There is so much to say about i + 1 that I am just learning. I don’t want to keep what I learn all in my head like some theory. I want to know how it works in my classroom so I can be a better teacher. I find it odd that now in my 13th year of doing CI, I am just now getting how the idea of i + 1 is a super important piece in the TPRS/CI puzzle.
Yes, we need to avoid giving our kids input (both spoken and reading input) that is too easy for them. And of course we need to avoid giving them input that is too hard for them. But how do we do that if we don’t have those materials? How do we get our hands on materials that push our kids just a little without pushing them all the way to failure (to use the weight lifting term). Has anyone experienced either one of those things because they were using incorrectly leveled materials?
It is like weight lifting, isn’t it? Too little weight, no gains. Too much weight, nothing gets lifted off the ground. I am just now beginning to see how the choice of materials is a really big deal for us, and how the Latinists and Chinese teachers, in particular, are probably doing a lot more prep work than we in modern languages are doing.
I think it will be many many years, at least ten, before we start seeing a wide variety of excellent materials that we can easily find to get our kids into the sweet spot of i + 1. Carol and Blaine have the corner on that market now, but others, perhaps a person or group from this PLC, will start coming out with good materials soon. I’m feelin’ that.
In the meantime, I’ll try my plan in the other post, the one I got from Annick, to read the Little Prince. If the kids can’t read it, they can’t read it. But it’s worth a try. I miss that book.