Unlock with PatreonThe Problem with CI
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Learning Lab Today
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13 thoughts on “Learning Lab Today”
I observed Haiyun Lu two weeks ago and was simply blown away by her Chinese students. She has carefully and repeatedly incorporated gesturing in her 1st and 2nd year classes and it inspired me to ramp things up w/ gestures for structures. Not go crazy, but ramp it up a little. It really kept kids engaged, was another level of comprehension checks, and was a huge boon for a number of kids.
with love,
Laurie
Yes! Very useful stuff -ready to be incorporated tomorrow! I’ve been hesitant to pause for too long on the pointing out of fear that talking will start in the silence, which it often does. But when the point and pause has been absolutely silent (like 3 or 4 times) I really do notice increased engagement after that -apparently b/c the kids have had time to process. Today I was not happy with how many kids were actually looking at the word I was pointing to, so I went on a broken record rant, repeating to the class that the word they needed to look at was the one my finger was pointing to. I said it probably 10 times, very slowly, with various inflections, which I think some kids got a kick out of. It was a good start.
A really goofy way I have of getting them to lock onto the word more is to point in the general direction of the word on the board with the laser pointer while I look at them. I’ll say the word and then say, “Boom!” like I got it perfectly without looking. The idea is that I can hit the word without looking, bc I am that cool. Of course, I miss the word, and they start making hand motions to help me while laughing. Then once they are all looking at the word I turn and put the laser point on it and keep going.
Way to make a frustrating thing for me (when kids aren’t tracking where the action is, like in a pause & point) into something that extends the pause & makes them want to look in a light-hearted way. Cool.
At my department meeting today I got on the DPS Teacher Tube channel and we studied Annick Chen’s Pizza story.
I told people they don’t have to stay, they can go work on something else if they wanted. Two people left at the beginning and one person left half way through. (I didn’t want them there anyway–can I say that here?).
The result is that 8 of us were able to talk about what Annick was doing, how she does it, and how we can incorporate that into our story telling.
One teacher said at the beginning “They look bored”, they aren’t doing anything. I told him to watch their eyes closely, their eyes are rolling up and then looking at her again when they have the answer. They ARE doing something, they are listening with the intent to understand.
I realize that as department chair I can’t force people into the method, but hearing things like “I could learn Chinese like that” is a fantastic first step.
drew — when you guys need a tprs french tchr — remember me! I’m 15 min away from your area…
Y además, tengo quince años de experiencia de enseñanza de español con credencial californiano.
Plus, I have a clear credential in English.
Whatever gets me into a tprs tolerant department the fastest!
californiana
🙂
you got it. we need a CI army!
Oooh! Can you link me to this? It is exactly what I am looking for.
http://bit.ly/rhQpxw
xie xie 🙂
Drew the most important thing you gave those colleagues was the moment of understanding students’ eyes when they are listening closely with the intent to understand. So often we observe students’ faces and assume erroneously that they aren’t with us and change up our game plan to engage them differently. This adds to the confusion in their heads rather than clearing it up.
Way to go department head!