Comprehensible Midwest

Thank you to all of the organizers of the first ever Comprehensible Input Midwest (CIMW) conference! Not only did I leave the conference refreshed with tons of great ideas, but I also scored a few free novels thanks to TPRS Publishing and TPRS Books. This conference was unique because I got a chance to connect with local CI teachers AND see presentations from superstars such as Stephen Krashen and Carol Gaab! I presented a session titled Turning the Page: Reading in the Lower Levels which focused on backwards planning strategies for novels and activities you can do to keep your students engaged while reading. Below is a pdf of my session and some ideas from other presentations that I am excited to use in my classroom.

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Krashen's Keynote Presentation 

The conference started out with a presentation from the one and only Stephen Krashen! Here are some powerful thoughts from his presentation:  

•  We all know about pop-up grammar, but what about pop-up theory? Pop-up theory is when we teach students about second language acquisition theory. Have you even told students to pay attention to the visual aids that you post for them during your lessons? You might not have known it, but this was a pop-up theory lesson! When you told your students to focus on visuals you were actually teaching them that context is an important aspect of language acquisition. 
• Krashen said, "If a lot of language is happening everyone gets what they need." Since my transition to middle school I have been nervous about meeting the needs of my fast processing students as well as my barometer students. Krashen eased my worries because in a Comprehensible Input (CI) classroom everyone is naturally getting their i+1 simply due to the fact that so much of the target language is being spoken in class. 
• We can't teach grammar in a pre-determined order! The rules of language are too complicated! This means we need to throw away grammar syllabi and notions that we should be teaching a specific gramatical topic during a specific year. When we use CI grammar occurs in a natural order. 

Carol Gaab: Inspiring Higher Order Thinking (HOT)

This session really got me thinking about the types of tasks I use in my classroom. During this session Carol stated that we need to "decide what we want to occupy our student's cognitive capacity." When I apply this statement to Bloom's Taxonomy on the left, I can see that I need to focus on creating more activities that use the upper skills. During this presentation Carol proved that you don't need to use complex language to talk about complex ideas. Teachers simply need to give students the language they need in order to process and respond to the questions they are being asked. Below are some of Carol's ideas that I have already implemented in my classroom this past week!

• Possible or Probable: Ask students questions that require them to draw inference from the text. These questions are great because they have no "right" or "wrong" answer. Students simply find evidence from the text to support wether the statement is possible or probable. For example we just finished telling the story of the music video Soy yo by Bomba Estero. After reading the story I asked students questions such as: Do the girls on the street have a lot of friends? Does Carmen (that is what I named the star of the video) practice the recorder a lot? Would Carmen win a dance competition? These questions have no correct answer so students have to critically analyze the text and video to come up with facts to support their answer. 
• Venn Diagram: After watching the "Soy yo" video students had to compare and contrast Carmen (the star of the video) to themselves. Students put the following statements in a venn diagram to evaluate their similarities and differences with Carmen: no se preocupa por las opiniones de otras personas, juega al básquetbol, toca la flauta, le gusta bailar, lleva overoles, tiene estilo. Again, this task gave students the opportunity to analyze their own lives and compare them to Carmen. 
• Predictions: After each chapter (or at the end of a class if you didn't finish a story) have the students make predictions about what they think will happen next. Students write their prediction in a chart labeled 'prediction/fact', and when they find out what actually happens they write it under 'fact.' Carol wrote an entire post about how she uses predictions in CI Peek. 

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Who else was at Comprehensible Midwest? Did you learn any ideas that you are excited to implement in your classroom this month?