Water Wings

This blog post from last spring tags on to what we were talking about earlier this week:
If we are floundering in the CI, we should compile a list of bail out moves and tape it to our desks. We can call them our water wings because we are all learning this together – there is always something new to learn – and the method doesn’t look like it’s going to take any concrete final form ever.
I’ll just write what Michele suggested to Clarice on a little piece of paper and tape it to the corner of my desk near where I teach so I can just walk over to it, put my finger on it, and commence the bail out – I mean put on the water wings – of my choice.
Here is what Michele suggested and it is a great list:
…I can always switch to having the kids write, or do a parallel story, or have a superstar change perspective, or write the story together (and then embellish it together – having told them it’s a bit boring), or go to a dictation….
So:
– freewrite
– parallel story (see comment below from Michele for details)
– superstar perspective change
– class writing of story where they tell us the story in French, or English, and we write it down while they read what we write.
– dictée (see resources page of this site for explanation)
– SSR/FVR as long as perceived as just another activity as per Robert.
– they finish the story in groups on limited time on little squares of paper and their new endings show up in the reading as per Nathan.
– Kindergarten Day as per Clarice.
Also classic TPR on vocabulary and also having students do drawings, because it is so hard sometimes to fill the 90 minutes when you are new at this. Those two ideas from Angelka Dodd.
This is the short list as we know that there are many more bail out moves that we can’t think of off the top of our heads. Hopefully this list will grow as we keep on teaching (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fmP6XRCr39s&NR=1).
Another good move is to take a book and read to them in L2 as they read in L2. No discussion, just let them hear what the language sounds like.