When it comes to Comprehensible Input teaching, nothing beats real teachers sharing real classroom takeaways — from epic CI wins to wild “this actually works!” moments.

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In this episode of Comprehend THIS!, guest hosts Vicki Schrader (ELL and CI educator from Surrey, BC, and author of multiple CI novels) and Pat Rolfes (26-year veteran high school Spanish teacher from Minnesota) join Scott Benedict to reflect on what CI has truly taught them — about teaching, language, and kids. From the “aha” moments that proved input really is everything, to the real-world hacks that keep CI sustainable when plans fall apart, this episode is full of heartfelt stories, teacher-to-teacher wisdom, and a little bit of caffeine-fueled honesty.

#ComprehensibleInput, #TPRS, #LanguageTeaching, #WorldLanguageTeachers, #CIPodcast, #TeachingTips, #SpanishTeachers, #FrenchTeachers, #GermanTeachers, #CISurvivalKit

Hosts:

• Scott Benedict - https://www.instagram.com/immediateimmersion
• Vicki Schrader - https://www.instagram.com/@vrsschrader
• Pat Rolfes - https://www.instagram.com/patrolfes73

Resources & Links:

• CI Survival Kit - https://imim.us/kit
• Webinar Club - https://imim.us/club
• Ben Slavic - https://benslavic.com
• Ian Video: https://youtu.be/Hz_d-cikWmI?si=DHUHCGpG-Cv3Ulu9

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Okay language teachers, let's be honest.

Some days CI feels like pure magic,

and other days you're wondering if anyone

in your class even knows what day it is.

But here's the thing, it works.

And this week we've got proof.

Meet Vicky Schrader, the Grammar Queen

turned CI novelist from Canada.

Yes, she's gone from drilling verb charts

to publishing entire novels.

We're diving into the wild world of

comprehensible input in real classrooms.

Not the Pinterest, perfect kind, but the

my story crashed and burned

before second period kind.

You'll laugh, you'll nod,

you might even feel seen.

So grab your coffee, or like me, your

Diet Pepsi, or

whatever is keeping you alive,

because this episode will

remind you why CI is worth it.

Even when your students think TPRS stands

for Totally Pointless Random Stuff.

Let's do this, it's episode 10, CI in the

wild, my big takeaway.

Let's go ahead and welcome Vicky after

our short messages,

and we'll be right back.

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[LAUGHTER]

I think honestly, to me, it's the whole

idea of making sure that it's

comprehensible, making sure the kids are

on board and that they're understanding.

And I will still, to me, I think that

that was what made me excited about

grammar, when I was learning grammar,

was that for me, it unlocked a lot of

keys for what was

happening behind the scenes.

But when I was learning

grammar, I was in university.

I already had six years of French.

I already had a lifetime of English.

And they played off of each other.

It was like, "Oh, so that's what's

happening in English.

Oh, that's what's happening in French."

So for me, that was really exciting, and

I felt like that was a

really important thing.

But when we're just

starting out, it's too much.

Absolutely.

So then in the classroom, I've gone from,

you know, there were the days, I'm like,

"Okay, day one, here's your textbooks.

Let's sign it out and read the first

piece, you know, the first stop.

Oh, it's in context, right?

There's a story at the front.

So clearly, there's a context for it.

So that must make sense.

And the students that I teach are used to

doing worksheets and that sort of thing.

They usually have some sort of background

in the language before they come,

but it's like super, super dry from a

teacher who doesn't speak the language.

And they maybe never even

spoken a word of English.

So that style is something they can fall

into, but it doesn't

bring the language to life.

And that's what CI has done.

I have this year in my level

one class, there was a girl.

You can spot them right away.

The one who is the student that I just

described, some of them, you know, they

can answer your

questions right off the bat.

And you start thinking,

"Oh, why are you in level one?"

But then you see, you can see it.

But this one girl, she

was a true level one.

And she would turn to our friends, like,

"What did she say? What did she say?"

I'm like, "Okay, so there's my

barometer, right? Watch her."

She is now writing.

So we went from day one,

like circle the day of the week.

Like, "Can you point to it? Can you

repeat after me with the circling

questions and all that?"

She's now writing about a

hundred words in 10 minutes.

Right? In her daily journal, she can

write for me and tell me what's happening

if life's going sideways or what.

Which is really, really cool.

And that's the CI piece for it, is just

they don't need grammar rules.

They need to be able to communicate.

They need to be able to tell me that

there's a problem in another class.

They need to be able to tell me that

their teacher doesn't understand them.

And they'll feel like it's a racist

incident, but it's not.

It's a misunderstanding between teacher

expectations and student background

knowledge or past ways of

being, just the whole shift.

So it's easy, easy to sort out, but they

need to be able to have

those basic conversations.

Absolutely. And a couple of things that

you mentioned right off the bat about,

first of all, grammar.

