In the next few articles I feature a few of the most important of the fifty-two jobs listed at benslavic.com. The first is on the PQA Counters:
PQA Structure Counters (3) – Kids love to count stuff. The three PQA counters (or however many targets you have that day, there may be less) tally repetitions of target structures for you during PQA, not stories. The idea is that you have explained to them that you absolutely need their help to set up stories, that you can’t start a story until you know that you have enough reps on a target, at least fifty but preferably much more than that. The PQA Counters are made to understand by you that the story may fail if you don’t get enough reps on the target structures during the PQA, which, after all, exists to get reps on structures. Once the meanings of the target structures for that day have been established, the PQA counters begin to count. So the process with these students becomes one of you working together with them towards a common and important goal of getting sufficient repetitions to make the story work. They take it seriously. I usually award these jobs to students who are kind of quiet but like to be involved in some way.
The PQA Counters can make five group tick marks on a sheet of paper, but you can also give them a little mechanical device called a pitch counter, available at sporting goods stores for under ten dollars. These are round little hand held devices that pitching coaches use to count pitches in baseball games so pitchers don’t get hurt. All the student has to do is press their thumb down once each time you say the target they have chosen to count. Then, as class rolls along, you periodically in English ask them how you are doing, how many reps you have on the target they are counting.
Think about this, a teacher asking a student in the middle of class how they are doing. This apparent shifting of power to three students during class is huge in reducing the passive defiance in the classroom described earlier. The students are working with the teacher, not against her. The process of counting reps taps into the good will of the students doing this job, and the balance of effort tilts more toward 50% when this happens. In this way, the PQA Counters function as a kind of social glue. They bring the class together in pursuit of a common goal, shoulder to shoulder with the teacher. The PQA counters are pure gold.