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Stepping Stones to Stories!

Ben’s System of Starting the Year with

Comprehensible Input

by
Ben Slavic
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…with comprehension based instruction, teaching a language successfully is very difficult, but it
reaches most students. Without it, success is virtually impossible, and reaches only a few bright
kids. You have to pick one of these. If you pick the first, you align with 21st century standards
and research. If you pick the second, you align with the past. You do, however, convey the
illusion to lots of kids that they can’t learn a language. Don’t do that anymore…..
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This book is dedicated to teachers who are new to comprehension based

instruction. It is also dedicated to all who have struggled with TPRS. Buckle up.
Get ready to fly.
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Table of Contents

Rationale ........................................................................................................................................ 7
The Problem .................................................................................................................................. 9
Disclaimer .................................................................................................................................... 13
Acknowledgements ...................................................................................................................... 15

Stepping Stone 1 – Six Activities .............................................................................................. 16

Activity #1: Word Associations ............................................................................................... 16

Activity #2: Circling with Balls ............................................................................................... 22
Activity #3: One Word Images ................................................................................................. 37
Activity #4: Word Chunk Team Activity ................................................................................. 42
Activity #5: Dictée ................................................................................................................... 46
Activity #6: Targeting Power Verbs using PQA ................................................................. 49

Stepping Stone 2 – Five Skills .................................................................................................. 51

Skill #1: Circling ...................................................................................................................... 51

Skill #2: Point and Pause .......................................................................................................... 59
Skill #3: SLOW ........................................................................................................................ 62
Skill #4: Choral Responses ....................................................................................................... 67
Skill #5: Staying in Bounds ...................................................................................................... 73

Stepping Stone 3 – Five Classroom Management Tools ............................................................ 78

Classroom Management Tool #1: The Classroom Rules .......................................................... 78

Classroom Management Tool #2: Jobs for Kids ....................................................................... 85
Classroom Management Tool #3: Personalization/Naming ...................................................... 88
Classroom Management Tool #4: Assessment using Quick Quizzes ....................................... 91
Classroom Management Tool #5: jGR ..................................................................................... 96
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Stepping Stone 4 – Six Bail Out Activities .............................................................................. 103

Bail Out Activity #1: Dictée ................................................................................................... 103

Bail Out Activity #2: Free Writes........................................................................................... 104
Bail Out Activity #3: Math Brakes ......................................................................................... 105
Bail Out Activity #4: Drawing ............................................................................................... 108
Bail Out Activity #5: Read and Discuss ................................................................................. 110
Bail Out Activity #6: Extending TPR ..................................................................................... 112

Stepping Stone 5 – Krashen’s Five Hypotheses ....................................................................... 117

Hypothesis #1: The Input Hypothesis..................................................................................... 117

Hypothesis #2: The Acquisition–Learning Hypothesis .......................................................... 117
Hypothesis #3: The Monitor Hypothesis ................................................................................ 117
Hypothesis #4: The Natural Order Hypothesis ....................................................................... 117
Hypothesis #5: The Affective Filter Hypothesis .................................................................... 117

Conclusions ............................................................................................................................... 118

Appendix A................................................................................................................................ 126
Appendix B ................................................................................................................................ 127
Afterword .................................................................................................................................. 131
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Rationale

TPRS trainings used to focus on stories right away. People would do a workshop and then try to
start teaching in the fall using stories in their beginning level classes. It rarely worked. It was too
much, too fast.

It is the premise of this book that it is best to wait to start using stories until the late fall or early
winter, not before, using alternatives, the stepping stone strategies offered in this book, to start
our year.

These stepping stones to stories are easier to learn than stories. In addition to preparing the
teacher in the art of using comprehensible input, they also show the teacher how to set up:

1. a strong and vibrant classroom management program.

2. a personalized classroom.
3. an assessment program that works and saves time.

The caution to new teachers is that, without the classroom management, personalization and
assessment pieces in place first, it is much more difficult to make comprehension based
instruction work. In fact, it is nearly impossible.

Why is starting out a school year with stories a most difficult thing to pull off in foreign language
classrooms? What opposes their use in secondary school classrooms in the United States? Here
are some reasons:

1. The entire system of storytelling is very hard to learn and most people give up on it
within months of trying it.
2. The vast majority of students don’t know how to interact with their teachers in class and
must be trained.
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3. The data gathering and grading pieces required in schools are in conflict with the soul of
comprehension based instruction. Students, parents and especially administrators who
don’t understand storytelling can ruin careers.
4. TPRS as a pedagogical term conveys an image of classroom chaos to huge amounts of
teachers, due to past TPRS failures by teachers.
5. Training is insufficient. It is folly to ask a teacher to attend a summer training in the area
of comprehension based instruction and then go in and make the bucking bronco of
comprehension based teaching work in their classroom in the fall.

Training wheels, stepping stones to stories, are available here. The teacher who wants instruction
in personalization is advised to read PQA in a Wink! Read TPRS in a Year! for training in actual
story creation.

The purpose of this book is to help you get your year cranked up with good classroom discipline
and personalization before you worry about stories later. You’ll be a lot better with stories
having studied and practiced the ideas in this book first. This is the right place to start.
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The Problem

When students interact with a book or computer program to learn a language, only a very small
percentage of students demonstrate gains. Even in those few students, the gains are stilted and
reflect mere learning and memorization, not real acquisition.

Unbelievably, there are still teachers who preach memorization in the language classroom. A
teacher recently wrote to me about an experience she had in a summer training:

“I’m at a standards based unit world language conference and the presenter has been telling us
about the importance of memorization. Even the guy next to me who is against TPRS was
shocked. I’ve already thrown into the discussion the whole language acquisition vs. learning
piece, but she insists that memorization is critical when starting to learn a language in middle
school. The presenter has been on the board of ACTFL.”

This is unconscionable. It is false and aligns with no research whatsoever. There is so much false
information out there against which we must guard ourselves. Rome is now officially burning for
traditional teachers in the field of language acquisition.

Those of us who already know that we want to teach using comprehensible input, and thus align
with current research, face a decision. Do we go against the odds and try in a determined way to
make comprehensible input work in our classrooms, or do we fold and go back to the old ways
of doing things which we know don’t work?

On one side at the extreme end there are those who think that immersion in incomprehensible
input can work, and on the other extreme end there are those who still think that we can learn a
language by memorizing verbs.

The argument presented by both sides is specious. Both sides fail. Immersion in
incomprehensible input doesn’t work (Rosetta Stone is the worst example) and the traditional
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20th century approach used in most American universities and secondary schools on down to
kindergarten doesn’t work either – all it does is shame most kids.

Is there a middle ground to be found somewhere away from all the insanity, somewhere we can
meet our secondary school kids and rock the house with them so that our jobs are actually fun
and our kids really learn and want to come to class and stay in our programs for four years no
matter how “smart” they are?

The stepping stones to stories suggested below are based on the premise that acquisition of a
language is a deeply human thing, and, as in all things human, right adjustment to others must
define everything.

Therefore, we must look to how we interact with our students in a human way in the target
language. We must look at classroom dynamics, not at a book or computer program, if we really
wish to bring our students to real command of the language.

Using comprehensible input to teach a language is a human process, not a method. It’s not math.
It involves much more of the unconscious mind than teachers who stress grammar would like to
admit. Such teachers are on their way out.

With comprehension based instruction, when the students are truly involved, the instructor is
able to go into class with much less preparation and a much lighter agenda.

Chasms between students and teachers disappear when it all becomes fun and the kids learn to
focus on the message and not the words. This frees the teachers up to relax and not be consumed
by her job.

The greatest of all the many benefits of comprehension based instruction is not the massive
proven gains that we bring to students, gains that are beginning to attract attention worldwide,
but that language teachers do not become victims of teacher burnout.
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At the time of this writing (2013), people are finally rallying behind the ACTFL Three Modes of
Communication and the 90% Use Position Statement. It’s all becoming more human, and a lot
more fun!

Where is the research supporting the use of the book and computers and videos and mixing in
large doses of explanatory English? And who even has the money to purchase such materials
anymore? Who even wants to continue to use English in their classrooms?

The best research we have is that of Dr. Stephen Krashen and others in the area of
comprehensible input. Those who dispute this are increasingly perceived as out of touch.

Acquiring a language has little to do with conscious analysis (the old way) and everything to do
with turning the process of acquisition over to the unconscious mind, where it belongs.

Suddenly, the job security of a teacher, not to mention her mental health, depends on her learning
how to get students to focus on the language as a whole and not just in pieces. When that
happens, the process goes into the unconscious mind and the language is acquired.

Perhaps the greatest barrier facing the teacher investigating comprehensible input is a failure to
appreciate the depth of the statement that we learn languages unconsciously.

That is what keeps the illusion going – conventional teachers miss the entire point when they fail
to fully grasp that languages are acquired without the analytical participation of the conscious
mind.

Some language teachers who are aware of the power of comprehensible input think that they can
throw little bits of comprehension based instruction into their predominantly conscious analysis
of the language. But this brings the same gains a yoga student would get by merely reading a
book on the various yogic postures instead of actually doing them. We cannot serve two masters.
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I have seen Dr. Krashen’s ideas work in my classroom in ways I could never have imagined
since I began working with comprehensible input some twelve years ago. After twenty four years
of reaching just a few smart kids as an AP French Language and Literature teacher, I now reach
almost all of my students in ways I could only dream of before.
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Disclaimer

Written mainly for new people and for those who have struggled with TPRS, please note that this
book is also intended for use by members of my online Professional Learning Community.

In that interest, many links to articles published on the PLC are provided in these pages. They
can serve PLC members as embellishments to what is written here. Reading those links,
however, is not to be viewed as any kind of requirement for success. The stepping stones as they
are presented here are a stand alone pedagogy which will carry the diligent teacher across the
waters to stories without any reading being done on the PLC.

Indeed, there are as many ways to do comprehensible input as there are teachers. There can be, in
my view, no curriculum, no blueprint, no one set of prescribed materials, if comprehensible input
is to work in your classroom in the real way. Therefore, the entire content of this beginning the
year/stepping stone book is intended to merely suggest ideas, and not to lay down some kind of
curriculum.

Teachers are asked to pick and choose from the ideas presented here with the intention of
building a fluency program that reflects their own strengths, their own preferences and their own
goals in comprehension based instruction.

Teaching should not be a cookie cutter experience driven merely by the delivery and collection
of data – it should be a fun and expansive personalized journey for both teacher and student, one
that is different in each class and on each day. Teaching the same thing all day is a proven part of
teacher burnout.

If there is one single valid criticism that has been leveled against TPRS, TCI, and all the other
things that have grown out of Krashen’s research, it is that they have been made by too many
people into too much of a mystery. This has resulted in a bad name for the entire approach.
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It is the purpose of this book to simplify everything into doable form so that the teacher who may
be skeptical of comprehensible input can at least try it and give it a chance.

We must redirect the chaotic light beams that TPRS has become into one continuous and focused
beam so that comprehensible input can now shed a genuine bright light directly on the difficult
work of teaching a foreign language. The time for this work of redirecting TPRS, whether we
like it or not, has arrived.
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Acknowledgements

All of the material in this book is of my own creation except the following:

1. The blockbuster classroom management tool that is jGR- explained later in this text - is a
combination of the work of many people on my PLC, most significantly Robert Harrell in
Los Angeles and Jen Schongalla in New Hampshire.
2. All five skills described herein are from Blaine Ray, as is the information on free writes
as well as the concept of Read and Discuss. I express my deepest appreciation to Blaine.
3. I borrowed Dictée from the French educational system because I knew it would be of
immense help in my comprehension based classroom and I was right.
4. Finally, it would be impossible for me to have stayed in teaching without the guidance of
Susan Gross. She is now retired, but still involved, so if you get a chance to see her give a
workshop, don’t miss the opportunity. Susan saved my career as a language teacher.
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Stepping Stone One: Five Activities

Activity #1 - Word Associations (WA):

Making associations with words by working with Word Walls is a powerful way to help
beginning students dive into a foreign language. It is also a powerful and efficient way to start a
level 1 class. It also gives both teacher and students confidence, which is what both need most as
they start their new year together.

What I do is take a bunch of words and make them into a Word Wall. The list contains some
verbs, but I also have a Verb Wall with only verbs on it. Here is how the process of using a Word
Wall works for me:

I put a Word Wall and/or Verb Wall up. There are a few examples on the posters page of my
website (benslavic.com/tprs resources/posters).

Where do the words come from? If you are locked into a pacing guide with vocabulary lists
connected to thematic units, you can put those words up, but be cautioned that those words will
not carry much interest. A lot of people take their words from frequency lists like this one found
at our Denver Public Schools website:

http://curriculum.dpsk12.org/lang_literacy_cultural/world_lang/curr_docs/200_french_hi-
frequency_words.pdf

Below is an interesting list or words for level 1 students that carry energy and make for good
classes:
Spanish Sample Word List

levántate despácio parate

siéntate camina da una vuelta
rápido salta adelante
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atrás muchacha a la izquierda

levanta silla pelo
baja piso pecho
mano techo pie
pierna puerta reloj
grita ventana toma
suave come casa
fuerte pescado brazo
toca llora lápiz
señala ríe pluma
pega escribe grande
cabeza dibuja pequeño
boca oreja pone
ojos rodilla hermosa
mesa carro sonríe
nariz tira la pelota una vez
chico corta me gusta
muchacho le da, dale
chica a la derecha

French Sample Word List

on se lève derrière montre (v.)

on s’assied lève frappe
rapidement baisse tête
lentement main bouche
marche jambe les yeux
saute crie table
arrête doucement nez
on se tourne fort garçon
devant touche fille
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chaise poisson genou

plafond pleure voiture
plancher rit lance
porte écrit coupe
fenêtre dessine lui donne
mange oreille

These words carry lots of interest. Other links to Word possible Walls can be found here:

http://www.benslavic.com/tprs-posters.html

I go over two or sometimes three words a day to start class. This simple training wheel exercise
impacts everything I do in my classroom. It starts class on a fun, physical note. We put the words
into our physical bodies via gestures, sounds or images that enable us to remember the meaning
of the word.

For example, if, from the Word Wall, I want to teach the French word “voiture” (car, pronounced
“vwature”), I ask my students, in English, if anyone can think of “some way to remember that
voiture means car…”.

Different suggestions come up. Some are very outlandish but are somehow often the most
remembered ones. We use English to just discuss those sounds or images and then we go to the
next word. It’s fun and lasts just a few minutes.

In the case of “voiture”, someone may suggest that we can remember that it means “car” with the
associative phrase, “What year (sounds like voiture) is your Toyota?”

Another example is “les yeux” in French. The kids can associate that sound with laser eye
surgery or lazy eye.
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TPR is the gesturing part of this, when we work with verbs. We put the verb “into our bodies”
and then try throughout the year to gesture it whenever we say it, keeping in mind that thousands
of repetitions and gestures of a verb is still often not enough.

I once asked a student who scored a perfect score on the National French Exam one year what
part of the instruction he felt most contributed to his score, and he immediately replied, “…those
word activities we did at the beginning of the year…”.

Anyone who has done this kind of gesturing and association knows how oddly powerful and
compelling it is as a teaching tool. A few details:

1. If no one can come up with an association, we just go on to the next word.

2. We never do more than three words in one class period, usually only two.
3. The process has a sequence. First I tell them what the word means, and then I ask them
how they can remember what it means. Doing this creates a pleasant sharing of ideas.
4. English is needed to get through this activity quickly, as we only want to spend two or
three minutes on it at the most.

Using L1 in this way at the beginning of class allows us to connect with our students in a social
way before we get into the harder challenges of connecting solely in the language. It is a nice
way to settle into class, and is highly recommended because it creates a lighthearted mood right
away.

Let’s look a bit more closely at the process to make sure that we understand the sequence. Each
time that we introduce a new word from the Word Wall or the Verb Wall, we say what it means
and then ask the class how we can remember what it means, as in:

Students, a word we want to learn today from the wall is les yeux. Les yeux means eyes. How can
we remember what les yeux means?
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When the class as a group chooses to remember that les yeux means eyes by making associations
in their own minds and by expressing those associations out loud in the group in their own
voices, they create a problem solving community.

When the instructor says:

Oh, class, Bryan said that we can remember that les yeux means eyes because of lazy eye!

she acknowledges Bryan and his immediate contribution to the group at the beginning of the
class. This is part of the all-important process of personalizing the classroom every day by
recognizing the child as a human being first before trying to teach him anything. Bryan is
acknowledged for his intelligent and creative suggestion, expressed in his own voice, linking les
yeux to lazy eye.

The teacher, like Scrooge at the end of A Christmas Carol, sends this message to her class when
starting class:

I’m going to like this class! I like the ideas these kids are giving me!

All the ideas can’t be accepted, of course, so we reject ideas with lots of good will, a smile, and
sometimes even that process of rejecting ideas becomes pretty funny.

Starting a class with plenty of personal acknowledgement of how smart and creative kids are is
good politics. Asking kids for help is always a good idea – it gets them involved. When we say
how funny their ideas are, we flatter them. Flattery gets us everywhere in comprehension based
instruction.

The phrase “how can we remember” is of key importance when we work with our Word Walls.
How can we remember it? We become a team working together. Here we are all together, about
to embark, after this brief period of Word Association work, into L2 for the rest of the class
period, and the inquisitive messages from the instructor are:
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How can we all work together?

What can I learn from you?
How smart you kids are!
Man, I could never have thought of that!

and the kids’ messages to the class and to the instructor are:

Look how smart we are!

You can learn from me!
I’m smart!
I can think of weird and crazy things to help the class!

There is a tonal difference here. This inclusion of the individual in the group, this attention to
what their own life experience has been enough to ask them how what they know can help the
larger group, this attention to the student as a person, is significant.

An example of personalizing a classroom that is particularly effective for younger kids, because
of its connection to the powerful world of animals, comes from Charlotte Dincher in Bremen,
Germany. Here are the two links:

http://www.benslavic.com/blog/2013/01/26/wall-zoo/
http://www.benslavic.com/blog/2013/02/09/wall-zoo-2/

Other links to articles on the PLC about Word Associations are:

http://www.benslavic.com/blog/2011/11/17/word-wall/
http://www.benslavic.com/blog/2012/01/27/another-bail-out-move/
http://www.benslavic.com/blog/2012/02/21/verb-strips-french/
http://www.benslavic.com/blog/2012/02/25/a-first/
http://www.benslavic.com/blog/2012/05/29/importance-of-gesturing/
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http://www.benslavic.com/blog/2012/05/29/common-verbs-in-french/
http://www.benslavic.com/blog/2012/05/31/word-wall-2/
http://www.benslavic.com/blog/2012/10/22/%ef%bb%bf%ef%bb%bfon-word-waljkjkjls/
http://www.benslavic.com/blog/2013/02/12/walls/
http://www.benslavic.com/blog/2013/06/13/tpr-to-set-up-ci/

Activity #2 - Circling with Balls (CWB):

Circling with Balls addresses personalizing the classroom and setting rules. In my view, the
primary job of a teacher is to make children feel that they are important and that they can learn,
as opposed to just making sure that they learn the content of the class, and we do this via
personalization and rule setting.

I know that parents don’t saunter into each of their child’s classrooms each year and request that
their child be treated as a human being who really counts, and to let the grade be secondary, but
it would be a very good thing if they did.

We have a long way to go in American education on that point. Students can’t learn just for a
grade. They can memorize and forget, but they can’t learn for acquisition – they can’t actually
learn the language.

Those students can’t learn in the unique way that students in comprehensible input classrooms
learn – through reciprocal and participatory verbal interaction and give and take with others,
which is what language is – unless they have an identity in class.

The popular Circling with Balls activity builds that identity. It is easy to do. Each student has a
half sheet of colored card stock, folded lengthwise so that it can stand up on the desk in front of
the student later. (I use a different colored card stock for each class that I teach.)
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The students write their names clearly in large letters on the left hand side of the sheet, and to the
right of their name they draw a picture of a sport or musical instrument they play or want to play,
or a drawing of a favorite pet or animal. They can draw more than one thing if they want.

By asking the kids to do this on the first day of class, I catch their attention. The students see that
their interests, and not a textbook, are going to be the subject of the class.

For the next several days, I ask the kids to place their cards on their desks facing me. This is my
beginning of the year curriculum. I just walk around the room, expressing interest in what I see
while engaging the class in circled conversation in the target language about what they have
drawn. (Circling is explained in the Skills section below.)

Yes, I am teaching French during this time. However, the hidden agenda is that I am using these
first days of class to establish classroom discipline as well as personalize my classroom. Those
two things are my real point of focus. The French is only incidental. This is explained further
below.

As I walk around, I may notice that LaVonne has drawn a volley ball to the right of her name. So
I say:

Classe, LaVonne joue au volley!

Next, I go to the board and write:

LaVonne joue au volley - LaVonne plays volleyball!

Then, pointing to and pausing at each single word I say, I begin a series of circled repetitive
questions based on the original statement. This is the first comprehensible input of the year so it
has to be done right, which means that I have to artfully use the TPRS skills of SLOW and
Staying in Bounds (both explained later).
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While making these statements, I REQUIRE the class to respond chorally to each statement I
make, as indicated below in bold in parentheses.

Pay attention to those words in parenthesis below and make it a part of your questioning
technique. You can know everything there is to know about comprehension based instruction,
but if you don’t remember to require a class choral response to every single question you ask all
year in your classroom, you will lose touch with your students and none of this will work:

Statement: Class, LaVonne plays volleyball! (ohh!)

Question: Class, does LaVonne play volleyball? (yes)
Either/Or: Class, does LaVonne play volleyball or does LaVonne play soccer? (volleyball)
That's right, class, LaVonne plays volleyball! (ohh!)
Negative: Does LaVonne play soccer? (no) No, class, LaVonne doesn’t play soccer. She plays
volleyball! (ohh!)
3 for 1: Class, does LaVonne write novels? (no) That's right class, that's ridiculous, LaVonne
doesn't write novels! She plays volleyball!
What: Class, what does LaVonne play? (volleyball) That’s right, class, she plays volleyball!
Who: Class, who plays volleyball? (LaVonne) Correct, class, LaVonne plays volleyball.

