I am so irresponsible with using English in my classroom that I now have asked a kid to time ME on how long I go in L2 before an L1 fail. The kids are really accurate about it. Each kid in each class who has me on the watch is like my own personal track coach with a stopwatch in hand. It helps me.
My goal now is to get through just ten minutes of comprehensible input at a time. The student signals me at the five minute and the ten minute marks. When the ten minutes is up, I speak English and we all take a short break, from 1 to 3 to even 5 minutes.
I do allow myself translation on the board using Point and Pause, along with the all-important “What did I just say?” line and any random Pop Up Grammar (defined as when you simply write and/or say, “This (word in L2) means this (word in L1)”.
It’s working.
