About a year ago Michele/Alaska started thinking in terms of student focused CI classes, with Jim and others throwing out new ideas from time to time about how to get the kids to be sources of CI – hence greater personalization.
Student generated stories, with the kids writing the scripts quickly in abbreviated form over just a few minutes based on targets given by Michele, represent an important development in the work that we do as teachers using contextualized comprehensible input.
Now, it has dawned on me that the term “student centered” is going to become an increasingly important, vital, possibly crucial part of any discussion about what TPRS/CI is. The definition of input is going to be changed because of our year long focus on students’ ideas, their work together, as sources of CI in our classrooms.
It will be interesting. I have a new blog entry category, along with the student generated stories category, called Student Generated Comprehensible Input. I will try to remember to link this category up with ideas like the one I just got from Drew (not yet published) where student free writes are used to generate appropriate level readings and discussion.
Years ago someone wrote on the moretprs listserve: “Circle or die!” I would add possibly, in the light of how kids seem to be visibly losing their ability to act properly in social settings, “Personalize or forget it!”.