When do we introduce grammar, even in

their native languages?

It's lower elementary school when it

starts to get, when they start actually

talking about grammar.

And what's the assumption already? That

they're relatively fluent

in the language already.

I mean, obviously not sophisticated

language, but they can talk. We can

understand them. We can

talk. They can understand us.

We don't have to do a lot of

simplification or modification of the

language back and forth.

You know, we don't have to do that pigeon

speak at all for them to be able to do.

So, but what we do when we have, we teach

from a textbook point of view or a

standard curriculum, a traditional

curriculum, we hit them

with grammar from day one.

And grammar, someone told me this, I

never really realized I'm going to fix my

camera because my

camera's got me off just a bit.

Bill Van Patten said, and I never really

thought of it this way, he goes,

textbooks are always ordered.

What's easiest to teach, not what's

easiest to learn. So what's the first

thing they throw at them?

Gender and gender agreement.

Which for, you know, you don't, we don't

have that. You don't have that teaching

English, but teaching other languages

that have gender, that's something that

English kids don't

understand and no concept.

So it's a really difficult thing to

learn. It's easy to teach. And then

subjunctive, which is relatively easy to

learn in French and Spanish.

It's relatively easy. It's one of the

earlier acquired things in

the native speaker world.

But it's really difficult to teach. They

put that off into level three or level

four because we don't have a similar

concept and it actually is going away in

English subjunctive.

I hear it hurts my ears every time I

said, if I was president, like, no, it's

if I were president because

you never were the president.

So that always irks me and I hear it all

the time and it stands out in my ears so

that you made that

point about the grammar.

You and I was funny that you pick

comprehension because you teach English

language, meaning you could have multiple

languages represented in your classroom

and you don't have a common language to

fall back on to make it comprehensible.

Which I find is really funny because, you

know, years ago, I was not part of the

story, but my best

friend was she was living it.

So she explained it to me and it was kind

of funny. If you've ever been to a

national conference, one of the things

they used to do was a native.

It was immersion dinners

is what they called them.

So you pick the language, either one you

already spoke or one that you were

learning and you went to

dinner with this group of people.

And the rule was you only spoke that

language during the evening.

So it was a way for us to be able to

relate with actual adults in the language

that we teach instead of with kids with

the language we teach.

And it was great. I like German and I

didn't I didn't want to

use my stuff with Spanish.

So I went always with the German group.

So I did not was not part of this one.

I was at that and TPRS, but I was not

part of the Spanish conversation one.

But it was Blaine Ray and it was Stephen

Krashen were at the same dinner tonight

that and it was Spanish.

So they were having this conversation.

The conversation was going well for like

30 minutes, no problem.

And then someone introduced the word.

I don't even know the context of how this

came up in conversation.

But the word Chispa, which means a spark

like either a spark from electricity or

like a spark in your brain that went off.

And so it came up and now they were lost.

Someone was lost.

They couldn't understand what Chispa was.

And so for next 10, 20

minutes, they were drawing pictures.

They were acting it out.

They were doing all kinds of things to

try to make this other

teacher understand what Chispa was.

And it wasn't working.

And then finally someone went about and

said, oh, my gosh, Chispa means spark.

She said it in English.

Chispa means spark.

Can we possibly move on from this?

Yeah.

And a little bell went off and Stephen

Krashen's brain because Stephen Krashen,

you know, the whole impetus of what we do

and his idea originally because he came

up with also the natural approach.

He co-founded the natural approach where

you don't use translation.

And he was against translation.

He said no translation,

no first language at all.

And he was going about this.

And then Blaine says no, but sometimes

you just need translation.

And Stephen Krashen says no, you don't.

You absolutely do not need it.

And this is the time when a little Chispa

went off in his brain and goes, oh, I see

why you might need translation because

sometimes it's the simplest, most direct,

effective way to make

something comprehensible.

And we equated this to let's say you're

in class and you've been speaking and

trying to get this one kid

to understand this one word.

And you've wasted 30 minutes doing it.

And the other kids are like,

can we just move on from this?

We got this the first time.

And you've got that frustrated kid who

goes, it just means spark.

Let's move on and think about that when a

just if they didn't understand it, just

writing it on the board really quick.

Guess what?

Bingo.

It's done and we can move on.

So it came.

He goes, I can see

now where the point is.

And in your case, you don't have that

always to fall back on

because you're teaching English.

I know at my school, we have 43 different

languages represented at

our school, 43 of them.

And I couldn't imagine being an ELL

teacher and having, you know, 30 of those

43 languages

represented in one classroom.

How the heck am I going to

make something comprehensible?

So I find that funny that

you chose that particular one.

And then the thing that you said that

made me go ahead and think about was how

what's this non-native speaker?

Non-native speaker

doing teaching the grammar.

And I'm like, I'm the complete opposite.

I don't want a native speaker teaching me

the grammar because they

can't explain the grammar.

