Hard Reset: A whole class intervention

I want to talk a little bit about a whole class intervention that I have used when things in class are going off the rails. But first: 

Who's responsibility is classroom engagement and cooperation*? 

Now, I am not a fan of anyone telling teachers that classroom management challenges are their fault- by any means- and I also know that my own actions and beliefs can lead to power struggles and problems. They are also in my control. 

This article by Angela Watson (Truth for Teachers) is a very good read about this topic: Is your "invisible throne" creating power struggles and unnecessary work?  I also went back and re-read this article (also by Angela Watson): How to respond to rude, disrespectful student attitudes.  

Ideas about controlling students (coercing them, manipulating them) is one way that White Supremacy manifests in classroom management, and in my work to dismantle systems of oppression and find places where White Supremacy is guiding my actions, I choose to reframe how I think about kids and behavior. 

*I prefer the term classroom engagement and cooperation over classroom management. It makes more sense to me. I don't want to manage students. I want to cooperate with them and engage with them.

Individual interventions

I get a lot of questions in workshops about individual kids and their behavior, and my response is always the same: approach with curiosity. Why is that kid doing that thing (usually blurting)? Do they know they are doing it? Is there a need not being met? Is there a relationship to develop? Depending on the answers, the interventions are going to be different. Kids are kids- and one strategy is not going to support every student. Also- consider: if it is just one or two kids that you are struggling with- how awesome is that?!? Celebrate that! Then approach those kids with curiosity.  In my Plan B post, I have a long list of possible individual and whole class interventions- take a look. 

Whole Class Intervention

This intervention is one I learned from Jon Cowart (I think) and mad props to him for his amazing work on classroom management. This is my version of a hard reset. 

However, please know- this is one intervention in a whole menu of interventions. And like many items on a menu, they are best when served with other items. I suggest adding a heaping serving of Plan A Minus or Plan B, if you're asking! 

This whole class intervention came about because I could not successfully teach a lesson. Students were interrupting me and disengaged (how is that even possible? They managed it!) and talkative and off task. This was a situation where the majority of students were not cooperating nor were they engaged- not just one or two- so I needed to approach the class as a whole.  Mind you: I was a "long term" sub with a very firm end date. I was not their "real" teacher and that was made perfectly clear, and not just by the students. So there were some factors that were out of my control. 

I had to focus on what I could control: my own practice. 

I started with curiosity.

Self-Reflection

So my reflective, curious questions to myself were:

• Had I done a good job explaining the expectations? Did I go over the expectations ALL the time? 
• Did I give students the chance to practice meeting expectations? 
• Did I celebrate when expectations were met?
• Were my expectations culturally responsive and appropriate? 
• Was I consistent or inconsistent? 
• Was I using the target language so that students were understanding the input? 
• Was I talking to the students or with the students? 
• Was I teaching content that was at all interesting to the students, or including them and their interests?  
• Were there relationships that I could develop? 
• Were there opportunities to develop relationships (with students and caregivers) that I could take advantage of? Examples would be sending a positive email home, or talking to the student's coach to find out more about them and their interests. 
• What did the students -as a group- need that they weren't getting? 
• Could I provide that with my time and energy and means? 

It became clear to me, upon reflection, that I had not taken enough time to set and practice expectations, and in fact, had not considered their input at all. Since I was a substitute  and had limited time with them, I made the decision at the beginning to use the classroom teacher's expectations.  With some classes that seemed to work fine. But with the 8th graders, it was not working.  Lots of things weren't working.

I also realized that in addition to expectations, students needed more structure- they were used to one thing, and they needed scaffolding to be able to do something different. Thus: the More Structured Input plan, aka Plan A minus.  I implemented both interventions more or less simultaneously, and although I didn't have a lot of time with students, it made the last few days with them more successful and more fun for everyone. 

Hard Reset

When students walked in, I had some kind of starter on the board, but instead of reviewing it, I sat on a stool in front of them and I said something like "I don't feel like class has been going well, and I think we need to come up with some norms and agreements so that I can do my job of teaching and you can do your job of learning. I have been very frustrated because I don't feel like I am doing a lot of teaching, and I get the sense that you all are frustrated too. So we are going to start over." I did this in our shared language (English). 

I made a classic T-chart on the board with the titles Student and Teacher. I asked them what their job was. Some shouted out, but most were happy to raise their hand and offer their ideas. For each student job they came up with, I said "so what does that mean for me?" and added my job. 

There was some negotiation, and some explaining on my part. Like when I had to say "the thing that I am most frustrated about is when you talk over me. I can't do my job when that happens. So how can we address that?" 

