Comprehensible Input teaching, CI strategies, and language teacher growth collide in Episode 20: “CI Forever? Evolving, Adapting, and Not Getting Stuck” for teachers wondering what comes after the switch.

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

Once CI routines are solid, it’s easy to slip into autopilot—this episode tackles how to stay curious, evolve your practice, and mentor others without turning CI into a rigid rulebook.

Want plug-and-play CI resources that actually work? Check out the CI Survival Kit: https://imim.us/kit.

#comprehensibleinput,#languageteachers,#CIteaching,#worldlanguages,#teacherpodcast,#CIclassroom,#proficiencybased,#teachCI,#teacherPD,#languageacquisition

Hosts:

1. Scott Benedict - https://www.instagram.com/immediateimmersion
2. Kayla Velasquez - https://www.instagram.com/srta_kaylavela

Resources & Links:

1. Assessment Academy - https://imim.us/academy
2. CI Survival Kit - https://imim.us/kit
3. NotebookLM - https://notebooklm.google.com
4. Gemini - https://gemini.google.com
5. ChatGPT - https://chatgpt.com

Join the Conversation:

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

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Host: Scott Benedict — Immediate Immersion

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Good morning everybody, how's everybody

doing this Sunday morning?

You ever look up mid class and realize

you're doing the same

thing you've done for the last

4 years but now on autopilot?

Yes, same.

Today on Comprehend This I'm joined by

the wonderful Caleb

Alaskas to talk about what

happens after you go CI.

When the novelty wears off, the routines

get comfy and you start wondering if this

is just how I teach now.

We're talking growth, curiosity, evolving

without losing your mind and how to avoid

becoming that CI teacher who hasn't

changed a thing since 2017.

If you've ever loved CI and felt a little

stuck, this one's for you.

We'll be right back

after these short videos.

Top Quiz Are your

assessments aligned with what you're

actually teaching?

No?

Cool, let's fix that.

The Assessment Academy is 10 pre-recorded

lessons that help you ditch the scantrons

and actually assess what matters.

Like proficiency, performance and whether

your students are

still breathing by Friday.

Watch on your time, as many times as you

want, for a whole year and

know there's not a single

lesson about bubble sheets

or grading 72 essays at 11pm.

You're welcome.

Head over to mm.us slash academy and

start assessing like

you actually mean it.

Welcome 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.

Good morning and welcome Kayla.

How are we doing this morning?

I'm doing great.

I got my Benito bowl shirt on.

I'm ready to go for later.

Oh, awesome, awesome, awesome.

Just remind some people about yourself a

little bit before we go

ahead and get started because

I know you've been on once before, but

they may not have seen

that episode or remember.

Sure.

So my name is Kayla Velasquez.

I am a Department of One Spanish teacher

in rural Wisconsin and I

have been in this position

for seven years and this is my 11th year

teaching and I've always

been a Department of One.

So I teach middle school exploratory and

Spanish one through four

at the high school and I

have been a CI teacher since pretty much

year one, year half of

my teaching career and we

have music every day.

We read a ton, lots of games, brain

breaks, stories,

co-creation and I love my job.

I love my kids.

I love seeing the progress that they make

and I enjoy sharing all

of that with my husband

and we live here with

our dog and two cats.

Awesome, awesome.

I have two dogs.

I have a 15 and a half year old who's a

little grumpy as he's

older and then I have a little

puppy that's on a year and a half.

So I'm feeling you with that.

Well, plus I have a lizard.

He's sleeping right now because it's

winter time but I have a

four and a half foot, you

can't even see on the screen, four and a

half foot lizard that I have here.

He's like a puppy dog.

But you're like me.

We have about the similar origin story.

I started with CI in my second semester

of my first year of

teaching so I've been teaching

a little longer.

I've always taught within a team but

sometimes I think that I

might want to be that solo

teacher.

Right now, my current situation, I teach

off the main campus at a

Career and Tech Academy.

So the kids get bused back and forth.

They take two classes at the Career and

Tech Academy if they

choose to take that path and

then two classes back at the main campus.

And one of those classes would be their

Career Academy class,

whether it be construction,

culinary or agriculture.

So they choose one of those and then I'm

one of their electives

that they have, the Spanish

over there.

So I kind of feel like I'm all by myself

over there and though I

still have to coordinate

with the main campus.

