Teaching with Comprehensible Input means balancing fast processors, slow processors, and advanced students without losing your mind.

Take the CI Proficiency Quiz to assess where you are in your CI journey: https://imim.us/ciquiz.

In this episode of Comprehend THIS!, we talk about differentiation in CI classrooms, pacing challenges, and how to keep everyone engaged with one solid lesson.

Want ready-to-use CI resources that support all learners? Check out the CI Survival Kit: https://imim.us/kit.

#comprehensibleinput, #differentiation, #CIteaching, #languageteacherpodcast, #languageacquisition, #teacherhumor, #CIclassroom, #worldlanguageteaching, #studentprocessing, #comprehendthis

Hosts:

• Scott Benedict - https://www.instagram.com/immediateimmersion
• Pamela Parks - https://imim.us/pamela

Resources & Links:

• CI Survival Kit - https://imim.us/kit
• The Fastest Way to Fluency: TPRS 2.0 - https://imim.us/tprs2
• TPRS 2.0 is a Game Changer! - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YxVCi44CGzM&t=12s
• Dr. Shelly Moore, with her discussion of unpacking standards - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7j0oL1CNXAs
• Apples to Apples Game - https://drive.google.com/file/d/1wvNKrq-hat7JD_h1xENSXoovSaA-so8F/view?usp=sharing
• My Blookets that teach the students how to yell at each other in the TL
• https://dashboard.blooket.com/set/64d925a9ff6f69f302615592 - Spanish
•  https://dashboard.blooket.com/set/64d9201bff6f69f30261551c - French
•  https://dashboard.blooket.com/set/67f73bbe9502e4c3ebe8bbe5 - Japanese

Join the Conversation:

Got thoughts or your own story? Share it in the comments or tag us @ImmediateImmersion!

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Connect with Scott:

Host: Scott Benedict — Immediate Immersion

🌐 https://immediateimmersion.com

📧 Scott@immediateimmersion.com

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Hello and welcome to episode number 25.

Can't believe I'm

doing 25 episodes already.

We're almost at a

year going through this.

So okay, quick poll.

Who has a class where one kid is still

processing the sentence from yesterday?

Another kid answered before you finished

talking and then there's

that kid reading a novel

in week two.

Yeah, same.

Today's episode is CI with fast

processors, slow processors

and that kid who's reading

novels in week two because

differentiation in CI is

real, necessary and occasionally

unhinged.

I'm joined by Pamela Parks and we're

talking about how to keep

everyone engaged without

planning six different

lessons or losing your mind.

If your classroom processing speed looks

like rush hour traffic,

this one's for you and

we'll be right back

after these short messages.

To comprehend this, real

talk for real language teachers.

No drills, no dry theory, just honest

stories, practical ideas

and a reminder you're not

alone in the CI trenches.

Let's dive in.

And welcome back Pamela.

She has been a steady.

We're happy to have you.

We're happy to have you.

So today we're talking about

differentiation, which is a buzzword, but

I think it's an actual,

unlike many buzzwords we have, I think

this one is one of

the more valuable ones.

Oh absolutely.

And actually just to put traditional

teaching up on the block

right now on the thing doesn't

really differentiate very much.

And they say that 4% that number comes

around a lot, that 4% of

the people can learn that

way.

And I mean, I learned that way.

It's not where I got my oral proficiency

from, but I did learn that way.

But when you figure out 4% of a class of

about 35 kids, it's one kid.

It is one kid.

That stinks.

And that's not differentiation, teaching

just to one kid and

no, if an administrator

knew that, they would say

you need to take that away.

You can't be teaching that way to teach

only to one kid to the

exclusion of the others.

And so hopefully today our audience will

come away with strategies

and techniques to differentiate

without having to reinvent the wheel,

without having to plan multiple lessons.

I mean, for many of our teachers who

teach lesser taught

languages, which sadly is even

now French nowadays, they are the sole

teacher and have to teach all the preps.

So you teach Japanese and French and

Japanese and Spanish.

So you are the queen of preps.

I would go crazy.

I am not writing 20 million

lessons for the same thing.

I need to import my

differentiation into every lesson.

And actually, that's why I turned to

game-based learning, because

games have the differentiation

built right in.