I learned that one student thought I was really mean and unreasonable- I had no idea- because of a comment I'd made that they misunderstood. I also learned that, for the most part, they wanted to be there and learn Spanish, and were incredibly frustrated with their peers that were being mean. 

This is important: Jon Cowart reminds us that expectations need to be OBSERVABLE. "Respect" is not an observable behavior.   "One person speaks at a time" is observable. 

I had to work with them (not entirely successfully as you will see) to keep behaviors observable. 

This is what we came up with in one class:

Image ID: T-chart with student jobs (listen the first time, focus, move quickly, Don't be attention seeking, use Spanish*, Hands to self, ask a friend) and teacher job (Give clear instructions, 2nd chances, give support, brain breaks, use Spanish*, be nice/flexible, use a kind tone)

This took most of the class time. We even did a brain break game in the middle.  Or maybe more than one!

I let the students know that we would be signing a document with these new norms in the next couple of days. (I wanted to live with them and see if there was anything missing or problematic before committing to them, honestly!)

Then what?

The following day as a starter (bell-ringer),  students were shown the list and asked to pick 2 agreements to focus on. They had to use a sentence frame to write about why it was important. They did this in English, our shared language. 

Image ID: A slide with directions for the starter, sentence frames "I will (choose one from the list). This is important because..." and a picture of class agreements. 

Before starting any language instruction, I went through the Norms in English and let them know that at the end of class, they would be reflecting on what they chose. 

At the end of class, I had them use the same scrap of paper that they wrote on to reflect-I asked them to put one to five stars on each sentence, one star being "nope, I didn't really succeed at this" and five being "I succeeded at focusing on this agreement". I collected these reflections but I did not ask them for names. I was curious to see if their self-reflections matched my perception of how class went- and it turns out, it did...mostly.

The following day, we signed the agreements, one at a time, and put them on the board, and again, I started class by reading them. 

Moderate Success!

And you know what? Between this hard reset and giving them more structure in class, I began to see improvement in both engagement and cooperation. It wasn't what I had hoped for- it wasn't the 8th grade class of March 2020, those dreamy kids who did everything I asked and then wanted more- it was the actual kids in front of me, being somewhat successful. More successful, at least.

I could see that there was an upward trajectory- progress was being made, and with patience and work, we could have a lot of fun and use a lot of language.

 Unfortunately, all that happened the last week I was subbing, so I didn't get a chance to let it play out in the long run. That's ok. I think small successes add up to big ones, and being able to have some discussions and do some things in class, in the target language, is actually a pretty big success!

I hope that this look at a Hard Reset, paired with some other structured input plans, help you! 

More Structure: Creating a Plan A Minus*

Plan A-Minus*

*Not quite Plan B, not quite low-fun input plan, but something else: when it's becoming clear that having conversations with students about something is something they are not yet ready for. Adding more structure. 

The Background

Two of my classes in my recent role as a long term sub needed something...a lot more of something. Or less of something.  Or just...SOMETHING.  

They were CHATTY. Like I couldn't say a sentence without being interrupted by something totally unrelated or by students having side conversations about whatever they felt like.  It was not fun.  There were some other behaviors as well, but it was the CHATTY that was making me insane. 

They also were very used to an output-heavy class and were very reluctant to engage with input.  

My Thinking

I had to make 2 interventions/shifts in my teaching in order to meet the kids where they were.  

Mindset Shift 1: Teach the kids you have, not the kids you want

I was a little caught up in my pre-pandemic teaching brain- pretty much constantly wondering why they weren't like the other classes, or why were they so completely unlike the class that I last had...the middle school kids that I adored and had so much fun with! It is so easy to dwell on wanting to teach the kids I wanted...not the kids that were actually in front of me.   

But I had to teach the kids in front of me, not some idealized version of the kids I wanted. Which meant I had to make some changes to the class structure because what I was doing was not effective. And that, my friends, was on me. 

This was a mindset shift that I had to work through- teaching the kids that were there.  (Thanks to Laurie Clarcq for naming this shift.) Once I made that shift though- it became a lot easier to manage.

Mindset Shift 2: MORE STRUCTURE

I realized within the first week that I needed to give them a LOT more structure. Some of this was the group of kids, some of it was because as a long term sub they were not interested in investing in me or my class, and some was just...well, I guess because. 

The (Original) Plan

My lesson plans were to teach the song La Gozadera, using plans from The Comprehensible Classroom (please read the disclosure about my relationship with The Comprehensible Classroom here.) I thought a song unit with lots of reading and culture would be just the right amount of content to finish during my time as a sub.  Plus,  I've never taught the song before and wanted to try it. 

