We continuously allow blurting. Who among us can dispute that point? We have come up with, over many many years, all sorts of tricks – a million ideas it seems like – to win the battle. We keep losing it.
In my department, as a result of the success of our “community meetings” (we had two of them yesterday) in which Linda and Zach and I get our classes together to talk about the problem and demo what a CI class can look like when students don’t blurt, I have thought of something to try next week.
It’s called “Two Strikes and You’re Out”. Yet untested, I strongly feel that it will put me in the driver’s seat this time. It’s a game, right? Like how much a cop will let you get away with in the speed zone. We let them go five miles over the limit and oops class is ruined by 35 cars going 51 miles per hour in a posted 45 mile per hour zone.
Here’s my plan. On the first blurt, that is, when the student blurts once even if it’s just one word (which opens the floodgates but we don’t seem to appreciate that), the student goes directly to the wall to sit in a chair to observe – merely observe, they may not participate. This is Eric Herman’s idea that Alisa and others jumped all over the minute they read it here last week.
Now, a critical point here. If that student in any way blurts anything for a second blurt, I am going to send him or her right to Linda or Zach, whichever one has a class. (I wouldn’t send a kid out to a room where it is possible that no one is in there.)
I will give them a chapter book and tell them to go sit in the other teacher’s room and to write what they read on Bryce’s very effective Dual Entry Journal form:
https://benslavic.com/blog/dual-entry-journal-form/
(I developed the sending-them-to-a-teacher idea four years ago at Lincoln High School in Denver but didn’t use it on a second blurter, but only with those out of control kids that we get every once in a while.)
Why wouldn’t this work? We all know the reason! It’s the four fingers pointing back at us when we point to the class as the problem with our index finger. We’re not strong enough in our core to do it. We let the first single blurt go. And also we don’t do it because we’re too nice (not a good thing in a teacher sometimes). Many reading this might think that two strikes is just too mean. Hogwash!
When to use it exactly during a typical class period? All the time. I will use it specifically when I announce that we want to do CI for a certain period of time (30 min. for me in each class). That would be during PQA/Stories and also during Read and Discuss of a novel/chapter book (R and D must have the same requirements re: blurting as for stories.) And I will use it generally when we are doing grammar/translation or anything involving lots of English if the kid is just unmanageable or disruptive in any slight way – we know where the fine line is on that one. Out they go.
And it’s not too mean. I’ll report back in two weeks. I think I’m going to be able to say, “Bam!” on this one. I hope so. I think that in this discussion on blurting we have put our finger on the pulse of classroom chaos in our CI instruction.
Oops I need to add that perhaps the biggest reason they blurt is because I allow myself English in the form of “time outs” during the CI. Not anymore. If I want to share about the time my hat flew off the Eiffel Tower I have to wait until the end of the session, quickly noting it on the tripod paper for later so as to not derail the class myself. That’s a big part of the problem!
Tip:
Make a little chart of when participating colleagues have their planning periods. On the chart have the colleagues phone extension. Make the call first, don’t just tell them the kid is coming to them. Of course use English for this. No problem. When blurters, from the wall merely observing now, know that they are one blurt away from removal from the classroom, well, try it and see for yourself.
Another point:
Now that my kids (preliminary testing of Two Strikes and You’re Out! has been far more promising than I had any idea it would be) and I aren’t playing the blurting game anymore (we’re just not), I am finding that I able to speak much better French in the classroom, and it’s a bit faster but I’m working on that.
It is the best French of which I am capable, that is for sure. I used to only find that French at the bottom of a beer glass in downtown Denver with my DPS rock star team of wonderful people. This French did not occur before in my classroom, when I was mixing languages in the same way that John Steinbeck’s Doc mixed beer and a milkshake in La Jolla in what I think is his chef d’oeuvre, Cannery Row.
How did this happen? Well, how does anything that is unfettered, artistic and pure happen? It’s not weighed down by self-indulgence, by having at the base of my instruction the sea snake hiding among the algae of sad need to show off how smart I am in French to little kids who could care less, and who, in spite of all the data gathering shoved into their face by well-meaning adults, still only want to know what happens in the story.