I can't explain in

English why go goes to went.

I know it's in a regular verb and I know

that the technical term in English,

because the same one's in

German, is weak and strong verbs.

And, you know, to go is a strong verb

because it goes from I go to I went.

But I can't explain the rhyme reason or

wherefore why it does that.

I can't do that.

Yet I can explain why the

accents move around in Spanish.

Why sometimes the word has an accent and

sometimes it doesn't.

It's actually to keep their pronunciation

consistent along the way.

I can explain those things,

but a native speaker can't.

They just go, well,

that's just the way that it is.

And so I never liked getting that grammar

explained to me from native speakers.

If you are the same as me, give me a

thumbs up in that chat box or in the

comment box if that's you as well,

because I always got frustrated.

I asked, you know, I took German, French

and Spanish and I would

ask the native speakers.

So why does it do that?

I don't know.

It just does.

You know, that's the answer.

And it's the same answer

I would give in English.

Yeah. And in English, if a student asked

me that, I could probably do it.

It'll probably take me about 30 minutes

and I'm going to use

words that are out of bounds.

So because it's a complicated thing, I'm

probably going to go into some language

history that is going to

completely bore them to tears.

Whereas if I tell a story that yesterday

she went to the store and today she is

going to the store, the kids are just

going to hear it and they're going to say

it and they're going to use it and

they're not going to question it.

Right.

They don't because it becomes so natural.

You packed a lot in there.

Yeah.

I always have my sticky notes that I

write my little notes as you talk.

I'm like, look, I mentioned about that.

I got to mention my band.

OK, so let's see if I can go through and

figure out like the translation one.

Who is it who said maybe, you know, this

quote, when you speak, when you speak my

my second language or my my learned

languages, you speak to my head.

But when you speak my my first language,

you speak to my heart.

So your example of the spark word.

If if I do the song and dance and draw on

the board and try and do all of that

stuff, yeah, OK, they can get it.

But that translated word now

I've got the fullness of it.

Right.

And five, two seconds versus five, ten,

fifteen, twenty minutes.

Which one are you going to take?

Right. Like the song dance was fun.

It was entertaining for them, maybe.

But we just wasted a whole bunch of time.

It's like the play where they try and get

teachers to go on tangents.

They do it to us all the time. Right. And

then I like when I do

it and yeah, I do it.

I entertain the tangents.

And then I explain to them

what the word tangent is.

And I tell them, you know, I draw that on

the board for the tangent line.

And I say, that's what we just did.

And then I'll set a circle around that

and we'll bring it back in other lessons.

I'm like, all right. So that was a 10

minute. What was it?

Where did we go? Was that art? And

they're like, what was the tangent?

But yeah, if you can speak to their heart

in two seconds versus the song and dance,

then why wouldn't you do that?

So for me, I've been in the class where

every student speaks a

different first language.

That was much more

common in my last school.

The school I'm at now, it's

predominantly Mandarin speakers.

So I've actually I finally, after 20

years of teaching,

started actually learning.

So for all of my parent meetings, an hour

and a half where everybody

else's take 30 to 45 minutes.

Translator mine help all of the efforts

to use language with

whatever the hell is there.

I thought, you know what, let's actually

try and learn some of this.

I just do a lingo. I need to. I've

listened to I love to the C.I. sample

classes in Mandarin, like

Linda Lee has one on YouTube.

And I just love it because I start to

soak up a little bit more.

But I really need a Mandarin CI language

class that I can join.

But I have been doing my Duolingo and I

wouldn't face my pick up the words.

And then with that, and I can say to the

students, OK, well, in in

Chinese, it's like this, right?

And I'm guessing they know

I'm guessing. I'm like, right.

You know how that works. They're like,

yeah, yeah, that's right.

I say, OK, so then in English, we can use

some of those

comparisons and it saves time.

Yeah, it does. So we don't need to just

resort to circling questions.

We can do, you know, it's

like this whole toolkit.

So I haven't I haven't abandoned

everything that I used to do.

I've just added to it and see

I becomes more of my default.

And if it's not my default for a

particular lesson, it's

definitely the undercurrent.

Right. It's definitely the undercurrent.

The third person, S,

is the one for English.

Yeah. Right. It'll be the first unit in

the grammar textbook.

And yet it's late acquired. We

know that it's late acquired.

So that same level one class, they did

some writing earlier this

week for our Halloween story.

And I haven't I haven't given it back to

them. All I did was I went through and I

made a PowerPoint slide with some of the

things that they're doing in the writing.

And I just pulled sentences straight from

their writing and I targeted a couple of

different structures just because I

wanted to do, you know,

maybe a grammar commercial.

But I'm actually the whole lesson.

But they were completely leaned in on it.

It was on the PowerPoint.

I said, OK, here's here's actually the

grammar label on what's happening here.