The lesson plan (simplified) looks something like this:

• Card talk
• Clip Chat (movietalk) for beginning of music video
• Watch video
• Discuss video
• Read about meaning of the title
• Students do some reading activities related to the reading
• Read more about video and song 
• More reading activities

The Reality

When I looked at the plan, I saw a big looming disaster.

Nope. That was NOT going to work!

These students did not seem to be able to handle any kind of class discussion, and the free-form nature of Card Talk or Clip Chat seemed like a recipe for frustration and disaster. I believe that there would be very little input happening and a lot of frustration. 

I did some reflecting about what the challenges were in class, and what actually was going well (when it was!), and I decided that I needed to give students more structure. I also decided that it would be a good thing to trick them into thinking that they were creating with language (output) while getting them to attend to the input. I framed this in my own head as "the illusion of output". 

Credit

All of these ideas came from a mix mash of Jon Cowart's Weekly Packet, the Plan B plan from Martina Bex, Implementing Plan B (from me!) and Low Fun Input Plans from AnneMarie Chase, and my own experience as a teacher. 

Modification For Card Talk

I created a little response sheet- it was 6 or 8 open ended sentences: En la opinión de ____, _____ es/no es divertido/a. (In ___'s opinion, ____ is/is not fun.) 

When I say little response sheet, that is exactly what I mean. Since I print everything "2-up" (or 50% sized) and then copy it on recycled paper from the copy room- copy paper that has already been copied on one side- it was quite small!

Telling them that we would discuss each picture then fill out the form was like magic. Suddenly they were listening, and mostly responding to my questions! Engagement! 
After discussing someone's card, I filled in the blanks on the board and they copied them. (illusion of output, actually input!)

The Response Sheet for Card Talk 

At the end of the form, I had two open ended sentences for them to finish themselves, and then we discussed how they finished the sentences (also more illusion of output, but with the focus on me leading the discussion- that is, input). 

The bottom of the response sheet for Card Talk

Modification for Clip Chat (MovieTalk)

For the movietalk portion of the lesson plan, I created a slideshow with screenshots. Since the lesson plans ask the teacher to just use the intro to the video, I only used 3 stills for this part. 

A screengrab from the La Gozadera video plus vocab to use instead of a video 

I also created a little response sheet.  

Question 1 was ¿Qué ves? (What do you see?) 
I gave them some input first, then let them tell a partner what they saw, then I talked about their responses, and THEN I let them write. See how the input came first? 

Question 2 was ¿Dónde están las personas? (Where are the people?). Again, I showed the slide, talked about it, let them make predictions, talked about their predictions and why they thought that, and then let them write. Since I noticed that they weren't very good explaining how they reached their conclusions (which is an important skill in any language!) I lead the discussion down that road: What's your evidence? Why do you say that? Why do you think that? 

The third question was something like ¿Cómo están las personas" (How are the people feeling?) and again I got their ideas, led a conversation, asked them for some evidence for their thinking, then let them write. 

I also added a space for them to copy the Write and Discuss, just in case I decided that they needed that. (They did not, and I am not a fan of having students copy them in general, but I thought I might need that space!) 

Part of the ClipChat response sheet 

Watching the Video

For the actual watching of the video, I gave them a 5 Senses Video Viewing Form from Martina Bex and they had to fill it out while they were watching. After, I led a discussion. I really like this particular sheet because it allows them to write at the level that they wish- single words, phrases, and sentences. 

Prep Time

Now, it took me less than 10 minutes to make those response sheets- which may sound fast (and it was! Remember- I'm pretty experienced!). I hoped they would work - I thought they might be exactly the ticket- but I didn't want to spend a ton of time on creating. I was using the MVP principle in creating these: the Minimum Viable Product.  Basically, the idea is to create the thing that you think will work, and after you use it, then reflect, touch it up, change it, make it pretty if that's your thing. (I learned this from Angela Watson and it has been a HUGE timesaver mindset for me!)

What Happened in Class

To my everlasting joy, it went pretty well. I was able to give them the input because they felt like they were getting output. (Illusion of output, very structured output, lots of input!)

Once they bought in to the illusion of output, I was able to do the more free-form activities (Card Talk, Clip Chat) with much less difficulty. The response sheets gave exactly the right amount of structure to let the input still be about the students (their cards, their interests, their ideas).  

The reading activities were pretty straightforward and although I was surprised that they had never done activities like the ones I was asking them to do, once they figured out what I was asking for (reading, re-reading, reading closely, interacting with the text in a way (that forced them to make meaning), they were pretty cooperative.  

