I got this from a blog member:
I have a question about your rules, for the “Do your 50%” rule, how do you explain that to students when you explain your rules? I”ve read some posts you wrote about that rule but I’m still shaky on understanding it completely.
My response:
I tell the kids that we are going to work together this year. So, they must do their half and I will do my half. Since I am the only one who speaks the language, their half is listening and mine is speaking. They have the hard job, because listening with the intent to understand (that is rule #1) is far harder than speaking. But they have to do it. If they don’t they will fail the class. I tell them that that will change in French 2 and beyond. Then they will speak more. But not now. I tell them that the option is the book and big tests and notebooks and homework and not hearing the language in the classroom. I ask them how they learned their langauge – most of the kids in my school are fluent in Spanish. I remind them it was mommy and daddy and grandma and grandpa speaking to them over and over and they just learned it. They usually choose to hear it. I laser point to the 50% rule and tell them to show up for me this year. I enforce this with my eyes on theirs all the time in class, walking around from kid to kid, making notes about whether I need to contact admin or parents here in this critical two week phase many of us are now beginning. I make seating charts that will maximize the effectiveness of the rules and what I observe in the Circling with Balls/One Word Image work we are doing now. I kindly offer kids who want to memorize and take notes like they did in middle school a choice to get into another class. I reward the kids who show me that they are willing to listen with the intent to understand and do their half. I tell those kids stuff like “You are doing so well with what I am asking you to do right now that you don’t have to take the first quiz next Tuesday. Just put a +10 at the top of your scantron sheet. I can tell that, the way you listen, you would get a 10 on the quiz anyway. If you keep doing what you are doing right now, the way you are listening to me, I will make sure that you get an A in this class no matter what. Thanks!” And then I go back and scan the rest of them, punctuating the message I just delivered to the class via that one model kid. That’s what I do now at the beginning of the year. I have no desire to teach French for at least two weeks. Of course I do it, but it is incidental. What I am really doing is norming the class and personalizing it. If I set the rules and personalize first, I find that, in my experience, the rest of the year flows quite nicely. Now is the time to work my butt off in class. Later, I can relax and just enjoy talking with the kids about stuff in French. That happens after they understand how my class works, not before.
See also:
https://benslavic.com/blog/2011/06/05/10310/