Many of us experience a kind of constant struggle as we try to figure out how to do comprehension based teaching. It’s time to let go of that. We won’t find the right strategy. In these pages we will find strategies that work for us, with which we resonate, but, as we have often said, the only strategy that we can really isolate is not a strategy at all but a distilled essence – to bring up the yet not fully defined term Ruth brought to us a few days ago – and that distilled essence in its purest form is comprehensible input itself. So as far as strategies go, some of those offered here work for some, others work for others, but comprehensible input is our goal.
But by looking at comprehensible input itself and by finding the strategies in these pages that make it work for us in our own ways in our own classrooms, we may be looking in the wrong direction to get to our real goal of becoming master teachers. Working each day to find and master the strategies to make sure that the kids can understand what they hear and what they read is in my view not all there is to do in this work. Comprehensible input is not the only piece of the puzzle. What is more important than comprehensible input?
It is a leitmotif that I have tried very hard to include in these pages here over the years. It is a thought that I would consider to be the message at the core of everything I personally believe about this work.
Here it is:
It’s not what we do (comprehensible input), it’s how we feel when we do it. Kids are not stupid. They pick up on everything. If we don’t convey to them a sense of happiness that is genuine while we do the various CI strategies in class, then they won’t work. Kids always respond in kind to how they feel in class, not to what they do. This is because estimates are that from 70% to 93% of all human communication is non-verbal. As little as 7% is verbal. That is a bit of research that really supports the position I am trying to make in this post.
Happiness is the operative word here and in my view it is what makes comprehensible input work. Behind the strategies, fueling them and bring life to them, is happiness.
That’s my thought for the day.