Like third person S. But before we did

that, we actually like it ended up being

actually building because in one they had

like no one that they were like, like,

she is like ice cream.

Like she likes ice cream. You know,

they're those kinds of things so they

could completely see it.

And then I said, OK, now the next one I

need you to know. And I

actually talked to them.

This is my level one class. I talked

about how, you know, when you learned by

by worksheets, that's language learning.

There's this other thing, language

acquisition. And I talked to them about

those two strategies and they can see how

I use both of those in class.

I said this one, I'm going to show you

this. And some of you know it. You do it.

I know you know it, even though it's

something that takes longer. And the rest

of you, I just need you to learn it

because your other teachers, because

everywhere they go in the school, they're

using the language I'm

teaching them or trying to.

Yes, because it's English. They're in an

English speaking school.

So I said, I just need you to do this

because this is what your teachers are

going to be looking for.

They expect you to do this, but they'll

never tell you. So hear it right now.

So we actually made that really, really

explicit from their writing. And I can

hear around the class. They're like, I

think that's my sentence.

That's my. Yes, this one's yours. Pay

attention. This one's yours.

I had a kid who was like every sentence

was mixing present and past.

And but he saw it and it was really,

really cool. And yeah,

level one, really, really cool.

My level three class is

they're a little higher.

So I do a little bit more. They get a

little bit more grammar stuff in there.

But yeah, trying to build a common

language so that I can start pulling on

some of those differences for them has

actually made a big difference.

Yeah. And you said something

about that third person. S.

And English, I use that as an example a

lot in my classroom, you

know, that we don't have verb.

We don't have verb endings in English and

we do in Spanish. And unlike French,

because I know that's the other language

you you learned, at least.

What what Bill then point out to me as

well about that, what's late acquired and

what's early acquired is stuff that is

early acquired is stuff

that actually changes meaning.

And what's late acquired is stuff that

doesn't change meaning. So someone can

still understand English if

he goes he talk or she talk.

Totally. Because we have that subject

built that we have to add that subject

and then the verb is there.

Whereas and French needs that and German

needs that they need the subjects because

in French, although they're all spelled

differently, they most of

the verb sound the same.

They're all spelled differently, but they

sound the same. So you need the subject

pronoun to differentiate

who's doing the talking.

German's the same way because in third

and in plural, the we and the they form

are the same verb form. It's

the same as the infinitive.

So, again, you need the subject there to

tell. But in Spanish, we don't need the

subjects because every verb is different.

And you hear the differences. So we don't

need the subjects. We can leave them

completely away and go on there. And I

use the same thing in English.

So, yes, they forget to put the S on the

third person singular because why it if

you leave it off, it

doesn't change the meaning gender.

If you say El Chico versus La Chico, it

doesn't change the meaning at all. It's

still the boy, whether you said that with

the right gender or

not, it's still the boy.

So it didn't change the meaning. So the

brain saying not as important, not as

important, not as important, but other

things that actually change the meaning

of what you're saying, the brain says,

oh, I need to key into that because

that's making a major,

whether I make a left or I make a right.

I've got to know that decision point. So

I think that's really, really

interesting that we go through.

And it's funny that English got rid of

all of our endings because we came from

German and German is full of endings. And

so we have simplified.

They always say make a joke. German say,

if you take away all the grammar rules

from German, you're left with English.

And that's kind of like what it is.

I was also going to talk about it. You

mentioned you need a C.I. class in

Mandarin. One of my dear friends, Dr.

Terri Waltz, she

turned me on to italki.com.

And what italki.com is, it's a kind of

like Uber for language teachers. So

people join this program and you get

native speakers from around the world.

You want, you know, Ukrainian versus

Russian or you want Colombian Spanish or

Quebecian Spanish versus I mean, Quebec

and Spanish, Quebec and

French versus Parisian French.

You can find the actual dialects that you

want. You're paying them in their local

currency and they have different rates

depending on what they want.

And you can do traditional tutoring with

them. But what she did is she told them

the basic what she wanted

them to do in the lesson.

She says, I want you to tell me a story

and I want you to ask me lots of

questions about who, what, where, when

either or yes or no about a story.

And I want you to do this. And she

trained them how to do C.I. And then when

she paid them, that's

what they did for her lesson.

And they're relatively cheap because what

we think is cheap is really expensive in

their own currency when they think about

it in their own currency.

You know, they don't the cost of living

in Colombia is a lot different than it is

in America or Canada. So they don't need

as much money and you

can find different ranges.

They've got reviews. But I really like

that. I also recommend to my students to

if they need some tutoring practice.

It's a lot cheaper than the sixty dollars

an hour that they might be charged here

in America when you can get it for maybe

ten dollars an hour and get an actual

native speaker in there.

So that's another thing I was just going

to mention. You can find that in

Mandarin. Yeah, that's good. Go ahead.

Oh, no, just that's cool.