This topic of the importance of choral responses will be addressed more fully later in a later
chapter.

When, where, why and other details can be added into this process as the kids start to acquire the
most necessary question words. You will eventually find that the most powerful question word is
“where”.

When you encourage silly responses that are personalized to the part of town your students live
in, or happen in the very school building you are in, like in the principal’s office or in the
basement, you will find a kind of lift off to the discussion. We can personalize locations as well
as people!
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The questioning pattern above, called Circling, is a staple of TPRS/CI instruction. Like Staying
in Bound and Choral Responses, it will be discussed later in this text in the section on skills.

So I ask questions as I walk around the room looking at and marveling at my kids’ identity
sheets. I look them in the eyes. I turn and proudly share with the class what I have learned about
a particular kid.

In this way, I get to know the students I will be teaching that year, in a non-threatening way,
focusing only on their strengths and interests, and the class gets to know them. They start to
become a member of a community.

This is HUGE for a kid, to be known to the class. If they are known in this way, they won’t have
to work so hard to get the attention of the class in other ways. And of course they are going to
want to understand what I am saying to them in the target language. It’s about them!

I always give my students time to absorb all the words I say by including long enough pauses, up
to five seconds or more. I point to the words I use and their translation on the board. This
processing time is crucial to make the method work.

As the students’ familiarity with the question words increases, I stop pointing to things that they
instantly and easily comprehend (have acquired), but I continue pointing to anything that they do
not yet easily know (have not acquired).

Acquisition takes months and months and thousands of repetitions. Not hundreds, thousands.
The question word “who”, for example, is usually still shaky in the minds of students in March
or April even after thousands of repetitions.

It’s just that way. It’s how the brain is wired. The brain needs to hear everything thousands of
times, which really upsets the assessment piece in language classrooms!
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This process we call acquisition means that the language has been absorbed by the unconscious
mind and neural connections have been made that easily bring that information into the
conscious mind to be instantly recognized when they are heard again. The conscious mind
cannot do this work. The conscious mind can learn, but it cannot acquire.

Learning implies forgetting. Acquisition means that it stays in there forever. Acquisition is such
a deep thing. In comprehension based instruction, we teach for acquisition.

With anything new, I write it down with its translation before moving on. But why would I
introduce any new vocabulary than the targeted structures I am working on?

I do not want to confuse my students with more information than they can handle. We do not do
that in comprehension based instruction. Our instruction must be clean and clear to our students.
We don’t go out of bounds – we stay on the target structures.

So, in Circling with Balls, and in PQA in general and certainly in stories, we always focus on a
few structures at a time, getting significant numbers of repetitions on them and not introducing
any new words unless it can’t be avoided.

In the Circling with Balls activity I have three goals: 1) to make the class about the students, 2)
to establish the Classroom Rules (described below), and 3) to make the language fully accessible
to my students.

As mentioned, in most beginning classes (in which the kids are between thirteen and fifteen
years old), more than half of the students draw a picture of a sports ball. (That is why this
activity has kept its odd name after so many years despite efforts to change it in the TPRS
community.)

When the discussion is about students and the sports they play, a sense of play is immediately
brought into the first few weeks of discussion. All you need is a number of sports balls of
different types in your classroom.
 27

I have three of those smaller sized basketballs (with a basketball goal in the corner for relaxing
between classes), two footballs, a soccer ball, a volley ball, a tennis ball, a softball, etc.
Regulation size basketballs and footballs bend little fingers, so get the softer and smaller ones.

An important detail is that, as I circle in the target language about one kid’s interest in their sport,
I hold the ball associated with their sport, at times dangling it like a carrot in front of the kid.

I also focus first on the single kid in the class who appears to have the most potential to be a
trouble maker that year. I am going to turn that negative oppositional energy into positive energy
on the first day of class, or at least I will neutralize the kid with the sports ball activity.

I do this by keeping the ball away from the potential trouble maker while talking about him. This
builds tension and interest, and puts me in a position of control over the child. I may give the ball
to other kids for a moment, but not to the kid who wants it.

The kid must hang with me in the language to finally get control of the ball. At that point they
can sit there with the ball in their hands or in front of them, now as an important new member of
the group, and not as a potential trouble maker. When I give them the ball, I whisper to them that
I will take it back in an instant if they misuse it.

There is something about being able to toss the balls around that relaxes all the students in the
classroom, which is no small trick on the first day of class. Thus, if you walk by a desk and see
the name “Shawntay” and there is a drawing of a basketball there, you say in amazement, "Class,
Shawntay plays basketball!"

As you hold the basketball it is clear to everyone that Shawntay wants it, because he knows that
being a basketball player is going to be an identity for him in your class this year. In fact, you
may have already decided that he is Shawntay James, the great power forward for the Miami
Heat.
 28

The secret to the Circling with Balls activity is that you hold on to the basketball, tossing it to a
few kids, but not to Shawntay, circling away:

Class, Shawntay plays basketball! (Ohh!)

Class, does Shawntay play basketball? (yes)
That’s right class, Shawntay plays basketball! (Ohh!)
Class, does Shawntay play basketball or does Abe Lincoln play basketball? (Shawntay!)
That’s correct, class, Shawntay plays basketball.
Class, does Shawntay play volleyball? (no!)
Correct again, class, you are very smart! Shawntay does not play volleyball, he plays basketball!
(Ohh!)
Class, who plays basketball? (Shawntay!) That’s right, class, Shawntay plays basketball!
(Ohh!)

Three details:

1) I like to use the word “class” as a lead-in word to almost every sentence I ask. It builds
inclusion and shows who is in charge. Try it.
2) You cannot go too slowly when you do any of this.
3) There is a natural flow to this questioning process – when it is time to leave the discussion
about Shawntay, you will know it.

The Circling with Balls activity builds tension and interest in the class. Whatever Shawntay’s
typical level of academic involvement in his other classes is, here he is focused.

Waiting to give the ball to Shawntay only when the circling about him is over, as mentioned,
keeps the interest up and going through the entire process.

In the Circling with Balls activity, the kids are hearing language that is meaningful to them. They
can understand this simple language that is all about them, and it shocks them and pleases them
and gives them wonderful confidence in this class, where things are so easy to understand!
 29

All you have to do is keep asking questions from the Question Words chart, pointing and
pausing, staying in bounds, demanding choral responses, and in just a few moments, almost
magically, you have circled your way into personalized details.

(The Question Word chart is available for downloading on the posters page of my website by
clicking on the TPRS Resources hard link. I recommend that you post it in the back of the room
facing you if you are new to this work.)

Over time, as new structures are acquired by the class in a natural way, you learn more details
about each kid. Some are true but most are made up. There’s something silly about stuff that you
make up in class and silly is good in comprehension based classrooms.

You may learn from the class that Shawntay plays basketball behind (teaches prepositions)
Target at five p.m. (teaches time) on Wednesdays (teaches days of the week) in the summer
(teaches seasons), but only in the month of July (teaches months) with Mickey Mouse (teaches
prepositions). Your reaction to each one of these facts is, of course, one of great interest.

As long as the instructor:

1. honestly listens to the students’ cute answers (which must be in the target language),
2. makes certain that student-provided information drives the class,
3. points and pauses to all question words and any new words that may have slipped into the
discussion,
4. checks for comprehension (discussed in detail below),
5. stays in bounds,
6. speaks slower than seems possible,
7. uses absolutely simple language,
8. conveys a genuine sense of wonderment that these students do such wonderful things,

then the fluency portion of your language program is being addressed and Circling with Balls
and the other activities described in this section will work.
 30

You may wish to print Anne Matava’s Questionnaire on the back of the Circling with Balls
cards. This puts in one place, on one card, these two powerful personalization tools.

Here is the front of the Circling with Balls card (folded sideways on each student’s desk as
explained above):

________________________________________FOLD HERE____________________________________

(Write your name on this side) (Draw a picture of some sport or something you do on this side)

Here is the back of the Circling with Balls card, the Questionnaire:

Directions: please fill this out thoughtfully, combining made up and real answers. Blend a little of your
real personality into a lot of a make believe personality:

Name

______________________________________________________

Nickname

______________________________________________________

Name you wish you could have

______________________________________________________

Job

______________________________________________________
 31

A job you would like to have

______________________________________________________

Any interesting or unusual facts about you

______________________________________________________

A celebrity you find attractive and why

______________________________________________________

Favorite musical groups/athletes and why

______________________________________________________

A pet and their name

______________________________________________________

A pet you would like to have and their name

______________________________________________________

Something you don’t like and why

______________________________________________________

Something you don’t have but really want

______________________________________________________

Some unusual thing you have

______________________________________________________

Talents/abilities, however strange

______________________________________________________

Someone or something you fear and why

______________________________________________________

Weird chores you have to do

______________________________________________________

A food you don’t like

______________________________________________________
 32

Once when doing CWB with the questionnaires filled out on the reverse side of the CWB card,
my eyes fell on A Name That You Wish You Could Have on the questionnaire and the student
had written Her Majesty. Instead of just being a cardboard cutout in my class, this student
suddenly and wonderfully became Her Majesty (back of card) Who Dances (front of card).

This use of the questionnaire brought important personalized details about this student into play
much earlier than had I just circled with balls in the normal way.

If you learn that another student, Catherine, has two horses, whether it is true or not, you can
develop it into all kinds of imaginative personalized comprehensible input over the course of the
year to greatly strengthen Catherine as an important member of the group that year.

You could ask Catherine questions about the horses: which is bigger, what are their names, what
color they are, which one runs faster, which one Catherine prefers, etc. You could spend a week
asking Catherine questions about those two horses – she would be happy to answer all of them.
This is time well spent and it is how we try to spend our time in comprehension based
classrooms - our students are our curriculum.

Think of the Circling with Balls cards and the questionnaires, when they are placed back to back
on a piece of card stock, as a sort of foundation on which you can start your year building truly
personalized and meaningful classes.

Downloadable versions of both cards can be found at www.benslavic.com on the posters page
(TPRS Resources) for your use. Click on:

Circling With Balls Template - Side A

Circling With Balls Template - Side B

(If you don’t like the font on the questionnaires you can change it before printing your cards.
Also, don’t forget to choose different colored card stock for each of your classes.)
 33

Below Anne describes how she uses her questionnaire at the beginning of the year:

“I feel strongly that the language in a story script should be, at the very least, familiar to the
students and already part of their repertoire. In order to build that repertoire, I do not start the
year with stories per se; rather, I work intensively with material provided in the students’
responses to questions on my questionnaire. I scan the questionnaires for an interesting piece of
information and spin little scenes out of it. I choose one or two students to talk about each day. In
this way, I cover structures such as likes, is, wants, goes, has, eats, and plays, in the first 6-8
weeks of school. This creates a body of acquired language from which we may begin working
with story scripts. It also gives me a chance to get to know the students, and communicates to
them that they are important in my class. Below is an example of what one such scene, circled
out of the information that ‘Chris plays bass guitar’ and ‘Big Boy sings’.”

Chris plays bass guitar in a band. Big Boy sings in the band. The band is called “Mr. Rogers’
Band”. It is a gospel band. Big Boy sings in Pig Latin. The concert is in jail. Mini-Me is in jail
because he is too short. Mini-Me cries and dances the Macarena.

I asked Anne to elaborate on the above:

Q. How long do scenes like that take to create?

A. That little scene probably took about one 40-minute period, very early in the year.
Q. Do you work with two kids per class like this for three academic weeks (15 classes x 2 kids)?
A. The two kids per class thing is not carved in stone. With music, it was easy to find two kids
and put them in a band. When I talk about what someone likes to eat, for example, I might make
it only about them. I don't really know going in. Normally I start each class having chosen one
fact about one kid from his questionnaire. Sometimes others get added in, sometimes they don't.
Three weeks is not long enough. It's more like four to six weeks.
Q. In other scenes, do you get into more or less detail than in the scene you described above?
A. The amount of detail is about right. Maybe more as time passes.
Q. Is it possible to get a first silly name for a kid from this activity?
A. A silly name? I never thought about it. Why not?
 34

Notice very importantly that Anne said this: “I don't really know going in [what will happen].”

This is huge. The teacher who succeeds with comprehensible input must be willing to give up
teaching a preset body of information (always boring to kids) and instead work with information
that the kids have provided (always interesting to them).

This kind of radical shift in curriculum depends on the teacher aligning their instruction with Dr.
Krashen’s idea that, given enough comprehensible input, all the vocabulary and structures the
student is ready for are automatically provided (the Net Hypothesis):

http://www.benslavic.com/blog/wp-admin/post.php?post=11640&action=edit&message=1
http://www.benslavic.com/blog/2012/02/28/net-hypothesis-2/

Anne concluded:

“I call the use of the questionnaires my first quarter curriculum. It's easy to write a curriculum
guide with it. Students will be able to tell where they live, how old they are, what they like, etc.
Sounds just like the old textbook days, doesn't it?”

If the kids don’t fill out their questionnaires with a lot of really cool details and well thought out
answers, it is because you are somehow sending them the message that you aren’t really that
interested in what they write on them.

If, on the other hand, in the first few weeks of the year, they see that you attach a lot of
importance to what they have written on both sides of their cards, and that you use them a lot in
the classroom, then many of them will get that the class is about them, and that their peers will
be forming opinions about them from what you say about them and from the little scenes you
create from the questionnaires, etc.
 35

What usually happens is that the students don’t initially take the questionnaires seriously because
other teachers have made similar requests of them but never used them, but when the students
realize that you really want to learn about them, they ask for their questionnaires back and you
get back some really interesting information.

When that happens you can then use the questionnaires to their maximum effectiveness all year,
and you will know that your classroom is well on its way to becoming a strongly personalized
classroom. Your interest in them sparks their interest in each other.

Thus, with the questionnaires, the teacher has the advantage of being a lot further along into
imagined details about her students right from the beginning of the year. At that point, you don’t
even have to work hard at building interest in the class, because it starts out interesting and
skyrockets from there.

The kids can't wait until you get around to them, to their cards and questionnaires, so make sure
you talk about each one of them before going on to stories later in the fall! At least mention those
kids who are painfully shy. They aren’t so shy as to want to be excluded from the group!

Of course, all along, the students don't even consciously notice that everything is in the target
language, as per Krashen’s statement that only when the mind of the student is focused on the
meaning and not on the individual words can real acquisition happen.

I remember in a workshop once, in one Circling with Balls coaching session, when the student
teacher took over the controls of the session from me, she had us fill out our Circling with Balls
cards, and, although I was supposedly the instructor in that session, I deeply felt the needs of
Ben, the Guy Who Rides Bikes (I had drawn a bike), to be noticed by my classmates as a guy
who rides bikes. But she never got to my card and I felt what all kids must feel when left out –
disappointed and somehow empty. So include them all.

Skip Crosby in Maine stays with the Circling with Balls/Questionnaire cards pretty much into the
late winter each year before starting stories. It’s a good idea. He just spins and spins and spins
 36

stuff out of the cards, and reports that the quality of the classes are better because they are much
more highly personalized than stories could ever be.

I would certainly advise combining the Name That You Wish You Could Have question from
the questionnaire with the regular Circling with Balls activity as soon as possible with as many
kids as possible in the first months of the new school year.

When a student is talked about in terms of what they do and then when the name that they want
to be called is used in that discussion, it is much more powerful than when the Circling with
Balls activity is done alone. The section on naming students found later in this text will discuss
the naming process in greater detail.

Here are some links to further information on the PLC about the Circling with Balls activity and
other topics mentioned above:

http://www.benslavic.com/blog/2008/08/24/circling-with-balls-and-word-lists/
http://www.benslavic.com/blog/2012/08/29/20095/
http://www.benslavic.com/blog/2011/08/31/a-few-details-about-circling-with-balls/
http://www.benslavic.com/blog/2009/11/29/i-can-dance/
http://www.benslavic.com/blog/2013/05/13/importance-of-simplicity-in-the-first-two-weeks/
http://www.benslavic.com/blog/2012/07/02/circling-with-balls-ramble/
http://www.benslavic.com/blog/category/circling-with-balls/page/6/
http://www.benslavic.com/blog/2012/09/11/time-to-bail-out-on-the-balls/
http://www.benslavic.com/blog/2009/08/23/we-are-just-a-bunch-of-tin-men/
http://www.benslavic.com/blog/2009/08/23/on-the-importance-of-learning-their-english-names-
right-away/
http://www.benslavic.com/blog/2009/09/05/circling-with-balls-2/
http://www.benslavic.com/blog/2009/09/06/circling-with-balls-3/
http://www.benslavic.com/blog/2010/07/31/stuff-i-learned-in-la/
http://www.benslavic.com/blog/2010/08/04/its-really-so-simple/
http://www.benslavic.com/blog/2010/08/14/circling-with-balls-4/
 37

http://www.benslavic.com/blog/2010/09/11/a-ramble-dont-read-it/
http://www.benslavic.com/blog/2011/08/20/next-week-we-all-try-to-be-just-like-linda-li/
http://www.benslavic.com/blog/2011/08/24/conversation/
http://www.benslavic.com/blog/2011/08/24/today-2/
http://www.benslavic.com/blog/2011/08/27/role-of-circling-in-pqa/
http://www.benslavic.com/blog/2011/08/28/circling-with-balls-question/
http://www.benslavic.com/blog/2011/08/30/trust-the-net/
http://www.benslavic.com/blog/2011/08/31/a-few-details-about-circling-with-balls/
http://www.benslavic.com/blog/2012/04/26/troubleshooting-video-1/
http://www.benslavic.com/blog/2012/04/27/18078/
http://www.benslavic.com/blog/2012/05/05/archie-3/
http://www.benslavic.com/blog/2012/05/07/18215/
http://www.benslavic.com/blog/2012/04/05/rhythm-of-circling/
http://www.benslavic.com/blog/videos/visceral-circling/
http://www.benslavic.com/blog/videos/visceral-circling-archie/
http://www.benslavic.com/blog/videos/circling-with-balls-archie/
http://www.benslavic.com/blog/videos/circling-with-balls-archie-continued/
http://www.benslavic.com/blog/2013/06/03/pancake-batter-2/

Activity #3 – One Word Images (OWI):

One Word Images is a term that I use to describe a way I have of using comprehension based
techniques to teach exploratory classes that are not ready to do full stories, although I also use
this technique with more experienced classes as well.

OWI is a lot of fun for the kids and is a lot of fun for me, one that I could do for hours and hours
on end, just to see what the kids come up with.

To start, just pick a noun from the wall. Animals are good and if you have a Word Zoo up you
can draw from that all year to do this activity. Write the word down on the board, translate it, and
start asking the kids the following specific set of questions about it:
 38

its name
its quantity
its size
its color
its intelligence level
rich or poor
mean or kind
hair color
eye color
its mood
where it is
what it is doing
when this occurred (time, day of the week, etc.)
other physical characteristics – see TPRS in a Year!, Portrait Physique

Then just use Circling to see where the class takes it! As you ask more and more questions, the
image will develop almost like a photograph in the minds’ eyes of the students. To middle school
students in particular, and especially when it is an animal, and especially when they create it, and
when the animal has a silly name, and does strange things, the image becomes very compelling.

I have a laminated copy of the above questions on a clipboard at my desk for ease of access. It is
my prompt sheet for this activity. The process of creating these images can last from a few
minutes to an entire class period.

Doing this is actually very much like asking a story, but without all the complexity in the form of
multiple events, characters and locations. All that is needed for first year and exploratory classes
is to choose a noun, not necessarily an animal, ask the questions listed above, and see how far the
original word ends up going via simple Circling with the students.
 39

Circling permits the adding in of details. The repetitions build the CI, and the new details build
the (personalized) interest.

Such little images may not take things as far as a regular story, but so what? They are a lot easier
to do, and they help students whose listening skills need to be developed – that describes most
students if the ones you get are anything like the ones I teach - before stories are started.

Building confidence in new teachers is not something that TPRS is known for. So, if you are new
to teaching using comprehensible input, it is nice to know that you can just take a word like
“casa” and work with it in a very simple way. All you have to do is say “casa” in front of the
class in a tone of expectancy, showing that it is a special word that you and the kids are going to
talk about in a special way.

Then, to establish meaning, write casa on the board and then in English. Point to the word in the
TL form and then to the English and then pause to let it sink into the students’ minds.

Next, do the word association process. Ask the kids to associate the sound of the new word with
some other sound or gesture, anything that they can think of. For the image of a house, when a
shy student puts her hands over her head like a roof, you respond as if this is just a brilliant
suggestion, praising the student and having the other students do that motion, glancing with great
approval at the originator of the gesture.

This word - casa - is just the first word in a series of words that will be provided by the class to
build an image that is unique to this class. It may or may not become a scene, for now it is just an
image, but in that image is the message that this class is going to be fun!

Having made up a sound or a gesture or anything that you can think of to help the students
remember the base word casa, you now need a student to pretend to be the house for the duration
of the activity. You are going to train your first actor.
 40

So you say “I need a CASA!” and then just wait for a student to come up and sit on one of the
acting stools and be a house.

Acting means just sitting there in all comprehension based classrooms. There is usually no
shortage of kids wanting to do this. If there is, wait them out. If no one comes up, which would
be very rare, just go to another activity, or back to the CWB cards (always a good bail out move).

Do not try to build One Word Images with your kids until the second week of school at the
earliest. They need a base vocabulary first.

In the work we do with comprehensible input, we are not teaching images or stories, we are
teaching little chunks of language. The kids think that we are teaching an image, because they
forget that the instruction is in a foreign language, but your focus is on the structures used,
getting repetitions on them, over and over, far more repetitions than we feel are needed.

All the while the child is beginning to acquire the language in the real way, by focusing on
meaning and not individual words, freeing up the unconscious mind to do what only it can do –
process sound into language unconsciously.

Slow repetition is the key to this work. If you were really to go slowly enough while getting
these reps, you could conceivably take more than one class period to create just one image,
because you repeated things so much. This would be painful for you but great for the kids.