Note: I did a major behavior intervention as well- which I will post about at a later date, but I think the structure is what allowed them to settle in and let input happen. 

February Blues: Resources for Classroom Management

Lately, I have seen a lot of posts about classroom management, and the general feeling of classrooms falling apart. I know this week was rough as anything for me!  

So, I gathered up all my favorite resources about classroom management.

Remember- just because it feels like nothing works doesn't mean that's true. Take each day with a deep breath. Treat yourself with the same compassion that you treat your kids. Treat your kids with as much compassion as you can, and forgive yourself when it doesn't work out. This is a tough time of year for everybody who teaches in the western hemisphere.

With love, having survived another Friday in February, Elicia

To read:

How to respond to rude, disrespectful student attitudes:

https://thecornerstoneforteachers.com/truth-for-teachers-podcast/respond-rude-disrespectful-student-attitudes/

Is your "invisible throne" creating power struggles and unnecessary work (brand new!)
https://thecornerstoneforteachers.com/truth-for-teachers-podcast/power-struggles-and-unnecessary-work/?utm_source=drip&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=When+you+regret+that+power+struggle+with+a+student...
When you just can't- Plan B

https://comprehensibleclassroom.com/2012/10/30/plan-b-reading-activities/

When all my classroom management strategies weren't enough: Implementing Plan B

https://www.desklessclassroom.com/2019/11/implementing-plan-b-when-classroom.html

All of AnneMarie Chase's classroom management posts

https://senorachase.com/?s=classroom+management

Cecile Lainé's incredible reflection on a tough group

https://towardproficiency.com/2018/05/20/hard-learned-lessons-in-classroom-management/

Why your best efforts might be failing

https://comprehensibleclassroom.com/2019/08/08/why-your-best-classroom-management-efforts-might-be-failing/

$

Jon Cowart's Classroom management book and class - I keep going back to this book over and over again. It is the only book I can think about that truly addresses management in a comprehension focused classroom. Jon has a wide variety of experience in different, primarily urban, settings, and offers so many important tools for management.

https://fluencyfast.com/product/classroom-management-for-the-ci-classroom-ebook-jon-cowart/

https://joncowartteaching.com

To watch (Fun Club episode!)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DjLLeLZrMUg&feature=youtu.be

Story Asking Tip #2: Managing choral responses

For more storyasking ideas and supports, check out http//:bit.ly/storyaskingsolutions.

Implementing Plan B: when the classroom management strategies just aren't enough

Plan B: I wanted to share a little bit today about how I have two classes that are really challenging this year- for different reasons- and how they have become my Plan B classes.  

First, here is what I mean by Plan B.

https://comprehensibleclassroom.com/2012/10/30/plan-b/

A little background:  

One class is the class that I have not yet been able to finish a story with. There are constant interruptions. I have a personal belief against sending kids out of class, and in general none of the interruptions are truly horrible or worth sending a kid out for- they are just unbelievably frustrating. Like dozens, or hundreds of low-level constant interruptions and annoyances that bring everything to a screaming halt. 

I have tried a bunch of different strategies and interventions over the last 5 weeks, but finally at the beginning of this week, I decided to go to Plan B.

So, why am I doing it? Well, I realized I was being drained. I was trying everything in my toolbox of classroom management strategies.  

Here are those tools and interventions I used:

• I taught and practiced procedures. Over, and over, and over again. I refused to move forward until everyone was doing what I expected them to do. With a smile! (I smiled- them, not so much.) (In L1)
• I responded quickly, and positively, to every single instance of a student not doing what I wanted. I have posted rules, and each time a student spoke out of turn or had a side conversation, I walked over to the rules and waited, patiently, smiling, until I had the full attention of everyone.  (Rules are in L1.) (This is a strategy I learned from here.)

• I narrated the positives constantly. In L1.

• I reviewed the expectations before each new activity. I asked students to volunteer to be positive examples and model the desired behavior, and narrated it. In L1.

• I used proximity, seating charts, and secret signals to indicate to a kid that they were going off the rails.

• I found something positive (behavior wise) to write home about and emailed or called the caregivers of the most challenging kids, to show that they *could* be successful in my class. Sometimes I wrote about how Little Johnny had a rough day on Thursday but really turned it around at the beginning of class on Friday. It was *something* positive, right?

• I met with the kids who just didn't get it, individually, and tried to connect, build relationships, find what they are interested in, etc. I even paid attention to student athletics- which for me, is a big deal.

• I sought help from other teachers in our student support meetings, documented behaviors so I could try to see patterns within myself, time of day, activities, and/or students.