Now, I was just saying my biggest thing

because we never even got to my answer to

that. For me, it's that personalization.

Because the textbook isn't personalized

and it's dry and they say it's pretty

their personalized questions.

They're just asked the same question to

every kid. That's not personalized

because I know that

kid doesn't play sports.

So why am I asking if he plays hockey? I

know what his answer is going to be. No,

you know, he's a skateboarder or she's a

reader or, you know, he likes art or

whatever the concept may be.

So that personalization is one of the

things because I can connect the language

to the student. And when I make that

connection, that was the biggest takeaway

for me, partly because I didn't have a

lot of experience with the textbook.

So I didn't have anything to compare it

with. But that personalization was such a

big thing for me to get the kids to want

to pay attention long enough so that the

acquisition can happen.

And if I talked about some random Juan

and Maria and no offense to anybody, Juan

and Maria, but every Spanish textbook,

those are the common names they put in

every story is Juan and Maria or Carlos.

You know, it's the same ones and nobody

cares about those people because they

don't know those people.

And so the personalization was a really

big thing for me because that got my kids

to click and to understand and to know

what's going on and want to listen to the

story because it was about them.

And if it wasn't about them, it was about

one of their friends. And it was about

topics that they were under that they

wanted to know more about.

So they were more apt. And you talked

about tangents. My kids always want to go

in tangents. What was your first prom?

What was your prom like?

How did you go to your first driver? What

was your first date like? And I'm like

you. I go right into them. But my trick

is I go into them in Spanish.

And I have every kid on the edge of their

seats going, I want to hear because I

asked this question. I want to know the

answers. So they're

really trying to comprehend.

And so those tangents are teaching

moments for me and they're great teaching

moments. And they think we got them off

topic. And I'm like, we had a win because

I got them all engaged in

Spanish for the whole period.

So, you know, it's

kind of funny that way.

You did not just.

No. And you know what? Personalization

has actually I would count that in part

in my field column because there was a

long time where I was doing the person.

I'm like, I'm doing it. I'm doing it. But

they're not leaning into it because when

I'm talking to you, this darling over

here is like, you know, well, we're not

going to listen to him.

Right. And you go around the class like

that with a whole bunch of people, you

know, they're still building their own

relationships. They're really not

connected to each other yet because

they're in my class because

they're all new to the like.

They just come from some other place.

So they're not really connected. So they

don't really care. So then for me, is it

triangulation when you start like, I'm

like, all right. So who who is the

skateboarder? Who's the hockey player?

What what sport does does this student

play? What's what sport does that? Who

doesn't play sports, you know?

And I started throwing it back to them.

And that was when the personalized

questions, they started a little bit more

attention. Oh, she's

going to test us on the right.

Always is they're going to be a test.

Well, there is it's going to be live. And

the tangent, as long as they're in the

target language, they're in line with

what you're interested in.

Well, that's your engaging, right? It

again, Dr. Krashen talks about how it has

to be compelling, right?

Yeah. A comprehensible and compelling. So

if it's what the students are asking and

they're all in. So if one kid is asking

and the rest of them are sitting back and

they're like, how can we do this?

And play video games underneath the

table. Well, then that's not the time to

go on. But if they're

all leaning in, go for it.

Absolutely. And then you bring up

something I hate jargon. I

am one who just hates jargon.

Now, because like, triangling and

circling, if I have to explain what that

is, and it's a

concept people already know.

When you tell them what PQA is and you

tell them what circling is and you tell

them what triangling is, it's something

they already know and probably

already do in their classroom.

But we added this weird word that I had

to explain. I can't stand that. And I

apologize. I know Blaine and works really

hard in coming up with

these words, but they're not.

I don't find them helpful. And the people

I teach don't find them helpful. I mean,

I didn't understand what PQA was for

many, many, many, many, many,

many, many, many, many years.

I think I understood the words,

personalized questions and answers, but

they never demoed it in demonstrations

because they went right into the story.

Until I learned, I read Ben Slavik's book

PQA in a week and I'm like, oh, that's

just conversations. That's having a

conversation with a kid.

Can we not just say that's what it is?

Because now you don't have to explain to

me a term. It's a conversation.

As soon as you say conversation with a

kid, everybody in the room got what

you're talking about. We didn't have to

go and explain this whole technique.

And same thing with circling. That's just

scaffold of differentiated questions. We

all do it as teachers. Yes, no, either,

or what, where, when, how questions.

Can we not just say what it is? Why do we

have to come up with a term that we have

to explain to do that? And

triangling was another one.

That's just using your teaching verbs. So

it comes from the point of using the I,

then the you, and then some form of third

person. They or he or she.

So you're getting all forms of the verb,

first, second, and third, three points of

a triangle. But why, why

give it a name? Triangling.

When I can just say, we got to make sure

we ask first person, second person, and

third person questions to

get that verbs in there.