The kids are brand new to the language; you cannot afford to get complicated on them when
doing one word images. And give them brain breaks. Invite different kids to sit on the stool and
be a house, a fish, etc. Hang out in the language with them. It beats conjugating verbs.

A house becomes a little red house. If it develops into anything more than that, great. If not, the
kids are hearing and understanding simple language via interesting, repeated and slow
questioning, which is the entire point of everything we do.
 41

To repeat, and this is the radical part for those who do not yet fully grasp what comprehensible
input really is: we try to get the students so focused on the image that they forget the words that
are being used, so that it all goes into the unconscious mind where languages are really acquired
in the true sense.

When students suggest cute answers to your circled questions about the One Word Image, then
you know that you are going to be successful in this work because your students will have then
claimed ownership in the process - it will be their image, their story.

Thus, the building of the image, as in the building of stories later, must always be done by the
group, and certainly not by the teacher alone. The teacher merely asks the questions; the kids are
the providers of the answers.

Here are links to further PLC articles/videos on One Word Images:

http://www.benslavic.com/tprs-video-one-word-image.html
http://www.benslavic.com/blog/2011/08/31/one-word-images-4/
http://www.benslavic.com/blog/2011/08/09/one-word-images-3/
http://www.benslavic.com/blog/2011/07/01/one-word-images/
http://www.benslavic.com/blog/2012/01/16/trust-the-process/
http://www.benslavic.com/blog/2012/04/09/dream-necklaces/
http://www.benslavic.com/blog/2009/05/13/questions-on-one-word-images/
http://www.benslavic.com/blog/2009/05/13/one-word-images-2/
http://www.benslavic.com/blog/2013/05/13/importance-of-simplicity-in-the-first-two-weeks/
http://www.benslavic.com/blog/2009/05/03/the-owi-activity/
 42

Activity #4 - Word Chunk Team Activity (WCT):

It would be nice for teachers if communication via language could be done via single words
only; their jobs would be much simpler. Unfortunately that is not the case. Languages require
that words be grouped together in order for communication to occur.

So we learn to group words together in chunks in our comprehension based instructional

activities. This offers students a more robust version of comprehensible input instead of mere
word lists, thus paving the way for more complex language in the future, eventually leading to
stories and big pass rates on exams like the AP.

WTC is used in exploratory classes and at the beginning of the year in regular classes, on Fridays
as a reward for good efforts at listening (which is very rigorous), or any time a break is needed.

This activity makes use of the Word Walls, builds a sense of play, builds group trust and group
identities, and highly motivates the kids to listen carefully to L2.

Here is the process:

1. After teaching, gesturing, and working individually with the words on the Word Wall for
some weeks, you put the kids into groups of four (or five in large classes), and ask them
to come up with a silly group name, plus a gesture or sound to go with that name.
2. Then make up bizarre little combinations (chunks) of words that the kids have studied
from the Word Wall, keeping those chunks really simple at first. For example, you look
at the Word Wall and see the word “hand” and you also notice the word “yell”. Both
words have already been presented in the Word Association activity prior to doing this
activity. Putting the two words together, you say, “The hand yells!” in L2. It doesn’t have
to make sense, and is better if it doesn’t, because it teaches the students to decode with
greater attention, so make the images really bizarre.
3. Each group then tries to translate what they heard by consulting with each other, working
together to come up with the correct translation.
 43

4. You call on the first group to raise their hand. Once recognized, they must first do their
group sign in totally synchronized fashion before answering. If they are successful, they
get to answer the question. Then they give you the answer in English and, if correct, that
group gets six attempts at a basket (in under one minute) or six attempts at hitting a circle
on the board with a paper ball, or something like that. Basketball is best. I have a small
basketball court, fairly authentic like in arcades, and it really works to get them to listen,
because they all want to shoot for points and show off for their classmates.
5. Their group name and sign is a big part of this process. When I call on them they have to
make their group sign in perfect synchronization between all group members. If they
can’t do that, they don’t get the question. I know that sounds over the top, but if you see it
in action you can see what this sign synchronization detail does for the game.

This activity does all sorts of things for class chemistry. It is fun, highly personalized, the time
goes by quickly, there is lots of laughter, and there is a tremendous level of auditory focus on L2,
with readily apparent auditory gains early on in the year, setting the stage for successful stories
later in the year.

For example, the group that has decided that it wants to be known as the “Conquistadores”, when
I say something like “the house is not red” (house and red having already been taught in class
from the wall) jumps up and, exactly at the same moment, claps and yells “Olé!” together. That
is their group sign. All have to do it. If it isn’t perfect, the class bemoans them for their
slackness, and other groups vie for the question.

Eventually, a group answers two questions correctly, and so they earn a group trip to “the line” at
the basketball hoop, to take three shots for every correct answer they have provided, or six shots.
Of course, the kids take the scoring very seriously, as you have told them that it is for extra
credit. (That is where we have arrived in education – some kids won’t even play a game unless it
is for extra credit!)
 44

Of course, I rarely put anything in the grade book to reflect points made during the game,
because I don’t want to and because they normally forget that they even earned those points
when class is over.

In the rare case that kids come up at the end of class or at the end of the grading period wanting
their extra credit, I throw a few points into the book for their group members and move on with
my day. I tell them that the onus of remembering how many points they have is on them and that
they have to come to me with their extra credit requests. Most just walk out of the classroom at
the end of the period and forget about it.

So, when I say that this fourth of our five stepping stone activities is a chunking activity, I mean
that I am moving the students, right at the beginning of the year, from knowing just single words
to knowing words that I arbitrarily chunk together during our game. This sets up an early
capacity to focus on meaning and not individual words, which process, as stated, must occur if
acquisition is to occur.

You should see the level of involvement. The kids are simply aware of playing a game, but they
are doing some serious, in fact rigorous auditory decoding in the first weeks of the year. This
work is preparing them beautifully for stories.

I once wrote a response to a question on this Word Chunk Activity from a colleague who asked
about sourpusses – how to get them involved in the game. I include part of it here:

“Whenever the team has to synchronize their team sign, little Joyless Johnny, bless his heart, is
put on the spot by the rest of the group to participate. Even if his mind is clearly not going to
participate, he must do the sign, or face the wrath of the group. The synchronized sign keeps the
sourpusses in the game.”

But, if there is a REAL sourpuss, or someone who can’t work well in a group, I just bring them
to stand next to me to judge the synchronicity reactions of the teams. That student sits on a stool
 45

– I have two stools in my classroom for actors in stories - and is given this job and with it a bit of
power and we decide together which group had their hand up first.

There are three such jobs – one kid tells me which group was first, another tells me if the group
did their sign in perfectly synchronized fashion, and the third keeps score on the board. Working
with these normally ill-behaved kids in this way breaks down walls between the teacher and the
instructor and builds trust, so superstars don’t get to do these jobs.

When joyless students have a job that I need them for, our relationships change. This is what I
want. My goal as a teacher is to always find a way to bring every single student in the room into
some kind of participatory role with me. I also authentically need these judges to see which
group got their hand up first and if the synchronicity was there.

This asking of kids to judge the action also works for native speakers. I put the native speaker in
front of the room with me and they pick out which group was first. They also help me by making
up questions. They just look at the Word Wall and make up questions just like I do and they
alternate with me in directing the action.

The native speakers really get into making up Word Chunk questions and being judges in
choosing the first group to get their hand up and, really, doing everything the teacher is doing,
which is what native speakers should be doing in classrooms that they shouldn't, in the first
place, even be in.

Even though English creeps into this game, I highly recommend it as a powerful tool for CI and
for team building. It works best in seventh grade exploratory classes, whose (usually six to
twelve week classes) are too short to get stories going, but eighth graders also like to play it
every day and when I say no they see sometimes view it as a form of punishment!

When we are further into the year, I still allow my classes fifteen minutes or more of this game at
the end of the week as a reward for good storytelling work. But if a really fast processing kid
 46

fails to work with her group and dominates so that she is the only one answering questions, we
just don’t play.

By the way, this activity, along with dictation, also serves to keep the kids focused at the end of
the year when many kids and teachers have checked out already.

Every once in a while, as a bail out move, when you arrive at one of those moments in teaching
when you just don’t know what the hell to do, you can do a quick rote two minute activity to
reinforce vocabulary without actually getting into the Word Chunk Team game.

Just point the laser pointer at one of the columns of words on the Word Wall. First just go down
the list with the kids chorally translating. Then make up a few outlandish chunks and have them
translate. It’s just another bail out move possibility – others are discussed below.

Here are links to further articles on the Word Chunk Team Activity:

http://www.benslavic.com/blog/2008/09/20/word-chunking-team-activity-2/
http://www.benslavic.com/blog/2008/12/17/word-chunk-team-activity-pqa-ben-slavic-tprs-
decodin/
http://www.benslavic.com/blog/2009/01/08/dirks-twist-on-word-chunking/
http://www.benslavic.com/blog/2009/01/13/word-chunk-team-activity-bis/
http://www.benslavic.com/blog/2009/10/22/word-chunking-at-upper-levels/
http://www.benslavic.com/blog/2012/05/30/the-flying-ship-of-tprs/
http://www.benslavic.com/blog/2012/11/09/bring-variety/
http://www.benslavic.com/blog/2012/09/20/heads-together-checker/

Activity #5 – Dictée:

Dictée is a tool to teach writing, a tool to improve students’ listening skills, a bail out move, and
a tool to calm down the kids and get them doing what they are used to doing in school - writing.
 47

We connect dictée to a recently created story, a novel, or a projected image. When this is done,
the subject matter for the dictée is not random, which is a huge factor in the kids’ confidence, as
they are able to connect writing to known auditory information in their brains taught in the past
twenty-four to forty-eight hours.

So on the day after a story or after the reading of a novel, I have the option to go to the LCD
projector or document camera and ask the students to take dictation on a passage from the just
completed story or from the novel we are reading.

The key point in dictée is that there be no speaking by the students. This must be enforced 100%
of the time, or dictée is ineffective. Students speaking during dictation is much more egregious
than their speaking during stories – it entirely defeats the purpose.

Neither must you, the instructor, speak English during dictée, for any reason, ever.

As long as absolutely no English is involved, dictée creates a wonderful flow of language, and
spectacular connections between sound and writing occur in the minds of the students. They can
now see how what they have been listening to is structured on paper. They must have heard and
understood it with their ears first (they must have created it in their mind’s eye) before turning it
into writing output.

Dictée bridges the gap between sound and writing, melding the two, moving information back
and forth across the hemispheres, processing huge amounts of synaptic connections in what I
have come to see is a spectacular process for teaching writing.

I always remember to include all punctuation instructions in the target language (see PLC article
on that topic in list below) before doing the first dictée.

Here is the dictée process:

I give the students a half sheet of paper with groupings of three blank lines on them.
 48

1. On line 1, I read chunks of sentences and give the students time to write each chunk. I
read each sentence chunk three times. The first time I read at a normal pace and they
listen. The second time I read very slowly as they write. The third time I read at a normal
pace while they check what they have written. I do not read it a fourth time. You will
learn the normal pace, slow pace, normal pace pattern. I simply do not allow a student to
ask for a repetition of anything at any time.
2. Next, I show the students the correct version of the text, phrase by phrase, or chunk by
chunk, and not sentence by sentence, which is too complex. They look at it and make
their corrections on line 2 as I successively reveal each new correctly written chunk on
the LCD or document camera.
3. The students bring down onto line 2 any corrections of the text only if any are needed,
but the teacher may want to require that they copy the entire correct text on the second
line. I grade both lines, whatever is correct from line 1 as well as any corrections made on
line 2. In this way, the students are graded on what is correct, not what is wrong. They are
graded on how well they can copy!
4. Line 3 is just a line space to make everything clearer and easier to read, but the teacher
can opt to make them write the English version of the text on that line.

The dictated version of the story doesn’t have to align perfectly with the story passage it came
from. In fact, intentional errors as you recreate the story force deeper thinking by the students,
and allow you to introduce a limited amount of new vocabulary.

The benefits of doing this are obvious. The kids participate to a very high degree, because they
know that working hard at this task of processing sound into writing will bring them an easy
grade, which increases their overall motivation in the class, increasing classroom discipline.

Here are links to further articles on how to use Dictée in your classroom:

http://www.benslavic.com/blog/2013/04/17/dictee-punctuation-terms-request/
http://www.benslavic.com/blog/2013/04/17/dictee/
 49

http://www.benslavic.com/blog/2013/04/17/importance-of-total-silence-in-dictee/
http://www.benslavic.com/blog/2013/03/31/a-few-points-about-dictee-in-the-tprs-classroo/
http://www.benslavic.com/blog/2012/09/29/dictation-rubric/
http://www.benslavic.com/blog/2012/03/19/dictation-detail/
http://www.benslavic.com/blog/2011/03/14/chunk-dictation/
http://www.benslavic.com/blog/2011/03/15/chunk-dictation-2/
http://www.benslavic.com/blog/2010/04/28/a-little-idea-that-has-been-helping/
http://www.benslavic.com/blog/2008/05/23/dictation-details/
http://www.benslavic.com/blog/2008/05/02/a-little-more-on-dictation/
http://www.benslavic.com/blog/2008/04/16/more-on-dictee/
http://www.benslavic.com/blog/2008/04/20/susie-and-joe-on-dictee/
http://www.benslavic.com/blog/2008/03/19/line-2/
http://www.benslavic.com/blog/2013/04/18/pictee/

Activity #6 – Targeting Power Verb using PQA:

Here is something from Eric Herman that we should all consider doing for five minutes in each
class:

The PQA of a high frequency verb is a new thing I’m trying out. I want to improve my PQA skills
and I want to make a conscious effort to give kids reps on the 50 highest frequency verbs. I have
a timer give me 5 minutes and I have a counter. I have probably been averaging 40 reps in 5
minutes. My best this past week was 57 reps/5 minutes. Now that we have established meaning
(gestures) for these verbs, we are all more aware of them and I can use them and use the gesture
simultaneously to remind everyone of their meaning.

Eric suggests here that we do PQA with 50 high frequency verbs. If we all did that for five
minutes per class, we would have:

1. one more varied activity for our lesson plan.

2. a much stronger auditory base in our kids for stories in general.
 50

3. kids who know the most important 50 words in the language.

This is just brilliant. I honestly think that this idea should be taught at workshops like we teach
CWB and OWI and all that. Those who are still awkward with PQA, by doing this particular
strategy, would get a lot better at PQA and fast, in my opinion. It’s not hard to ask a class a
bunch of questions about a single verb. And since it is a five minute activity, we won’t run into
that “lost in space” feeling that sometimes happens when we do regular PQA.

I would also suggest that this activity could be done in different verb tenses at higher levels as
well, once the kids have a thorough grasp of the present tense. Imagine - kids at the end of first
year who can identify fifty verbs by sound. Imagine - kids in level 3 who can instantly identify
common verbs in the imperfect, future or even compound tenses because their teacher gave them
this kind of short intense PQA practice every day as part of each class for years. Compare that
with the old way.

See Appendix B on page 127 for more.

 51

Stepping Stone Two: The Five Skills

Skill #1 - Circling:

Students become strongly engaged when you circle properly, because they understand. There is
always a strong link between student engagement and good circling. In the early stages of
learning this skill, you will probably refer frequently to your circling poster, which should be up
in the back of your room until you are ready to circle on your own, by asking:

Statement
Question
Either/or
Negative
3 for 1
What
Who
When
Where
Why
Ask a detail

An example of Circling:

Statement: "Class, there is a boy!" (ohh!)

Question: "Class, is there a boy?" (yes)
[You add: That’s correct, class, there is a boy.”]
Either/Or: “Class, is there a boy or a girl?” (boy)
[You add: That’s correct, class, there is a boy.”]
Negative: “Is there a girl?” (no)
[You add: That’s correct, class, there is not a girl. There is a boy.]
3/1: “Is there a monkey?” (no)
[You add: That’s correct, class, there is not a monkey. There is a boy.”]
 52

What: “Class, what is there?” (boy)

[You add: That’s correct, class, there is a boy.”]
Who: Class, what is the boy’s name? (David)
[You add: That’s correct, class, the boy’s name is David.”]

If it is true that listening to comprehensible input is the pre-eminent focus of all foreign language
instruction, Circling is the pre-eminent feature of comprehensible input. The astounding results
gained by TPRS students would be impossible without some form of Circling.

The focus of Circling in each sentence is on the part of the sentence that is new to the students. If
you are in touch with what your students have already learned, then, when you circle, you can
stress with an increase in sound in your voice the part of the sentence that is new to them.

A single thought must be in the forefront of the instructor’s mind when circling: the word or
structure that you want the students to know must be repeated, repeated, and repeated again in
each successive utterance, and vocally accentuated at the same time.

Some instructors focus more on the circling than on the structure, thinking that there must be a
“right” way to circle. Circling is not a formula to be blindly followed. Rather, repetitive
questioning that accentuates and repeats the structure to be learned is proper Circling.

By focusing less on the Circling itself as a formula and more on the structure being circled, the
structure quickly becomes comprehensible to the students. It also becomes instantly recognizable
to the students when it occurs later in more complicated ways.

It is possible to get ten questions from one sentence by circling all three parts of the sentence. If
the structure is:

avait l'intention de (intended to)

 53

I might ask Jesse if he intended to drink some milk yesterday. I could care less if he intended to
or not, but I want to teach the structure, so I act interested. If he nods his head yes, I have the
green light on Circling, so I ask,

"Class, did Jesse intend to drink some milk yesterday?"

And then I circle that as per the pattern below. I can circle either the subject, the verb, or the
object. Most teachers for some reason only circle the object. They should learn to focus on the
subject and verb as well, to keep things mixed up and therefore unpredictable and therefore more
interesting.

A template for circling the subject:

1. Class, did Jesse intend to drink some milk yesterday? [Yes] That’s right, class, Jesse intended
to drink some milk yesterday.
2. Did Jesse or Eric intend to drink some milk yesterday? [Jesse] That’s right, class, Jesse
intended to drink some milk yesterday.
3. Did Eric intend to drink some milk yesterday? [No] That’s right, class, that’s absurd. Eric did
not intend to drink some milk yesterday. Jesse intended to drink some milk yesterday.
4. Class, who intended to drink some milk yesterday? [Jesse] That’s right, class, Jesse intended
to drink some milk yesterday.

A template for circling the verb:

1. Class, did Jesse intend to drink some milk yesterday? [Yes] That’s right, class, Jesse intended
to drink some milk yesterday.
2. Did Jesse intend to drink or eat some milk yesterday? [Drink] That’s right, class, Jesse
intended to drink some milk yesterday.
3. Did Jesse intend to eat some milk yesterday? [No] That’s right, class, that’s absurd. Jesse did
not intend to eat some milk yesterday. He intended to drink some milk yesterday.
 54

4. Class, what did Jesse intend to do yesterday? [Drink some milk] That’s right, class, Jesse
intended to drink some milk yesterday.

A template for circling the object:

1. Class, did Jesse intend to drink some milk yesterday? [Yes] That’s right, class, Jesse intended
to drink some milk yesterday.
2. Did Jesse intend to drink some milk or some tea yesterday? [Milk] That’s right, class, Jesse
intended to drink some milk yesterday.
3. Did Jesse intend to drink some tea yesterday? [No] That’s right, class, that’s absurd. Jesse did
not intend to drink some tea yesterday. He intended to drink some milk yesterday.
4. Class, what did Jesse intend to drink yesterday? [Milk] That’s right, class, Jesse intended to
drink some milk yesterday.

It is not intended that you circle all the possibilities above in order. Do not. Instead, pick and
choose depending on the situation. Mix up your questions.

This is a good way to make students process each question at a higher level, which results in
greater gains. You have mastered this aspect of the skill when you can circle at will in random
order without glancing at the chart.

Always check students’ eyes for understanding. If your students look as if they do not
understand, it is because they do not. Slow down, circle more deliberately, and stay in touch with
what is happening with all of your students.

Practice with the training wheels on (circling in the order given on the chart) first, so you don’t
get bruised, but know that when the wheels are off your overall instruction will take off in the
real way.

If Mark ran, the instructor can ask the class:

 55

Class, did Mark run? (yes)

Did Mark or Ryan run? (Mark)
Did Ryan run? (no)
Did Eric run? (no)
Did Mark run or walk? (run)
Did Mark walk? (no)
Did Mark swim? (no)
Mark ran? (yes)
Class, who ran? (Mark)

If Mark then “ran to the left,” you can see how your adding just this one simple detail greatly
increases the number of questions you can ask. But why would you do that? Asking if Mark ran
to the left, for you as a speaker of the language, is only a simple detail, but to the average student
it is a detail of immense auditory complexity. We will address this point further later in this text.

When circling, certain protocols must be established immediately about what kind of comments
are acceptable in response to your questions. The student is always the star, and no derogatory
comments are allowed for any reason in any way. We must always keep in mind the fragile
nature of the egos of most of our students, in spite of how they may behave in class.

Kids in secondary school are arguably in the most sensitive years of their lives. Therefore, if you
are circling information about a certain student, and another student makes a comment about his
real life girlfriend or some other personal bit of information that is private to the child, divert the
discussion and caution the students about keeping things in the realm of the imagined.

Any comment that is made at the expense of someone must be refuted by the teacher, and it must
be made clear, even if a parent conference is necessary, that no such comments will be allowed.

