When I accepted a job teaching middle school and high school kids, I was nervous about pacing (having only taught college at that point); I was nervous about not having the safety net of a textbook at this CI-only school; but mostly, I was nervous about classroom management. The pacing I am still getting the hang of (sometimes, I still find that I need to slow down a little), but mostly I just expect my students to perform to higher level, which most of them do. And, the lack of textbook, while initially scary, has been one of the most freeing parts about the job.
As for classroom management, I am still learning. I remember my own eighth grade class torturing a new teacher to the point he left education after his first year. I was determined not to let that happen to me. In my first year, I was rigid in routines and procedures. I had scoured pinterest in search of the perfect rules that would make my classroom run like clockwork. There were procedures for just about every daily activity in class. As we moved through the year, I learned to lighten up a bit on the rules and procedures and found what worked best for me and my students. (I still use callbacks for quieting the class and getting attention; the kids know my expectations for when they enter the classroom and for all of our different CI activities; and my only rule is RESPECT which covers just about everything). I am not a disciplinarian. I lead my class in a relaxed and even way. Kids know what is expected of them, and for the most part, they behave well. I have found that the most important part of classroom management is developing a safe environment for all of my students. I work hard at getting to know each and every one of the kids in my class. I greet them each day at the door; I ask them how they are doing; I keep up-to-date on their activities and what they love and hate. I also share my life with them--they know what I did last weekend, and they know about my family. I think relationships are the key to classroom management, and CI allows me to learn about my kids while staying on topic (PQA for the win). All of my students know I care about them, and it leads them to do and be better in class. This is not to say that I do not have my challenges. I have students push boundaries. The difficult students are the ones I try to identify from day 1. These are the students I work the hardest at building relationships. I also try to find the reason behind their misbehavior, because usually these kids are not acting up with no reason. This year's class has been one of my most difficult. The first few weeks, I had to set rigid boundaries while learning about my students. It took well into October before I started to feel like I had won over most of the kids in the class. It's still a work in progress, but I do believe that this method of teaching leads to positive relationships with students which in turn leads to more easily managed classes.
0 Comments
I think one of the best tools in my classroom is illustration. When we do a story (movie talk, ask a story, novels, character creation, etc.), I often have my students illustrating as I like it better than translating (kids are thinking more in the L2), and I think the kids enjoy it more as well.
After a story, I have students do a flow map or story board which summarizes the plot. I can increase input by having them reread a written version and choosing sentences for each frame. When I am shorter on time, students just draw their favorite scene, and then I have all of the students line up together with their drawings. They have to put themselves in order (summarizing the story), and we fill in the missing scenes together (more input!). Even just listening as we read a good paragraph and having the kids illustrate on white boards what is going on has been effective and fun. One of my favorite activities is what I call partner illustration. This activity works really well for those teachers who wish to target or review certain vocabulary (I usually target verbs in my beginner classes). I write up 10 sentences with similar subjects (the crazier the better--make them hard to draw)--they are not related to class stories except in vocabulary. Then each group gets a copy of the ten sentences. The partners take turns choosing one sentence and illustrating it for their partner who then has to guess which sentence it was. They continue until they have done all 10 sentences. I have had stoic football players reduced to giggle fits over this activity. My students LOVE it. Furthermore, it only requires the teacher to write 10 sentences, so it's a low-prep activity that gives the students about 20 minutes of solid input on their own. Below is an example of one set of sentences we used recently in French 1. 1) L’éléphant donne un biscuit au bonhomme de neige. 2) Le bonhomme de neige met un tee-shirt et l’éléphant met un jean. 3) Quand le bonhomme de neige voit le ver, il a peur et s’en va. 4) L’éléphant a faim et cherche un biscuit. 5) Le bonhomme de neige prend le jean de l’éléphant. 6) L’éléphant met un ver sur le nez du bonhomme de neige. 7) Le bonhomme de neige donne un ver à l’éléphant. 8) Le bonhomme de neige a volé le nez de l’éléphant ! 9) Le bonhomme de neige cherche son ami l’éléphant. 10) L’éléphant prend le portable de sa maman. In these, we had just done a couple stories with snowmen as well as one with worms (oddly...), and elephant is a nice cognate (and also hilarious for students to try to draw). Verbs we were working on were donner, chercher, mettre (prendre, s'en aller, and voler are review from Brandon Brown dit la vérité which we had just finished). I am always looking to add more illustration in my classroom; I am intrigued by smashdoodles, but I have not yet implemented them. I would love to hear what you are doing in your classes. Bonjour! Welcome to my blog. I have been teaching French in one way or another for years. I hold a masters degree in French literature, and I am a self-professed grammar nerd. Unfortunately, when I started teaching, not all of my students were as thrilled about conjugation and drills and discussing the many grammar rules in my beloved language.
When I started as a junior high and high school teacher at a CI school, I was initially panicked when I realized THEY DIDN'T EVEN HAVE A TEXTBOOK! Luckily, the school who hired me sent me to a couple of trainings to learn different CI strategies. I have been fortunate to attend conferences with Blaine Ray (who completely changed the way I think about teaching language), Carol Gaab (who gave me so many tools to enliven reading in even the novice foreign language classroom), and even Stephen Krashen himself. My approach to teaching French has shifted from stressing grammatical perfection to stressing COMMUNICATION (isn't that why we study langauge in the first place?). I use any comprehensible input strategy that works with my students: movie talk, TPRS, special person, story listening, card talk, readers--basically anything with which I can deliver CI in an engaging way to my classes. My goal is for students to acquire the language through fun stories. I rarely force output, but the results in my class show that these methods work and have higher rates of success across all students. My intention with this blog is to share ideas of what works in my classes. I have found, that while they are slowly and steadily increasing, the CI materials available to French teachers are very much behind those of our Spanish colleagues. I look forward to collaborating with other CI teachers and growing the online community of CI teachers in French and other languages! |
AuthorI am a secondary French teacher committed to Comprehensible Input. ArchivesCategories
All
|