So I always find that funny. So I put

that in the chat there so people can

understand who didn't ever heard that

term, triangling, but it's a really

effective technique.

And it's something that we, a lot of us

naturally do, but then we had to add a

term to and then we have to explain the

term and which makes it more confusing.

I'm sorry, I went off on my own little

tangent there, but it's okay.

It actually took me a long time to see

triangling and circling as forms of

scaffolding. Yeah. And it was like a

little epiphany moment. I'm like, oh, so

really what I'm doing is I'm just putting

more rungs in that ladder so

that I can make it accessible.

Because that's one thing I'll draw for

students or parents who are arguing

about, you know, like, why can't they go

to level three? Why can't they go to this

level? It's like, well, would you go to

grade 10 now straight out of grade seven

now? No, you wouldn't. Right.

But I draw that ladder. You've probably

seen that image where it's like huge,

huge distance between the runs. I'm like,

we want to put these in. Like, don't you

want to climb this ladder? Isn't that a

whole lot easier? So that, that was a

nice little moment to realize that it's

really, I'm going to make it easier.

And trialing is a really great, effective

way and more effective to teach it in

context, verb conjugations. As they hear

them, they see them. It's physical

because you're pointing to the people.

What do you do? I do this. What does he

or she do? Same kind of thing. And that's

where you get to the conversations too.

Because like you said, when you're

talking and you're focusing on that one

kid, if that kid is not in, if another

kid in the classroom, that they're not in their friend group, they don't know.

They're not in their friend group. They

don't care. But then when you bring it

back to them and I call it, you know,

it's kind of like fishing and then

gossiping. So I'm fishing for information

from the kid and I'm focused on that one

kid. But then we gossip about that kid.

Did you just hear that? What was his

activity that he liked to do? Class, what

would he like to do? Like he's not even

in the room. We're talking about him. Oh,

he liked to skateboard. Right. He liked

to skateboard. Now I bring it back to

them. Does anybody

else like to skateboard?

So I'm bringing that other class in. So

I'm focusing on the kid to give him his

10 minutes of fame. And then I bring it

back with the rest of the class. So it's

that constant juggling and back and

forth, back and forth. But that's how you

get the other class in there. But it's a

really, like you said, it's a really good

technique to be able to do that. And it's

scaffolding. We're constantly scaffolding

so that kids don't have to make those

giant leaps from one level to the next.

That they're able, we're giving them

enough holding points to be able to do that.

Holding points to be able to move along.

Like, you know, ladder is so much more of

a tame representation of it. Think about

like mountain climbing. Those kids who

like to climb the mountain walls at the

gyms. Can you imagine if, you know, each

little stepping thing you had to go is

six feet apart from each other? You know,

some kids got a stretch. Yeah.

Try it now. And they're like, I can't.

Well, same thing. Exactly. Exactly.

So I was thinking it's um, I like I like

your term gossiping. I was thinking it

was it's like being a good host. Yeah.

Right. So I'm talking to you. But as

teachers were never there's I know, we

teach the eyes. So then we're looking at

that student in the eyes. But as

teachers, we're never only looking there.

We're also surveying what's happening in

the whole entire room. So

like a good host at a party.

You've got your one person that you're

greeting and you're giving them your

heart, you're giving all your attention.

But you're also having all your

attention, but not all your attention

because you're of other people at your

party that you need to. So what do we do?

We bring them in. Like, oh, so and so

have you met so and so so and like so and

so enjoy some things. What do you enjoy?

Do you enjoy skateboarding? Oh, you enjoy

mountain climbing? You know, like, oh,

you know, and you make that conversation.

You're trying to build

that that connection.

And same thing in the textbook. So if I

do actually go to a textbook and I do

grab a textbook story or I do, okay, we

need to do this unit and grammar or

whatever. Right. And so just speaking to

the teachers who are doing that, like if

you've got that article in the front that

you textualizes the grammar, whatever

that story is, you then

pull it into the class.

Anybody else here are famous scientists?

Anybody else here want to be a famous

scientist? Have you done research? Have

you, you know, and you bring that

whatever they've used as their novel

article or short story. Triangulate it.

Do the same thing. Circle. Do all your

circling questions, pull it into the

classroom and make it real. And that's

that's one of my bridges. If I do

actually go grab one of those resources

for whatever reasons.

Yeah. And you know, it's funny you go

party because I used to call PQA. It's

like, cause people never understood it.

And they're like, I don't understand

small talk. I don't do small talk. I

think it's like at a party. You meet

someone. So that's your first student you

do. You talk and they go, well, how long

did I talk for? I'm gonna

go until it gets boring.

And then you use yourself to go to the

bathroom or get another drink to

refreshing your drink and you find

someone more interesting to talk about.

It's the same thing in the classroom.