Always keep comprehension based discussion firmly in the lighthearted realm of fun possibilities
and odd ideas. Teach the class that attempts at humor at a classmate’s expense will not be
tolerated. If a student does not feel safe in your classroom, she cannot learn.
 56

By starting the first class of the year in the target language using Circling, I send many messages
to my students:

1. By speaking only in French – except in the Word Association activity used to start class -
I am sending the message that French, not English, is the language that we will be using
in class this year.
2. By slowly circling in the first minutes of the first class of the year, I am sending the
message that slow circling will be the rule in my classroom all year. I am also sending the
message that it is my job to make my message clear, and that all they have to do is sit
back and listen and try.
3. By taking time to stop and laugh if something is funny, I am sending the message that we
will laugh in my class this year.
4. By requiring that my students react every time I state something, I am sending the
message that everything I say is totally fascinating to them, and that it is their job to make
sure that I understand that they know that.
5. By immediately writing any new words on the board with their translations, pausing and
pointing to every new word I use in English, I send the message that we will sometimes
use English in written form on the board as a basis for understanding words in French this
year.
6. By severely limiting the amount of new words I put on the board during class, I send the
message that I know how hard it is for my students to keep the basic structures in their
minds and that I will honor how rigorous the work I am asking them to do is and I will
not make them feel as if they can’t do it by going out of bounds when I teach.
7. By praising them at every turn, I am sending the message that they will not be criticized
on even the smallest level in my class this year, and that any hostile or controlling
personality they may have brought with them into class that year as protection won’t be
needed.
8. By making constant eye contact with each of them, I send the message that I care if they
are learning. By talking about them, doing so with joy and a sense of great interest, I send
the message that they are very important to me.
 57

9. By speaking French in such a simple and straightforward way on the first day of class, I
build good will and ensure my students’ success, thus insuring myself against the
“October Collapse”, which happens when the kids’ gas tanks of good will that were full
in August are empty because the teacher has insisted on teaching a simple and joyful
thing in a complex and boring way to the wrong part of their brains.

Sometimes I repeat the same exact circled question three or four times in a row using different
emotions. One would think that this would bore the kids, but the kids can be fooled into
decoding the same sentence multiple times by asking them questions in different ways using
differently voiced emotions.

The emotions override the meaning in languages, and the students don’t notice that the words are
the same. This keeps interest up in the structure, resulting in more meaningful repetitions and
thus greater acquisition. The effective language teacher will explore the role of emotions in their
voice to convey meaning in their classroom.

Another way to create input that is meaningful to the students using Circling is to add a parallel
sentence to the one you are already circling. A parallel sentence is a sentence which has the same
verbal core, but whose subject and object are different.

For example, if you are trying to teach voudrait avoir/would like to have, instead of circling just
one sentence around that expression, you introduce a similar sentence and circle both of them.

If your original sentence is:

Classe, Sleep King voudrait avoir une voiture!/Class, Sleep King would like to have a car!

You add another, parallel, sentence into the circling:

Classe, Jane voudrait boire un Mountain Dew!/Class, Jane would like to drink a Mountain Dew!
 58

Who cares if Jane really wants a Mountain Dew or not? Adding this second sentence expands the
size of the circling “field” in which you are working. It instantly adds many more possible
questions to your circling, because you can do more with two sentences than you can with one.

I consider this technique of bringing in a second sentence to mirror another one while circling to
be one of the great little tricks in comprehension based language instruction – you will feel
immediately more relaxed when you have that extra sentence to ask questions about.

Let’s turn our attention now to a second key skill in teaching using comprehensible input – Point
and Pause. But before we do that, you may want to read further about Circling by clicking on
some of these links on the PLC:

http://www.benslavic.com/blog/2013/03/31/cute-answers/
http://www.benslavic.com/blog/2013/06/06/rhythm-of-circling/
http://www.benslavic.com/blog/2012/04/05/rhythm-of-circling/ (video)
http://www.benslavic.com/blog/videos/visceral-circling/ (video)
http://www.benslavic.com/blog/videos/visceral-circling-archie/ (video)
http://www.benslavic.com/blog/videos/circling-with-balls-archie/ (video)
http://www.benslavic.com/blog/videos/circling-with-balls-archie-continued/ (video)
http://www.benslavic.com/blog/2013/06/06/thoughts-on-circling/
http://www.benslavic.com/blog/2012/04/23/not-enough-reps/
http://www.benslavic.com/blog/2011/11/30/staying-in-the-moment/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YJzSnf_cD3E (video)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bbDbGAfAMbM (video)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZQWxB-sJk1o (video)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OR2uuAyvmZQ (video)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XciHyVkRC4A (video)
 59

Skill #2 – Point and Pause:

We laser point to the structures and question words each time we say them. We also point to any
other words from the Word Wall as they occur.

Any previously taught structures that we use but on which we get a weak response during class
must be pointed to and paused at. If we have a list of connecting words or a list of prepositions in
poster form on our walls (I have both), we point and pause at them each time they occur in class.

If a word or structure has not been formerly introduced previously, we do not let it into class.
This is explained in detail in the section below on Skill #5 – Staying in Bounds.

The question words should already be translated and on the wall in poster form. We cannot
assume that our students know the question words – they are really confusing in the context of
stories because the kids are so focused on what is going on in the rest of the question that they
have trouble processing the question word.

In my view it takes about six months at least into a first year class for the students to fully
acquire the question words, after at least two or three thousand repetitions, minimally, on each
one. See the article called sBI in the Point and Pause links below for further elaboration on that
point.

So use Point and Pause with known words all the time, but do not allow new words in. If your
board is covered with new words in the target language after a class, all you have done is confuse
kids throughout the entire class. Covering the board with too much stuff is a common error made
by people new to the method. It may be the most common.

There are two points to be made here. In theory, there should be absolutely no new words or
structures on the board at the end of class. In practice, however, new words might creep in.
However, any more than two or three new words or structures is unacceptable, in my opinion.
 60

It makes sense. Two planes can’t take off on the same runway at the same time. This fact is
obvious intellectually, but, in the heat of teaching, it is not so easy to remember that we are the
only ones in the room who know those new words.

More than a few CI teachers have become untracked and lost contact with their students by using
words without first making sure that those words had been previously acquired. Over time, we
find that we know what our kids know, and we naturally steer the discussion away from words
that they don’t know (haven’t acquired). It’s a skill that comes with practice.

The mechanics of this skill sound complex but are not. When you say a word and get a weak
response, which happens about 95% of the time, you point to the word wherever it is on the walls
or on the board, then wait for a few seconds, looking at your students, before going on.

You should wait between two and four seconds, or longer, and what you are waiting for is the
“kathunk” moment in the invisible world during which you “feel” that the word has come into
auditory focus for the child. The concept of auditory focus is a critical one and is explained in
the first of the PLC links given below.

Once you start doing PQA and stories, even after you have established meaning and begun the
story, continue at all times to reinforce meaning by circling and pointing and pausing.

Pointing to and pausing at the question words as well as the target structures and any new
vocabulary throughout the lesson results in much more highly engaged students.

Visual students, especially, need you to do Point and Pause so they don’t get lost, and most kids
have been made by the system into visual learners. Overlooking the skill of Point and Pause may
explain why teachers sometimes feel that teaching using comprehensible input doesn’t work for
them.

It is our choice. We can point, pausing with the intention to make sure they get it, or we can
point without pausing and assume they get it. If we do the latter, they probably won’t get it.
 61

In a community college class of motivated adults who were all in close physical proximity to me,
I once saw how valuable the skill of Point and Pause really is.

It was the first class of the term, and I was still learning the method, and I literally pointed to
everything I said. Everything was on the white board, with English translations that were easy to
see – all the question words, the two structures I was trying to teach, and two new words that had
snuck into the class because they were fun.

I happened to be focusing on just this one skill of Point and Pause in that class, hence I became
firmly aware of its importance. I believe that, had I not pointed to everything in that class, the
students would not have been engaged at the level that they were.

Be clear – we must physically point to the structure and its English version on the board each
time it is mentioned, remembering to pause.

It sounds over the top, actually, to advise teachers to point in particular to every question word
they use for months and months, but I see it as a key to success in this method.

Downloadable question words in poster form in Spanish, French, German and Latin are on the
TPRS Resources hard link of this site on the posters page.

I once heard someone say at a workshop: “They get a lot less than we think.” That sentence has
stuck with me over the years, and I feel that it is critical that we use Point and Pause in a way
that guarantees that our students get a lot MORE than we think.

Thus, point to everything you can: the structures for the story, the question words, words from
the Word Wall and words from other posters you may have on the walls (I have two other such
posters, one for prepositions and one for connecting words) and yes, even words that sneak in.
 62

However, the biggest thing that you want to remember about Point and Pause is the caution to
not use it with any new words or structures. We only use Point and Pause with words and
structures that have been previously taught. It is a reinforcing tool only, and not a tool to
introduce new vocabulary.

Here are some articles from the PLC on the skill of Point and Pause:

http://www.benslavic.com/blog/2013/05/17/sgi/
http://www.benslavic.com/blog/2012/08/20/point-and-pause-revisited/
http://www.benslavic.com/blog/2012/08/18/robert-harrell-on-staying-in-bounds-point-and-pause/
http://www.benslavic.com/blog/2012/08/22/sheltering-vocabulary/
http://www.benslavic.com/blog/2009/03/12/car-parts/
http://www.benslavic.com/blog/2013/03/04/auditory-focus/
http://www.benslavic.com/blog/2012/10/31/trick-to-use-in-stories/
http://www.benslavic.com/blog/2013/04/25/a-good-question-2/

Skill #3 – SLOW:

Are you speaking slowly? Many people consider SLOW the most important skill in
comprehension based instruction.

Speaking too fast disempowers students. Speaking to your students slowly indicates respect.
When you speak slowly you acknowledge that you appreciate how hard it is for your students to
understand the new and foreign language.

To quote from Blaine Ray:

“The reason we have to go so slowly is that we can’t feel how hard it is. We have a feeling that
the language is easy because that is our experience. By slowing down much more than we
believe is necessary or possible, we are getting close to the best speed. We can only feel this by
learning another language.”
 63

Blaine implies two things here:

1. that the proper speed is going to feel awkward to us, and

2. that empathy is a necessary ingredient in delivering comprehensible input. One must put
oneself in the position of the learner, and feel how hopeless one can feel when one does
not understand what is going on. I’ve been there with Mandarin Chinese. It’s awful.

Much of the current training of new teachers reflects this idea. There are hours and hours at the
national conferences in which novice teachers are asked to take classes in languages they don’t
know. This truly opens their eyes to the importance of SLOW and to the emotional investment
(rigor) needed from the student in the comprehensible input process.

One day I was watching my classes being taught by a teacher new to the method. She was
working on Circling and I was coaching her from the side of the room.

Being new to it, she went very slowly. The kids responded so beautifully, due to the slowness. I
felt the truth of SLOW at that moment. My kids didn’t respond to me like that, but they
responded to her and I felt like a biscuit. I had forgotten SLOW.

One student, whom I perceived as something of a jerk because he didn't pay enough attention in
class, and whom I had given up on as a barometer student, was really hanging in there with this
particular student teacher and her slower circling.

I had to recognize that his problem was not his but mine – his failure to understand in my class
was my problem. If comprehension based teachers could just get that one idea, their relationships
with their jobs would change.

By slowly circling, this teacher was really getting some good teaching done. I watched in
amazement at the power of the two things, Circling and SLOW, when synchronized together in a
natural flow of language.
 64

To put it simply, when the kids are with you, you are going slowly enough. If it is too fast for
even one student who is trying to learn (the barometer student), it is too fast.

I have learned through practice to speak in “chunks” of sound lasting three or four seconds. I
have found that if I do not limit myself to that amount of time per utterance, I lose the kids.
When I frame an image or an idea in these smaller “chunks” of sound, the kids understand me.

It is quite difficult to slow down in English, so why should we think it easy to do so when
speaking to our students in the target language? SLOW requires strict self-discipline by us. The
feeling should be of driving 15 miles an hour in a 45 mile an hour zone.

Many of us work so hard at mastering all the other skills involved in learning comprehension
based instruction, but when we forget SLOW, we miss the entire point and invalidate all our
efforts in learning the other skills. The other skills have no effect unless we go slowly!

Students are always exactly where they are, and if we express something in three seconds, and
they need four seconds, it is up to us to slow our speech down to the level of the student and not
expect the reverse to happen.

We must develop compassion and empathy for what the student is experiencing. If we could
develop and put into practice this empathy, we would derive results we could not have predicted
or imagined.

Lynette Lang in suburban Chicago is a real pro at this skill. She paces so slowly, and with such
patience! Hers is a perfect pace and her students seem to hang on every word she says.

Moreover, Lynette actually takes the time in class to laugh with her students. It is honest
laughter, and is a great tool for personalization because it is authentic.
 65

The laughter has the effect of slowing down the class because it is a wonderful slow kind of
laughter. The class suggests things to her and it often strikes her as funny. She lets herself
actually think about it and when she laughs for real they all laugh.

Lynette doesn’t say, "No, that isn't it, I'm looking for something else." Laughing at funny things
at the right moment is an advanced skill in storytelling, and it happens more spontaneously when
the teacher is teaching slowly.

Another wonderful storytelling teacher, also in Chicago, Sabrina Janczak, also has the gift of
deep appreciation via laughter with her students. There are two videos of her teaching included
in the links found at the end of this section.

We should seek genuine laughter in our classrooms, not only because true learning is fun, but
also because of the enormous neurological benefits it has to the students and the teacher. Dr.
Krashen has addressed that topic:

“The path of pleasure is the only path. The path of pain does not work for language acquisition."

Another way Lynette slows her classes down is to whisper some of the input to her students. She
uses whispering in the same way professional storytellers do.

Between the laughter and the whispering, it is no wonder that Lynette’s students easily handle
the AP French Language exam every year.

Can one go too slowly? In one class, I asked the students if I was going slowly enough (I knew I
was), and one student said, “Mr. Slavic, do you know how when you ride a bike, if you go too
slowly, you fall off? That’s what this is like!”

But that was a superstar fast processor who said that. So I asked her to understand that people
process at different speeds and she understood and did not learn any less because I was speaking
 66

slower – she probably learned more. It is best to err on the side of caution by staying in constant
contact with your slowest processor.

It seems like a simple thing to go slowly, but it is not. In fact, for most of us, it has proven to be
nearly impossible. Except for Linda Li, nobody ever goes slowly enough.

Moreover, it seems that most teachers, no matter how much experience they have, repeatedly
forget this skill after even a few days. So to say that SLOW requires constant vigilance is a
tremendous understatement.

We must learn to wait until all our students have time to find the word on the board with its
English translation right next to it and then we must give the student the time to process what
they see there on the board into their minds before moving on. It is as simple as that. That is
really what SLOW means.

At the end of the first year, and if the students stay with you in their second and third and fourth
years, the gains curve over the four years will be exponential as acquired words add up like
falling snow and students in level 3 show up (typically) at Intermediate Low or even higher on
the ACTFL proficiency scale after just three years, without much effort.

Very often, smart kids who come to class and give the effort score at Intermediate Low after
level 2, IF the teacher has indeed stayed in the target language at least 90% of the time during
those two years. That kind of shoots the argument against comprehensible input. One student,
admittedly a genius but with no prior background, was able to score a 4 on the AP French exam
at the end of level 2, with some extra private coaching in the months before the exam.

Here are some more articles from the PLC in support of the above description of SLOW:

http://www.benslavic.com/blog/2012/09/29/dont-just-accept-answers-from-a-few/
http://www.benslavic.com/blog/2012/08/15/slow-2/
http://www.benslavic.com/blog/2008/10/17/jody-on-slow-1/
 67

http://www.benslavic.com/blog/2008/10/17/jody-on-slow-2/
http://www.benslavic.com/blog/2013/06/12/why-slow-is-so-important-1/
http://www.benslavic.com/blog/2011/08/15/why-slow-is-so-important-2/
http://www.benslavic.com/blog/2011/08/16/why-slow-is-so-important-3/
http://www.benslavic.com/blog/2011/08/17/why-slow-is-so-important-4/
http://www.benslavic.com/blog/2011/08/18/why-slow-is-so-important-5/
http://www.benslavic.com/blog/2013/02/09/video-by-sabrina-janczak-1/ (video)
http://www.benslavic.com/blog/2013/02/09/video-by-sabrina-janczak-2/ (video)
http://www.benslavic.com/blog/2011/08/24/be-careful/
http://www.benslavic.com/blog/2011/08/31/12149/
http://www.benslavic.com/blog/2012/08/15/slow-2/
http://www.benslavic.com/blog/2011/09/17/my-engine-doth-raceth/
http://www.benslavic.com/blog/2010/04/14/letting-go/
http://www.benslavic.com/blog/2010/01/16/angels-pushing-us-from-behind/
http://www.benslavic.com/blog/2008/05/13/just-go-with-the-flow/
http://www.benslavic.com/blog/2009/06/22/flow-in-tprs/

Skill #4 – Choral Responses:

Students tend to lie to us during class about how much they are getting. Many of the things we
have used in the past to check for understanding don’t really work. In particular:

1. Teaching to the eyes doesn’t work. All it does is set up a kind of fake interaction in the
class. In truth, most comprehension based teachers don’t teach to the eyes, they teach to
the foreheads. They can’t be blamed. If they taught to the eyes all day, they would be
crazy by the end of each day, such are the eyes of the cyborg-like teenagers of these days,
who interact wonderfully with various kinds of screens, but simply cannot do the same
with human beings, especially adult human beings, especially teachers.
2. Finger comprehension checks don’t work, as mentioned earlier in this text. We only need
to use them when an administrator is in the room. Those unfortunate people look for
things like that. (Unfortunate because far too many don’t understand current research in
 68

foreign language acquisition but act as if they do.) Building managers are happy when
they see such creative formative assessment with all those sets of ten fingers in the air but
that is about all the hands checks are worth – a good professional evaluation. Finger
comprehension checks don’t really tell us anything because the students lie to us.
Therefore, only use finger comprehension checks when administrators are in the room
and need to check the “uses formative assessment during class” box. Isn’t it crazy that we
have to teach to our observation goals and teach our students at the same time just to be
seen as competent teachers? It is all so strange!
3. Checking in with our barometer student, our lowest achieving student who tries to
understand, doesn’t work either. There are different reasons for this, but primarily it is
because there are too many barometers, more than can be efficiently monitored by the
instructor who has so many other things to think about. Simply put, we forget our
barometers.

So what does work in the area of checking for understanding? I have pared it down to two things.

The first is simply to directly ask the class one of these two questions every minute or two, as
those who have ever seen Blaine Ray teach a story have seen:

1. What did I just say?

2. What does ____ mean?”

We ask those two questions to individual students as a way to check if we are making ourselves
clear to certain individuals in class.

However, it is not enough to maintain contact with individuals. We must also retain contact with
the group as a whole. So we use the two questions above for individuals but we stay in touch
with the class as a whole by requiring choral responses from it, and that is the subject of our
fourth stepping stone skill. Every question we ask must get a response from every student in the
class, in choral form.
 69

We do this:

1. We verbally verify that the group is getting what we are saying, understanding all the
repetitions, by asking more yes/no questions or questions that require one word answers
than we ever thought we could ever ask in a million years. We do not ask just a few yes
and no and one word answer questions – we verify by asking a very large amount of
them, so many that we don’t go on to the next thing until we see that every single student
in the room has fully understood the question we just asked, because every single student
in the room has looked at us and spoken back to us in words that we could hear.
2. Only when everyone in the room has given us a choral answer to show that they have
fully understood do we move on. We look for comprehension in our students individually
and confront them individually, yes, but we also check on the group by insisting that we
hear with our ears the strong choral responses we require in response to every single
question we ask.

What happens, how most of us circle, is that we continue to circle halfheartedly without ever
really feeling convinced that the kids fully understand us. We don’t seem to be able to follow
through on the requirement that they understand what they are hearing. And why does this
happen? Why have we largely accepted half-sincere and generally weak answers from our
classes? It is because we lack the spine to make them respond more vigorously to our questions.

A few kids get what we say, leading the response process for the class, and we foolishly let that
happen, taking these responses by a few to mean that the class understands, and we go on like the
Tarot fool about to walk off the cliff with his faithful dog following right behind him.

Those weak responses are no greater indications of understanding than the bogus finger
comprehension checks and the bogus teaching to the eyes and the bogus paying attention to the
barometer that we are guilty of.

Here is an example, taken from the middle of a PQA session that I did at a conference once
using the structures works, lazy and the boss yells to set up the Anne Matava story Lazy:
 70

I was in Step One doing PQA to teach the first structure “works”. I started the circling in the
usual way, making a statement about my student Malcolm, sitting in the back of the room, to
start things off:

Class, Malcolm works at Wal-Mart! (ohhh!)

Class, does Malcolm work at Wal-Mart? (yes)
Class, does Malcom or Mickey work at Wal-Mart? (Malcolm)

My intent was important here. I had to stay with “Malcolm works at Wal-Mart!” until I got a
strong choral response that indicated full clear eyed understanding and spoken, fully audible one
word answers from every student in the class, even if it meant repeating that one statement for
the rest of the class period.

I waited them out to get the choral responses I needed. When the group choral response was in
any way weak, I asked the same question that I just asked. I have not always done that and now
that I do it my teaching has improved noticeably.

In those moments of waiting them out by asking the same question, insisting on a loud and clear
group response, we:

1. make sure that each kid is actively involved with us, which is the best and most powerful
form of classroom discipline ever devised.
2. Wait for the class to turn on the few kids who think – wrongly – that they can wait out the
teacher with their non-responses. Yes, I am saying that, if we do this right, the 80% of the
kids in the room who have to wait for the other 20% decide to climb onto the choral
response bandwagon will get so frustrated with waiting that they will turn on the 20%
non-participants and provide for you an instant classroom police force. When this
happens, and it happens often if you are requiring choral responses from everyone, it is a
beautiful thing.
 71

This is what we haven’t done in the past, most of us. We haven’t waited the students out to get a
full group choral one word response from them, which loudly spoken responses are the best
indicators of whether they have understood what we asked them, along with the two individually
directed questions mentioned above.

From the moment we have finished the first round of circling about Malcolm described
above, we add a few details to our questioning while still staying on the original statement to a
much greater degree than feels natural by asking and insisting on strong responses (bold caps
below), as per:

Class, does Malcolm work at Wal-Mart with me? (hand or laser point to the word
“works”.) (NO! – strong choral response and if you don’t get one wait for it or repeat
the question.)

Class, does Malcolm work at K-Mart with me? (hand or laser point to the word
“works”.) (NO! – strong choral response and if you don’t get one wait for it or repeat
the question.)

