What Skip said in a recent comment here prompted these thoughts on starting the year:
We personalize our classroom to start the year. What does that mean? In my view, it means putting the kid in front of the instruction.
Comprehensible input without the personalization piece is not nearly as effective as personalized comprehensible input. Susan Gross said it in this way:
CI + P = TPRS
So, when we start the year in the fall, we want to make sure that we have specific strategies to personalize our classrooms. The activities that I use are described in PQA in a Wink!
The most effective first few weeks activities are the Circling with Balls activity and the Name Game. Both are described on this site on the resources/workshop handouts link.
It just makes sense. Once a kid feels left out, it’s over. Out comes the cell phone, because, in what is really a sad scenario played out countlessly in our nation’s classrooms, at least in their cell phone there is somebody that cares about them.
That’s really what the cell phones are about, right? They challenge us to make our classrooms more interesting to the kids in them, and there is nothing more interesting to a kid than herself. The cell phones challenge us to include everybody, as per Alfie Kohn. The cells phones are talking to us.
The Problem with CI
Jeffrey Sachs was asked what the difference between people in Norway and in the U.S. was. He responded that people in Norway are happy and