Obviously we're not gonna leave the

classroom and go pee and we're not gonna

go get a drink in the classroom. But you

know, when it, when the conversation

starts to get boring, that's when you

know you need to move on to a new

student. And then you compare and

contrast and you bring the other class in

to make everybody back as a whole. So I

used to use that party as an analogy a

lot because it's kind of like what it is

when you're meeting someone.

You find them interesting, you talk and

then when it starts to get boring, you

know, I gotta go use the restroom. I'll

be right back or I'm gonna go get some

more drink. I'll see around, you know,

something and you find someone else talk

to. So it's kind of the same kind of an

idea. And I think it's really, you know,

these are really great techniques and

strategies to be able to use that I

didn't really have before CI. That they

were not even a possibility and the

textbook doesn't really allow for it.

They talk about the PQA personalized

questions, but they, their version of

personalized is that you ask the same

question to all 30

kids. So I'm gonna ask.

Well you can also, sorry, you can also

hand it off, right? So with the party

analogy, what's the other trick for

getting away? You do the introduction

thing. Yeah, right. Oh, look, here's

this, you know, here's so and so let me

introduce you. Do you want to ask them a

question? Do you want to ask them what

they like? And you feed the question to

the student and then the student has to

ask the question and then the other student has to ask the question.

And then the other student has to answer.

Well, there you go. Now I can sneak away,

right? But I mean, obviously not as a

teacher, not sneaking away, but going

back. Right. And yeah, just make them

talk. It's just you want

to ask that question of.

It's just basic human skills that we do

with just social skills that we need to

do. Just bring them in the classroom. I

can't believe we already spent 40 minutes

on the first question.

All right, what's next? The

conversations really go good.

This is a good question. The moment you

knew this works, what was that one moment

that convinced you this is how kids

really acquire

language, not just memorize it?

And is there a student or a class that

you're never forget?

This is not going to be the first moment.

I got to think about that one. But that

girl that I mentioned this year, right?

She's leaning over. Oh, oh, I can. Okay.

So there was a kid last year too. Right

from day one, they're leaning over to

their friends for everything. What did

she say? What did she

say? What did she say?

And now she's writing here we are. What

we've been in school for eight weeks with

a whole lot of holidays and professional

days in there, too, actually. So lots of

four day weeks and five day weeks. And

she's she can write half a page in 10

minutes of meaningful information about

her life or about the story. How cool is

that? I had another kid last

year. That's the same thing.

At the end of the year, he's the same.

And then at the end of the year, I was

marking their final writings. And I was

reading one. I'm like, this is fantastic.

This is absolutely fantastic. It was so

beautiful. I took up my phone and I

actually took a picture of it and my

exemplary work. And then I learned the

name. I'm like, I'm gonna be kidding.

It's him. Right? Like just it's this

growth is beautiful.

And they start speaking up for their

friends. And I'm just like, wow, you are

just leaned in and this is beautiful. So

so that's I mean, how can that not

convince you? I've had kids who can grow

with grammar, too. But you know what? The

kid that stands out who really grew up,

like super, super grammy.

He was with me for grammar. He was with

Adriana, a real parent for his other ELL

block. He had two ELL blocks. He was he

was teaching ELL in our school at that

time, too. So he was with me for his

grammar block. And

then he was with her for

for TPRS style English block. And he was

listening to music in English. And he was

doing all this stuff. I'm like, he's

growing so well. I must be an amazing

team. Like, well, no, I'm like the

smallest piece of that.

He'd be late to my class because he's

still writing her story for a for a quick

break. He's like, I gotta get more in.

And then he would tell me about it. I'm

like, oh, he grew so much.

Like, no, that was not me.

I would say for me, she was I'm sorry,

she was so kind and gracious with my

approach back then. She said, you should

try this. Yes, yes, I should.

She is amazing. She is amazing. The thing

for me was like that second semester I

taught in a school that majority Asian

kids, 80 percent Asian and most of them

were fresh off the plane Asians.

And so there is like no interaction with

the textbook. It was just boring

crickets. It was boring. They did their

work, but they you know, nothing really

happened with it. There's no growth. But

then second semester, I couldn't get them

to shut up on a speaking quiz. You know,

I only wanted 30 seconds. No, five

minutes set. I'm like, okay, we need to

move on. I need to be able to get to the

next kid. You've said enough.

And I don't know. It was my first year

teaching. So I didn't even know what a

clock was. So I'm like, my second year

teaching, like, why don't I just set a

timer? And when the timer goes off, they

have to stop. I never thought of that. I

just kept letting them talk. And I have

some kids talk for seven minutes. Some

kids talk for eight minutes. And I'm

like, that was just a matter of weeks

between first semester and second

semester. What was happening because of

this? So that said to me, this works. I

got kids to be able to actually talk and

not shut up. That was the big thing.

And then is there a student or that I'll

never forget there is he I had an amazing

kid. He was amazing. I had him in Spanish

class. But in our school, we had

something called enrichment or

intervention. Couldn't think of another

word. Enrichment intervention. So kids

who had poor grades in a class, they were

pulled in for intervention. But as a

school, we're like, well,

what do we do with the other 85?