But I'm seeing some benefits of working

by myself sometimes.

And I'm more of an introvert, which you

wouldn't believe with what I do.

But I'm more of an introvert.

So I think I might, I know some teachers

say I hate being the

only one, but I think that

might not be a bad thing

in my retirement years.

I always say it's a blessing and a curse

because it's a lot of work.

It's a lot of responsibility.

I mean, I feel like I'm responsible for

their entire Spanish

acquisition journey or whatever

they have in middle

school and high school.

But at the same time, when I can see that

progress and I can

see, I can literally show

them growth from eighth grade through

senior year, that's extremely rewarding.

And I don't know if I

could ever give it up.

So I don't think I'm gonna.

That is the best part because I've had

that experience where

I've had kids for three years

because when I taught a middle school,

I'm at high school

right now, but when I taught

a middle school, we were

starting the program brand new.

So there was no language program.

So that first year was horrible for me

because I had never only

taught level one all day

long.

And so teaching six out of seven periods,

level one, I couldn't remember what I did

and what I hadn't done.

Did I already go over this with you?

I don't remember because I, you know,

it's repetitive so much.

I don't remember what I did.

I started putting a little sticky notes

with what I'm supposed to

cover and a little checkmark

for every period to make sure that I

covered that or didn't talk about that.

And then the second

year we added level two.

So at least I got some variety in there

and I had some kids

who I had in level one.

And then we did level three that third

year and I got some of those kids too.

And it is a really reward.

It's one of the reasons why I like

teaching level one because

not to be egotistical, but

I can see their growth.

And I know it's all what I did.

Yes.

And level two or level three, you know,

they had some other teacher experience.

So even if they came back to you and you

don't really know how

much of it, you know, their

acquisition pie, how much was your

ingredients and how much was

it someone else's ingredients?

And so I had that one year that I had

about six kids that I

had in level one, level two

and level three.

And I keep exemplar quickwrites.

So I always keep the

first one of the year.

I keep one from the middle of the year

and one from the last one they do.

So I make copies of them.

I give them back the

originals and I make copies.

So and I always have them compare.

So at the end of the year, I go, here's

your one of the first part of the year.

Here's one at the end.

Look at what has happened so you can

celebrate what you've done

because even though maybe

your word count didn't increase, like in

level three, word count

starts to stabilize on a

quickwrite because they're

writing more complex sentences.

So they're not writing, you know, it's

really easy to write

short, choppy sentences and

get 200 words.

Not so hard, not so easy when you're

writing more complex.

And then for some of those kids, they go,

I have your very

first quickwrite from when

you were a sixth

grader is when you wrote.

And the other kids are

like, do you have mine?

I'm like, why would I have yours?

You were at my teacher, you know, you

were at my student at the time.

But that's a really nice experience to be

able to see that

where these kids started.

And then three years later, because they

were sixth, seventh and

eighth graders, where they

ended up.

I think it's a really powerful thing.

And it really tests.

It's a testament to see if what you're

doing in the

classroom is actually working.

I keep portfolios in a similar way, too.

And it's cool because I that every

student in our building

who's taken Spanish has some

sort of record.

I kind of think of them as like a memory

folder in a way because I

keep every every writing

sample that they've ever done any and

then like fun little

things like if we'll do like

a plate sketch drawing and then it'll

turn out really funny or write draw pass.

And it's like a

particularly funny drawing.

And those will go in there just as like

memories of Spanish class.

And my hope is that when I give those

portfolios to the kids, when they

graduate, whether they

stuck through Spanish for they, you know,

stop at Spanish to at

some point, they look

at them and they're like, look what I was

able to do with a

second language at one point

in my life, whether they

continue with it or not.

And kind of just inspires them to either

pick it back up or continue with it.

And they can just see that

progress from themselves as well.

And you just reminded me of something

that my first school did 25 years ago.

And I did it during the time because it

was a required thing.

But I think it's really valuable.

And I think I might actually bring it

back and incorporate it

in my own classroom is

that idea of a portfolio.

But what was different was because they

were the kids were

supposed to contribute from

all their classes in this portfolio.

And it's really hard

if it's a physical one.

So we called it the electronic portfolio.

So they had to upload pictures and images

and evidence of different things.

And we had different prompts along the

way they could reflect upon, too.

