Unlock with PatreonThe Problem with CI
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Nathan Black
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8 thoughts on “Nathan Black”
Thank you very much. Some of those ideas are things I have perhaps subconsciously begun to do with my smallest class ( 9 students today). I also think that many of the things you outline are workable for larger groups who might have good ideas but don’t answer well. If I can get them to acquire by drawing, seeing pictures, and writing – and not have to exhaust myself trying to get them to say their 50% back to me out loud – then I am gonna do it.
One of the best things I have not explored further is to have them draw a six-box without words. Then I can story ask them while I write right on the drawing.
They seem to respond better when there are student drawings to focus on. I think of it as a way to personalize class and get student input without them having to talk.
Any other thoughts you have just keep ’em coming. Thank you – this site proves how valuable it can be again and again.
Dirk
Thanks, Nathan. I agree with Dirk that most (maybe all) of your ideas are adaptable to big classes as well. For some larger classes there is a need to tone down the “excitement”, and some of these ideas should help with that.
This year due to a new type of scheduling, I’m teaching new every-other-day, year long exploratory course in German, and we are designing it to be totally culture/content-based instruction, with small numbers: 4 one day, 9 the other day. On day one, I realized that a traditional set-up wouldn’t feel right, so I decided to experiment with setting the room up more as a German Learning Resource Room…basically a Waldsee (the German Village of Concordia Language Villages in northern MN) type immersion classroom in a public school, but with more focused CI techniques all the time.
WE SIT AROUND A TABLE and talk/teach in simple PQA language all the time. For content, I’m drawing from authentic songs, google maps pictures, the daily phrases from Waldsee’s handbook, and projects for the classroom: decorated nametags, signs, city collages/watercolors (!), holiday-related crafts projects.
To this, I add my simple “basics” stories based on songs, poems, legends, and interrupt this with a TPR stretching routine.
I have a really good feeling about this class (an alternate to a study hall–students can choose among French, German, and Spanish), and hope that it continues. It’s a lot of affective domain “teaching from the heart,” and it requires that I turn down the standards-based professional teacher in me, and turn way up the encouraging, supporting camp counselor in me. The power of this lies in both my love as a teacher for the content I teach, as well as the training/coaching I’ve gained in CI /PQA, both here and at tprs conferences over the years. If you can, set up your classroom in this way, at least for a while, and see what emerges!
“…it requires that I turn down the standards-based professional teacher in me, and turn way up the encouraging, supporting camp counselor in me…”.
So well expressed! Indeed, those two things – the standards-based teacher and the camp counselor – are at extreme odds. They can’t exist together. For example, in a second year class we are sent the message that we are to focus on writing as part of the standards based curriculum that exists in all schools. But are the kids ready to write and start deconstruction – in linear/analytical fashion – of all the sound that they have heard in our TPRS classrooms up until now?
How many hours have they heard the actual language so far in their careers as language students in a second year class in October? 120 hours? And they need 18,000 hours to fully acquire? And we want them to write well and with high accuracy with that percentage (less than 1%) of auditory input under their belts?
What Bernie is doing there is perfect. He insists on the play part of the acquisition process. He draws from
“…authentic songs, google maps pictures, the daily phrases from Waldsee’s handbook, and projects for the classroom: decorated nametags, signs, city collages/watercolors (!), holiday-related crafts projects…”.
He does PQA. He’s not focusing on the writing too early. His students are probably reading a lot. The stuff in the standards having to do with writing and speech emergence will follow this PQA work naturally. It will all emerge in a natural way. Bernie has adopted a very mature, courageous, position here.
Great stuff Bernie! You are basically allowing your students to give developmentally appropriate output by responding through making the city collages, nametags, projects, etc. My wife keeps pointing out to me that my most successful lessons are basically just an adaptation of what our youngest daughter has done in kindergarten, first and second grades. She loves saying “They’re all just big kindergartners and you’re just giving them permission to show it.”
I’ve recently been emailing back and forth with some of my just-graduated Seniors who are now in College and love sharing with them what we are learning about German bands, events, that come up as part of our CBI explorations and got a sinking feeling when I realized that they are not going to get any of that stuff in college unless they look for it themselves. What Bernie is doing is teaching his students to develop a taste (or addiction) for all the cool stuff out there in the target culture that will keep them going when things get rough.
And I also agree that all this stuff works great in a big class as well, mostly because I stole the majority of it verbatim from all of you who have posted on this site over the past year. I’m extremely grateful to all for your generosity in create a supersaturated environment for learning
“…my wife keeps pointing out to me that my most successful lessons are basically just an adaptation of what our youngest daughter has done in kindergarten, first and second grades…”.
