![]() Day three in Brattleboro-beginning Spanish with Elissa McLean, the main organizer of this incredible week! I have worked with Elissa before, but I have never been lucky enough see her teach. She worked with Grant Boulanger's beginning Spanish class and did an impressive job of jumping into the class, despite the fact that she was a "substitute." She used humor to engage the students right away, and was able to use the fact that she didn't know what all Grant had covered to check for comprehension and get more reps of the structures that the students had already learned. Her wait time was incredible, allowing for more participation and engagement. She was amazing on her feet; given the fact that she hadn't been in Grant's class save for a few minutes the day before. She captivated my attention, and that of the students. Elissa is one of those teachers who makes personalization seem so effortless, and her ability to go super S-L-O-W-L-Y kept everyone anticipating her next words. These pauses were far from awkward; I have a hard time with quiet in conversations, both in the classroom and in casual chats with friends, so I have a huge amount of respect for those who use this effectively. This is a critical skill for CI teachers, and one that I plan on bringing to the top of my "things I really want to focus on and implement this year" list. On Friday, Grant was able to return to teach his class for the final day. As I mentioned in my post about day 2 of this conference, it really is wonderful to be able to see so many teachers with different styles work with and engage their students. Grant is so calm in the classroom, yet this does not mean that his class is not with him 100%. In the debrief afterwards, both the adult and adolescent students remarked on how Grant made an effort to get to know them as people. One student said, “[It's] nice to be able to have one-on-one interactions with your teacher.” Another noted that in the class there was an atmosphere that allowed for risk-taking, where students felt they could make mistakes and it was ok. When you're telling stories, she said, any words are welcome and if you mess up, it's not that big a deal. (More proof that stories are effective!) It was very powerful to listen to the students reflect on their experience in Grant's room, and hear that they all felt they learned more in this short time than they had in more traditional classroom settings. I think the comment of one student sums it up well: "[we were] learning by playing, [it was] really a lot of fun.” On Wednesday I spent the afternoon listening to management techniques with Annabelle (quelle surprise!) and Thursday I was in Grant's session on going slowly. Both of these sessions allowed me to focus on one of my biggest weaknesses (which I've mentioned about a gazillion times before!)-classroom management. My major takeaways from the two sessions dovetail with each other nicely. Movement can not only be used to control behavior, but also to force me to slow down. When things are slow, therefore more comprehensible, students are engaged and disruptions are greatly reduced. ![]() I think that this slide from Grant's presentation sums up a lot of my learning at Express Fluency this year. Understandable = slow. Interesting, meaningful, relevant = personalized. Use rejoinders to allow students to access expressions that appear in their everyday speech. Show the students that they mean something to you with a positive attitude and ask questions about them, their likes, their lives. When they see you care about them, they will care about your class. Don't leave time for students to become distracted, but if they know that you're talking about them, and they understand what you're saying, this should take care of itself! This week has allowed me to connect with some incredible people, watch some stellar teaching, learn new techniques, and be reminded of some important basics that are easy to forget. I am officially excited to start the year. I feel prepared to attack the issues I've had in the past, and want to have a successful year. But, as we all know... Compelling + comprehensible = success! Bisous.
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![]() Disclaimer: I stole something else from Annabelle-Bitmojis as images in documents. You'll now see these all over my blog. And now for something completely different! Day 2-I spent the morning with Dustin Williamson (whom I've known for years, but had never seen in action); he was teaching intermediate Spanish to older folks. One of my favorite aspects of teaching with CI is that there isn't one personality type that is "best." There are so many possible activities that we can use in a CI classroom that work well for our own temperament. Annabelle Allen (with whom I spent all day yesterday) and I have similar dispositions (my students often think I'm nuts), but Dustin is calm and relaxed, but his students were engaged and answering his questions. Some tricks I will take away from Dustin's class:
After lunch, I went back to learn more from Annabelle. Her classroom management is second to none (and I saw it first hand when I visited her school in February), and it's my biggest challenge, so I wanted to gather specific information to establish new systems. A lot of her strategies are the same or similar to things I already do, but this was an essential session for me because I was reminded that my issues stem from one major problem: inconsistency. In the beginning of the year, I let little things (that I should be smashing away immediately) slide, and that is setting me up for a rough road for the rest of the year. I will spend the next couple of weeks before school starts thinking of ways to help me be more uniform in how I handle small discipline infractions in my room. This is something I really want to nip in the bud this year. I do believe that I am a successful teacher and am good at what I do, but I want to end the moments of frustration when I feel that I have no control over my classes and I end up more frustrated than proud after a day of teaching. This is not an impossible feat, I just know it will take a lot of effort on my part. But, I know... ![]() PS-Annabelle talked about Mafia this afternoon, which she said is a very powerful classroom management technique. Here's her blog post about it. She played it with her 8th graders when I was observing her in February. I did not know how I could modify it for my littles, but she directed me to Erica Peplinski's blog post about The Bad Unicorn. MUST TRY THIS! In the Mafia example Annabelle gave during this afternoon session, she stressed how important it is that you know your students and details about their lives. She modeled how while she preps the game she leads the students down one path, setting up the scene so that the class thinks that it's one particular student. "A boy was walking in the park with his big family and small brown dog..." and the students automatically think they know who it is... "and the small brown dog attacked someone else!" Bisous.