So I think that's a really good idea to

be able to implement

back in my own classroom,

even if it's not for if I don't have the

kids for more than one

year, just a portfolio for

that year.

And because it's

digital, they can take it away.

We used to use like back in the day was

PowerPoint, but now we

can use Google Slides.

To put all that information in there and

make it, you know,

they can have it in there.

I think that's a really good idea.

I think I might I put it on my little

notes here for today

that I think I might start

looking at implementing

that for for next year.

It's fun because it acts

like a little time capsule.

And it's so cute because even the

freshmen at the end of

their freshman year will look

back at the beginning of freshman year.

And they're like, oh, my gosh.

So even though it's only been nine months

or something that's passed, they're like,

look, look, look, look.

Look how young I was.

A little I can write

and I look what I can do.

But then you add four years onto that and

that type of growth.

And it's just fun for them to be able to

see that because I

don't know how in other

contexts that anybody suggests doing that

for them or like

keeping track of those types

of things.

I know my mom always did that when I was

little, like she kept a

memory box of all of my

stuff and we'd go through it at like

frequent checkpoints in my life.

So I think that's just

something about me that I like.

Like I enjoy scrapbooking and and like

keeping I print out pictures.

I'm like the picture printer friend.

So I'm always like, oh, here I have a

stack of photos for you every few months.

So I think that's just part of my

personality coming

through in that way, too.

Yeah, I like that.

And I think it's like we

do that as a human beings.

You know, parents will put the little

growth chart like

they'll mark your height as you

grow up in the family

house and such like that.

And I think it is a real good thing.

And I don't think any other class is

really a good candidate

for that except maybe, you

know, music or drama.

But English, there's not a lot of growth

that you can show that

because they're already

fluent in the language and maybe their

essay may be more

refined, but the differences are

going to be a lot more

subtle than they would have been.

Yeah, it's a really cool skill that they

can see kind of going up over time.

But like music, they can see, you know,

they're making these

horrible noises out of their

instrument for the

first time they get it.

And then, you know, at the end of the

year, they're starting to

sound like something and

then you move on further and further.

So it's a very specialty disciplines that

can actually appreciate

a growth portfolio like

that, other than just an exemplary quote

for that just shows you

examples of their work.

Exactly.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Like a growth portfolio.

I think that's a good way

to refer to it for sure.

Absolutely.

Which in indirect way, we are talking

about our topic today,

which is that ever evolving

CI and not getting stuck

in a rut type of thing.

And I'll just start just here for quickly

because I was just thinking about it.

I am a very only in my in my school life,

am I very organized?

I am very organized to a T.

I have the very first quiz I gave because

it saved my Google Drive.

It's been there and my Google Drive is

now two terabytes, but it

is, you know, everything

I've ever created.

And I learned long ago to create

everything in my own

personal Google Drive because I

had a friend who left schools and she

went to high school and,

you know, it's different

district or high school and middle

schools are different districts.

She went from middle school to high

school and she is

desperately, she did not plan

enough time before they were closing down

her Google account to download everything

and move it over.

She goes, I expected it be a day because

it took a week to

download all the stuffs that

she had accumulated in 10

years at the middle school.

So I say, I always create my everything

in my own Google

Drive and that way I have

access to it forever and

wherever I happen to be.

So it works really, really well.

And it's also saved my butt when my

computer battery died

or like one time I can

computer battery

died, I forgot my charger.

And so I could access everything on

someone else's computer.

So that really saved my butt.

But I'm a, but in that organization, I

make templates for

everything because so much of

what we do is repetitive and I don't want

to always recreate the wheel.

I mean, for example, I'm

so lazy with my whiteboard.

I make whiteboard labels of things I

always have to write, like the goal, the

activities that we do.

I make little activities that says we're

doing a story today.

We're doing a quick write today.

We're doing a warm,

whatever the warm up might be.

And I, they're little labels that I

laminate and put magnets on.

So all I have to do is put those up there

and then maybe add a detail like we're

singing a song.

Well, what's the name of the song?

I can write that one in.

So I am so template driven and I have

templates for my lesson plans.

I don't even listen to

my lesson plan anymore.

My, my lesson plan is my, um, Google

slide deck and it's got

200 slides in it because

it's the whole weeks and everything I do.

What am I doing next?

I don't know.

Click.

