In some classes, like the one Jeff is dealing with right now, you just have to give up the lofty goals of heavy input CI and punt the ball, just to make it to the end of the year with those tough classes.
Anyone who is encountering serious pushback on stories, my advice is to just not do them. It’s not worth it. Do it with classes that aren’t being manipulated by those few snots and their parents like the ones that are making Jeff all but crazy these days, and with whom we have all had to deal, or will in the future when the elements create those odd perfect storm classes.
We can provide perfectly fine CI instruction without PQA and stories. We can even make CI work without personalization. It’s not so interesting to the kids, but it works. How? Just read a ton and spin minimally, using a kind of modified R and D. I have actually done that with a class this year, just one, that is just plain boring, having been made sterile by the Three Boys Who Felt Smart that I have written about here in recent months.
How far to go into the D part of R and D with boring classes? It depends on the class. We should always be testing the limits of a class to become more and more human with us. Call it p + 1. What does p + 1 mean?
It means that in R and D, in the D part, we ask factual questions about the text, but we then compare, and this is Jody’s idea, the characters and events in the text, in that paragraph, in that line being discussed first factually, with our students to make the discussion more personalized. It is safest to just ask a few questions and then return to the text when using p + 1.
p + 1 has the advantage over regular PQA in that we can always just return to the safe haven of the text. There is always another sentence to return to, which doesn’t happen in stories. So we are much safer with novels than stories. I would add that we can find a high degree of safety in novels by choosing novels that are always below the level of the capacity of the class to read.
Simple novels (I use French 1 novels in French 2) bring great confidence, which motivates. It takes some of the edge off of level 2 TPRS/CI classes, which are typically the gnarliest level of CI instruction, being caught between the honeymoon of level 1 and the strongly capacities in the language that we find in level 3 classes. So I call this going with simpler novels i – 1.
I just don’t do stories or PQA in that level 2 class and the rest of the students know why and they really resent the three Smart Boys, but I don’t care. My first job is to keep my sanity and I do that by not locking horns on a mission to save the world for stories when kids like those three boys are in the room. They get to win, but I am the real winner bc I keep my sanity and my job. I’m not going to do the salmon swimming uphill thing just to be able to do a story. I do stories either with the flow of the water downstream or not at all.
And Jeff, the nutball case of a student in your class is obviously not happy in your class unless she is producing, outputting. She got a parent and an administrator, a stupid weak one, on her side. Game over. Done. Let this class read forever and do output if it solves this ridiculous problem you have right now. R and D is your big weapon here. Suggested output activities that eat up gobs of time are dictée and bWT or any of the other writing activities we have here under that category.
R and D and writing output. And keep the D down to a whisper of D, only circling, no PQA, just to check in with the kids and provide them with just that much and no more auditory input in class. Just do it. And don’t announce it. Just get to the break and then next semester with that class don’t try anything but reading with totally minimal D and then give them all the output you want and watch the classes and the year fly by.
No more stories, no more PQA. Give it up. Stupidity won this round, but you will win the battle with other classes and in those wins you will win the war. It’s called playing defense, Jeff. Just play defense now.