• I implemented different interventions such as rocky stools, weight belts, fidgets, and bouncy sensory chair pads. (One kid sliced one of my homemade weight belts with scissors. That was not awesome.)

• I changed the kinds of brain breaks I did in those classes (from energizing to focusing and silent).

Whew! That's a lot of interventions!  

But NOTHING WORKED. And I was miserable. And I hated that it felt like a power struggle. I know that no one wins a power struggle.

Worse? I was spending so much time redirecting, responding, and eventually reacting, that there just wasn't a lot of input happening. And for the kids who want to be there? For the kids who are controlling themselves? Who crave the input and the fun? They were getting nothing except frustration.

Now, an earlier version of me might have justified throwing out the ringleaders. And yes, on a day with one of them absent, well, we got a TON accomplished.  

But I have to ask myself: will kicking them out solve the problem? Sort of, but only in the short term. And also, won't that eat up a ton of time in meetings with parents and admins, follow up meetings, documenting, writing plans, etc.? And you know that time will come right out of my planning and/or after school hours.  And will it change the behaviors?

Will it just turn our relationship into kid vs. adult? Will it cement their identity of "bad kid" and trouble maker? Can I break that cycle? Don't I have a responsibility to teach all kids, even the ones who make it the most difficult?  

But don't I have a responsibility to the other kids too, those who are losing out due to the poor choices of the few?  

This, my friends, is the eternal teacher question. And also why Plan B makes so much sense to me.  

In short, Plan B means that students get input that they understand, but the interaction as a community is missing. The input might be from a story, a pre-written text, a video, or whatever else was in my plan for the day. The activity to deliver input is altered so that students do it all independently. It is very heavy on reading. 

What it looked like: 

This week, the plan was to Clipchat (Movietalk) Sr. Wooly's video for Qué asco, read a more complex version of the video written up to be like a story, and invent our own gross combinations (like the song) to see who had the grossest and which one would smell the worst.  

I knew that at this point that students would not be able to manage a ClipChat/MovieTalk. Their interruptions would be too much, so I had to let that go. Oh well.
Instead, I decided to have them read and interact a bit with the reading (available with a Pro subscription) and then we would watch the video, then I would have them write (instead of draw and eventually use their illustrations for card talk) the gross combinations. Rather than trying to have a discussion about their gross combinations, I would have them respond ONLY with hand signals. If they could handle it. 
It has been more work. I had to create slides (ugh! I HATE creating slides! I hate working from slideshows in general!) with very clear directions.  

It has been work that I am, frankly, not used to doing. I have to very carefully plan out each activity and write it out- then make sure there is a text to read, a way to support their comprehension, and then something to do for fast finishers. 

Now, I do all these things normally, but I do them in the moment, based on how I am feeling and how the class is going. (This is one advantage of being experienced. I give directions on the fly and change how we use a reading or activity based on what is happening that day. That does NOT fly for Plan B.)
It is boring- while they read, I circulate. I monitor. It is NOT interaction. I am even more strict than usual (absolutely no talking. None!).  
I hate it. It is not my personality and it doesn't feel right to me. It is *not* an interactive classroom. It is not wacky, memorable, and it is really not fun. For any of us.  
But...it is working. Kids are getting input. I am not super frustrated at the end of the day. (Bored, but that is better than angry.) 

Kids who didn't get input because of all the distractions are getting input. Kids who were distracting are...getting input. Is it as rich and compelling as it would be if we were acting out the movietalk and exploring what they think are gross combinations? Not at all. But..it is input, and it feels a lot more equitable in that I am able to do my job and not spend most of my time and energy on just a few kids.  
And at the end of class yesterday, I tried a turn-n-talk. (This has not yet worked consistently.) They managed it. It felt nice. We reflected on the feeling of class in L1. It was a better day. One kid in particular got a positive email home.  

The next day, I tried another turn and talk and lead a short discussion. Each day, I want to give the class back to interaction, just a bit more, so that we can get back to the fun. But for now, Plan B is going to let me stay sane and keep doing my job of providing comprehensible input, so I am very thankful.

CI Overwhelm: practical tools for coping (#1)

Do you know that CI overwhelm feeling?  Like you have gone down into a black hole of resources and ideas and videos to watch and handouts to read and blogposts to follow and...and...and....

Which stage of CI are you in?  

Where do you even begin?

I have some ideas.  First, and foremost:

TAKE A DEEP BREATH.

Now take another one.  Just for fun, take a couple more.