Oh, that's what I'm doing next.

So that's how I kind of do it.

So I do everything template driven, but I

will say I've never been able to use my

templates year to

year the exact same way.

So I'm always constantly changing.

In fact, in one of my temp and my

templates I currently

use right now, we do

reading and listening activities on

Thursdays and Fridays, and I write a

story based on a student

for those, for each of those.

So on my template, where I may have a

cartoon that we're going to ask a story

about in the beginning part of the week,

the second part of the week, I don't know

what those stories are going to be.

And I can't, I'm not

going to use last year's kids.

I'm going to, it's

always going to be fresh.

So I just leave a blank spot in my

template where I can put

in my stories in there,

but I'm always rearranging and

rearranging and like, Oh,

I want to do this in this

order or that order,

nothing really sticks.

I have gotten in the ruts before where I

feel like I'm on autopilot.

And it's not really, let's

see how I'm going to say this.

My routine that stays constant, like

usually at the order of

the things that I do, I

sometimes change it up.

Like this week I started thinking, well,

maybe I don't want to do two readings and

listings.

We want to extend the

oral story a little longer.

So I, I'm playing with that.

I made that change just for this next

week coming up and

we'll see how it works out.

Um, so that part doesn't change, but the

activities sometimes I get in a rut into

and I need to force myself like, we

haven't done a picture talk in a while.

I forgot about picture talks

or I forgot about a movie talk.

I haven't done that one in a long time.

And I'm like, why did I stop doing that

activity or that brain break?

I get in a rut with my brain breaks and

sometimes, so the actual activities,

sometimes where I get in the rut, I'll

forget like a few years ago, I forgot

that I go, I haven't done

TPR in such a long time.

And it used to be such an

integrated part of what I did.

And I'm like, what happened?

Why did I stop?

I don't remember.

So now I put a slide in

to remind me to do it.

I do it for the sweet 16 birds where I

really focus on the

TPR on there, but, uh,

I don't know why I stopped.

It just something just kind of phased out

of my lesson plans and I brought it back

in.

So it's the activities for me that I get

into a rut with not necessarily, um,

the routine, because I think for me and

for a lot of teachers, that routine is

really, really important.

And for the kids,

they know what to expect.

They know Wednesday's monday

because it's quick, right day.

And now my kids always want to moan.

And they're all got to

write another one of these.

Cause I do it every week religiously.

So, um, they know what

to expect on every day.

So they know that, you know, Mondays are

conversation days and Tuesdays and

Wednesdays and Thursdays are our story

days and Fridays are reading days.

So they have those kinds of expectations.

And I think that lowers that anxiety of,

and what are we doing today?

Kind of questions that go on and kids

really want to know.

And I remember when I first started

teaching, we weren't

supposed to tell them.

It was supposed to be a surprise.

So to build that engagement in there.

And then a few years later, they said,

write everything down.

Everything should be

on agenda on the board.

So the kids know exactly where they are

in class and what we have to get done.

So there's a mix, but

I'm all for the routine.

It's just the different activities that

I, that at least where I get

stuck in a rut sometimes, what about you?

I totally get that.

I think there's a, it's all, always about

finding a balance between

routine and novelty, because I totally

agree that the routine, the, the

systems in a class throughout a day,

throughout a week is super important

for the kids and for me, I think, I mean,

especially as a department of one, when

I can be teaching up to three or four or

five prep set of time, and I only

have 60 minutes of actual prep time for

that, like I need to be able to just

look at, I think about my day, I think

about my lesson as like a template in

a way, and I know that I'm going to start

with an SEL check-in.

I know that I'm going to have Musica.

I know that I'm going

to do calendar talk.

And then I, all I really need to plan is

my, you know, my, my anchor of my class.

And depending on what day of the week

that is and then what level, you know,

like in my upper levels on Fridays, it's

our, it's our authentic TV show.

Um, you know, in lower, in my lower

levels on Mondays, every other Monday,

we're going to start doing our news, our

weekly news from, um, um, Mundo and

Tuzmanos from the

Comprehensible Classroom.

And so I need those systems for my own

sanity in planning that many preps, but

I know what you mean as far as activities

that I don't want the kids to start

feeling like, oh, we, we, we just keep,

we keep doing the same thing as far as

a whole group reading, we do whole group

reading the same way every time.

