This from Jeff Brickler:
Ben,
I have been thinking about how to make it easier on a teacher who teaches all levels, specifically Latin, German, Chinese, and occasionally Spanish. I have a hypothesis that I’d like people to hammer on for a bit before I decide to move forward next year. Here it is.
Many FL teachers teach 4 different classes. I also teach those classes while also traveling between buildings. These challenges, for me at least, are difficult to overcome when I have to try to come up with 4 different things to teach. What if we didn’t have to come up with 4 different things? What if we only had two preps, one for years 1-2 and one for years 3-4? Could we select interesting readings and backward design them for those two levels? Or could we select an interesting reading(s) and backward design them for all levels? Could we scaffold one thing down and back up to reach all levels of students? If we could do this, how would we do it? I was thinking that in the 1st and 2nd year we could select readings that were interesting, but a bit easier. If structures were high frequency, they would continue to pop up.
What is prompting this thought is my frustrations with the textbook. It seems so counter intuitive to me at least to use comprehensible input methods with a textbook, which has it’s own agenda. I know others do it with success and that’s great. It’s just not my style. I’m really trying to find a way that makes my work, if not less, more meaningful.
Thanks,
jeff