And I'll explain that as we do.

They do, actually.

And I will say I've not had to teach--

well, one year I did

teach all the levels, level

one, two, and three, plus what we called

level 1B, which was

for the kids who failed

level one, but we didn't want to keep

them with the sixth

graders, because they were

seventh and eighth graders.

And there's just too much of a maturity

gap between sixth

graders and seventh graders.

So those were the challenging students.

I had quite a few challenges.

I've got a lot of repeats for my Spanish

class who took it in middle school.

And then they come to high school, and

they want to retake level one.

And then I've got the seniors who want to

take Spanish level one, too.

So yeah.

That's not the

challenging I'm talking about.

Oh, yeah.

I've had those classes, too.

I had a kid who ended

up in an ankle bracelet.

Oh, yeah.

I've had that.

A eighth grader who

attempted murder on his sister.

Oh, OK.

That's challenging.

Yeah, that was challenging.

Yeah, he came in the very first day and

he started cussing

before class even started.

He first period, he started cussing.

He's like, I ain't going

in that bleeping classroom.

I'm not going in there

with those bleeping kids.

I'm like, what the heck?

I'm like, usually at least it's three or

four days in before

you start this kind of

behavior. Oh, no.

That was the first day I had another kid

who jumped in the garbage can and

sang the ABCs in English.

Jumped in the garbage can.

OK, yeah.

So that was sweet.

Yeah, very challenging and lots of

differentiation needed in that class.

So, yes, it was I've done all of them and

what I tended to do, and I don't know if

you do the same thing, but I like to

teach parallel lessons.

So same content and ratcheting it up or

down depending on the level so that my

sanity is there.

So I like that one B.

I'm still teaching what I would have

taught in my level one class.

I'm just taking three weeks to teach it

instead of one week to teach it.

That same lesson and using similar story.

And this is why common

formative assessments.

We've got a push in my district that

everyone needs to be

giving the same common

formative assessment on the same day.

And if you do that, first of all, it's no

longer a formative assessment.

But secondly, I've got

two Spanish one classes.

They're not on the same level.

I can't do that on the same day.

And so this push to March lockstep is

like you were saying,

the district doesn't

understand differentiation.

Yeah, they they like to spout it, but

then they don't

understand and they want us to

be all robots.

And if you want a robot, you know, you

can go ahead and hire

a or Rosetta Stone and

just go ahead.

I've seen districts do that.

Use Rosetta Stone.

Rosetta Stone came to all the districts

in Washington state

and said, hey, you could

save money by firing your teachers and

just having a computer lab.

Wow.

That's why one of us language teachers in

Washington state will

even touch Rosetta Stone.

Just ignoring the fact that it's only

like it's it's not very

rigorous and it doesn't

make any sense.

And it's only the Pimsler method, you

know, but at any rate,

yeah, not a good company.

No, absolutely not.

Absolutely not.

And if that's what you really want for

your kids, then that's

not doing the best for the

kids, but that's on you.

But when you have human teachers in

there, we are not the same.

And that's what brings the classroom

experience to the kids.

If you want a robot, the kids are not

going to be engaged.

They're not going to do that.

And I'm not necessarily against comative

formative assessments, but doing

everything on the same

day.

I want to have, OK, by fifth week of

school, we need to do some

sort of assessment measured

the same standard and so we can compare

apples to apples, a same

proficiency based formative

assessment, not one that says can they do

adjective agreement.

Right.

Exactly.

Because that's not that that's not that's

that's something completely different.

But can the kids understand this story

that has adjectives in it?

That is one.

But we don't have to

give it on the same day.

You know, at the same point, like I know

my kids in period three

will be ready two weeks

after my kids in period one

will be ready for that test.

And so if we say here's a by date, we

have to have it done by

because my first one, my

middle school really did this well.

We always had by dates.

So we want to have

this done by this date.

You find the best time to give it to your

students and I

wouldn't necessarily give it

in the same like I wouldn't give it the

same day for all my classes.

But I would be it would be very, you

know, by the certain

date so we can compare data.

That was the point of that date in there.

And we were really flexible with that.

We kind of go, oh, my kids

aren't really right there.

OK, let's let's shift it up a week.