![]() I've been thinking a lot about CI, and language teaching, and changes I want to make in my classes since I returned from NTPRS in San Antonio. (Intro post on my experience here.) Now, I'm here in Brattleboro, VT at the Express Fluency summer conference with some powerhouse people! (NB-I just realized that I did not write about the pre-conference workshop day yesterday with Tina Hargaden; I guess that will have to come later! D'oh!) The fabulous thing about being here is having the opportunity to watch other teachers teaching. During the mornings, Brattleboro Union HS is the site of some language classes for kids and adults à la IFLT. I spent the morning with one of my favorites, La Maestra Loca Annabelle Allen, teaching Spanish to students aged seven to 12 (and two adults), 16 students total. I was so lucky earlier this year to be able to travel to New Orleans in February and observe, visit, and talk with Annabelle. Our personalities in the classroom are very similar, and I wanted to see how she establishes classroom procedures. I will be the first to admit that classroom management is not my strength, Annabelle has impressed me with the control she had over her classroom. I was thrilled to be able to watch her again, despite the fact that I had spent several days with her a few months ago. This time, however, I came with a different agenda. While the goal of my visit to NOLA in February was just to see another teacher in action, today I wanted to see her teaching during the "first days of school." She began developing relationships with her students from the moment class started. By the end of the first hour, two of her students already had nicknames. She made the class completely about the students, talking about their hair, their likes, where the live. When she moved to a story-telling activity, Annabelle used students who had been more "active" during the class actors, or sound effects. There was one student who had obviously had some Spanish, and she designated her the artist for the activity, giving her an important task that allowed her to process the language in a different way. I thought this was genius for several reasons. First, it made her special. She was able to do something unique to her. Secondly, it pulled her out of the activity, giving other students the opportunity to absorb the language without a super-fast processor/student with a leg up. I loved being able to see Annabelle in action again, and am still amazed with how much I was able to learn and take away from my morning. ![]() So I'll admit now, I might seem a little crazy/stalker-ish; I attended both of Annabelle's afternoon sessions today. A few minutes into Annabelle's post-lunch presentation, I found myself in a similar situation to the one in which I found myself at NTPRS (see link to the post referenced at the beginning of this post). I didn't have any major lightbulb moments, I wasn't thinking about my teaching in a completely novel way. This has been my experience at most of my CI/TPRS conferences over the past six years. Today, I was able to see some ways in which I could tighten my teaching, or add to activities that I already do, or approach things from a different angle. I will now think about using music as a way to cut down on the use of English during group activities. Brain Breaks have become a huge part of my class procedures, but now I look forward to explaining the rationale behind them to my students, and really emphasize that these are not games! I saw how PictureTalks can be a great way of recycling material (do a PictureTalk in the beginning of the year, and then bring it back as a gallery walk or writing activity later in the year). I plan on spending tomorrow morning with Dustin Williamson; I have known Dustin for years, but have never seen him teach. One of the things I love about the language lab set-up is having the chance to observe teachers with different personalities and different teaching styles work with different levels. Thank you, Elissa, for organizing this week! Bises. |
AuthorAllison Litten, the 2019 VFLA TOY, teaches French at the Marion Cross School, a public PreK-6 school in Norwich, Vermont. This is her twenty-third year teaching, and twentieth at Marion Cross. Archives
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