We have, by now after all these years, so many strategies to use that it’s ridiculous. Most of us have settled into a diet that we prefer and all is well. We’re not overeating. I personally am enjoying a steady healthy diet of stories and readings using Reading Option A, which right there can require up to three or even four block periods, with occasional free writes and dictees.
All the other stuff, the Movie Talk, the vPQA, all those great menu items, I just haven’t been able to get to. It’s fine. We use the things that work the best for us. I have noticed that Linda Li – and I have another class observation of her second year students to share soon – usually does CI in the first half of our 85 min. blocks and then has the kids use the CI from that part of class to draw, write, etc (do output) for the second half of class.
Having all these great menu items to choose from is certainly a far cry from years ago when I would be half way through a regular 45 min. class and sweating, wondering how I was going to get through the rest of the class. When we teach using comprehensible input, it’s an unending feast.
The Problem with CI
Jeffrey Sachs was asked what the difference between people in Norway and in the U.S. was. He responded that people in Norway are happy and
3 thoughts on “Too Much Food”
“When we teach using comprehensible input, it’s an unending feast”. I did a sort of Movie Talk but I felt like I had little success. I even dare say that my worst PQAs were better at providing reps and sheltering vocabulary while recycling vocab from previous lessons. There was more engagement. I enjoy the story asking, reading cycles.
How are teachers working with scripts? I am trying that this week now but I feel a bit wonky about a procedure or steps of doing it. There is better engagement with students’ cute answers but I feel that there could be more CI provided.
Steven,
Here you’ll find a PPT that I put together to accompany my NTPRS session a couple years ago. May or may not be of help.
http://www.trippsscripts.com/#!misc-downloads/c1h54
I do lots of comparing/contrasting during stories. So if in the story Kimmy meets Beyonce, I will probably ask someone else if they’ve met Beyonce or someone that looks like Beyonce or another famous person. This is a textbook TPRS skill, and a very useful one for me. Something else I’ve been doing, just to get in one more quality rep and encourage visualization, is on any given sentence/fact that we may be discussing, I say “Clase, Imaginatelo” (Imagine it)” and they know to touch their forefinger and thumb to their chin and look up, then I say the sentence slowly again. I might do this 3 times in a given class. Also, the individual public dictado (for a willing student) is a nice way to extend the storyasking process for me.
Thanks Jim. You have some good strategies there. I will try again.