Preaching to Acquire

One of the things we stress in our CI classrooms is the need for community.  It's something that I've put more focus and effort into building this year, and I think I figured out one (pretty obvious - duh!) place to start... being vulnerable. If we want our students to share about themselves in class and grow closer together, we must model that for them.  Many of them may come from situations where being open, honest and real isn't what is expected.  Some of us may come from backgrounds where that is just not what our families expected from us.  Sometimes this is an adjustment for both teacher and students. Here are some ways that I've tried to model vulnerability in front of my students:  1) I ask them how they are and actually care about their responses.  It might be before school or during lunch duty when I see a student who looks tired or doesn't have their usual bubbly smile.  I always try to ask them how they are doing.  If they respo...

In case you don't know what a bail out move is... it's an activity that the teacher can do with little to no prep in case they need to "bail out" of their lesson that isn't working well, or it can be used if you have a few minutes of class left and don't know what to do with it. My favorite bail out move is a listening game/circumlocution game that I learned from Luke Worthington (who learned it from one of his professors).  It's super easy, requires little prep, and the kids get ALL OF THE INPUT! 1.  Give the students a small sheet of paper. 2. Have them separate it into categories (place, thing, food, animal, clothing, person, etc).  You could cater these categories to what you're trying to focus on in class if you wanted...or not! 3.  Under the category title, the students should write an example for it in L1 or L2 (animal: tiger, person: Ariana Grande, etc). 4. They should cut or tear their paper into small cards that have one categor...

Most days I really try to not get my students too excited, because it usually leads to chaos and headaches for me.  Every once and a while things get wild and work! This lesson is an example of that.  I love making OWIs (one word images) with my classes, but it can be hit or miss if I end up with a headache at the end of the lesson.  We got carried away with a ton of details, but it worked... the kids were engaged, we were using a bunch of Spanish, and we were laughing.  What more can you ask for? The awesome thing about OWIs is that you can do so much with them...if you want.  We eventually named the teeth (Bluetooth, Un-Mellow Yellow, and Snotty Scotty).  We haven't done anything else with them, but they are proudly on display in my classroom at the ready for if I need 'em.  Stories, adventures...who knows! The possibilities are endless. AND on top of that... my student artist who was drawing the OWI is the daughter of two dentists! ...