How many people are still enforcing jGR/ICSR now at the end of January? Just curious. I am thinking less people than in the fall. Why?
Perhaps for two reasons:
1. Everything is working. The Classroom Rules poster and the jGR chart require only limited use during class to straighten out wayward youths. The classroom discipline is in place, the TL is being used over 90% of the time, putting the teacher in full compliance with the ACTFL Position Statement on use of the TL, and all is well, so the rubric is not really needed.
2. Nothing is working. Using the Rules poster and the rubric is not effective because many kids are doing too much talking, are not following rule #4 in class, are not focused, and both the instructor and the students are using English much of the time.
When everything is working, the rubric is not needed, obviously, because the method is being properly used and the class was properly normed in the crucial months at the beginning of the year. Instructing a class in a language using comprehensible input IS naturally interesting to students, and the truth is that the rubric that we have created here together is not necessary if we are employing the method effectively.
If everything is not working, I suggest that we re-activate the rubric. This would require a meeting with the class announcing, in my opinion, a 50% or more grade weight to jGR/ICSR. Then (the hard part) we would have to enforce it daily or weekly through February, and be ready to defend our use of it as per the articles in the jGR category, which make the argument for the rubric.
Many of us are in full story mode right now. Teachers new to the method are no doubt struggling with stories, and this is just part of the process, since nothing good happens fast, but they should look forward to R and D if they have bought into the idea that mid-year is a good time for stories but that at some point, in February of March, it is best to go to novels. Step 3 of stories, the reading step*, is a good way to set up the R and D classes that happen in spring.
This idea of hitting stories hard in the winter and novels hard in the spring, of course, is only a suggestion.
In either case, whether the teacher is using stories, novels, or just loose PQA to stay in the TL, the teacher must know that if classroom management is still an issue they must act, and, as suggested in this articles, perhaps a return to jGR is not a bad idea. There are many articles on jGR in the jGR category. All are very useful and to revisit some of the right about now might be a good idea for some of us whose ship may be sailing in stormy seas right now.
*using ROA – Reading Option A – in Step 3 of TPRS is in my opinion as good as comprehensible input gets. It doesn’t get any more effective than that. When we read the story that the kids created (as opposed to the novel) and the students translate and then we spin off into discussion of what they translated, that is the pinnacle of CI instruction and, in terms of gains, far more powerful than any other form of CI, in my opinion.