You know, we were very flexible, but we

weren't doing it on the same day.

But you like you say that lock step.

A lot of administrators are now saying

that they want you to be

on unit two page two lesson

three of that thing on the same day.

So if a kid happens to switch that day in

the middle of the

period, they will not be

lost or behind or ahead or anything else.

And that I that I just find to be.

Well, this is the you touched on this a

couple of seconds ago

when you were talking about

the standards and everything.

And this is something that if you're not

a language teacher, you don't understand.

Our standards are really descriptors.

OK, there are what can

you do with the language?

There is no standard in the world that

says all Spanish one

students need to be able to

say the pencil is yellow.

Yeah. Who cares about that?

OK, it's what can you do with the

language that you have?

And so what we are looking for is totally

different than, hi,

I'm a math teacher and

the students need to know how to take the

differential equation of this thing.

You know, it's different because we're

building in relevance to our students.

We're working with whatever organic

language comes up with them.

And we want to know that can they produce

language in an authentic way?

That's not this rote memorization of say

the pencil is yellow.

Yeah, exactly.

Because I think a lot of the times there

are a few exceptions,

but a lot of the standards

and other disciplines are more concrete.

They're more objective.

Can they do this or not?

Where ours are more subjective.

Now English will have some subjective

ones about can they

write a persuasive essay,

that kind of thing.

But it still is a much more it's much

more on the objective

side than ours are because

ours are skill based and

can they do this skill or not?

So it's not like a fact they can't study

for because my kids always do retakes.

I'm like, you can't retake.

It's a skill.

If you can't dribble a basketball today,

just if I give you another opportunity to

dribble a basketball

tomorrow, doesn't mean you can do it.

You've got to build up that skill first.

It's a progressive skill.

Yes, exactly.

Yeah.

So the first thing that absolutely it was

a light bulb moment

for me and dovetails into

this whole discussion.

This was several years ago.

Now normally I teach over the summer.

I enjoy teaching and I'll be the summer

school teacher and stuff.

And one of my friends asked me, she's

like, oh, there's this great conference.

It's online going on.

And it's about special ed.

And I was like, yeah,

sure, I'll do that with you.

And as the day got closer,

I was like, I'm teaching.

I don't have time for this conference.

And I was just about to blow it off.

And I thought, well, maybe I'll turn it

on in the background

while I do the dishes or

something.

But I'm so glad I didn't blow it off

because Dr. Shelley Moore was there.

Dr. Shelley Moore is out of

Canada and a special ed teacher.

And she had this beautiful analogy.

And she said, oh, I went to school.

I can't do it justice.

All right.

I'll give you for the show notes.

I'll give you the link to her little five

minute video where she also explains it.

She says, I went to school because I love

making baked potatoes.

So I went to culinary art school and I

learned how to make

the perfect baked potato.

And it was absolutely like so delicious,

fluffy, melt in your

mouth and everything.

And I come into school to feed it to my

students and I give them all this

beautiful baked potato.

And it's lovingly fluffed and it's got

the butter in it and

it's got chives sprinkled

on top and some bacon bits.

And my first student says, I'm lactose

intolerant and you put butter in here.

And my second student

says, I'm a vegetarian.

I can't eat these bacon bits.

And my other my third student says, I

don't touch vegetables

and you sprinkle chives on

the top of you.

I don't want this.

You know, and suddenly it made

understanding the standards and

differentiations made total

sense to me.

And I'm not doing it justice.

She tells a great story.

But she always talks about

what is your baked potato?

What is the absolute minimum that the

students need to know?

This is the skill that they need to know.

I thought she was genius too.

They need to know this, the stuff that

they sprinkle on top,

the butter, the chives, the

bacon bits, whatever else, the stuff they

sprinkle on top, that's

going to make it relevant

to the student.

That's all bonus.

So if you've got your high flyer who is

using transition words

between sentences, yay, that's

great.

But all I really wanted was for you to

have a subject and a verb.

And today we're working on

adverbs or, you know, whatever.

That's my baked potato.

And if you're doing

more with that, hooray.

That's the differentiation.

And I love that analogy.

That is an incredibly accurate analogy.

I love it.

You reminded me of something when I don't

assess explicit

grammar anymore, but in my

early career I did.