Class, does Malcolm work at Wal-Mart? (hand or laser point to the word “works”.)
(YES! – strong choral response and if you don’t get one wait for it or repeat the
question.)

Class, does Jerry Lewis work at Wal-Mart? (hand or laser point to the word “works”.)
(NO! – strong choral response and if you don’t get one wait for it or repeat the question.)

Class, does Malcolm work with Jerry Lewis? (hand or laser point to the word “with”,
now focusing on the preposition.) (NO! – strong choral response and if you don’t get one
wait for it or repeat the question.)
 72

Class, does Malcolm work at Wal-Mart? (hand or laser point to the word “works”.)
(YES! – strong choral response and if you don’t get one wait for it or repeat the
question.)

Class, does Malcolm work at Wal-Mart with Mickey? (hand or laser point to the word)
(NO! – strong choral response and if you don’t get one wait for it or repeat the question.)

If you ask five to ten questions per minute in this way about the same sentence, insisting on a
strong choral response each time before moving on to the next sentence, you will see great things
happen in your classroom.

Let’s do the math. Let’s say you can average ten of these kinds of yes/no and one word answer
questions, these barrage questions, in each minute of a 45 minute class. It is possible!

Therefore, in one 45 minute class, but assuming only 30 of them are spent directly on
comprehensible input, you could get 300 questions per class.

In five days that is 1,500 questions or 6,000 per month and over nine months that adds up to
54,000 questions in the target language per year. It is clear that if the child has understood each
one of those questions through the process described above, they will have had a great year of
comprehensible input – a banner year, and the gains will be very high indeed.

To conclude, the only valid way to know if your students know is by asking them. Do it
individually and as a group. Like me, in the choral responses you may have found a tool which
might possibly even prove to be the missing piece in your instruction, a tool that may change
your effectiveness and your entire relationship with the method in ways you may have never
thought possible.

Here are some links to some PLC articles on this important skill:

http://www.benslavic.com/blog/2012/08/20/checking-for-understanding-revisited/
 73

http://www.benslavic.com/blog/2013/05/23/we-lack-spine/
http://www.benslavic.com/blog/2012/09/12/wait-them-out/
http://www.benslavic.com/blog/2013/03/04/auditory-
focus/http://www.benslavic.com/blog/2013/03/10/the-clapper-kid/?preview=true
https://vimeo.com/56861210 (video)
https://vimeo.com/user1798986 (video)

Skill #5 – Staying in Bounds:

We have mentioned it, but we now go into greater detail with Staying in Bounds. Our whiteboard
should ideally have no new words on it (maybe one or two) at the end of a lesson. If our white
board is cluttered, then we are going out of bounds. That may not be such a bad thing for us, but
it is a disaster for the kids.

Letting new structures worm their way into class is bad. The students can’t handle them.
Students are already busy trying to deal with the repetitions you are getting on the structures you
are working with, the structures at hand, the structures you are teaching.

How important is the point made in the last paragraph? It is important enough to say that if you
go out of bounds, which is what allowing new unknown structures into the flow of the
conversation is, you are basically sabotaging the entire class.

Put yourself in your students’ position. All those words are flying out of your mouth, probably
too fast if you are like me, and, again if you are like me, you probably are not doing the best job
of checking for understanding, and now you’re adding in new words from out of the blue?

Here’s the thing. We don’t target stories. We don’t target discussion. We don’t target a
generalized form of comprehensible input. Those things are too big. Language is too big. We
target certain words or structures within the stories and the discussion. This makes for happy
students because the constantly repeated structures give them some rebar to fortify the concrete
(see PLC links to articles to explain this important topic).
 74

When you go out of bounds and use the Point and Pause skill to bring new unknown structures
into the discussion, the kids will acquire neither the base targeted structures being introduced,
nor will they acquire the new terms that wormed their way into the conversation. It’s a lose-lose.

You must do your best to introduce no new vocabulary into your lesson. Start simple and stay
simple. It is better to just continuously repeat one sentence of comprehensible input in various
forms that everyone understands than to try to deliver CI that they won’t get because you have
introduced more new words for them to understand.

In this light, a point of crucial importance and one that will require a lot of practice on your part
is to never ask a question or make a statement without at least one of the target structures for that
day in it.

Just make a resolution to yourself to focus on the structure you are trying to teach. Ask yourself
what it is that you are trying to teach in each sentence you say – one word or structure is all it is
– and never get distracted by the passing show of ideas that occur during PQA or during a story
building session.

It is most important that the teacher who wishes to use comprehensible input effectively put
aside the general notion of using the target language in class in a general way.

Dr. Krashen’s idea of non-targeted input may make sense in the theoretical world, but there is the
question of available time. Most of us only have three or four hours per week with our students.
How can we immerse our students in a sea of non-targeted input in that amount of time and
expect real language gains?

As people who work in school buildings, with the sea of unmotivated students who walk into our
classrooms every day, and with such limited time available, we must target structures.
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I find it very helpful to ask myself before each class, “What do you want to teach?” or “What are
you teaching today?” It seems like an obvious question, but do we know?

To me thinking in the following way really helps. Let’s say I target these structures:

assis(e) en face de – seated across from

ressemble à – looks like, resembles
il ne faut pas – you must not, one must not

That’s what I want to teach. I don’t want to teach a thematically organized list of words, a
computer program with the latest bells and whistles, a bunch of units in a book, or any other
combination of language no matter how it is packaged, because when it’s packaged, it’s
ineffective, and that’s saying it the nice way. I don’t have time for packages with all the
hundreds of new terms they throw at students in one class period. I want to teach only a few
structures over 50 minutes, so that I don’t waste my time and their time.

How can my students, in level 2, with about 200 or so hours of French out of the 18,000 or so
hours needed for mastery, be expected to understand a story or read a book in the target language
after those 200 hours? It’s ridiculous. It would be easier to fly to the moon.

So in the first 200 hours I have to keep it simple by targeting a limited number of high quality
structures for those first few years. Which structures? Well, to me they are whatever structures
present themselves that day. I don’t believe in planning structures – I believe in targeting
structures, but I do not believe in planning structures.

Then, when the students are up to the “massive” amount of 400 or 500 hours of French
represented by levels 3 and 4, which they call “advanced” in an odd use of the term, the curve of
understanding the spoken and written language begins its slow upward bend, and with each
passing year the gains begin to go up exponentially so that after 18,000 hours the learner has
irrefutably acquired the language; it isn’t “rusty”, it’s there, and it is real. But those 18,000 hours
would take 72 years of high school French to result in mastery, just to keep things in perspective.
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Had the students spent those first four years conjugating verbs, they would have no results to
show for their efforts, and they would most likely hate the language and the culture, most having
quit as soon as they got their two year requirement satisfied.

What do I want to teach? I want to teach those structures.

The difference that most people may not grasp, the mistake they make with TPRS and with
comprehensible input instruction in general, is that in their ignorance they think that going over
the structures, using them in class less than a hundred times or so, is enough for acquisition. It’s
not. It’s not enough for acquisition or anything resembling acquisition.

If you like, we can label as “non-targeted” all the other words that form part of the din of the
story, those little connecting words (chunks of concrete) that the skilled instructor communicates
but does not expressly focus on in each utterance. (Only the target structures - the rebar rods - are
expressly repeated in each utterance throughout the class.)

Yes, those other words are not targeted but they get absorbed into the growing language system
if the conscious mind is not overly in control. This is Krashen’s i + 1 – the Net Hypothesis.

All those other words get acquired in sleep in a way we cannot understand, because the
formation of language is not something that man can meddle with, any more than he can meddle
with the formation of a baby inside the womb.

So when we accept that fact and quit focusing on and introducing too many side words, staying
focused on the target structures for that class, we let the unconscious mind organize everything,
all those other words, for that is how it really happens.

We just focus on the structures. A generalized kind of non-targeted comprehensible input is a

lofty goal, a process that is wonderful, certainly, but not one that is achievable in the classrooms
and in the available hours that we have as language instructors in schools.
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So we target structures and we learn the non-targeted structures anyway as a byproduct. We

acquire both. We target a few structures so that all the other structures can be acquired in a non-
targeted way. That’s why we stay in bounds.

Links to more articles on the PLC related to the concept of Staying in Bounds:

http://www.benslavic.com/blog/2012/08/22/sheltering-vocabulary/
http://www.benslavic.com/blog/2013/05/26/its-not-about-the-story/
http://www.benslavic.com/blog/2013/06/05/tprs-fail-introduction/
 78

Stepping Stone Three: The Five Classroom Management Tools

Classroom Management Tool #1 - The Classroom Rules:

On the posters page of this site:

http://www.benslavic.com/tprs-posters.html

find the “Classroom Rules Poster”. These rules (listed below) are used in thousands of
comprehension based classrooms around the world. It is strongly suggested that you use these
rules in your own classroom. Why?

Because they work. They are actually a collection of only eight surviving rules from over one
hundred that have been tested in my classes over the past twelve years. These are the survivors,
the rules that work, those that have proven themselves to bring direct observable impact on kids’
behaviors.

We cannot expect children to know how to behave. We must show them what we want, often to
the point of modeling the behavior for them. This is especially true with ninth and tenth graders
whose view of acceptable behaviors may have been skewed in their middle school classrooms,
behaviors that are totally unacceptable in comprehension based classes.

If, in the first month or so, we use these rules constantly, at every turn, in response to every
single infraction that we notice as we teach, we will only rarely have to use them again after that.
This is an amazing thing.

Whenever you see an infraction of the rule, each time, which is about every thirty seconds in the
first few days of class and every minute in the first two weeks, after which the infractions drop
precipitously, just do the following:

1. Stop teaching.
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2. Look at the kid and smile.

3. Turn to the poster and laser point to the rule he just broke.
4. Read the rule out.
5. Explain what it means to the class in general.
6. Look back at the kid and smile.

Note that when you smile as per steps 2 and 6 in the process steps listed above, you keep the
good will flowing. And yet, I have to admit to a bitchy edge hidden somewhere in my warm
smile, that the kids can’t see but can feel. It is a kind of invisible self-protective move that the
kids know is there.

I have found in thirty-six years of secondary school teaching that that edge is necessary for me –
it means that I am not friends with my students. It is a kind of promise to myself that I will crush
any little bit of misbehavior by stopping teaching and going through the steps above. It’s proof
that I have grown a spine over the years.

Again, we act each single time a rule is broken. There is no option here, no skipping over a
single behavior. You will know that you are doing it right when you find yourself explaining
these rules, and sometimes even modeling them (esp. Rule #4), at least half of the time in your
first three or four days of classes with all of your classes.

When the teacher sends the message that breaking any one of these rules is an o.k. behavior in
the first weeks of the year, they may as well do a silly walk on out of the classroom, because no
significant learning will happen in that classroom that year.

If one were to reflect on it, enforcing these rules is really a question of personal power, isn’t it?
Is the teacher going to exhibit personal power each time he hears a little side conversation
starting in some part of the room? Such side conversations can grow in much the same way as a
brush fire. The students are watching. Is the teacher going to slam the door shut on it, pour water
on it, in the instant that it happens, or not?
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Such little sparks are nothing more than students testing the level of personal power of the
teacher. That’s what kids do when they are that age. Don’t take it personally. Just respond to
each spark with a bigger spark of your own in the form of the laser pointer at the rules poster,
and do it every time.

Do NOT respond with a spark of your own in the form of anger. That is just stupid, as anyone
who has been teaching for more than five days knows.

If a kid is not o.k. with the rules and cannot change their attitude, they can change their
schedules. With certain kids, you must change their schedule. Failure to do so has been the cause
of deep, very deep emotional problems later in the year, mostly for the teacher.

When you don’t confront these bullies, and that’s what students who talk in your classes are, you
are sending a very clear message to your other students that they – the other students - aren’t
important enough for you to assure their right to learn in a quiet and focused setting. That’s the
wrong message to send. Do it. Find your personal power and use it in your classroom.

You must raise a ruckus with parents and administrators to get those really rough kids out of
your classroom in the first weeks. Any later is too late. There are many articles in the links below
describing this problem of how to deal with exceptionally difficult kids. There is a whole series
of articles on the PLC about how Pigs Can’t Fly. If you have a really rough kid in your class,
read those.

Here is a brief commentary on each rule:

1. Listen with the intent to understand. Such an obvious behavior is rarely done by
students in schools. They listen with the intent to get a grade. Tests rule in their minds. If
your students do not cultivate this first and most important of the rules, if they think that
school is a game built around testing, then they must be constantly reminded to listen
with the intent to understand. Point the laser at it, smile, and enforce it.
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2. One person speaks and the others listen. Kids get used to controlling classes with side
talking. It only takes some of them a few weeks before they have nearly complete passive
aggressive control over a classroom. Stop that before it happens. If you see a child getting
into a side conversation, explain to them that you are going to be doing most of the
talking this year because you are the only one in the classroom who speaks the language.
If they are not o.k. with that, then they must change their schedule. Pick up the phone on
this one, to parents, counselors, anyone who gets what is really going on. Go over the
heads of the fools who don’t get what is really going on.
3. Suggest cute answers, avoiding English. Blaine Ray has said this about personalizing
the class:

…I believe people who are the most effective at TPRS don't tell stories. They ask
questions, pause, and listen for cute answers from the students. The magic is in the
interaction between the student and teacher….

This is fine and a necessary part of what we do. However, this searching for cute
answers from our students is also a potential land mine in terms of causing
discipline problems. I once experimented for three years with allowing students two
words in English, thinking that doing so would lead to funnier stories. All it did was
lead to more discipline issues as the kids tried to stretch the two English word cute
answer rule into entire sentences or paragraphs. REQUIRE that they respond in the
TL. If they don’t know the word, don’t accept anything. And DO NOT allow them
to ask the “How does one say?” question. It is a grave error to allow this Trojan
Horse into your classroom. Don’t let them ask “How does one say?” Just don’t use
it. They don’t care, and if they do they won’t remember what you tell them anyway,
so why allow it? It’s just a way of drawing attention away from the language and
they will use it on you to ask things that are designed to draw attention to
themselves.
4. Clarify if you don’t understand. This is where you tell the students to make a sign,
agreed upon by the class, when anyone doesn’t understand. We call it a stop sign. This is
a great idea in theory but is hard to put into practice, because the kids, taught to
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memorize, have trouble recognizing when they don’t understand. So you have to teach
them that skill. You know when you say something that they don’t understand, so, every
time that happens, show them by modeling yourself how to use a hand signal to indicate
that they don’t understand. Which signal? There are many. I have settled on one that is
best for my students. It is the hand over the head from front to back to indicate “this is
over my head”. It has the advantage of being clear to you so that a student cannot say that
they clarified all the time but were blocked from your vision by the back of the person in
front of them. When a student uses the stop sign, in that moment the entire section of the
class that is sitting near the originally signing student ideally also makes the sign. This
draws the attention of the teacher to the need expressed by the child who started the
motion, without calling attention to the child, which encourages more use of this
technique by the kids.
5. Sit up...Squared shoulders....Clear eyes. It seems so obvious to ask a student to sit in a
way that conveys respect, but when students have been allowed in other classes to slouch
and even sleep it isn’t so obvious at all. What I do when I see a slouching student is to go
over to their desk and ask them to stand up so that they can see me, in their desk,
modeling the way I want them to sit and look at me during my class. The problem of
students sitting in a way that conveys disrespect to teachers has become so bad that it is
no longer enough to tell them, we must show them. The lesser extreme is of course the
pointing of the laser to the rule and the smile.
6. Do your 50%. The 50% rule means that we have to listen to our kids and they have to
listen to us – each has to do their half. It’s a two way street in which we both do equal
work to add up to 100% effort. I constantly refer to this rule when I see a student not
paying attention. I require a change in demeanor from the student before I continue with
the lesson. The concept of rigor is connected to this rule. We have a lot of articles and
posters on the huge topic of rigor on the PLC. The way in which your classroom is
rigorous, what rigor involves for your students, must also be explained in conversations
with administrators. I display it in poster form in my classroom for the students and for
visitors. Making administrators understand rigor is an important part of your evaluations,
since most haven’t a clue about how we learn languages. On the PLC, there is an entire
category full of posts on Administrator/Teacher/Parent Re-education. Read them. Also
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search other PLC categories on the topic of rigor or click on the category by that name.
One additional important point: if you are assigned a class that has been previously
trained in memorization and the textbook, do not expect them to change to accommodate
the new ways of learning that you present to them. I have inherited two such upper level
classes of smart kids and, with the exception of only a few students, I have found that, in
spite of my sincere efforts over months to reach them in the language, they cannot
change. For them, it would mean going back down the mountain of worksheets they
climbed up and then climbing with you back up another, more stable side of the
mountain. They just can’t do it. It is too rigorous for them. For years they were given A’s
for filling out worksheets and when they are asked to interact interpersonally in the
language with you by doing their 50% it is just too much. No blame. Not only do they not
have the interactive skills they need because they were never taught them, they also don’t
know enough language. I have seen fourth year students far behind end-of-year level one
students in terms of proficiency in listening and even reading! All they have done is to
memorize things and forgotten them! So don’t beat your head against that wall. It can’t
be done.

Links to articles on the 50% rule include these:

http://www.benslavic.com/blog/2009/10/29/50-rule-thoughts/
http://www.benslavic.com/blog/2011/06/05/10310/
http://www.benslavic.com/blog/2011/08/20/the-50-rule-2/

7. Actors - synchronize your actions with my words. Anyone who has tried to create a
story with their students knows that actors can be major distr-actors if not reigned in.
(That is one reason I don’t use props, or rarely. Since most of human communication is
visual, an antsy actor with a prop can completely draw the attention of the students away
from the language and onto the actor with the prop.) Be very careful in choosing actors.
Have them sit on stools and listen to the class. Quiet focused kids of good will who are
kind make the best actors. And actors absolutely must be corrected if during a story they
make a single move or do anything that you have not said. Not only is it confusing to the
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class, it is often part of a power game. So, whenever you notice an actor going to the bus
stop when in the story they are still back in the restaurant because you are saying those
words, stop the actor and laser point to this rule. With a smile, of course.
8. Nothing on desks unless told otherwise. It is a lot easier, when a class enters the room,
to remind a class about a rule than to say in a threatening way to one student, “Take that
backpack off your desk!” which can immediately become confrontational. Say to them,
instead, “Don’t forget Rule #8!” Just don’t allow anything on desks. Students will say
that they need to take notes at the beginning of the year. Let them, because they will stop
once they realize that they can’t keep up with the discussion and take notes at the same
time. This rule includes coins, pencils, etc. Some hyper kids may need a stress ball, but I
find that they don’t in CI classes because they are actually involved in class. Less than
five percent of the time in a CI class, writing is involved, so kids need to see the “unless
told otherwise” part of this rule. This rule is a big one in terms of classroom management
because backpacks on desks are code for cell phone use. Only allow the story and quiz
writers to have anything at all on their desks. Enforce this one before class begins, as they
sit down in their desks to start class.

Links to articles about the Classroom Rules and classroom management in general:

http://www.benslavic.com/blog/2012/10/29/lame-students/
http://www.benslavic.com/blog/2012/06/18/recalcitrance/
http://www.benslavic.com/blog/2013/03/31/two-voices/
http://www.benslavic.com/blog/2013/02/25/unless-you-want/
http://www.benslavic.com/blog/2013/01/29/help-wanted/
http://www.benslavic.com/blog/2013/01/11/instruction-and-discipline-must-go-hand-in-hand/
http://www.benslavic.com/blog/2012/10/25/all-over-the-place-with-verbs/
http://www.benslavic.com/blog/2012/05/11/consequences-poster-discussion-about-rigor-1/
http://www.benslavic.com/blog/2012/05/11/consequences-poster-discussion-2/
http://www.benslavic.com/blog/2012/03/29/two-approaches-to-discipline/
http://www.benslavic.com/blog/2012/08/25/insist-on-the-parental-support-you-deserve/
http://www.benslavic.com/blog/2012/04/16/one-thing/
 85

http://www.benslavic.com/blog/2013/05/13/importance-of-simplicity-in-the-first-two-weeks/
http://www.benslavic.com/blog/2013/02/14/we-are-the-adults/
http://www.benslavic.com/blog/2013/01/22/who-owns-the-problem/
http://www.benslavic.com/blog/2012/10/09/jgr-has-a-history/
http://www.benslavic.com/blog/wp-admin/post.php?post=148&action=edit&message=1
http://www.benslavic.com/blog/2012/02/18/rules-2012/
http://www.benslavic.com/blog/2012/04/08/pigs-cant-fly-10/
http://www.benslavic.com/blog/2011/10/24/pigs-cant-fly-1/
http://www.benslavic.com/blog/2011/11/14/pigs-cant-fly-2/
http://www.benslavic.com/blog/2011/11/15/pigs-cant-fly-3/
http://www.benslavic.com/blog/2011/11/20/pigs-cant-fly-4/
http://www.benslavic.com/blog/2011/11/28/pigs-cant-fly-6/
http://www.benslavic.com/blog/2011/11/28/pigs-cant-fly-8/
http://www.benslavic.com/blog/2012/01/11/pigs-cant-fly-9/
http://www.benslavic.com/blog/2012/01/21/pigs-cant-fly-1b/

Classroom Management Tool #2 – Jobs for Kids

How many teachers have you seen who have burned out? Why have they burned out? Many
would say it is because they simply have too much to do, just too much, during the day.

I agree that that is true, but I think that the real reason for teacher burnout comes from what
happens inside the classroom during class and is a result of grueling emotions, and fighting back
the desire to just tell kids to shut the f--- up.

Kids are great at being defiant but in a passive way. Translation: they don’t do their 50% and
they don’t want to take any responsibility for assuming any kind of role in the class other than
that of watcher. They don’t do this on purpose, they have been trained that way for years.
 86

However, such passively defiant behavior doesn’t feel innocent to the teacher. So the teacher
ends up working in a situation that resembles herding cats or pushing a knowledge ball up a hill
with no help even though there may be thirty people in the room who could be helping.

