Hi Ben –
I’m in my new school. So far so good. Nothing to complain about. There are a lot of native speakers here in Spanish 1 but there are no other foreign languages to teach here so…. Anyway I’m trying to see these students in a less contemptuous way. I can’t handle resenting them for a whole year! I’m trying to shift in my thinking.
So far (because of the native speakers boredom) we’ve struggled for a couple days doing card talk. It’s really hard to go slow when you have 6 kids trying to say go fast and the other 30 trying to fall asleep.
So today we “created” through Mike Peto’s interview power point. It went much better. I didn’t time it right though and we ran out of time to do the write and discuss. I was able to keep things pretty comprehensible through writing new things on the board and addressing the class as a whole asking for verification in the 3rd person.
Now we have these great little texts about students in class. It’s time to review, write, and extend! This is where I’d like input. I have a somewhat traumatized population. They’ve been through a lot. I don’t really want to ask them to act out the tableau. Especially with my mixed levels it doesn’t “feel” like they’d go for it.
I’d love to hear your input and that of the group!