But I was not the teacher.

I was trying to find a better way to do

it because the normal

way that teachers do it

is they give you credit and then they

start taking half

points off because you missed

an accent mark or you

didn't do this or that.

And I flipped it.

So I said, what was my minimal, viable

answer that I wanted?

So like you said, a subject and a verb.

Maybe that's all I wanted, right?

That was the minimum.

So if you did that, you got it right.

But if you put some more words in there,

plus a half a point.

If you got it all spelled

correctly, plus a half a point.

So you weren't losing points.

You were earning bonus points for being

more accurate or more detailed.

And this is game-based learning because

in a video game,

Mario's getting the coins.

He's not losing coins.

So you're all, yes.

And the more advanced you are, the

better, the more

coins you're going to get.

And this is long before I even thought

about game-based

teaching, but it flipped it so

that the average kids, the struggling

kids could still be

successful because they're

showing.

But it also allowed my superstars to get,

I got seven bonus

points and they like to show

that.

Because I had a principal three

principals ago who hated extra credit.

And I had this long, like year-long

argument with him, why I

should continue to give extra

credit.

Look, the high flyers who have 102% in my

class, they're not

competing with the other

students.

They're competing with themselves.

They're pushing themselves to get that

100, oh, can I get to 103%?

That's not taking anything away from the

students who are

struggling and need a little more

scaffolding.

Okay.

So, like, that's, I think that's crucial.

Yeah.

And for me, the idea of extra credit is

not doing another

assignment to make up for an

assignment you did poorly on.

Not making up for

something that they missed.

It's hey, you impressed me.

I'm going to reward you

for going above and beyond.

Exactly.

That's an all different philosophy than

okay, you didn't do

this tough assignment.

I'm going to let you do this easy

assignment to make up for.

No, that's the kind of excret that the

kids always think about

when they think of the

word extra credit.

I'm like, you got to earn the original

credit before you can

get the extra credit.

Exactly.

But it is the icing

on top, like you said.

It is the icing.

It's icing on the cake.

It's icing on the top.

And it's funny because there is a, I'm

going to see if I can

find it while we're talking.

I have an image of a, it uses a cupcake

as a explanation, but

it's a, if I can find it,

it's an example of explaining how a

rubric works to kids

where kids can understand it

in a way that makes

sense right off the bat.

Where is this?

My cupcake thing.

See if I just do a Google search.

Search for my cupcake thing.

Yeah.

Hey, it worked.

I found it.

Oh, wow.

It worked. It worked.

Sometimes the needle in

the haystack is right there.

I mean, I have my stuff pretty much

organized, but when I'm on

the spot and don't know, I

don't know exactly where I put it.

It takes me a minute.

Let's see.

I want to make an image of this, but this

really helps understand.

Go ahead.

Yeah.

Okay.

Go ahead.

No, no.

I was just going to say I put over my

desk, a picture of

Albert Einstein's desk when he

died to remind myself it's okay for my

desk to be really messy

because my computer is

super organized.

My students are always there.

They're laughing hysterically because

they'll ask a question

and I'll be like, "Hold on,"

and I'll just pull up that lecture that I

have in my back pocket

because my computer's

so organized.

Yeah.

My computers are ... My

classroom is organized too.

I use all my organization skills at

school and have none.

If you saw my desk right now, I'm sitting

at ... I'm embarrassed,

completely embarrassed.

Okay.

Here it is.

Let me put this on the screen.

I'll cover my face up.

This really helps them

understand what the rubric is.

I just like to make a

mistake though, but it's a cupcake.

Yeah.

Yeah, it's a cupcake.

This isn't much differentiation.

Just help them

understand rubrics so they know.

They're mist when it's still a little wet

and it's not really holding its shape.

That's a one or two because we were on IB

Rubrics, so we had up through eight.

Then you got a fully formed cupcake.

It's fully formed, perfect as a three,

four, and then a five, six.

You put some frosting on it.

Then seven, eight, you

went above and beyond.

You put sprinkles,

you put a candle on it.

The kids really understood this a lot

better than even an ABCD

type situation because they

can go in there because I go, "Why didn't

I get a seven or eight

on it or an A on this?"