Getting kids to assume some degree of ownership in a class is almost impossible, unless they
have jobs. They need clear jobs with clear responsibilities, since they are young.

So, at the start of each class, I review which kid will be doing which job they have chosen. In an
instant, attitudes change as the kids know that they are needed in this class and that they will get
extra credit from doing it.

I sometimes write who is doing what job on the board to remind the kids and so that they can see
their names on the board. It is a discipline tool and keeps the kids focused.

The jobs piece is huge in a CI classroom. Since I introduced it into my teaching almost ten years
ago, I have noticed that with each passing year my classroom management has gotten better and
better. I don’t feel that I am in opposition to the class so much when the kids have jobs.

Jobs must emerge, however, organically. You can’t just assign a job. It has to be chosen by the
kid.

You offer it. If no one wants it, don’t assign it. There are some basic most important jobs that
you must fill, however, because they cut your workload down by at least half. These are the jobs
for superstars who can get the job done. They are the first seven to fifteen of the jobs listed in the
PLC article on jobs, especially the first seven.

Note importantly that the jobs have been found by many PLC members to be an astonishing way
to get a class facing with you in the same direction, and not facing against you. It’s a keeper.

Here are the first fifteen of the fifty-two jobs. The jobs with asterisks next to them are jobs that I
could not function without in my classroom:
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1-3.PQA Structure Counters* (3) (Monday) – The PQA counters do so much. They do things
that we are not even aware of, functioning as a kind of social glue. They bring us together in
pursuit of a common goal. Pure gold. On these PQA Counters also see below ****

4. Story Quiz Writer* (Tuesday) – described in detail on this site but I’m not sure where.

5. Story Writer* (Tuesday) – described in detail on this site but I’m not sure where.

6. Story Artist* (Tuesday) – described in detail on this site but I’m not sure where.

7. Distributor/Collector of Quiz Scantron Sheets (any day)

8. Actors – will synchronize actions to teacher’s speaking or reading. It’s a job in that we always
like to use our best, least distractible actors.

9. Professeur (there can be two of these) – they quickly decide on things like if the house is red
or blue so that the teacher doesn’t have to take a side. Skill #36 in TPRS in a Year!

10. Bleater – see Skill #35 in TPRS in a Year! (auditions for this position are hilarious)

11. Où/Where Person (instantly lowers the kids’ affective filter in class) - I am not sure where
this job is described but it’s a major one.

12. Quand/When Person (also instantly lowers the kids’ affective filter in class) – Huge. Again, I
don’t know where it is described. Sorry about that.

13. Word Chunk Team (WCT) Controller 1 (this is the most left out kid in class who couldn’t
even get into a group. He gets to pick which team raised their hand first – see
resources/workshop handouts for Work Chunk Team details.)
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14. Word Chunk Team Controller 2 (another kid in need of feeling needed – this one judges
synchronicity of group signed responses.)

15. Word Chunk Team Controller 3 (keeps score and also watches – very important – to see if all
the heads in the group go together to consult before the hands are raised. A group with one
dominant member has to be broken up.)

Here is the link to the complete jobs listing on the PLC:

http://www.benslavic.com/blog/2012/10/04/jobs-for-kids-updated-aug-2012/

Other general PLC links related to the jobs piece:

http://www.benslavic.com/blog/2012/10/04/jobs-for-kids-updated-aug-2012/
http://www.benslavic.com/blog/2012/10/08/the-jobs-piece/
http://www.benslavic.com/blog/2012/09/21/the-kids-teach-the-class/
http://www.benslavic.com/blog/2012/09/22/response-to-magic-bean/
http://www.benslavic.com/blog/2012/09/20/heads-together-checker/
http://www.benslavic.com/blog/2012/09/19/a-few-new-jobs/
http://www.benslavic.com/blog/2012/11/19/the-soudain-girl/

Classroom Management Tool #3 – Personalization via Naming:

Building identities for our students via the right names raises the level of fun and interest, and
therefore the learning, in the comprehension based classroom.

It is an important aspect of the activities suggested in this book. Finding the right names and
using them often is not a specific activity but one that is constantly woven into classes all year
long.
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There is no rush to get the names out. Again, in terms of the above discussion it would be better
to avoid using names from the questionnaires if they have a fake feel to them.

In this method, things always emerge. That is to say, unexpected things happen, and it is no less
true with the naming process. We never know what will happen or what name will occur when –
our job is to be open to the possibilities and learn to react to what happens in the classroom
instead of always, miserably, trying to control everything.

Thinking that teachers have to control everything in education is no longer a valid pedagogical
idea. We can’t control how people learn. We know that now, but, judging from all the books and
computer programs out there these days, the point has not been applied.

Really, if we are to truly understand how comprehension based instruction works, we would be
well advised to place in our minds and hearts the following words by Soren Kierkegaard:

“If I were to wish for anything, I should not wish for wealth and power, but for the sense of the
potential, for the eye which, ever young and ardent, sees the possible.”

When you allow the names to emerge organically in your fluency program, that is to say, from
basic and authentic human interaction as it occurs over time with your students in a natural way,
you can then dance into an identity with a child.

Names aren’t silly if they are forced or announced. The best silly names don’t come from the
questionnaires, they come from class discussion and emerge unexpectedly.

You may perhaps learn a little fact in class while circling with sports balls or in some other
identity building activity. Or the fact may emerge in the hallway. It may look so small. But you
keep it in your mind, like a treasure, and when the right moment arrives in class, you play the
name and, because it has been cultivated like a plant, it stays alive, with roots in the activity of
the class, and so it usually lasts all year or ten years.
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It is a fine thing to learn the art of waiting for a name to emerge. You are a watcher of the
process, a contributor, to be sure, but you don’t have to be clever and put the naming game all on
yourself. Students don’t want you to. They want in on the process that creates their names.

They may act amused if you tell them that they are Pablo, but they resent it on some level. You
labeled them without getting to know them! Why do that, when the creation of funny,
organically emerging names that reflect the real kid is so crucial to your success. The kids don’t
want to be Pablo or Rubia, they want better names than that.

So go ahead, get to know the kids over time. Wait, wait, and the right name - the one most
honoring to them - will emerge. Some names happen in the first interchange of the first class
because of something the kid did that was unique and funny and worthy of a cool name right
away.

Or it may take forever, like with The Boy Who Goes in Front (who as a newly arrived urban
black student in a white suburban middle school, naturally had huge emotional walls up).

So I waited, waited, and moved my chair figuratively closer to his desk just a few millimeters
every day for six months, waiting for his name to emerge, because I knew that when his name
emerged into the class, he would emerge.

One day in April, not until then, at the end of class, he had written this down on a note: “the boy
who goes in front”. Handing it to me, he asked me to write it down in French. I did. And from
then on, I called him Le Garçon Qui Va Devant and he was involved.

It shocked me a few weeks later when, with three adults – one teacher, one principal and an
assistant superintendent - in my classroom to observe, he volunteered to be the actor in the story
for the first time. But it worked. The Boy Who Goes In Front had been listening all year, but he
had an identity now, and so he could now participate in class. The name unlocked him.
 91

As you stand by your door on hall duty between classes, you notice that a kid who never says
anything in class just said to a friend in the hallway (walking by your door) that he was able to
drive a Chevrolet Corvette for five minutes this summer.

This is major information. So you yell down the hallway how impressed you are that he drove a
Corvette and the next day you ask him if you can use that in class and he mumbles something but
you see in his eye a look of recognition. From that little look emerges not just the name but him
as your student with a class identity and now, only now, can you set yourself to the task of
teaching Chevy.

To conclude this section on naming, we can say that naming kids is a very delicate art form of
waiting, and then a little thought will appear in class, or some little event will happen, and you
will know what that student’s name is, and your relationship with the student will change.

Links to PLC articles on naming students are:

http://www.benslavic.com/blog/2007/11/06/personalization-and-names/
http://www.benslavic.com/blog/2013/02/02/importance-of-names/
http://www.benslavic.com/blog/2008/06/30/on-naming-kids/
http://www.benslavic.com/blog/wp-admin/post.php?post=23740&action=edit
http://www.benslavic.com/blog/2009/12/03/the-back-of-a-plate/
http://www.benslavic.com/blog/2008/05/13/personalization-with-adult-learners/
http://www.benslavic.com/blog/2008/03/30/name-connection/
http://www.benslavic.com/blog/2012/08/12/thoughts-on-names/

Classroom Management Tool #4 - Assessment in the form of Quick Quizzes:

Why is an assessment tool included in the section in these handouts that has to do with enforcing
classroom discipline? It is because how you assess has a huge impact on your classroom
management.
 92

Quick Quizzes are short daily quizzes given in the last few minutes of each class. They provide
an excellent assessment tool because formative assessment is a perfect match for comprehension
based instruction.

Moreover and to the point of classroom management, however, when students know that a quiz
is likely at the end of class, they begin to realize that they better pay attention.

When you quiz daily, after any kind of comprehensible input whatsoever, it changes the culture
of the class. The child, now deprived of grades for copying someone’s homework or cramming
everything in the night before the big test, finds that engaging in class is a pre-requisite for
passing it.

A prime motivating factor in the success of Quick Quizzes in my classroom is that the quizzes
are easy. Usually, kids act out because the class is too challenging for them, because the culture
of most classes is greatly skewed in favor of the “smart” students.

However, in comprehension based instruction everyone is smart. The teacher who can deliver the
instruction by successfully implementing the skills listed above can reach every single child in
the room, and so has a vast advantage over the teacher down the hallway who has to deal with
academically and emotionally split classes of haves and have nots all year.

Does that mean that discipline problems simply disappear when Quick Quizzes are used? Of
course not. Comprehension based instruction, because it is genuinely rigorous and not falsely
rigorous, requires so much work from pampered kids that discipline problems will occur.

So I constantly remind my kids what they are getting in return for their rigorous listening and
reading on a daily basis in my classroom: good grades that respect that they have lives outside of
school - since I ask for the work to be done in class – and not as homework, big tests, projects,
extra credit or any other of that lame stuff that currently defines success in most language
classrooms.
 93

Quick Quizzes demand yes and no questions or simple translations of single words. This kind of
assessment actually tests what the students have learned. All a student has to do to be successful
on Quick Quizzes is show up for class and be present intellectually and socially. What an odd
thing to ask a child in this world!

Do not use questions that require complex answers when you give Quick Quizzes. We are
rewarding effort in listening and reading here. And languages are just too complex for us to
expect our students to always “get it right.” The obvious corollary of that statement is that we
should use much more formative than summative testing in foreign language education.

Not using Quick Quizzes can have deleterious consequences in that we can emerge after a few
weeks with a very skewed idea of what some of the less communicative students actually know,
which is unfair to the child, can lead to arguments over grades and bring in helicopter parents.

There are two things that I keep in mind when assessing using Quick Quizzes:

First, I want to make the test easy. If a kid knows that forty minutes after they walk into my
classroom they will be assessed on something that they can succeed at if they but pay attention
during that time, they will then in fact pay attention, and the classroom discipline will be there.

As stated earlier, normal traditional classes are skewed in favor of certain kids so that there is a
natural imbalance created, and when there are imbalances in classrooms, there are discipline
problems. Why not keep ALL of the kids in the classroom in the fold by guaranteeing them
success? Why not take the word “punitive” out of our classrooms? It is as easy as giving Quick
Quizzes!

The second thing about Quick Quizzes is the need for speed. Anyone who has had success with
stories knows that stopping a class that is rolling along in the target language in order to assess is
a difficult thing indeed. And, as Blaine Ray has said, “You can’t make a pig grow any faster by
weighing it more often.” However, it is easy to give a Quick Quiz in just a few minutes at the
end of a fifty minute class. Here is how that process works:
 94

1. First, the kid who is the Distributor/Collector of Quizzes jumps up and distributes either
scantron sheets or pre-prepared squares of paper (8.5 x 11 in four squares).
2. Pencils are distributed to anybody who needs one. The pencil battle is not a good battle to
pick, so just have hundreds of pencils in your room and get over it. Everybody moves
apart with their hands functioning as cover sheets.
3. When I say, "Question #1!" the class knows it has only about twenty or thirty seconds to
get ready to write, so you can move from processing a story to being in a Quick Quiz in
that amount of time.
4. If a kid tries to look on someone else’s paper, I keep the kid after class and call the parent
in between classes, treating it as a hugely serious issue, the result of which is that they
don't try to cheat as much. I always have a list of kids’ phone numbers in class.
5. Next, the superstar kid who wrote the quiz – the Quiz Writer – hands it to me. This is a
very bright kid whose instructions are to write, during the story, twelve questions all of
which can be answered in only yes or no answers. (My grading platform is ten, and when
the Quiz Writer writes twelve questions, I can instantly throw out a few if they don’t
work.)
6. Some teachers prefer to get more complete answers and forego the yes/no format. It is
their prerogative. I prefer to forego the extra work. Moreover, yes or no questions (yes
and no in L2 have to be spelled correctly or the answer is wrong) do a greater job of
guaranteeing the success of the students while at the same time guaranteeing a fast quiz.

So much time is lost in our schools to testing! This way of assessing recoups some of that time,
and the kids get to learn more. Everybody is happy, parents and administrators because they can
go into the grade portal and see a slew of good grades, although I did practically no work to get
them, and students because they know that simply listening brings their success on the quiz,
making them want to listen the next day, greatly improving individual morale and thus classroom
discipline. The result of which is that Quick Quizzes become one of our greatest classroom
management tools.
 95

I believe that the students who most appreciate these quick and easy quizzes are those who are in
school to actually learn. They don’t feel that they are being put into memorization mode, which
is good because, with Google, people don’t need to memorize anything anymore – they can just
look things up. In fact, the student, when taking a Quick Quiz, is merely recalling recent
interesting information that they just heard in a relaxed way because they were interpersonally
involved in the class, as per the Interpersonal Skill of ACTFL’s Three Modes of Communication.

By choosing test questions that are reasonable and straightforward, I send the message to the
student that it is not my purpose to trick them on tests, but instead to grade them fairly. This is
sorely lacking in the testing culture that our kids constantly endure these days. So Quick Quizzes
become a motivating tool and not just a classroom management tool.

Grading punitively has been a dark game that has been played too long in education. It ultimately
detracts from a teacher’s program and keeps it from growing. Teachers who grade kids with a
mean streak are rewarded each year with lower and lower enrollments, so that only a fraction of
the students who originally enrolled in the program remain at the upper levels. What student
wants to go on to another year of testing with a punitive teacher?

I generally weigh the Quick Quizzes at 35% of a student’s grade. The other 65% comes from a
single assessment source, a rubric that is in my view a true breakthrough in foreign language
education and an even more powerful classroom management tool than Quick Quizzes. It is
discussed in the fifth and final segment on classroom management.

PLC links to articles on assessment using Quick Quizzes can be found here:

http://www.benslavic.com/blog/wp-admin/post.php?post=10612&action=edit&message=1
http://www.benslavic.com/blog/2011/08/28/quick-quizzes-2/
http://www.benslavic.com/blog/2011/09/06/quick-quiz-question-1/
http://www.benslavic.com/blog/2011/09/06/quick-quiz-question-2/
http://www.benslavic.com/blog/2011/11/30/the-quiz-writer/
http://www.benslavic.com/blog/2012/08/30/quick-quiz-question/
 96

http://www.benslavic.com/blog/2012/11/01/quick-quizzes-3/
http://www.benslavic.com/blog/2011/07/01/one-word-images/

Classroom Management Tool #5 – jGR:

The tool described in this final segment of the discussion about classroom management is a true
heavy hitter in that it forces students to show that they are interpersonally involved with you and
the learning process at all times.

Like the Classroom Rules, it is the happy outcome of multiple attempts to design such an
instrument. It is the brain child of Robert Harrell in Los Angeles and is called jGR – jen’s Great
Rubric - and represents collaboration between me, Robert, and jen Schongalla in New
Hampshire. We named it after jen, who found the magic formula to make it really fly.

Here it is:

INTERPERSONAL SKILLS RUBRIC (used in daily assessment: 65% of grade)

5 ALL SKILLS IN 4, PLUS NON-FORCED EMERGING OUTPUT. – this is a rare kid who
throws out some good unforced French every once in a while. Like if I am in the middle of piling
up reps on “She went camping at Wal-Mart”, this kid is the one who says in the target language,
“So there is a girl who goes camping at Wal-Mart, right?” and I go, “Yes, that’s it!”, and we go
on with no use of English. That kid is a 5 kid. These are really strong co-creators of stories. I
would say to this student: “You are giving A+ effort. You play the game perfectly.”

4 (A/B) THE STUDENT CONSISTENTLY AND IN A CLEARLY OBSERVABLE WAY

NEGOTIATES MEANING WITH THE TEACHER NONVERBALLY. This is the kid who is
really involved but not spontaneously outputting speech yet. They are fun, always visually
locked on, use the stop sign when they do not understand, are always there with cute answers,
and just a blessing to each class and I tell them so. These are strong co-creators of stories.
 97

3 (B/C) THE STUDENT SOMETIMES NEGOTIATES MEANING WITH THE TEACHER

NONVERBALLY IN AN OBSERVABLE WAY, BUT THE NEGOTIATION OF MEANING
IS INCONSISTENT. ALSO INCONSISTENT USE OF “STOP” SIGNAL. – this kid is also
involved but more passively. They show that they are not always on top of all the CI because
they let the stop sign slide a bit. This is the kid who used to get an A in my class just for getting 8
or above on quizzes. No more. But good kids nonetheless. These are limited co-creators of
stories. They do not blurt out words in English or talk to their neighbor in English. They can be
counted on not to blurt.

2 (C/D) ATTENTIVE BUT DOESN’T RESPOND; DOESN’T USE “STOP” SIGNAL –

THERE IS NO OBSERVABLE NEGOTIATION OF MEANING WITH THE INSTRUCTOR.
– this is the kid who may or may not get a good grade on a quiz but makes me work way too
hard. They just aren’t involved. They don’t get how to play the game yet. They occasionally
blurt out words in English or talk to their neighbor in English, both of which destroy the goal of
the class, to stay in the target language as per the 90% Use Position Statement of the American
Council of Teachers of Foreign Languages (ACTFL), which is the national parent organization
for foreign language teachers in the United States. But usually they just stare at me in spite of my
being practically on my knees begging them for a more creative and energetic response to all the
hard work I am doing. These are not co-creators of stories.

1 (D/F) NOT ATTENTIVE: NO EYE CONTACT OR EFFORT. – these are not creators of
anything. THERE IS A COMPLETE ABSENCE OF OBSERVABLE NEGOTIATION OR
MEANING AT ALL GOING ON BETWEEN THEM AND THE INSTRUCTOR. They suck air
out of the room. They do poorly on tests. They give nothing to the story. Their chances of failing
the course are high. They often blurt out words in English or talk to their neighbor in English,
both of which destroy the goal of the class. I would say to this student: “You really don’t add
anything to the class; in fact, you might put your head down, come in late, try to do work for
your other classes, disrupt others, blurt out in English, talk to your neighbor during class,
organize your purse or bag, put on make-up, check the time every other minute, try to text, etc.
 98

*One might object that that is just the way some kids are, and are that way through no fault of
their own. Fine, but my job, the main clause of my school’s mission statement in fact, includes
how my job, my mission, is to “build productive citizens” ready for work in the 21st century
workplace. I take that seriously. So if I let those same kids’ stone faced behavior or blurting go,
thus not aligning my assessment with the national standards, I am not properly doing my job for
my employer and I should be fired.

Note in this rubric that demonstration of interpersonal skills at level 4 does not depend on the
student’s ability to speak or write, but on their demonstrated use of skills to negotiate meaning in
the target language. In negotiation of meaning is found everything in the acquisition of language.
Thus, students can earn “A” on interpersonal skills no matter what their level of
proficiency/readiness to output. The reason for this is that consistent use of these skills in
language acquisition ensures the highest possible level of comprehension and thus later of
output.

Here is how jen defines the word “attentive” in the rubric:

*ATTENTIVE = NOTHING ON DESK OR LAP; SITS UP; MAINTAINS EYE CONTACT

WITH SPEAKER; LISTENS WITH INTENT TO UNDERSTAND; RESPONDS TO
STATEMENTS/QUESTIONS WITH SHORT ANSWERS OR VISUALLY; DOESN’T
BLURT.

Robots can sit attentively but the difference is that they give nothing to the group. That’s why
jGR is about interpersonal skills and not interobotic skills. So the new definition of success in a
language class, in my view, is that when a kid tries to do the rigorous work of interacting with
me in class, not just by listening, but also by responding actively in the rigorous learning
environment, they should be rewarded.

As stated above, it’s not about measurable gains on tests, for three reasons:

1. Kids process things at different speeds. It doesn’t mean that they can’t learn the language.
 99

2. Working to try to understand is the real work. That is due to the unassailable fact that we
learn languages unconsciously. If we learn languages unconsciously, then we do not
know and thus cannot evaluate what has been learned.
3. We are dealing with a language. It’s an unconscious process. It’s a soup that takes years
and years to be ready to serve. Dare a gourmet pass judgment on the taste of a soup after
only fifteen minutes into the preparation when the recipe calls for 8 hours before it is
ready to taste?

Jen has brilliantly chosen to give attentive (read robotic) kids an interpersonal grade that can
never be higher than 2. Look at what a 3 is above and you won’t find the word attentive in it. Jen
uses the words RESPONDS when describing behaviors above the grade of 2. Responds is a word
that describes human interaction, not robotic attention. As Dr. Krashen has said, robots can’t
converse.

Let’s be clear. Some students don’t have bubbly personalities. That is not the point. When we
talk about showing a strong interpersonal skill, the quietest kid in the room might be one of the
most expressive.

We all have had those quiet kids. Sometimes they are more expressive than the louder kids,
much more so in fact. So the claim cannot be made that a child who is a quiet superstar would, in
jGR, run the risk of getting a lower grade. They could easily be rated at 4. Re-read below the
description of a 4 on the jGR scale to confirm that statement:

4 (A/B) THE STUDENT CONSISTENTLY AND IN A CLEARLY OBSERVABLE WAY

NEGOTIATES MEANING WITH THE TEACHER NONVERBALLY. This is the kid who is
really involved but not spontaneously outputting speech yet. They are fun, always visually
locked on, use the stop sign when they do not understand, are always there with cute answers,
and just a blessing to each class and I tell them so. These are strong co-creators of stories.

