A colleague wrote:
I always come back from workshops thinking, “I’m at least that good! I can organize lessons like these!” And then when I get home to my own classroom, I find that I’m not that good. I react badly to classroom management issues, or I miss some vital sign from one of my students that throws me off all day. Or I chicken out and speak more English than I should.
I feel the same way. I speak too much English. I say don’t do it and then I do it. A kid even called me on that today when I was complaining to them about their English! Oh boy. On top of that, unless it’s a proven Anne Matava story, my stories are fairly boring these days. And I have six teachers coming to my room in the next few weeks. Help! Reading and discussing and spinning is great, but the kids can only take so much of Blaine’s books and I am too lazy to write stories for the kids. There is a general slump going on, in short.
In that interest, I need some mid-winter slump advice. Bryce recently gave a kind of list of stuff he does with his kids to keep stories from getting flat because they are done too often. We are all at that point in the year right now where we need such activities. I am calling here on this blog for any activities that people use that are connected to auditory or reading comprehensible input. Any ideas? C’mon.
But I don’t want any games. Just stuff along the lines of what Laurie has going that really work, with her embedded readings. Someone on their website has a list of all the things we can do in TPRS, which is considerable, but I don’t know who it is or where the list is. I just heard about it. Was it Michele?
So let’s help each other through February with variations on stories and readings, that will break up the mundane routine I’m sure many of us have gotten into. But it has to be stuff that gives our students plenty of personalized CI. If it’s not personalized CI, then I’m not interested. O.K. start sending.