I go, "Well, did you

really go above and beyond?

Did you?"

This is so funny.

I don't do projects anymore,

but when I did, I was so evil.

I was so evil to my students because you

know how you always

keep the good projects?

I always had examples of good projects.

What I did is-

Oh, you saved the student work.

Yeah, I saved the student

work, the good projects.

I had examples.

I had the Rubric.

I didn't have this cupcake

idea, so I didn't have that.

I just told them, "You got to go above

and beyond to get the good grades."

I go, "This is what I saved."

They're like, "What did that one get?"

I think that was a C, and

it was an A plus, right?

An A plus.

I would do that every year.

I did it every year.

You're so evil.

But you know what I got?

I got some of the best projects ever.

In fact, one, I had this

one that was really good.

She made a marionette.

Remember those little brass fasteners

that you used to do

where you could make joints

with paper?

She made a whole body with joints on it

and then labeled all

the parts, like the little

arm was a brothel and

the cabe that she did that.

Okay, so this is a body parts project?

Yeah, it was body parts.

Okay.

I go, "Oh, this was a C. She could have

done so much more with this.

Why wasn't it three-dimensional?

Why was it more colors in there?"

I just went off on it, right?

Here's what I got.

This is what I got from a kid after that.

It was a body, but it was cut in half.

On the one side, it had skin and all the

regular body parts were labeled.

On the other side, it

looked like an anatomy lesson.

Did they do those bones?

The bones, the muscles, the organs, and

labeled all of those.

Wow.

Remember that art piece, science piece,

the body exhibit that toured?

Yeah, the plasticine bodies.

This is what it looked

like way before that came out.

I'm like, "I would never have gotten that

if I had said this

little marionette thing

that she did was an A."

But I did that every year.

I took that one the next year and I go,

"This might have gotten a B-."

I do do projects because I like my games.

For body parts for my

class, it is "Bonjour."

I do "Muniekas Kitapenas."

I show them, I have on the board big

pictures of me with my

hands close up so they can see

what I'm doing and I'm

doing in front of them.

I take pipe cleaners and I bend it around

and I say, "Una Cabeza."

I only teach Espanol Uno.

I only need them to say the basic stuff.

Then I've got yarn and after they make

their little pipe cleaner

form, they can wrap whatever

colors they want around it.

We could talk about da cara, los ojos,

unaris, and they can draw

that on with a marker or

whatever.

For me, the project is I don't really

care if you come up with

a really stupid looking

character as long as you're speaking in

Espanol the whole time.

If I hear you speak English, that's it.

The score is can you speak Spanish for

the whole hour that we do this?

My baked potato is speaking Spanish.

It doesn't have to be grammatical.

The ad chips don't have to match the

nouns because at that

point they don't even know

very many ad chips other than grande and

pequeño and all that.

They're so engaged in making the little

figure that they're

trying harder to talk to their

friends and they know their colors so

they can say, "Oh,

amarillo, amarillo," and they

can point to it and I'm like, "Yeah,

you're speaking in Spanish.

Good."

I walk around with a clipboard and I

pretend to grade them,

but really all I'm listening

for is did you speak English right now?

Yeah.

I like what you talked about even last

week and you brushed

upon it today too, that you

give them that language so that they can

communicate with each other on the

activity on there instead

of assuming that they

can come up with their own.

I think we do that a lot in teaching.

We assume.

I made a mistake years ago, years ago

when I had them write a

... I was my native speaker,

so that's like English

class but in Spanish.

I asked them to write a paper using

double space, double space of paper.

I thought these are sophomores.

You've had to have written a double space

paper by now in one class or another.

They didn't know what it meant, double

space, and they didn't ask me.

I assumed they knew, but this is what

they turned into me,

word, space, space, word,

space, space, word, space, space, word.

They didn't realize it meant I need to

leave a space between

the lines so I have room to

write comments.

It was just so funny.

My supervisor at the time

was an ex-English teacher.

He goes, "You've got to be so graphic

when you explain these

things because you can't

assume that they

understand and what they know."

We do that a lot.

We get into high school.

We assume they know how to behave in a

classroom because they've

already spent nine years there

before they get to us as

freshmen, but they don't.

You have to tell them.

