I’ve written about using CI with a textbook before, but I think I’ve made some leaps in how it’s going. So here we go, here’s what a typical class looks like. If you are a fan of Tina Hargaden I’m sure you’re going to see some similarities.
Bell Ringer:
The daily bell ringer is what students are doing as they enter the class. I need to get better at the bell ringer process, but that’s on me. Bell ringers MUST be something students can do on their own, without my help. My bell ringers are one of two things. Silent reading, or grammar practice. I want to make sure students feel they are prepared for other classes that might focus more on grammar than I do. I have found though, the 5 minutes of grammar has been AS effective as full class periods of grammar.
Input:
After the bell ringer we go into input time. This can be anything. Story asking, movie talk, picture talk, PQA, special person, ANY activity that provides input. I try to go for about 15-20 minutes of input with high comprehension and frequent checks for understanding.
Write and Discuss
Students have now heard a lot of input, now is an opportunity for them to get more repetition of the language by reading it as I write out what we talked about. Sometimes this is difficult depending on what we talked about. What I’m still struggling with is honoring all students in the class. If we have a PQA day then I typically talk about only one student, because I want to have something substantial to write about. I’m still struggling with talking about multiple people and writing about multiple people during write and discuss. Recently I’ve added, thanks to Tina, a word by word translation followed by the question “What do you notice about how Spanish is different than English?”
Assessment
I’ve got a big ol’ stack of Anne Marie Chase’s ACTFL aligned Quick Quizzes. I can use these WHENEVER we do write and discuss to get a listening or reading grade. I’m going to be much more attentive next semester to give one every day that we write and discuss as a way to keep students accountable for input.
Languageley 