Tasting the Word
Let’s say when starting to build a one word image with your class that you accepted, from the objects called out, a grape. The first thing we have to do with any new vocabulary is “walk before we talk”, so we stroll to the board and write down in both languages as always:raisin – grapeThere is an optional step you can do right here before going through the six one word image prompts:If we feel like it (if it fits our personality) we can say the word “raisin” in all sorts of different semi-histrionic ways. I have always enjoyed “tasting” the word in this way, saying it loud and fast, slow and soft, using different emotions, in different ways as suggested on the Director’s Cues posters. When doing this, I always notice that a few of my students are also tasting the word, subtly moving their mouths to do a kind of neurological study of the sound. You can see it happening if you look closely. Of course the concrete sequential students think it’s weird. But they’re the weird ones because they are afraid to taste life and to take a risk. I have also been told by some teachers that it is weird, and I told them that they didn’t have to do it, that there are as many ways to teach using comprehensible input as there are teachers. I like doing that little step just after writing the one word image down on the board and so I do it. One thing that I have learned about teaching is that you can’t wait to have fun, that you have to take some risks. And I don’t just taste single words in building one word images – I also taste entire sentences and even paragraphs and stories, as is described in the “sacred reading” reading option. How are our students supposed to plummet deep into everything that language might be in a classroom (think of a song or a poem) unless they have had a “weird” teacher do something weird like tasting words in class somewhere during their long dreary path to graduation?