You are not alone. You are not the first person to have this experience.  Since I started focusing on speaking so that my students understand and want to engage in communication with me, aka providing Compelling, ComprehendED Input, there has been an actual explosion in resources, communities, trainings, blogs, readers, webinars, and more. *

Regarding all the amazing things you want to do/think you should be doing/feel bad about not doing:  Angela Watson over at TruthForTeachers has a lot of great ideas about being enough.**

It is really easy to think you have to be all of that.  And more.  That video that you saw? That person has probably been doing this for a long time.  (For some perspective, you might want to take a look at this post from Chris Stoltz:  You are now playing the long game.)

That writing sample where their kids are fluently using le passé composé?  Again, people don't post their student's worst writings.
And that bulletin board that is totally pinterest worthy and not in your classroom or even in your wildest dreams? (That teacher probably has a TA. Let's be honest here.)

Did you read that great blog post that makes you want to rethink everything and re-do it all, right now?  Do you think that you need to overhaul your classroom management system, assessment protocol, gradebook, and why not your entire teaching philosophy while you're at it?

Hang on.  More deep breaths.

You want to be a better teacher?   You want to get better at delivering input?

Slow down.

Slow down and get good at one thing. *** 

Just one.  OK, maybe that is not your style- you want it all, you are an overachiever, and you want it now. NOW.  Me too.  But let me tell you about the power of working on one thing.

Sorry for the poor quality- this is the
poster that is in my classroom

After attending NTPRS where, for the first time, I got to be a student in a less commonly taught language, I had a major aha moment.

I realized the power of going slow, and that the one thing I could change easily was to talk more slowly.

That was my only goal. SLOW DOWN.  I made a gigantic poster of my adorable cats lounging on my bed with the word "slowly" in Spanish, and hung it at the back of my room so I could see it every day.  And my goal for the whole year was to focus on that one thing.  And you know what, after about 6 months- six months!- of working on going slow, I was a better teacher.

I was better because I was more comprehensible.  I had to intentionally slow myself down by doing things like pausing. And pointing.  And writing new words on the board. And looking at their eyes.  So suddenly I was providing more comprehensible input and getting better at all kinds of discreet skills, by just focusing on that one thing.

A thinking exercise:  

Take some time, maybe your relaxing beverage of choice, and do some reflection. Below is a reflection form I created for a wonderful teacher I have been mentoring online. She was feeling all those emotions that I described above- like a failure, like she wasn't good enough, like she wanted to change everything right now but didn't know where to start...you relate?  Me too.

Take your relaxing beverage of choice and do some reflecting.****

Look at your teaching life- your practice.  Fill out the Gut Level Teacher Reflection: CI Version (Click here for the printable version.)  Thanks to Jennifer Gonzalez' post over at Cult Of Pedagogy and her kind permission to adapt and share.

Download the form here:

Under each domain, list things that give you positive feelings (+), negative feelings (—), and mixed or unclear feelings (?) or questions.

Domain #1: Skills for Delivering CI

Which of these do you think you are good at? Which do you think need more practice at? Is there one that feels *more* manageable? Is there one that is overwhelming?
(asking circling and triangling questions, pause and point, staying in-bounds with vocab, slow speech, choral response, teaching to the eyes, checking for comprehension)

Domain #2: Techniques for delivering CI

What do you feel confident about? What activities give you dread?
(Calendar/card/small Talk, story-asking, PQA, PictureTalk, MovieChat, group reading, OWI, personalization, [too many to list])

Domain #3:Classroom management and relationships

What do you do to help build relationships with students and make them feel safe and ready to take risks? What are the behaviors that make you crazy?  Is there that one kid that you connected with?

Domain #4: Assessment

What do you believe about assessment? Do grades in your class reflect what students can do with language? What feels bad about grading? What feels ok?

Domain #5: The Why 

Sometimes, knowing why we do something paves the way for the what to become much easier. Take a look at some statements and note whether you have a positive, negative, or mixed/confused feeling. Some are statements about language acquisition, mostly taken from Dr. Bill VanPatten’s work.

• A flood of input creates a trickle of output.
• There are no such things as grammar rules.
• What teachers call errors are indicators of developmental learning stages of the learner.
• All students are capable of acquiring a language.
• Language learning is stage like; more instruction does not alter the need to go through the stages.
• Language is abstract, language is different than math.

Domain #6: Self-care 

Being attuned to the emotions and gauging comprehension levels and focusing on all the skills can be exhausting. Consider your work-life balance, your routines for self-care, your sleep and eating habits, and things that are important to you outside of school. Jot down what is working for you, what you feel is not working, etc.

Last step:

Take a look at your +, -, and ? notes.
Now pick one.

ONE, I said. Not one from each domain, you overachiever you.  Just one.

