When people present on CI, they use various techniques and strategies to make their points. Our PLC member Carly Edelman makes her points about CI by using Card Talk and the Star Sequence in the following way:
Workshop Agenda :
A. Set up: Participants take colored card stock and markers, write their first name and draw a picture of something they like. They are told to play the role of students.
B. Card talk demo: focus on WBYT, going slow, teach to the eyes, light TPR in context, working the room to draw connections between participants with likes in common
C. Quick quiz: 5-10 yes/no questions based on the card talk (save time and only do five).
D. Write and discuss: generate a paragraph based on the card talk as per Phase 4 of the Star Sequence.
E. Reading options: probably read and translate, talk about grammar in context, or use any of the other Phase 4 readings options you want, depending on time.
F. Debrief: teacher talk, what was going on (explain the Star Sequence and how it works as a taxonomy). What did I do to make myself comprehensible? How can one adjust the activity for higher levels? What are options for “extend”? If you only have an hour, spend much more time in the demo than in the debrief. If you have two or more hours, make sure that you use the two best Phase 5 extension activities of dictee and the Word Chunk Team Game.
Here’s Carly’s workshop description:
What do students want to talk about? Irregular verb conjugations? Adjective agreement? When to use the subjunctive? No way! They want to talk about themselves. Let’s use that to our advantage! Instead of focusing on the rules of the language we can use the language to learn about one another. This presentation will demonstrate a no-prep activity that provides oral and written input and can be used with all levels, including beginner students on their very first day of class. The demonstration will be in French, so only non-French speakers are allowed to participate in the demonstration, to show the communicative powers of this activity!
My takeaways:
After presenting on CI for about 15 years, and always wondering what the best thing to do would be, I can say that this choice (to use a Category A Card Talk live demo as opposed to boring slides) is about the best, simplest, easiest-to-understand and therefore most effective idea for a presentation that I have yet seen. It covers all the bases! If you look at it, what Carly is doing is just going around the Star Sequence.