Susie Gross 101!
Nathan said –
“…what Bernie is doing is teaching his students to develop a taste (or addiction) for all the cool stuff…”.
Which cool stuff is precisely the stuff that drew most of us to teaching languages in the first place. We had fallen in love with the language and the culture at some point on the road and we wanted to share it with others and so earn our livings. But, whoops! 96% of the kids that they sent us for this sharing that we wanted to do weren’t as interested in the language and culture as we were. They needed convincing. But we failed at convincing them. We bored them with the book instead. They quit. We saw so many of them as stupid, blaming them instead of ourselves, because it is hard to blame oneself after having had a degree or two conferred upon us by scholars. Easier to blame the witless students. Suddenly we didn’t like our jobs anymore. But then Blaine and Susie and Jason came along and basically yelled at the world, “Here’s how you can make it fun!” and we tried and, after some fits and starts as L and many others are going through right now, we started to reach, just as Nathan and Bernie are refererring to above in their own teaching, 96% and not 4% of the kids. We realized that what Dr. Krashen was talking about and what Blaine was delivering in big vats of TPRS stories was right and true and effective and wonderful. And one day we realized that it had all become fun again. Our students miraculously became very smart, even clever. We had to learn how to shoo them out of classrooms at the end of class. We were reaching their second grader personalities and they and we both stopped, finally, focusing on the language and instead began in our classes to focus rather on the communication of fun, interesting, meaningful, and bizarre messages in the target language. Fun. Hmmm. What a concept. We can overide the Nazi part of our teaching personalities and relax. For more on this idea see –
https://benslavic.com/blog/?p=8294
https://benslavic.com/blog/?p=8043
Thanks Nathan for writing this! And thanks for the reminder of embedded readings. I keep forgetting about this great idea from Laurie.
Here is something that’s been happening with my small class (7) from targeted and untargeted PQA:
I have been finding a lot lately (even though I dig scripted stories) that my PQA gets us into an unexpected story. I’ll start circling a word, and a mini situation arises. If it’s got momentum, I let it go for a while, adding in a new structure that might be necessary to explain what “happened” to the student. Basically the PQA has created the story skeleton and first location for us. Then the next day (or whenever) we’ll keep it going, in a more story-asking way, and apply the other “locations”. Sometimes they keep popping up. I think this story was asked on 3 separate days, one location for each day. 2 of the 3 were based on real events that we fictionalized.
Here’s an example from last week (kind of long, Spanish 3, last quote was written by a student, with some errors corrected). Can you figure out what the targeted structures were, or rather, BECAME?
—-
Prueba de Amistad
Hace una semana, Leah dejó caer sus libros en el pasillo afuera del salón de Sr. Fried. Leah los dejó caer a posta. Annie los recogió rápidamente porque es buena amiga y porque Leah estaba embarazada ese día. Annie le preguntó:
-¿Dejaste caer los libros en accidente?
Leah le respondió:
-No. Los dejé caer a posta. Fue una prueba de amistad, y tú la pasaste.
Profe Tripp oyó el cuento por Annie durante la clase de español. Le gustó la idea. Así que Profe Tripp dejó caer su taza de agua en el suelo del pasillo. Tatiana vio el incidente, pero no hizo nada.
Profe Tripp le llamó a Roger y le dijo que hubo un accidente en el pasillo. Roger vino al sitio del incidente como si fuera Flash. Roger recogió la taza y secó el suelo. Roger le preguntó:
-¿Dejaste caer el agua a posta o en accidente?
Profe Tripp le dijo:
-A posta. Fue una prueba de amistad, y tú la pasaste. Tatiana no la pasó. La fallezó.
Fernando oyó la idea de Leah y le gustó mucho. Así que fue al baño. En el baño, dejó caer agua. Dejó caer un vaso de Disneylandia lleno de agua al suelo. Profe K entró al baño y vio el incidente. Profe K no recogió el vaso de Fernando. Fernando le preguntó:
-¿Por qué no recogiste mi vaso?
Profe K le dijo con una sonrisa:
– Lo siento. ¡Yo necesitaba usar el baño mucho! Tanto que yo corrí aquí y golpeé a muchos estudiantes y profesores mientras de correr. Yo golpeé la mano de Profe Tripp y le hice dejar caer la taza de agua. Y golpeé a Leah en el pasillo y le hice dejar caer sus libros. Lo siento. Yo necesitaba usar el baño mucho. Lo siento. No podia encontrar el baño.