That was one of the big shifts in my

classroom management

techniques was, "Duh, I didn't

tell them what it looked

like to behave in my classroom."

They didn't know.

I just said, "You need to behave.

You need to make smart choices."

They didn't know what those things were.

You were what a smart choice was.

Exactly.

You were absolutely right.

Differentiation, super easy to do with

chat mats or any kind

of scaffold that you hand

out your students.

Or I have the students ... We're using

interactive notebooks this year.

I'm experimenting with interactive

notebooks and I'm really liking them.

I have them write things down in their

interactive notebooks.

I'll hand them a handout.

I've got things projected on the board,

all the sentence frames

that they need, and the

major vocabulary words.

Okay, now your high flyers, they're going

to take the paper you

give them and they're

going to throw it in their backpack and

they're never going to look at it.

For total of the road students, they just

need something in their

hands to feel confident.

Or they need to know

that's up there on the board.

Oh yeah, that's right.

That's where the word wall is.

They just need to know and they'll glance

at it, but it's mostly

just to reassure themselves.

The students who really need the

scaffolding, they might

be reading off the board.

They might be reading off their notes.

That's okay.

They have chosen the level

of scaffolding that they need.

It wasn't any extra work on my part.

It's there for everyone and the students

self-select what layer level of

scaffolding they're going

to use.

It's not cheating to have the notes

because what we want,

what we're checking for is,

can you put the words

together in an authentic way?

Can you communicate?

If the words coming out of your mouth are

understandable by another student, that's

what we care about.

Absolutely.

I'm going to share something with you.

You said chat mats, but

something I have learned recently.

When I heard, I don't know if you've

heard of this app before

or not, but Notebook LM,

which is a Google app.

I've heard of it.

When I thought it really was, I thought

it was a note taking out

because I'm always looking

for better ways to take notes.

That's what I thought that this was.

But it's not.

I watched an online video

that explained what it does.

I was like, "Oh, this

is freaking genius."

Here's an example.

I'm just downloading it right now of

something I've created to

make some kind of chat mats

and vocab stuff for them.

I go through my textbook unit and I make

infographics based on the vocab.

In each unit, we have

four sections of vocabulary.

Each page has got one of the vocabulary

and then whatever grammar topics I find.

Here is one I made.

I try to make it really fun for my kids.

This is one I made for the vocabulary of

unit four, adjectives.

All I do is I put a list of

my vocabulary into Notebook LM.

I just copy and paste it.

Then I tell it to make an infographic

with all the vocabulary,

with the English translations.

Then I tell it what kind of theme I want.

It could just be a basic cartoon, but my

kids respond better

when it's things they know.

I've made, this is South Park.

I've made The Simpsons.

I've made Spider-Man, Batman, whatever

can be to make it much more interesting.

I'll print these out.

I did that sort of stuff on my own.

It would have taken me hours to this.

It took a matter of 10 minutes and that

was for them to do it.

I just copied and pasted and told I just

had to wait for it to get done.

That really made a really

good reference point for them.

For your interactive, they could paste

this into their Notebook easily.

Here's one for activities that I did.

This is B2.

Download, save.

This one I did Snoopy.

It's got all of that in there.

Let me see if I have another one.

You must have a color printer.

We just got one.

Not a printer.

A color copy machine.

We got a color copy machine.

Wow.

I choose my pictures so that they'll copy

nicely in black and white.

I used to do it that way too.

You could tell, if that's what you

wanted, you could tell

Notebook LM to make it all

black and white for you so

that it takes that into effect.

We have this color and technically we're

not supposed to use

that much color, but guess

what?

You default that way.

When I send stuff over to the printer,

you defaulted to color.

Oops, I didn't change the setting.

Not my fault.

Exactly.

Here's what I did for present tense.

Where is it?

PPP present tense.

That is cute.

What?

Did it download?

I'm a nerd.

The whole reason I became a professional

translator in my younger

days was because I wanted to

read more comic books.

You got me in my sweet spot.

Here's one with SpongeBob and teaching

how to use conjugations.

I teach all three

conjugations simultaneously.

I don't do the ERIR.

I don't do it that way.

I do it from the third person singular.

This is what's explaining it this way.