And that's what I feel like I'm trying to

focus on varying more.

And a few years ago, I started a project

of, I called it the great

ZI strategy harvest, and

it's this huge Google sheet.

And I just started to like brain dump

every strategy that I read about in

blogs, heard about in podcasts, heard

about on social media and PD and

conferences and anything that I knew.

And I just kind of listed it like here

are a whole bunch of whole

class reading activities so that if we

have a text that we're reading as a

group, I can try to pick one of these

things to, to, to use as we read the

text or if I want to do a listening

activity, here's 20 different listening

tasks that I can have the

students engage in as we do it.

So I try to refer to that document and I,

I shared it out on one of like the

Facebook groups a while ago.

Um, but I, I use it all the time.

I referred to it.

I try to update it because I feel like

it's like a menu, like I almost need a

menu of strategies to pick from because

when we have our content, when we have

our text or our story, I mean, we could

do the same thing with it, but why?

Because I get bored too.

And I don't, if I'm bored, I don't want

the students to come

and be bored for sure.

So I agree.

It's always about finding that difference

between routine and novelty.

And it's definitely, it can be

challenging sometimes.

Cause sometimes I'm just exhausted and I

just want to just

read, but I know I can't.

I know.

Like especially when I taught the sixth

class in a row, I'm like, I am so

done playing fly swatter today.

I am like, maybe we just skip it.

Will they even notice if I

just skip it in third period?

Cause I'm just, I can't do it again.

I'm with you there.

And I will tell you, I know a lot of

people don't like AI and there are some

things I agree with them, but the way

that I use it makes my

life easier because I

use it as a teacher assistant.

Um, and so I will ask, I will go into

chat GPT and I'll

ask, I go, I've got this

reading, this is what

I normally do with it.

Can you give me five other ideas?

Oh, okay.

And so he comes back and it gives me a go

and I go, I don't like two and four.

Can you please give me swap out two

different ones for that one, or I need

an activity for a novice low students, or

I need something to differentiate this

activity for the variety of kids I have.

I have kids who are novice low.

I have kids who've got, even though we're

in the second semester of the year,

who still have zero language ability.

So I need something for that.

You know, it gives me some good ideas.

Not all of them are great, but they give

me some ideas, but now I'm going to

tell you some super user power.

I, I've heard of this app before, but I

never really used it.

And then I took a class on this app for

some, it wasn't even based off school.

It was just another class I took about

how to use this app.

It had nothing to do with school.

And this app is not only amazing for not

only teachers, but also for students.

And it's free.

And it comes with your Google account.

It is called notebook LM.

And let me tell you how

I can, you can use it.

Notebook LM is the thing.

And it said notebook.lm.google.com.

So what it does, it takes the best of AI

and leaves off the bad stuff.

One of the bad things about AI is what

they call hallucination,

that it makes up things.

Notebook LM works in a vacuum.

It only can, it only references

information that

you've uploaded as a source.

So it can't make up anything else.

So as a student base,

they can take their notes.

They can take a picture of their

handwritten notes if they did it by hand,

or upload a PDF of their,

if they typed their notes in.

Take, if the teacher gave them access to

the slide deck, they can upload that.

Put all the sources in there.

And then once you have all those sources,

you can make an audio podcast from that.

So not only, it'll, it'll replay with two

different voices and it will

review all that information.

And there's a button that you can

actually ask live questions to that

podcast and it will generate.

So if you like, oh, I don't remember that

thing and ask the

question, it will do that.

It will make a little short overview

video for you explaining the concepts or

whatever you're trying to study.

You can make an

infographic of all that information.

So a really colorful image that's like

comprising of all your

notes, all of the things in there.

You can also make

PowerPoint slides from that.

So there's a lot of different variety in

that, but what's great about it, as I

said, it works off the sources only.

It does not go out and find things unless

you ask it to go out.

And so here's where

your harvest would come in.

You have some sources that you know of,

so you've uploaded those, but you can

click the deep research button and then

tell it, I need reading activities for

second language acquisition.

You put that in there and it's going to

take its time and it's going to research

all of these websites and then upload

them as sources to your spot.

And you can vet them if you want to vet

because it comes up with like 50 of them.

So if you want to vet them, you can, but

you don't have to use them like that.

