Actually Craig kind of answered his own question. This is an email from him two days after the question I posted earlier this morning. Here it is:
Yesterday I was trying to force this story on my kids cuz I came up with it and I thought it was funny. Introduced it in class and it was absolutely a snoozer with no energy. I decided to try it again today and try to control NOTHING except the use of target structures, and it was like magic. I told the kids they had to all Speak only in Spanish and come up with all the details. There were kids who rarely speak just spewing spanish words and really getting involved.
Later I had another class kind of lagging with the story details so I cut it off for a while and gave them a reading from last week that I had forgotten to assign them. We read it together going over it three times till they felt comfortable repeating to me the translation.
Afterwards we went back over the details of the class story and they were able to talk about both. It was fun. The best part was that they (all high risk kids) were so proud of themselves they wanted to take the paper home with them. I asked them if they really understood what a huge deal it was that after six weeks speaking spanish with me they can read a full page of text. I told them that yes it is a huge deal and I couldn’t be more proud.
It’s surprising that though we are “covering” so much less, I feel like my subject is immensely more meaningful this trimester because of these methods.
The Problem with CI
Jeffrey Sachs was asked what the difference between people in Norway and in the U.S. was. He responded that people in Norway are happy and
