The joys of floating.
I feel like the characters in the Wizard of Oz sometimes. If I only had a room…I’d have word lists all over the place, my question words would be clearly visible to everyone, I’d have my own set of whiteboards even if they were sheet protectors with paper stuck into them.
But without a set classroom (I teach in three different rooms a day, which isn’t THAT bad compared to some teachers, of course, but it’s difficult when the language you’re teaching isn’t taught in any of those rooms) my kids are more likely to be seeing Spanish verb conjugations or French pronouns on the walls. And the seniors, at least, are getting itchy about it.
“Maybe we could get a list of words? Like in this textbook I used to have, there were lots of words related to different topics…” Which brings up the question of whether I’m differentiating enough to the *better* kids. I am pretty sure the slower processors are being served fairly well, but the quicker ones are capable of picking up a LOT more words. So I’m thinking — since we “dress Obama” every morning (the Obama Paper Doll book) in about a minute or two, I’m seeing a list of clothing words, a list of place words, a list of…
The sixth-graders, meanwhile, are happily building stories about velociraptors that get presents from their friends in Thailand. I wonder if the vocab “crisis” seems worse in sections that tend to “just talk” rather than tell stories?
Posted in Uncategorized