This is great scaffolding for kids

because they have access

to this and it allows them,

the chat mats, the different things.

I have some other ones that I've made

that aren't as creative as this.

I use Canva to make them and they've got

all this stuff in it just

like these do, but those

are not as interesting to the kids as

these are and it allows them to scaffold.

You were talking about where they can

self-choose their level of scaffolding.

One of the things I do is I will write,

let's get these off my screen now.

I write a story or I'll take a piece of

literature because one of

my favorite things is just

because they're level one, I don't think

they should not be exposed to Don Quixote

since it's such a major influence in the

whole Western world.

It was the first Western novel.

It was written during the rest of

Europe's dark age, but it

was the golden age for Spanish.

On top of that, the kids don't ... I go,

"You've heard of this.

You just don't know you've heard of it

because they reference it all the time."

There's comments about

tilting it windmills.

That's how women broke

you need to understand.

Yes.

Here's what I do with that.

I show them there's a Lexus commercial

from many years ago

where a kid is in this car

seat and he's looking up at windmills and

looking at the car and

looking up at the windmills.

That is a acknowledgement to that story.

I explain in the story, I go, "Here's the

basics of the story.

This guy dresses up like a knight in

shining armor trying to fix

problems that aren't really

problems.

It's a comedy."

They don't really understand that.

I go, "Think of it like this."

I go, "Think of it like this.

You got Spider-Man pajamas and you now go

around the city and

you try to solve crimes

and be a crime fighter because you are

now dressed up as Spider-Man.

Are you really Spider-Man?

You're not."

Then they get the understanding.

I take that little spot where he's

fighting in the

windmills, that little section.

It's only a paragraph and it's written in

what I call Shakespearean Spanish.

It's old and it uses a lot of words that

we don't use anymore.

I take that.

Then I write four levels of that.

I get it down to four

sentences that are really basic.

The embedded readings from--

Price Pedstrom.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I do those and then it gets me--

It's a total of five levels total to get

them to the original.

They eventually get to

the actual original one.

I'm like, "You just read a section of

what they teach in

college as an entire class,

this novel, one novel

for an entire class."

Native speakers, my friend

just took it a couple years ago.

She's from Argentina.

She goes, "It was the hardest class."

She goes, "I speak the dang language."

She goes, "It was just a really hard

class and understanding all the nuances."

I do those kinds of things and I'll

staple the whole packet together.

Easiest on top, hardest on the bottom.

I say, "Don't go for

the easiest one for you.

Look through them and find one that's

easy but a bit

challenging and start there."

That's I plus one.

That's just outside of your comfort zone,

zone of proximal development.

That is a foundational

theory of language acquisition.

You gotta be just

outside of your comfort zone.

Absolutely.

I get a formative assessment right off

the bat without ever

looking at their answers

because if they chose the first one, I

know they either lack

confidence or lack skill.

It gives me right off the bat, then I

gotta do some more

differentiation to figure out

which one they are because it's different

approach to fix the issue.

If they start at the middle one, I've got

another idea that they went in the middle

one.

Once I know what level they chose for

themselves, then I look at

the answers to find out if

it's confidence or skill.

Because if they're still struggling in

the answers, then I

know it's skill they chose

it based on there.

If they're nailing every answer, it's

confidence that they're having a problem.

But I didn't do anything.

That's the other foundational theory of linguistics.

Here's another.

Now it's chat GPT.

I said I don't use it to create things.

I use it as an assistant.

I already have the Don Quixote or if it's

my own story that I

wrote, I will then ask

chat GPT to give me four differentiated

levels starting with just the basics.

I tell it, and if I don't like what I

get, I tell it to redo it.

I don't like that one or I didn't like

the second one it did.

I don't have to create each

differentiation anymore.

I can have chat GPT go

through and come up with that.

I wrote the story.

It's just coming up with the variations

because I'm a busy teacher.

My friend always used to say when it

comes to classroom jobs,

anything that doesn't require

a college degree,

delegate out to students.

You don't need a college degree to

simplify a writing, a

reading that they're going to

do.

I delegated to chat GPT because I could

be better used my time

coming up with other readings

or stories for that.

It's another way to differentiate.

Sorry to monopolize

right here at this moment.

Oh, no.

Another thing, and this happened live.

