A Spatial Curriculum
In the past, language instruction has largely involved isolating parts of language (grammar or working from word lists) and then breaking everything down into pieces and analyzing it. This is a left-brain dominant process requiring thinking. It is a process that involves planning and memorizing and testing and filling in blanks and no small degree of boredom.
The reason that that kind of teaching is boring is that languages don’t exist in pieces or as single words and so they can’t be acquired that way – they exist in full blown context or not at all. Languages cannot be broken down and still live and thrive outside of meaningful context any more than a tree can exist outside of an ecosystem.
The result of the old kind of teaching is that our students learned unimportant things about the structure of the language, which allowed them to pass tests, but they didn’t even come close to learning the language itself. The result is the common phrase, “I took four years of Spanish in high school and I can’t say a thing.”
The curriculum described in this book is different. It is spatial in nature. Here is how I represent it:
By starting in the Create phase of the star with an image created by the student, instead of starting from a grammar point or from certain words packed into a semantic set or a thematic unit list, in this schema we just talk to the kids about their image, going clockwise from one node to the next in the star, expanding the language into space, as it were. It really works.
After all, what is our goal in this work of teaching languages? Isn’t it to use the language to communicate with our students? Is that not the standard – Communication?
How Does it Work?
We take journeys around the star. The basic pattern for each journey is the same:
Step 1: Start in the Create Phase (12:00 on the star). Here you create an image.
Step 2: The Review Phase (2:00 on the star). Here you review the image.
Step 3: The Write Phase (5:00 on the star). Here you write out what was said about the image.
Step 4: The Read Phase (7:00 on the star). Here you read what was created.
Step 5: The Extend Phase (10:00 on the star). Here you do extension activities using what was created.
The plan is simple. At any point in class you will be at any point on the star.
It is the step-by-step routine that we want to convey in this book, so that the teacher can put her classes, so to speak, on “automatic pilot” and not have to endure the constant mildly frantic feeling in her work that she can’t keep up with her work because of all the “stuff” that she has to do during the day.
A Whirlpool
The whole brain spatial and expansive process that characterizes the star preserves the wholeness of the language. It allows real communication between the teacher and her students. It is a wonderful way to teach a language class, because something is created each day that is genuinely interesting to students, something that automatically leads to authentic human verbal interaction.
When teaching a language engages the unconscious minds of our students, and not their conscious minds, good things happen. Teaching expansively does not reduce a language into pieces, laying them out to be analyzed, which is very boring.
Teaching around the star is a more intuitive process. A journey around the star requires very little planning and, once the process has been internalized by both students and teacher, no planning is needed.
The Star Sequence Curriculum provides an ever-deepening investigation (think of a whirlpool) into the language first created in the north node of the star. Massive repetition of language structures occurs in natural ways over long periods of time.
Because the repetitions are highly contextualized, we get quality repetitions with the star. We get enjoyable and cohesive repetitions of naturally flowing language that keep the action and dialogue fresh, never letting it become dry or predictable, since there is no hidden agenda that we are trying to convey other than just the language itself.
The result of such instruction comes in the form of positive feedback from all quarters. This comment from one of Anne Matava’s students sums it up: “I love this class. You do less work than in any other class but learn way more.”
Therefore, in the star, we have a template that allows us to bend and shape our instruction into something that is much more alive than what we have done in the past.
It is time for this change in our profession.
Alisa Shapiro-Rosenberg
Alisa has been teaching using the Star Sequence for some time. She comments:
“The Star completely supplants the old thematic mapping model from the 1980s that is still in use today, even though it is an accepted fact that the old model is completely outdated.
“Ben’s star allows us to go from node to node around the star, deepening the language experience at each node. The nodes are about extending and developing meaning, moving ever deeper into the same text but in ways that are never boring.
“The star provides an amazing sequence, one that is grounded in repetition. The star is a fugue, going ever deeper, one that does not flounder around at shallow levels bordering on memorization.
“The star is shimmering and twinkling. It invites. We are reminded of Dr. Krashen’s quote about each exposure to a lexical item revealing another 5% of the word’s meaning as long as the interest is there. As we pass from node to node, more and more meaning emanates more deeply from it. This deepening investigation into meaning when focused on the message and not the language is when acquisition occurs.
“The star is also a much more practical document because it can list the actual lesson plan (or options for it) for that day/week/cycle. The teacher always knows where she is in the cycle and instead of planning a lesson need only stroll up in front of the class and simply ask the class where they are in the cycle. The students will know. This lack of planning brings great mental health benefits to the teacher who works with the star.”
If, as Alisa plainly feels, the star is so wonderful, then why are so few languages teachers these days using this curriculum? Why are they doing the same things they’ve done for years?
It is because old habits and paradigms die hard. Linear instruction based on word lists, high frequency verb lists, backwards planning lists for novels, thematic units, semantic sets, or anything connected to a table of contents in a textbook have sunk their hooks into language instruction everywhere. But it’s not how people learn languages.
In retrospect, we can say that classical thematic unit planning, trying to use comprehensible input to teach lists of words, was never appropriate because it contradicted the research. Linear lesson plan design based on lists simply doesn’t address the Communication standard. The design works in other subjects, but in languages it is artificial.
In languages, words can be arranged in an almost infinite variety. Why limit that potential by focusing only on certain words at a time? Dr. Krashen has warned that such targeting of certain words in comprehensible input classes constrains student interest.
Why bore students by teaching them the colors one word at a time when we all know that in languages such words don’t exist in isolation from other words? Why talk to the kids in stilted fashion by trying to insert the words that we “need for them to learn” when we can instead invite them to enjoy a much freer lesson that is divorced from any planned outcome? Is it not true that any conversation that is interesting is unpredictable?
Curricular design models that follow the spatial design sequence like the one that the star provides will eventually replace the old textbook model. Now, we can finally honestly say in language instruction that the sky’s the limit!