Pick one thing from your notes and work on that.  There might be a million more other things that WILL help you be a better teacher, but what, to you, today, is the one thing for you?  You can come back to your list later.  It will still be there. (Unless you lose it. Quick- snap a photo!)


Footnotes: 
* When I started, and I am one of the newer practicioners having only done this for five years, there were no facebook groups. There were no newsletters. Gosh darnit we had to connect via a listserv.  That's right.  Email listserv.  Occasionally I would send an email to that nice lady Martina and she would email me back a couple months later.

**Favorite blog posts by Angela Watson:
Getting out of the day-by-day lesson planning trap
The culture of cute in the classroom
The simplest way to stop feeling overwhelmed and over-scheduled 
When is it ok to feel like you have done enough for a student

***I realized, while watching Faith Laux's presentation on ComprehensibleOnline, where I learned the  "One thing" advice from: The amazingly influential Karen Rowan.  Thanks, Karen!

****Yes, I did just discover bitmoji.   And I am totally, utterly charmed by it, way more than I have any right to be.

What's new this year: #1 Celebrating birthdays

There are a few new things that I am trying this year in my classroom.  Here is a series of short posts about them.

#1: Celebrating birthdays

I am terrible about celebrating birthdays.  This goes for my personal life (sorry, friends) and even more so in my professional life.

Last year, Laurie Clarcq did a presentation in Comprehensible Online about classroom culture and it was so chock full of ideas that I was instantly inspired and overwhelmed.  I decided to pick one thing that I felt that I could manage, and made a plan to do it. That one thing was celebrating birthdays in class.  Laurie modeled how she has kids give each other compliments when it is their birthday.



While idly browsing someone else's blog (and I have no idea to whom it belonged, sorry!)  I found this AMAZING free resource on TeachersPayTeachers, which is basically a starter for birthday compliments. It is SO good that I did not edit it at all.  I just printed it up (half size, to better fit in interactive-ish notebooks) and passed it out to the kids.

That was the easy part.

Write the birthdays down in a book.  

Then came the "remembering the birthdays" part, something that I am terrible at.  I decided to get a school calendar from the dollar store and write each kid's real or half birthday in it.  It took about an hour of precious late summer time, but hey, I got it done.

Dollar store score!  

I also decided to make a kid check the calendar as part of class job.  This turned out to be great if it was the right kid for the job, and not-so-great if it was the wrong kid.  One sweet, sweet girl came up to me in early November to tell me, nearly in tears, that she had forgotten to check the book and that we had missed another student's birthday, and asked me to fire her.  Instead, I allowed her to resign and we found someone else to take that over.  In another class, the student comes in each day and tells me everyone's birthday in each of my classes, for which I am grateful.

When it is a student birthday, I ask the kid whether they would like us to write or speak our compliments.   Either way, the whole class gets out their compliment starters (that are in the back of their notebooks) and a whiteboard. They have a few minutes to think and write.

If we are speaking, I just take my phone and film each kid as they read what they wrote.  If we are writing, the kids line up the whiteboards and I film myself reading them.

Finally, I send the video to the birthday kid, cc'ing the parents so they can see it too.  Sometimes the sound doesn't record, which is a bummer, but it's still better than not doing it.

I wish I could measure the impact this has had on my classroom this year, but it is impossible to separate it from everything else.  Suffice it to say that I feel like this is the best year ever as far as classroom culture and classroom management.  This has got to be a big part of it, and the joy in the room is palpable.

I love my job!

The Highly Structured Class pays off! (Procedures and Routines)

Last year, I had a couple of tough classes.  Really, really tough classes.  They had great attitudes and were excited about learning, but never, ever stopped talking.  In English.  Running commentary about EVERYTHING that happened.  Constantly.

It was enough to make me groan every time I saw them on my schedule. (Which was every day.)  I tried Plan B.  I tried every trick in my book.  They still made me crazy.

But...(you knew there would be a but, right?) they learned.

Despite all the time I spent away from providing comprehensible input (trying to create community, practicing routines and procedures, redirecting behavior, having class conversations about goals, and loosing my temper) they learned.  They learned a lot.  They retained a lot.

When they came back this year, they blew me away. 

They remembered all the Spanish.  Well, maybe not all.  Probably not the stuff we did in May.  But most of them have a strong hold on everything else.

I have to ask myself why.  Why did that work for them?  The only thing I can fall back on is my greatest strength as a teacher: procedures and routines. (Hey- you have a greatest strength too.  What is yours? It's good to ask yourself.)

 These together form the structure of my class and make it a highly predictable class with a lot of tolerance for chaos (e.g. kids barking, hooting, and stuffed animals flying through the air.)

