David (Talone) responded to Jeff:
Jeff,
Sorry to jump in late, but I wanted to express my support and understanding as well. Last week was a HUGE struggle for me and I was heavily chastised by my administration as well. It is really tough to stand tall and strong when you are getting slammed from all directions. I notice on Ben’s blog that everyone is going back and talking about discipline once again. I think that this might be one major failing of this method of instruction – it can be utterly taxing on the teacher. This is not an insignificant concern. If people as committed as all of us are wavering it is easy to imagine a teacher on the fence simply deciding to go back to drill and kill.
In terms of what to do with the kids I can only tell you what I have done (outside of John’s already excellent suggestions). Activities that don’t require a lot of work on the teachers’ part:
Dictations are a great way to start class off on a quiet and serious note, and can come with a grade. I did them twice last week and liked the tenor they brought. I just took 3 sentences from the last story we read. If I did 8 sentences that would probably take up nearly half or more of a 45 minute class.
Another thing is to extend the work that you do with the stories (or do it with old stories).
I like to use textivate with the kids after they have read and we have gone over the stories. If you can get laptop carts you can pass an entire class having them work on that (textivate has 3 new “games” who wants to be a millionaire, snake, and space invaders which just practice either putting the stories together in order, or writing the correct word). If you don’t have laptop carts, you can simply project it up on a screen and either a) do it as a class or b) have them write it down. I like to do the fill in the letter exercise with half the letters missing (you can change the amount if that is too hard) and have the kids write out a paragraph or more.
Robert’s story frame idea – Put up some simple frames and have the kids fill them in, then expand that into a full writing activity. Choose one good one to edit and use it as a reading for the next day. I like to use these stories or the kids freewrites because they are generally pitched at the right level, using the right structures, and I don’t need to think it up, just edit the mistakes and it is good to go. Obviously, choosing a stronger student’s submission makes the cleaning up process easier.
I also did a madlib last week which the kids seemed to be ok with, and was less chaotic than asking a story.
I also always have copies of the book handy and the workbook exercises (Cambridge) so that when things start to go south one troublemaker or the whole class can simply read a cultural unit and answer the 25 questions on it.
Good luck man! Hang in there!
Dave
