Update

4 thoughts on “Update”

1. magister p

   May 22, 2015 at 4:03 pm

   I considered myself to be fairly knowledgable when it comes to CI, but after joining I am now 100% overwhelmed by the content on here.
   Yesterday, I had 5 tabs open, going further and further down the rabbit hole of reading up on new strategies, their explanations, comments, and updates, only to find that the original article on R and D seems to have been replaced by its Compact form, or Word Walls with Verb Walls and something called Verb Slam Activity (which I still haven’t figured out despite 8+ articles). After getting a handle on ways to structure a class, the use of binders described in the detailed vPQA article seems to turn everything upside down, at least in terms of classroom rules, assessment, etc. For someone jumping in, it is difficult to sort out the evolution.
   It would be nice to have broad categories, perhaps reflecting the core list of strategies/requirements, with variations nested within.

   Log in to Reply
   1. Sean Lawler

      May 23, 2015 at 9:53 am

      Hello magister p! Have you looked at the “Big Ideas” and “Two Week Plan” categories on the right? Those have helped me if I feel a bit lost in the matrix that is this blog. I also know that Ray, here in Chicago, over the years has used this 2 week plan and been very successful. I haven’t had the job stability that Ray has had, so we can say that someone who has piece-mealed things together (me) and another who has developed a strong program at his school (Ray) have found the “Big Ideas” and “Two Week Plan” as something like The Path.
      That said, Ben and the group here are always revising. It’s a beautiful thing. I’m blessed to be a part of this movement with these wonderful folks.

      Log in to Reply
      1. Ben Slavic

         May 23, 2015 at 11:17 am

         Sean I revised the two week plan to include new stuff and now it would be hard to get everything in there into two weeks of instruction but it certainly does offer some stability as you say. I think chill is still using it. She is the first one to see how stabilizing it can be for a teacher. I didn’t revise the category, just the book, which I need to quit messing with because it’s getting, as they say in England, “mental”.

         Log in to Reply
2. Ben Slavic

   May 22, 2015 at 9:49 pm

   Understood and appreciated Magister. It’s the nature of the medium we are using, I’m afraid, where things grow into other things and things scroll out only to reappear in some other form, etc. There is no method, just an approach, and all the things I have suggested here, or learned from others, are just things people have tried and so it would be impossible to categorize in simple form all we have developed over these eight years now. My web guy keeps yelling at me for simpler categories but I think the term categories is not even correct – those terms are more of a glossary.
   Don’t fret. Pull what you can. Conferences clear things up. And as you know I just spent an entire year trying to write what you suggested above into one place where everything indeed does make sense. It’s my Big CI Book, just finished. Whether it makes things simpler or not remains to be seen. I wrote it to simplify everything here for new people, and also for myself, because it was very emotionally hard for me to think that the scrolling out nature of the discussion here, if not captured somewhere, would cause all these revolutionary strategies to be lost in time. and that would truly make me cry those really big crocodile variety of tears. I would cry me a river, a lake, if all we have done here got lost. I would cry am ocean.
   So that big new book is my magnum opus, capturing the best of the three other books and updating lots of older stuff, and I won’t write another book about CI because in this new book I feel that I have written it all. Until this group adds something new. But I have to stop somewhere as I have other plans for next year.
   But I hear you. Just keep in mind that there is no method. Just you and how you interpret CI in your own classroom. That should reduce some of the very understandable frustration. Construction projects when in their initial stages always create a lot of dust. I will publish something from my book as an article on Verb Slam and sorry about the confusion. Tell me if it clears that up. Ultimately these strategies when you see them done are far more simple than they seem when described using words – it’s just that way.
   The vPQA is all from what Julie does. So yes her use of binders is not what others do. I will focus heavily on vPQA this summer in MN. Sorry, man. Keep digging. It’ll become clear if you just keep at it, and you will find that the version of CI that you end up doing reflects you and your personality and teaching style, and no one else’s. When it becomes yours, you will know something. It’s like painting. You imitate until you get your own style. That’s what we do. No cookie cutter anything in this work. No one is an expert. No one is better than anyone else.

   Log in to Reply