Such kids would not be rated at a 5. That is a good thing. We are here to educate the whole child.
Ours may be the only class that this kind of “Buddha” student experiences in high school that
 100

might push them outside the limits of their comfort zone in order to succeed academically if they
really want the 5 on jGR.

This would be a true service by us to the kid, and align with most schools’ expressed mission
statements to build “productive citizens”, while at the same time aligning with ACTFL.
Education is much more than an academic exercise.

Beyond that, jen also uses the term “uses the stop sign” as a key indicator in determining a score
above 2. To get a 3 or above, the child doesn’t have to be a fast processor, nor have great talent
at writing or speaking, but the student must be able to have the skill of negotiating meaning in
the target language, quietly or not. People who attempt to negotiate meaning in the target
language, quietly or not, learn the language. It cannot be said that jGR punishes kids for having
introverted personalities.

So, for me, a kid who interacts with me in class nonverbally but in observable fashion and who
uses the stop sign and shows up for class in the real way is exhibiting a human and not a robotic
response and I will reward that kid with a grade above 2. I will not reward a kid who doesn’t use
the stop sign or who uses it in a false way and who chooses to give me nothing back more than a
blank stare. They will be rated at a 2 at most.

If you do well on the quizzes but earn a 2 on jGR you can hope to receive a lovely C in my class
if you appear to be a robot, but if you want a grade above C then you actually have to show some
human qualities and show up for class.

Grading using jGR, in my opinion, keeps the teacher’s vision on the ACTFL Interpersonal
Mode. Indeed, the only thing that is keeping teachers thinking in terms of testing and not in
terms of this kind of rubric in language classes is a failure to change and adapt to what is really
happening in language education right now and what really defines language acquisition in the
real way – interacting with others to communicate ideas, which is something that we cannot
quantify.
 101

No blame on the attentive robots – they probably literally have never had a class in which their
grade was determined by a mode of communication.

And yet, not only do the national standards imply that we should assess in that way, but also
many parents are now increasingly asking that their child have, in at least one class, the
opportunity to interact in a human way with their teacher instead of with a machine or a teacher
who teaches who looks like a machine.

Such parents get it. Not everyone is voting for robots and books in schools. There are parents
who want their kids to learn interview skills and job marketplace skills and skills that focus on
working positively within a group. There are parents who don’t want cyborgs for children.

There is so much to discuss about this classroom management gem called jGR that any more
introductory discussion here in this book would be insufficient. Instead, the reader who is
interested in this radical new idea is encouraged to read as many of the articles in the PLC links
provided below on the topic.

It is hoped that reading even some of these articles will give the reader a fuller appreciation of
the depth and breadth of this classroom management monster.

The links:

http://www.benslavic.com/blog/2012/09/01/jens-great-rubric-jgr/
http://www.benslavic.com/blog/2013/03/12/we-connect-grades-to-behavior-using-jgr-because-it-
is-the-right-thing-to-do/
http://www.benslavic.com/blog/2012/09/10/grading-question/
http://www.benslavic.com/blog/2013/06/12/our-jobs-as-teachers/
http://www.benslavic.com/blog/2012/09/12/grading-in-accordance-with-the-three-modes-of-
communication/
http://www.benslavic.com/blog/wp-admin/post.php?post=20672&action=edit&message=1
http://www.benslavic.com/blog/wp-admin/post.php?post=20712&action=edit&message=1
 102

http://www.benslavic.com/blog/2012/09/24/jens-great-rubric-jgr-2/
http://www.benslavic.com/blog/2012/09/27/jgr-warts-appear/
http://www.benslavic.com/blog/2012/09/29/the-clear-choice/
http://www.benslavic.com/blog/2012/10/07/jgr-2/
http://www.benslavic.com/blog/2012/10/09/jgr-is-subtle/
http://www.benslavic.com/blog/2012/10/09/jgr-has-a-history/
http://www.benslavic.com/blog/2012/10/09/jgr-and-reading-classes/
http://www.benslavic.com/blog/2012/10/12/the-eyes-have-it-in-jgr/
http://www.benslavic.com/blog/category/jgr/page/3/
http://www.benslavic.com/blog/2012/10/14/there-are-options-to-jgr/
http://www.benslavic.com/blog/2012/10/28/jgr-helps-our-society/
http://www.benslavic.com/blog/2012/11/07/jgr-can-be-misused/
http://www.benslavic.com/blog/2012/11/07/jgr-is-a-game-changer/
http://www.benslavic.com/blog/2012/11/09/jgr-and-parents/
http://www.benslavic.com/blog/2012/11/10/jgr-and-parents-2/
http://www.benslavic.com/blog/2012/11/17/jgr-and-parents-3/
http://www.benslavic.com/blog/2012/11/14/participation-points/
http://www.benslavic.com/blog/2012/12/07/spreading-the-wealth-with-jgr/
http://www.benslavic.com/blog/2012/12/21/jgr-works-with-snotty-kids/
http://www.benslavic.com/blog/2013/03/08/jgr-must-be-enforced/
http://www.benslavic.com/blog/2013/03/22/jgr-has-teeth-2/
http://www.benslavic.com/blog/2013/04/17/interpretive-mode-2/
http://www.benslavic.com/blog/2013/04/17/jgr-1-2-and-3/
 103

Stepping Stone Four: The Bail Out Moves

Sometimes we don’t know what to do. What we are doing isn’t working, for whatever reason,
and we need to change. It’s not an option when there are thirty five kids in the room checking the
radar for their teacher’s strength of character. So we stop doing what isn’t working, and we do so
in the moment that we know it isn’t working. There is no shame in that.

Here are some options that we can instantly go to in those very emotionally difficult moments
that only teachers who take risks can know:

Bail Out Move #1 - Dictée:

Dictée, described earlier in this text on pp. 42 through 45, is the sine qua non of bail out moves.
It’s marvelous, wonderful and fantastic all at the same time. It’s a safety card that can, however,
be played too many times in a week, but, if it is not overused, it’s unmatched.

Let’s say that you are trying some PQA and it just isn’t working. Stop doing it! Let it go! The
kids aren’t into it! Fine! Breathe! Then just take whatever lameness you have going on in the
class up to the point where you decided to toss in the towel, and do a dictée.

In a dictée you can use whatever information you have gathered up to that point in class as a
source text, even if it’s just a few facts, because a few facts is enough in dictée. You will be
surprised about how long it takes to dictate even a few lines to the kids.

Follow the instructions given in Section One above to review the instructions on how to give a
dictée. When you know you can bail to this heavy hitting tool to quiet kids down, your affective
filter about comprehension based teaching will go straight down.
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Bail Out Move #2 - Free Writes:

A free write is simply a period of time lasting ten minutes during which the students write as
many words as they can in L2 in the form of sentences that communicate an idea. This can be
done any time it is needed. It cannot be done in the first two months of the year, however; the
kids don’t know enough.

Doing a free write is an excellent bail out move because, like dictée, it has the magical quality of
shutting kids up because the pencil in their hand is like a magic quieting wand, getting them to
do what they always do in school – write quietly.

Free writes are not busywork, however. They are activities that deeply connect to acquisition in
that they access any comprehensible input that the students have heard in class enough times as
to have been acquired or nearly acquired and bring it into form as writing.

I don’t advocate much output work in the first two years of studying a language – maybe 5% of
class time - for reasons that are explained on the PLC under the category called Output, but I
make an exception to my reserve when it comes to dictées and free writes. That is because free
writes work.

The rules for free writes are:

Write without stopping for 10 minutes.

When time is up, count the number of words you wrote.
No English words in the story except for names.
Keep the sentences and story line simple.
Get your story idea ahead of time.
Use lists if you have them.
Use words that you already know.
If you don’t know a word, don’t use it or reword the idea.
Use as many adjectives as possible.
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Spell as accurately as you can and then move on.

Add another character when you get stuck.
Use posters from the room as help.
Illogical stories are o.k.

Students are told to write as many words as they can that follow the above rules over a period of
exactly ten minutes. You can devise whatever scale you want. Some teachers give an A or ten
points for over 50 words, a B or eight points for 40-49 words, etc. The students count their
words, then write their letter or number grade on the top, then all you have to do is enter the
grade.

Some teachers ask the students to record their word total in bar chart form in their notebook. This
keeps track of the amount of words they write as the year goes on and the students are amazed
when they can write well over one hundred words in the target language without a dictionary
after a matter of mere months.

I recommend this bar chart activity. Along with actual copies of the free writes, it can be shown
to parents at parent conferences. It is something that looks official - a nice looking piece of data.

Every month or two, the students do three or four of these free writes, at the most, usually on
Fridays since they are all “listened out”. Their goal in terms of number of words is raised every
so often to go from fifty words to one hundred words by March and even more by May, but such
data collection is completely up to the discretion of the individual instructor.

The main thing about free writes is the main thing about dictée – no talking.

Bail Out Move #3 – Math Brakes:

You can “brake” the flow of your class when you simply don’t feel comfortable with what is
going on by doing a math “brake”. If the CI train of words gets to moving too fast, slow it down
and attach a CI car to the train that is a math car. It’s not as if our students don’t need
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the repetitions on numbers. At the same time, when we do this bail out move we reinforce other
content areas in the target language, which administrators love.

This is suggested when doing math brakes:

1. Working at the board, teach them all the math addition, subtraction, etc. terms.
2. Make them do math problems on a blank piece of paper by giving them practice
questions.
3. If you feel like it, give them a ten point Quick Quiz using simple math problems.
4. They have to show their work.

Holding a pencil in their hands is easier for kids than the very rigorous work of listening to CI.
Knowing that they might have a quiz coming up doing math keeps them focused.

Math brakes can last from only a few minutes, just doing a few problems, to an entire class
period. Also, as mentioned above, math brakes are an integral and valued part of the bimonthly
schedule that I use to great advantage in planning (see link below for that schedule).

On this topic, Margie Snyder of our PLC shared that Jim Wooldridge (Señor Wooly) has a
wonderful tutorial for a math card game that helps students practice numbers up to 99. The game
is called Noventa y Nueve and the video tutorial can be found here:

http://www.senorwooly.com/blog/sr-wooly-video-tutorial-6/

Combien/Cuantos/How many is a very common question word used very frequently in circling.
Whenever a number occurs during circling early in the year, it is best for the students that the
instructor write them down, or point to them on a poster, when saying them. Numbers are not
easy to learn.

Teacher's Discovery makes a poster of the numbers 1-100. On it, each horizontal row of ten
numbers is in a colored square. I use it frequently to teach numbers and reinforce colors at the
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same time, not necessarily in a story. The numbers one through ten are all in red squares, eleven
through twenty in orange, etc. A good bail out is to go to the poster and call out (as in Bingo):

27 Yellow!

If 27 is in a yellow square they put thumbs up:

Correct, class, 27 is in the yellow!

If 27 is in a colored square other than yellow, the students put thumbs down. This is a chance to
get some good circling in:

Correct, class, 27 is not in the yellow, it is in the red! Class, 27, it is in the yellow or the red?
Correct, class, it is in the red! Class, 27, it is in the green? No class, that is absurd!
27 is not in the green! 27 is in the red!

Used in a focused way for five or even ten minutes, this activity is very effective. I was amazed
at the gains in comprehension the first year I started using this particular poster in this way with
circling.

Another good numbers game, which is a really a guessing game using circling, involves putting
two columns on the board. On one side draw an arrow pointing up and on the other an arrow
pointing down. Ask the kids to yell out numbers between one and one hundred, or for advanced
classes, higher numbers.

If the number you have in mind is 70, and the student guesses 50, say, “Non, c’est plus de 50/es
mas que 50/it is greater than 50” and write 50 under the column with the arrow pointing up. If
the student guesses 90, say, “Non, c’est moins de 90/es menos que 90/it is less than 90” and
write 90 under the column with the arrow pointing down.
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If a student repeats a number that has already been guessed, just point to the number already
written and state either “no it is more than...” or “no it is less than...”.

Nothing replaces seeing and hearing the numbers at the same moment. Of course, I never even
have a number in mind in this arrow game until eight or ten guesses have been tallied, thus
stretching it out for extra input.

A possible option to doing a bail out move based on math would be to ask the kids to spell
words, as per this article on the PLC:

http://www.benslavic.com/blog/2008/03/28/take-a-spelling-break-2/

Bail Out Move #4 – Drawing:

This bail out move is from our PLC member Diane Neubauer in Chicago. Not surprisingly, it
gets the kids working with a pencil in their hands.
Here is what Diane shared with members of the PLC about this strategy:

“I needed to bail out on PQA with a class today – too many too chatty and distracting kids to
keep a conversation going well.

“Because I’m so pleased with how my bail-out worked, I will explain further. My bail out today
was spur of the moment with my oldest class. We had created gestures and PQA’d some words
for 20 minutes and I thought, “What can I do that will still cause these chatty kids to listen to
these words in meaningful context?”

“I switched to having them sketch what I described – describing a scene that used all the new
structures. The list of new structures was still up on the board. I had to repeat the description and
gradually added a few details and used different wording. They asked me to repeat! Marvelous.
Drawing slows the kids down – and made them be quieter and listen better. Then they told a
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partner what was in their scene. Then a couple of brave souls came up front and spoke about
their sketch in front of the class.

“Then I gave them a comprehension quiz on which all but one student got 100%. I collected their
sketches and picked two especially clear, cute ones to use at the beginning of class tomorrow as a
review.

“The review of the students’ drawings turned out to be a great way to start class the next day,
too. The two students whose drawings I chose were honored (and generally aren’t the most
verbal in the language, so it was especially nice to show that they understand very well). The
review also clarified how many of them had retained the new structures.”

I say congratulations to Diane. What she describes above is real comprehension based teaching.
This drawing idea is indeed a gem of a bail out move. It slows the kids down and focuses them.
PLC member David Talone said, after trying it, that it “eliminated the need for me to be so
interesting. And it does what all comprehensible input should do; it focuses the kids on the
language.”

Diane continues:

“With my distracted, bouncing-off-the-walls class I think this might become a permanent part of
the PQA process in my classroom. I will also probably try to review some of the drawings
tomorrow as a class warm up before the story.”

PLC member James Hosler added a few excellent suggestions to Diane’s idea:

1. “It would be cool to pick up pictures randomly throughout the class period, project them
over the document camera, and discuss them in L2. It’s a good version of recycling, but
with PQA and not stories.
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2. “Use a student’s pictures as the basis for a Quick Quiz, e.g., in L2, “In this picture, class,
does Albert want to eat vegetables?”

I assume that the Quick Quiz that Diane gave in the situation described above was not given to
her by her Quiz Writer. Just to offer a simple work saving suggestion – if you find yourself
making a quiz up on the spot (since it wasn’t given to you by your Quiz Writer), you should
make all the answers either all yes or all no. This removes the need for you to keep track of the
answers and the kids don’t know that you are doing it that way.

And if you are pressed for time and still want to send the accountability message to the kids, just
give five questions and double the grade. Remember that frequent, almost daily, formative
assessment using Quick Quizzes is a huge part of your classroom management program.

Bail Out Move #5 – Read and Discuss:

This bail out move is extremely effective and involves reading. If you have a chapter book that is
way below the kids’ level, just hand it to them and have them read it. It is important that the book
be at a lower level than their achievement, because when they can read it without effort their
confidence goes up and they all of a sudden behave better.

If you don’t have a low level chapter book to hand out that they haven’t read, find a simple text
and project it. It is good to have something waiting in the wings to read (as a book or in the
computer) to be ready for this bail out when you need it.

Tell the kids to read in the first chapter quietly for 10 minutes or so. This immediately calms the
waters. Then go to the first paragraph and do the following things in this order:

1) Translate a paragraph with the kids. This is straight CHORAL translation. Never translate
for them by yourself. Be very strict (i.e. tie it to their jGR grade) about insisting that you
hear their voices during the choral translation. You do not read to them, you all read
together. The Reader Leader helps you - that is what the Reader Leader’s job is for and it
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is a very important job in these situations because it removes the “you-vs.-them”

dynamic.
2) Talk about the specific content of the text you just read, in the target language. Here we
just ask simple yes/no questions while insisting on a strong choral response from
everyone. You can easily do that while working on just one paragraph for the rest of the
class period, or you could spend just a few minutes on it. How long to go is up to you.
3) PQA the text whose facts you were just discussing. If Brandon got Marianne’s attention
by driving the blue T-Bird of his father in the novel, you ask one of your students if he
has a T-Bird. If the kid is a dud and doesn’t want or know how to play the game, stop and
instruct the child (they are children and need to be told) how to make up cute answers to
your questions so that the kid ends up having to tell you that he drives a red T-Bird and
off you go into some PQA with him. With real duds, you may have to go to the heavy
cannon by using the Annoying Orange technique described here to reach kids:

http://www.benslavic.com/blog/2012/09/15/annoying-orange/

(Note the lesson in PQA here – do not back away from recalcitrant kids. Take it to them.
Of course, know when to back off as well.)

4) Do a dictée on the paragraph. You already have the text so there is no need to put it up
for group reading; they correct their text from the book.
5) Do a Quick Quiz. Your superstar Quiz Writer would have written the quiz from the
chapter by now, as you have instructed her to write a quiz for all the comprehensible
input you do in class.

Your purpose in each of these five bail out moves, and in many others described on the PLC, is
to get out of a difficult class situation as fast as you can. These moves are great at eating up
minutes, and that’s what you want in those moments when it feels as if you can’t go on.
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Since all of us experience those moments in teaching, because teaching is a brutal profession,
these bail out moves are not really optional and should become a vibrant and solid part of your
classroom options as a comprehensible input teaching artist.

Note carefully that Read and Discuss is also a general classroom practice, part of your
curriculum, when teaching novels and is not just a Bail Out move per se. When teaching a novel
you start class by having the students read silently in the chapter of the novel you are in. Starting
class in that way for ten minutes while calming music plays (see resources page/calming music
on this site) is an excellent move for your mental health and the mental health of the class.

Then you can start in with the five steps listed above and the class rolls along and you don’t have
that weird kind of intensity that you get with PQA and stories. Doing some amount of R & D is
almost indispensable in a ninety minute block class because it eats up so much time.

When reading a story created by the class, the process is slightly different from the steps for
reading a novel. The steps for reading a class-created story as per Step 3 of TPRS are located in
“Reading Option A” in the PLC list of categories.

Bail Out Move #6 – Extending TPR:

Often, in the daily grind of teaching, we struggle. It's just that way. The five bail out moves
presented in this book are excellent ways to deal with a flat class, but this next move is aimed
specifically at responding to those electric moments when observers walk into our classrooms
unannounced.

I don't think that they mean to knock us off our rhythm, and I'm sure that there are teachers who
handle such intrusions (that's really what they are) with aplomb. I, however, am not one of them.

There have been times in my career when an unannounced observation by a supervisor would
send me into an internal panic and I would lose my focus. But when Dr. Krashen came into my
classroom with Diana Noonan to observe two classes in 2012, I had no such reaction.
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That is because Dr. Krashen wasn't there to find fault with me - he simply wanted to see some of
his ideas in action in the field. Hmmm.

I am happy to report that I no longer react in fear to formal observations by administrators. Over
time, over the decades, I have slowly come to realize how deeply ignorant most observers are
about what I am doing, and also how little they care.

Administrators are always overworked, and most do the observation in large part for no other
reason than that they have to. As they sit there observing, if they hear English, it's fine. If they
hear French, that's fine too. They watch the kids' response or lack of response to the instruction,
as they are taught to do in their administrator trainings, but their hearts are not in it.

Once, when teaching an AP French Literature class in the TL (or as best as I could in the TL
without knowing about TPRS/CI at the time), I looked up to see that my principal - a former
college football star who thought that education was about bashing heads in - had come in
earlier only to fall asleep.

Moreover, I have always felt, I think correctly, that those observations were to judge me, not to
help me. That's what it felt like. For more on the huge mental battles we must fight with
observing administrators, click on the PLC categories entitled, "Observation Suggestions" and
"Observations by Idiots – What to Do".

So this final bail out move is for those situations when you get observed unexpectedly and must
raise the quality of the class but don't have time to shift the class into a writing or reading or
math or drawing activity, because they take too much time to set up.

The observer doesn't want to see a two or three minute shift in the class when they walk in - they
want to see the flow of instruction and the lesson continue without interruption. (They think that
they can observe without changing the energy in the room, but that is another topic.)
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So what to do?

My answer is simple. Since TPR is at the heart of all we do and is instantly engaging, we should
use it as a bail out move in these situations. We want to fool the observer into thinking that the
TPR was what we were doing before they came in. You will find that good TPR, when properly
extended out a bit, is a great way to meet the pressure of an unannounced observation and to get
all the right boxes checked in a short amount of time.

We can shift to TPR that fast if we need to, before the observer even gets through the door, and
thus win the mental battle. Just tell the kids early in the year that when you get observed, there
are certain things you need to do for the observation and that you may switch things up on them
very quickly if someone walks in. They get it and will go with it. They are good at that and they
love a challenge.

How to do this bail out move? Well, to do TPR all we need is a verb. I have a Verb Wall that is
separate from my Word Wall. That wall is a powerful place in my classroom, a place I
sometimes use to start class as described earlier in this book in the section on Word Associations,
but I also refer to the Verb Wall with the laser pointer when I am doing any kind of CI, auditory
or reading.

The Verb Wall is an instant support place. Offering kids instant recognition of verbs during a CI
class in written form while gesturing the verb to them or asking them to gesture it to you is just a
good thing to do.

So, if a badge walks in and I need a quick change in the feel of the class because the CI is not
flying at altitude, and the kids' level of engagement needs to be ratcheted up a notch, I just stop
whatever CI I was doing and go through the steps below.