It was live on one of our

podcasts, I think it was.

They asked, they goes, "I'm having a

problem where I've

got," I can't remember.

It was a blind, I think it was blind,

some severe inhibition to

being able to teach language

because you need your eyes and your ears

really to be able to absorb the language.

I believe it was she was blind.

She goes, "I don't really know how to

help her understand

some of this stuff because

I'm so visual.

I got pictures, I've got

gestures, and she can't see that.

I don't know how to verbalize that."

She's not holding young.

What I did is, I knew one thing because I

use closed captions

because I'm an old person.

I use closed captions on TV because I

can't always understand.

Sometimes I hit the wrong one.

If you hit the descriptive ones, then you

get the ones that are

saying they are walking

from the left side of the screen to the

right side of the screen.

I said, "You have to

do that with a student."

That was my answer.

Then I said, "You know what?

I'm stumped beyond that.

I've not had a blind, I've had a deaf

student, but I've

never had a blind student."

We went into chat GPT and

said, "I'm a Spanish teacher.

I'm teaching level one.

I use a lot of gestures and images, but I

have a student who is blind.

Give me 10 different ways that I can

differentiate for this

student to make the language more

comprehensible for them."

It gave me a long list, and we read it

out loud in the podcast.

Not all of them worked well.

We excluded those completely

or generated some ideas for us.

We go, "Can you

elaborate more on that one?

That one sounds like a really good one."

When you're stumped, you can also use it

for brainstorming to come up

with ideas to differentiate.

You can tell it really ... You got to

give it the context.

You guys say, "I'm a busy teacher.

I have four different

preps that I need to do.

Can you help me with the least amount of

time effort to be able to do that?"

It comes up with some different things.

One of the things it said was if you get

the little food, for

example ... I had this when

I was younger as a teacher.

I got all the plastic foods.

You get the plastic.

You give it to her.

She can touch it.

She can feel it.

She can do that.

Bread.

Get actual ... Yeah, the real bread where

you can actually touch

Wonder Bread and feel

it and stuff like that.

Smell it and use those senses.

And also talked about

using all the senses.

What does it smell like?

What does it taste like to use those

other senses and things

you don't really think about?

You just don't think about ... That's

probably really good for

the other students too.

Yes, absolutely.

They can be learning their sensory words.

They can be learning how to say, "It

smells like, it feels

like, it tastes like ..." They

can learn all those things also along

with the students so that

the student doesn't feel

singled out.

The differentiation should be like that.

It should be ... This is for everyone.

It's just plain good teaching.

If you need the

scaffolding, you're going to take it.

If you don't, you're not.

That's exactly it.

I always say differentiation or teaching

for special needs,

things that you're supposed

to do for special needs students isn't

good just for the special needs students.

It is good for all students.

And then when I explain in workshops

about accommodations,

because they always think

that, "Well, we're

making it too easy for them.

We're making it ..." And I

don't look at it that way.

I go, "Here's what it is."

And I'm going to mess this phrase up, but

fair isn't always equal.

When I say glasses ...

I talk about glasses.

These aren't reading glasses.

These are blue light glasses that I use,

but I'm blind without my contacts in.

My contacts don't give me super sight.

They just bring me back to the

level that everybody else has.

When we do accommodations for kids, we're

just negating whatever

issue that they have.

We aren't giving them superpowers.

We're just negating.

My big thing is I hate in books when I

wish our CI authors

would listen to this a little

bit more.

They like to footnote the vocabulary at

the bottom of the page,

or worse yet, put it at

the back.

And I know they can't do it for

everything to put the words,

like I'm going to tell you,

because it'd be way too

much of a translation.

But when I put a word ... Like if I have

a reading on a test,

and I need a word, and

I know they don't know this word, I'll

put it in parentheses

right next to where they

needed it.

Because a lot of kids, especially

struggling readers, whether

it be from a special needs

issue or just their slow

readers, have trouble tracking.

It's got a little footnote.

They know to go to the bottom of the

page, and then they go

back and they lose where

was I.

And they got to reread that whole

section, where it's just

easier to have the parenthetical

right next to it and

help them through that.

That's not giving anybody superpowers.

It's making everybody on the same level

playing field that only my