WHAT ARE MY PROCEDURES AND ROUTINES (P&Rs)?

It doesn't matter.  It truly doesn't matter what mine are.  I am happy to share them (below), but it doesn't matter.  What matters is knowing what they are, and how you teach and practice them.

I came up with my P&Rs by asking myself the following questions:
1) How do I want students to enter and leave class? (procedures)
2) What are the routine tasks that we do most days (sharpening pencils, passing out papers) that can be made faster or more efficient? (procedures)
3) What are things that kids do that make me absolutely crazy that I can train them not to do before they do them? (procedures)
4) How can I make my classroom feel more like a place where we are family, with in-jokes, predictability, and closeness? (routines)

Bryce Hedstrom defines a procedure as:

"Procedures are ways of doing routine activities that help the classroom to run more smoothly so that we can focus on learning. Procedures are not exactly rules, but repeated disregard of procedures will affect learning in the classroom.  There are several specific ways we do things in this class and you will learn them during the first weeks of school."

An aesthetically pleasing notebook arrangement makes me think of procedures.

Some of the resources that helped me develop this list (and my overall approach) include:
Bryce Hedstrom's classroom management philosophy and practice (including passwords and jobs), Alina Filipescu's philosophy of "Discard the Discipline Plan" and Angela Watson's amazingly useful book "The Cornerstone for Teachers", which I suggest that every teacher read.  

A SAMPLE OF MY PROCEDURES
Entering and leaving:

• Kids line up outside, receive their seating card for the day, give me the password, and enter.
• They get their materials for the day (usually scrap paper, glue, and scissors) and get started on the starter.
• When I ring my chime three times, they drop their pencil to indicate that they are focused on me,  and I greet them.
• At the end of class, someone tells me it is time to clean up. (Student job)   
• The kids quickly clean up the entire room and put away their materials.   
• One person picks up the seating cards and puts them away.  (Student Job) 
• A student inspector  (student job) tells me that they are ready: "Listos" and I reply in TL: Thank you for learning.  They reply "Thank you for teaching us" (in TL, of course) and I say good bye.

Papers: I give papers to the two kids sitting in the middle and they pass them outwards.  Kids sitting on the end of the horseshoe put the papers back on the paper table. (rotating job)

Absent kids: I wrote about that job and procedure here. (student job)

Moving chairs from one configuration to another: I model what I want, we practice, they do it.  We practice often, I narrate positives, and if need be, we practice over and over.

Whiteboards: If students are writing on whiteboards, I ask that they do not "show" their work to me until I make a specific sound with my rattle.  This way, I have time to look at individual work, make suggestions or give praise, and see who needs to work on what.  Everyone has think time.  Plus, they know that being the first one done doesn't get rewarded.

Late work: Students have somewhat relaxed deadlines and rolling deadlines.  If they miss something, they put a Missing/Late work slip on it so I know what I am doing with it.  If one kiddo has a lot of those slips, it is a good conversation to have during (or before) Parent Teacher conferences.

Here is a link to a document that I modified from I am sad to say that I can not give credit to the original as it is no longer available.  I am pretty sure I got it from Bryce, but not 100%.  If you know where the original document came from (ABCs), please let me know in the comments or by email!   Here is a link to the document I use in class. 

UPDATED 2023: 

Please note- in looking at the ABCs from a few years ago, my thinking has changed a lot on how I would use them. Now, I still think this is a really great exercise for me but I would not give it to students, and there are some things I would change.  

A SAMPLE of my ROUTINES 
To me, routines are different than procedures because they add fun and a little chaos into the class.  Most of these routines I learned from Alina.  Here are some of the ones I have adapted:

I was very impressed with this class! 

• ¿Quién?- when I say this question word, a student holds up a stuffed owl and says "woo whoo"
• Sneeze- when someone sneezes, a student says "uno-dos-tres" and the whole class says "salud"
• If a student impresses me, I say "Clase, estoy impresionada" and they respond (as if they can not believe that I could be impressed "¿Usted está impresionada?" and then I explain, in L1 or L2, why I am impressed (someone was a risk taker, someone was extra kind, etc.) and then I throw that person a stuffed animal to cuddle with.
• Pero...all kids hold up their index finger, one kid goes "dum dum dum..." in a slightly ominous way
• Perro- someone barks.
  
• Queso- any time someone who is not in class walks in my door, someone jumps up and sings/dances "¿Qué es esto?" and the whole class responds "Esto es queso" and then we pretend like nothing ever happened.  

Our director of admissions giggles EVERY TIME she walks in our room with visiting parents.  It's so awesome.