Note that these steps are very similar to the Word Association process but differ in that they
always extend into little scenes. So, when the person walks in I immediately swing into action in
the following way:
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1. I find the next new verb in the list of verbs on the Verb Wall.

2. Before the person gets in the door, I have the laser pointer on the verb while I say
these things in this order to the class:

Class, this verb means "runs". What does this verb mean? (runs)
Class, how do you say "runs" in French (court). Good, class, "court" means "runs".
Class, show me "runs". (They show me various gestures. I accept one and praise its
author.)

3. I then inform the class using the PSA technique (Personalized Statements and
Answers) that one of them runs:

Class, Jorge runs! (ohhh!)

I don't ask if Jorge runs, I tell them. The reason for that is that teachers are not the only
ones who are iced by administrators, it happens to kids, too. They also feel judged by the
new controlling presence in the classroom which just feels wrong somehow. So we are
going to use that one sentence, circled slowly over and over with plenty of
comprehension checks in the form of strong choral responses and hand comprehension
checks, so that we get command of the observation and convey a sense of instructional
ease to the face in the back of the room.

4. So I circle the original statement. The kids get what I am saying but the administrator
doesn't. Score a point for me. In the rare instance when the observer knows what they are
doing, they come in expecting to see engaged kids hearing the target language in the
class, and that is what they are now seeing.

5. I circle as long as I want, getting ready to extend the scene with the two great extending
questions of "where" and "with whom", which were also mentioned earlier in this book.
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6. Then I ask where. I make it a weird place. I circle that a lot.

7. Then I play the "with whom" card. Making that person a celebrity always works best.
Circle that.

8. I keep building the image with other question words. I go very slowly. I refer to the
Classroom Rules or jGR or the Rigor posters so that the observer can get all the boxes
having to do with classroom management checked. Sadly, I have learned how to guide
the observer through their observation process.

9. As the extended scene built from that one verb either gains or loses energy, I check the
clock and, knowing that the observer needs to check the assessment boxes as well, I
quickly get a quick quiz from the Quiz Writer, who has been told to monitor and
adjust when a badge walks in by writing at least a five point quiz on the content that
happens when the badge is in the room.

10. When the observer is gone, I go back to the lesson or stay with the verbs or go to
another bail out move, thanking the class for their help. They know I mean it.
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Stepping Stone Five: Krashen’s Five Hypotheses

Much of what is described above finds its roots in the five input hypotheses of Dr. Krashen. I
could go through the above text and connect just about every point I make to one of the
hypotheses described below. It is nice to be able to connect teaching practices to current research
when sharing information with colleagues. It is a gross understatement to say that not everyone
teaching a foreign language could make such connections. What does that say about our
profession?

The source is Wikipedia:

Hypothesis #1 - The input hypothesis. This states that learners progress in their knowledge of
the language when they comprehend language input that is slightly more advanced than their
current level. Krashen called this level of input "i+1", where "i" is the language input and "+1" is
the next stage of language acquisition.
Hypothesis #2 - The acquisition–learning hypothesis claims that there is a strict separation
between acquisition and learning; Krashen saw acquisition as a purely subconscious process and
learning as a conscious process, and claimed that improvement in language ability was only
dependent upon acquisition and never on learning.
Hypothesis #3 - The monitor hypothesis states that consciously learned language can only be
used to monitor language output; it can never be the source of spontaneous speech.
Hypothesis #4 - The natural order hypothesis states that language is acquired in a particular
order, and that this order does not change between learners, and is not affected by explicit
instruction.
Hypothesis #5 - The affective filter hypothesis. This states that learners' ability to acquire
language is constrained if they are experiencing negative emotions such as fear or
embarrassment. At such times the affective filter is said to be "up".
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Conclusions

It has been the objective of this book to suggest a simple system of stepping stones to stories that
do not confuse but instead help new teachers meet their teaching goals.

Many of us have wanted for some time to leave the uninspired shores of traditional language
teaching and cross over to the bright new land and excitement of comprehension based language
instruction, where we can be ourselves and where our students can make real and authentic gains
in a way that also just happens to be fun.

But there has been too much confusion in the TPRS world for many of us to safely pass across
those waters, and many of us have floundered in the big waves and frequent storms that
characterize any true shift in paradigm. Some of us, too many, have drowned in too much new
information.

We have seen the great research ship, the U.S.S. Stephen Krashen, plow its way through the
waters ahead of us, leading the way, only to be battered by gunfire from a kind of teacher who is
still out there and doesn’t want to give up their dominance of the seas even though they have
brought academic misery to students for far too long.

It doesn’t have to be that way. The old and obviously ineffective ways of teaching languages
don’t have to continue. We can make the change. We can put Dr. Krashen’s research into joyful
practice in our classrooms. We just have to keep trying.

We need to stop spinning so many confusing new worlds out of TPRS. We need to simplify
things so that comprehension based instruction, teaching using comprehensible input, does not
morph into some new label or brand that is owned by someone but instead becomes simply the
way we teach kids.

That’s the way it should be. I maintain that teaching using comprehensible input is not a method
at all but rather a process of personal unfoldment that is unique to each of our personalities, one
 119

that leads us through the new waters without anybody getting battered and without anybody
being made to feel wrong or flawed in some way because they don’t do it in the same way that
someone else does it. Haven’t we been battered enough?

The new process should be natural and simple to learn. It needs to make sense and, once we have
scampered across the waters, the new land we arrive in should be explored and settled in clear
and precise ways that are unique to each of us. When working with comprehensible input,
things need to be kept simple.

It is my goal to be able to earn a living without losing my mind as per this quote by Thomas
Merton:

“To allow oneself to be carried away by a multitude of conflicting concerns, to surrender to too
many demands, to commit oneself to too many projects, to want to help everyone with
everything is to succumb to violence. The frenzy of the activist neutralizes his work for peace.
It destroys the fruitfulness of his own work, because it kills the root of inner wisdom which
makes work fruitful.”

Be advised that if our work is to become simple we must reconstruct what first year material
even looks like. There is much content in our field that is accepted as first year material but is not
simple and easy at all for the students and should not be introduced as thematic units. This
includes expressions of time, dates, weather and the like.

Nor can we work from pacing guides and lists of words to plan what vocabulary we teach – it
goes against everything Dr. Krashen has shown to be true about how we acquire languages.
Discussions and stories in the target language that are based on pacing guide vocabulary contain
the same inherent boredom in them as their source chapters in the book.

Comprehensible input doesn’t work like that. Presenting material in thematic units or in pacing
guides destroys the confidence of students. Rather, you would do much better to introduce
expressions of time, etc. in very small doses; sprinkling them lightly into your instruction
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throughout the year and not holding your students accountable for those areas in any formal
testing context.

It is pedagogically more effective to sprinkle words into our students’ minds lightly in the form
of tens of thousands of sprinklings over time than to present a word once or twice and then, with
heavy hand, give a test on it. Doing that only makes kids feel that they can’t learn a language.
They need more sprinklings than we can ever know if they are to really acquire the language.

We especially need to cool it on the greetings at the beginning of the year. They are not so easy
to learn, nor are their responses, and they just confuse the kids. Here are two links to PLC
articles supporting that idea:

http://www.benslavic.com/blog/2010/08/12/you-lost-me-at-how-are-you/
http://www.benslavic.com/blog/2009/07/24/3647/

The activities, skills, classroom management tools, bail out moves and the five hypotheses
described above are our five stepping stones across the waters. Taken separately, each one is
simple and can be mastered by working on the five subdivisions of each area as they are
described above.

We who wish to master comprehension based instruction can in no way intellectualize these
stepping stones; we must walk the walk across the waters by trying, sometimes falling in and
sometimes keeping our balance. We must put these ideas into our bodies. The highs will be very
high and when we fall we will get drenched.

But we must try. It is time now for teachers to finally break away from the old way of doing
things. That is what we are doing now. There is no way out except by going in and using these
techniques every day, for better or worse, with each group of kids that walks into our classrooms
in every class period on every day we teach.
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Just postpone the stories until you are ready for them. You can learn how to do stories from my
book TPRS in a Year! and you can learn how to personalize your classes and work on classroom
management to greater degrees than are mentioned here by reading PQA in a Wink!

Also go to a summer conference if possible but you will find that joining our PLC is like an
ongoing conference that lasts all year. Several teachers have been able to have their school pay
for their PLC membership. PLC membership gives you access to thousands of past articles and
PLC member comments dating back to 2007. There is a wealth of information and training
there.

Each of our five stepping stones is made from the same building material, the simple premise set
forth by Dr. Krashen that language learning is an unconscious process. It is a material that has
never before been used on a large scale in language teaching, certainly, but its time has finally
arrived.

That language learning is an unconscious process is an earthshaking premise and until each
teacher stares at it long enough to absorb it and implement it, her teaching will not change. If I
could make only one point about comprehensible input, it would be that point.

Books and computer programs certainly do not operate on the premise that languages are
absorbed; they assume, quite falsely, that we can learn a language via conscious analysis of and
focus on mere words instead of focusing only on their meaning when taken together in chunks of
sound and visually in reading, which is what language really is.

So the first thing that people new to comprehension based instruction must do is transfer their
attention from the old material (conscious analysis of the language) to the new material
(unconscious absorption of the language).

If they can’t separate their gaze from the old material, they will never be able to reap the
enormous benefits of the new material. It’s the old image of the donkey starving because it can’t
decide which of two equidistant haystacks to go to.
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Once this work starts to feel natural to us, we will find that we will have done something that the
esoteric philosophers of old could only dream of – we will have turned the square into a circle,
the circle of FLOW in our classrooms, the circle where the Pure Land can be found. That,
indeed, will be a wonderful day and worth all the effort it took to get there.

Allow one more analogy. In construction sites of old there were cement mixers that were turned
by hand. They stood on metal legs. Cement was mixed for hours and hours on end. When
poured, the cement hardened into sturdy floors as long as it had those steel rods called rebar (the
target structures) inside them gluing the concrete together. But the mixers had to be turned
constantly.

So also, we mix the cement of comprehensible input all day in our classrooms and we glue it all
together with the target structures for that day. Because we know that language acquisition is an
unconscious process, all we have to do is keep the FLOW of language going by keeping the
process unconscious.

When we do that, the poured concrete provides unexpectedly strong language floors from which
the student can launch an entire lifetime of joyous inquiry into and solid contact with all aspects
of the culture being studied. Because the floors thus formed are so sturdy, our students’ inquiries
into the culture will be true. Lives will change because of this. Proficiency will be there, and we
will not have wasted the child’s time, as has been done to (what in my opinion is) a criminal
degree in the past*.

The mixer itself can be said to be represented by the five activities that we learned above. The
hand that turns the mixer are the five skills that we learned. The sturdy legs holding the mixer up
and keeping it from falling over are the five classroom management tools that we put in place.
Other back up mixers on the job site are the five bail out moves, and, as mentioned, the ground
holding everything up on the construction site are the five hypotheses of Dr. Krashen.
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It can be done. We can mix the concrete of comprehensible input so that it can be poured into a
sturdy language foundation for all our students. All we need to do is keep things simple, in fives,
accepting that nothing good happens overnight, and go to work each day and keep at it and watch
wonderful things start to happen, because they will. Expect a miracle!

* Criminal because of the loss of time. Time has been stolen from the innocent student. The fact
is that language acquisition only happens when written and spoken messages are actually being
understood. We achieve this in our students by speaking to them in larger and larger chunks over
time so that increasingly lengthy conversations in the target language and increasingly lengthy
reading passages are actually understood. When we do this we are building AP language exam
superstars. In classes dominated by the textbook and computer programs, this does not happen.
Lengthy written and spoken messages in the target lessons are NOT understood over years.
“Hard work” in the old book based classrooms is not hard work at all. It is just busy work. It
used to look authentic but now it can be seen for what it is - a sham. When even gifted students
after four years of study cannot demonstrate that they understand written and spoken messages in
the target language, then we can rightly say that something criminal has happened.

The system of comprehensible input is authentically productive in that students from the
beginning of their language training exhibit that they can:

1. stay focused on and understand messages being delivered in the form of listening and
reading.
2. be actively engaged with the instructor in the language.
3. respond with body language.
4. know when they do not understand and fix it because they want to.
5. respond with short answers that become more complex over time.
6. be aware of the stream of the conversation and enjoy the instruction.
7. report to others that they are learning.
8. show confidence in their growing language abilities and move to the next level even if
they are not college bound.
9. pursue language opportunities outside of the classroom because they want to.
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Can we say that those things describe the discrete grammar instruction of old?

Here is a list of links below to articles on the PLC on the topics of unconscious language
acquisition, simplicity, FLOW and rebar floors:

Unconscious language acquisition:

http://www.benslavic.com/blog/2010/07/19/we-learn-languages-unconsciously
http://www.benslavic.com/blog/2010/07/18/we-learn-languages-unconsciously-2
http://www.benslavic.com/blog/2010/07/19/learning-a-language-is-an-unconscious-process-3
http://www.benslavic.com/blog/2013/04/13/we-learn-languages-unconsciously-4
http://www.benslavic.com/blog/2013/04/13/we-focus-on-the-milk
http://www.benslavic.com/blog/2013/04/13/we-learn-languages-unconsciously-6-tractors
http://www.benslavic.com/blog/2012/12/13/subatomic-mass

Simplicity:

http://www.benslavic.com/blog/2011/04/13/the-three-steps-and-bloom%e2%80%99s-taxonomy-
of-learning/
http://www.benslavic.com/blog/2012/07/08/honoring-the-cycle/
http://www.benslavic.com/blog/2011/05/18/classroom-discipline-4/
http://www.benslavic.com/blog/2012/09/07/keep-the-stories-simple/
http://www.benslavic.com/blog/2012/08/16/we-should-be-able-to-do-that/
http://www.benslavic.com/blog/2011/06/02/the-movie-must-be-uninterrupted/
http://www.benslavic.com/blog/2011/06/09/simplicity-4/
http://www.benslavic.com/blog/2011/08/06/uncluttering/
http://www.benslavic.com/blog/2011/10/26/the-simplicity-piece/
http://www.benslavic.com/blog/2011/11/28/simplicity/
http://www.benslavic.com/blog/2012/01/16/keep-it-simple/
http://www.benslavic.com/blog/2012/02/26/we-are-not-balanced/
 125

http://www.benslavic.com/blog/2012/03/11/the-four-pillars-of-simplicity/

FLOW:

http://www.benslavic.com/blog/2009/10/11/i-can-relax/
http://www.benslavic.com/blog/2010/04/14/letting-go/
http://www.benslavic.com/blog/2008/11/21/slow-works/
http://www.benslavic.com/blog/2011/08/30/trust-the-net/
http://www.benslavic.com/blog/2008/12/10/let-the-story-just-flow-along/
http://www.benslavic.com/blog/2009/04/13/on-uninterrupted-flow/
http://www.benslavic.com/blog/2008/09/13/noodles/
http://www.benslavic.com/blog/2008/05/13/just-go-with-the-flow/
http://www.benslavic.com/blog/2008/03/01/shy-of-strangers/
http://www.benslavic.com/blog/2008/03/24/play-ii/
http://www.benslavic.com/blog/2010/01/07/5639/
http://www.benslavic.com/blog/2011/08/12/dr-krashen/
http://www.benslavic.com/blog/2010/06/21/the-unconscious-mind-is-wonderfully-set-up/

Rebar:

http://www.benslavic.com/blog/2011/03/11/rebar-1/
http://www.benslavic.com/blog/2011/03/12/rebar-2/
http://www.benslavic.com/blog/2011/03/16/rebar-3/
http://www.benslavic.com/blog/2011/03/20/rebar-4/
http://www.benslavic.com/blog/2011/03/22/rebar-5/
http://www.benslavic.com/blog/2012/05/09/rebar-6/

\
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Appendix A: Scheduling Suggestions

Here are PLC links to a few suggested schedules to give the teacher who is new to all of this
some scheduling options to explore how to organize things on a daily, weekly, bimonthly or
yearly schedule:

Daily:
http://www.benslavic.com/blog/2012/03/12/new-suggested-daily-classroom-routine-2012/
Weekly:
http://www.benslavic.com/blog/2012/11/18/time-spent-on-reading-level-2/
Bimonthly:
http://www.benslavic.com/blog/2013/02/08/new-bi-weekly-schedule-2013/
http://www.benslavic.com/blog/2013/02/21/24447/
Yearly:
http://www.benslavic.com/blog/2012/03/25/possible-yearly-schedule/
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Appendix B: High Frequency Verb List

Below is the verb list (and more) mentioned earlier in this book about spending five minutes per
day getting reps on certain targeted verbs. Read the first paragraph in particular. I highly
recommend doing exactly what it says. Also, if you make a Verb Wall from these, I highly
recommend writing them in the third person singular, not in the infinitive. This is from Eric
Herman:

I think limiting the activity to 5 minutes, having a student timer and a student counter, as well as
telling kids the purpose of the activity and sharing your personal repetition best, gets student
buy-in and focus. I teach beginners and the activity stays largely in the present tense, but I use
different tenses as needed (with a simple hand gesture to indicate tense), even with beginners.

The list of 50 verbs comes from Mark Davies' Spanish Frequency Dictionary. There is nothing
particularly significant about the number 50, so you could set the PQA cutoff higher or lower.
They are all verbs in the top 200 most frequent words, except for a few words, which are good
ones from the 200-300 frequency range. There are some 8 verbs that I will not PQA, because
they are the storytelling words my students have already heard a bunch (is, has, wants, says,
etc.), there may be some that are taught with TPR (mirar, escribir, etc.), and others that are
cognates (pasar, existir, entrar, producir, ocurrir, recibir, permitir, necesitar). I have a Verb Wall
with the words in the 3rd person, rather than the infinitive (that was a suggestion I had read
somewhere, maybe from this blog). I think that intentionally planning the 50 high frequency
verbs gives me a reassuring sense (whether healthy or not) of having a "curriculum." I've heard
before that all we have to do is speak naturally and we will give students CI on the high
frequency words, but I know I don't get to all the 50 verbs and if I don't plan them, then some
don't get enough reps.

On page 148 of the Frequency Dictionary there is a list of the verbs most common in speech, as
well as lists of the verbs most common in fiction and those in nonfiction. Starting on page 235
there is a frequency list by part of speech (verbs on page 275).
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Here are the verbs from the range 1-200, including their rank frequency.
#. #Frequency. Spanish verb - English verb
______________________________
1. 8. ser - to be (identity)
2. 11. haber - to have (+Ved)
3. 17. estar - to be (location, feeling)
4. 18. tener - to have
5. 25. hacer - to do, make
6. 27. poder - to be able to; can
7. 28. decir - to say
8. 30. ir - to go
9. 37. ver - to see
10. 39. dar - to give
11. 46. saber - to know (a fact), find out
12. 57. querer - to want, love
13. 66. llegar - to arrive
14. 67. pasar - to pass, spend (time)
15. 75. deber - should, ought to; to owe
16. 77. poner - to put (on), get (+adj)
17. 81. parecer - to seem, look like
18. 89. quedar - to remain, stay
19. 91. creer - to believe, think
20. 92. hablar - to speak, talk
21. 93. llevar - to take, carry
22. 94. dejar - to let, leave
23. 97. seguir - to follow, keep on
24. 100. encontrar - to find
25. 104. llamar - to call, name
26. 105. venir - to come
27. 106. pensar - to think
28. 111. salir - to leave, go out
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29. 112. volver - to return, to V again

30. 122. tomar - to take, drink
31. 124. conocer - to know (someone or place)
32. 128. vivir - to live
33. 131. sentir - to feel, regret
34. 134. tratar - to try, treat, deal with
35. 142. mirar - to look, watch
36. 155. contar - to tell, count
37. 161. empezar - to begin, start
38. 163. esperar - to wait, hope (for), expect
39. 173. buscar - to look for
40. 177. existir - to exist
41. 179. entrar - to enter
42. 183. trabajar - to work
43. 187. escribir - to write
44. 190. perder - to lose, miss
45. 195. producir - to produce, cause
46. 200. ocurrir - to happen, occur

Here are the next verbs after 200:

47. 203. entender - to understand

48. 204. pedir - to ask for, request
49. 205. recibir - to receive
50. 215. recordar - to remember, remind
51. 219. terminar - to finish, end
?52. 220. permitir - to allow, permit
53. 221. aparecer - to appear
54. 222. conseguir - to get, acquire, obtain
55. 223. comenzar - to begin, start
56. 226. servir - to serve
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57. 228. sacar - to take out

58. 229. necesitar - to need

Here are common verbs in the spoken register not listed above:
263. oír - to hear
325. tocar - to touch
328. estudiar - to study
353. gustar - to be pleasing to
387. valer - to be worth
407. fijar - to fix, set
415. dedicar - to dedicate
437. comprar - to buy
448. interesar - to interest
486. imaginar - to imagine
524. enseñar - to teach
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Afterword

Let’s not mince words. Kids of today have few reasons to believe in themselves. The scene in
most schools is still all about competition and testing and dominating and winning and excluding
others.

But if we learn to teach using comprehensible input we can change that culture of competition
into one of cooperation and mutual understanding and the building of community. We can bring
success in languages to many more than just the few dominant winner students.

We really can. Let’s give the kids something to believe in – themselves. By setting up
classrooms in which we speak to the kids in ways that they can understand, in ways that make
them want to understand, we give them hope enough to believe that they can do something, that
they can be very successful in at least one of their classes.

Let’s learn how to teach in such a way that our kids experience hope. Let’s stop teaching in ways
that crush hope. That is what the old system did – it crushed hope in kids. We just weren’t aware
of it. But the sad looks on our students’ faces when they were in our classes before we made this
change should have tipped us off that something was wrong.

All that is done now - it’s over. There is no blame. The time has finally arrived for us to change
how we teach so that we can change the looks on our students’ faces. That is reason enough to
get up in the morning and go into our schools.

We can do it. We can help kids believe in themselves. We can help kids believe that they can be
good at something: a language. We can help kids believe in life. It’s not really about teaching a
language at all, is it? It’s not. It never was. We do so much more than teach languages.
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