85% of the kids who didn't need that

intervention. Well, that was where

enrichment. So teachers would choose

whether they were going to do a

enrichment or a intervention class. And

we made sure that classes like math and

English were on opposite week. So they

weren't trying to pull the same kids.

Well, in Spanish, I didn't have very many

interventions. So I did my intervention

maybe once every every other month, I did

it probably there. But I did a lot of

enrichment. A lot of teachers would

choose fun enrichment things didn't have

to even be with your

with what you taught.

Like some did kid teachers like films,

they did film studies in class, they'd

watch a movie during this time, this

block of an hour and a half, they would

do a film study about it. So all

different kinds of enrichment that kids

would like to want to go to

if they have good intervention.

Well, I did one time, I did TPRS, but in

German, for we didn't have a German

class. So for kids who want to learn

another language, I thought maybe this

would be fun. Well, this kid picked up. I

mean, this is only an hour and a half.

This is only an hour and a half one

class. And I did it for four weeks in a

row. So you're talking about an hour and

a half times four, but space seven days

apart from each other. And he was picking

up the German endings, like you wouldn't

believe not just the verb endings, but

the adjective endings.

And unlike, you know, French or Spanish,

where the adjective endings, you know,

are relatively consistent in German, they

change depending on if it's a noun. I'm

sorry, if it's a subject, if it's an

indirect object, if it's an indirect

object, or it's showing

possession, the endings change.

Same ones. And then you got gender to

worry about as well on there. So and we

have three genders in German. So it gets

really complicated. But he was picking up

on them just from hearing it. Because we

didn't do any of the normal stuff. We

were just doing oral stories. We didn't

do any readings. We didn't do anything

else. We just did story after story after

story. So he had no answering questions.

No, I mean, like writing them down. No

reading. He was just hearing the stories

and he was picking up on these endings.

And I'm like, this is what it's all

about. I mean, obviously, he was a

talented language acquirer. But it just

shows that no grammar was needed. I

didn't explain what a direct what

genitive case was a nominative case were.

And you know, all the different cases

that we have in German, I had to explain

any of that his ear is picking up on the

endings. And it was so that kind of those

two things together. And they were

decades apart from each other, because

that kid was maybe

seven or eight years ago.

And then the other thing happened in

2002. So you know, it's a long time

apart. But those are two big things that

say this works, what we're doing actually

is working. And it's

just powerful that way.

I love it. I love it.

Now we are getting towards the end. So I

let's see this fight try to find a good

motivational question that we can get

other teachers involved here.

What would you shout out to teachers

still stuck in the textbook? What do you

wish you could tell every teacher who's

scared to ditch the worksheets? What big

myth or do you wish that you could just

erase forever something that gets them

unstuck from wherever they are because

they're here because they

have some kind of interest in CI.

They may not made the jump yet. What's

something that you can help them feel

more safe and secure

about making the leap?

Yeah, so we've got different

personalities, right? There's some of us.

I laugh when in your intro, you talk

about that Pinterest. Perfect lesson.

That is not my losses.

No, it's not my style.

I dream of being that teacher. I am not

that teacher. I never will be that

teacher and I don't need to be that

teacher. Absolutely. There are some

people I think they're really gifted at

that and it's beautiful.

That's that's great. It's not me.

So we've got those teachers. So you might

the people listening, we might have

somebody out there who's like, I want it

to look perfect. I want to be perfect

before. And we won't

mention any names like Adriana.

She's amazing. Just.

That's the person I want to grow up to

be. Yeah, me too.

Yeah, I'm already older.

Older. And then and then there's the

people who are a little bit more

adventurous and they're willing to just

jump in. I would say like just if you're

more tentative, if you're you're scared,

you're like, I can't make the perfect

lesson, but I want to try sort of some of

this stuff. Just

bring the questioning in.

Right. So when you're when you're doing

the reading from the textbook, whatever

it is, bring in your circling questions,

stretch it out beyond, find out what

those vocabulary look at your look at

your reading. There's probably a million

vocabulary words that are going to be out

of bounds for your students.

And of course, we want to teach them

every single one of those. But two ones

that are important. Bring them in your

conversation like all week, make them a

part of just things that come up. How can

you you've got those words in your mind?

Like, how can I sneak that word in this

into the conversation? How can I sneak

this word into a question? How can we

bring this up? And for or the topic,

because of course, it's the

comprehension, it's got to be meaningful.

So like my my earlier when I talked about

I have this one article in my mind, where

it talks about Marie and Pierre Curry as

an example. It's for verb tense, of

course, it's got nothing to do with

radioactivity or amazing discoveries of

reading. But it's, it's about verb tense.

But how can I bring that in, you know,

and it talks about horse and a carrot. He