And then you can tell it now, make me an

infographic summarizing the top 10

different activities for reading or

whatever you're researching.

And it will make that infographic for you

and it makes beautiful infographics.

In fact, I think I've got one I can show

right here really quick.

Honestly, this sounds like exactly what

my idea behind starting this a few years

ago was just to have something that I can

reference either in

planning or on the spot.

Because sometimes that's the thing too.

It's I think we're going to have 20

minutes for an activity and in reality we

have 40 or in reality we have 10 and what

I had planned isn't

going to fit in the time.

So I'd love to just be able to have

something that it's again, like a like

just like a quick pick menu.

And you can do it based on time, based on

the amount of kids that are in the room,

based on whatever it is, whether you

want, whether they're antsy or whether

they're feeling kind of blah that day and

they need activity or they need chill.

And calm.

And I feel like that's just what I've

been trying to do with it and I just have

not had time to get back to it.

And it takes so much time, but what's

great about it, as I said, you can just

go ahead and ask it.

So once you've done it, you know, you can

ask you like just like

you can with chat GPT.

OK, call these activities and give me the

ones that only fit in a

five minute time period.

And then you can make that infographic or

whatever you want to have done.

Let me see here is where we go to my.

Just found it, let me put it in to to to

to my drive desktop.

So this is one I did on comparing.

I has not do it with what we're like for

classes, but comparing

TPRS 1.0 versus TPRS 2.0.

OK, so here's that

infographic that it came up with.

Oh, that looks great.

So I mean, and I've

done them with vocabulary.

I'll put in my our our week's vocabulary

that I have to teach from the textbook

and then I will make

that one into one, too.

So I think I've got another one of those

I can show here really

quick if I can go ahead.

Oh, this is awesome.

So they and they're

really good and well designed.

Well, let's see here, Spanish one.

Oh, yeah, here's a perfect one.

I'll download this one really quick.

Only current page.

Download this one is

on the sweet 16 verbs.

OK, so I love what I did,

what it did with this one.

And if you don't like what it

does, tell it to do it again.

You know, just like if you were having a

teacher assistant or a student teacher

assistant in your class and they didn't

do it exactly the way you wanted, you

tell them to do it again, please.

And so it works really, really well.

Let me see, this one is called sweet 16.

Sweet 16. Where did they go?

There it is. Oh, oh, I love that.

Yeah. So you can make it.

And you can put your

vocab list in for the week.

Yeah. And make this thing.

And it really helps the visual learners.

And what I love about these two is I

cheat because my our school now has

color copiers or huh.

So we're supposed to switch it to black

and white, but it defaults to color.

Oops. I just made 30 copies of these.

Because I think there's so

much more effective in color.

They are. They are something like this.

A hundred percent is

more effective in color.

Yeah. And so the kids have these and I

keep giving them to go.

Do you have another

infographic for us today?

I make infographics because I don't

really I'm not an explicit grammar

teacher, but I make the infographics up

like we're getting ready

to do plurals in level one.

And I have to teach that in explicitly

teach it at my school.

So I made an

infographic that explained it.

All the way.

So the notebook notebook.

Yeah. I told you research.

How do you make plural?

I mean, I know the answer, but I didn't

want to do the work.

So I said, how do you how do

you make plurals in Spanish?

Please include the exceptions.

So that it went through and I'll show you

what it came up with

because I did that one, too.

Oh, I did one for telling time.

And it was, you know, so I got an

infographic for telling time for them.

Where is the one to do with plurals,

plurals, Spanish

plurals, the quick start guide?

Here it is.

So it really helps to

synthesize the information.

I tell the kids I make them get.

Actually, I buy a whole stack of those

those plastic page protectors and they

buy them like in packs of 500.

And they're really cheap if you buy them

on Amazon for those packs.

And then I give them to the kids and I'll

put them back to back in there and they

can keep them in a folder so that they

always have that in there.

And so you can do it with grammar.

You can do it with OK,

just do this one, plurals.

Where are we going?

P for plural.

Here's this.

So I told Stephen, give you

the example of exceptions.

So I put in there the Z for

C change that you need to do.

That the kids always forget.

So it has it in there and it says, you

know, add the vowel, add an S if it's a

vowel, add a consonant if it's an E.

It's giving them examples.

And it tells about the L and the Lada and

the Los and the Las and the Una and the

Una and the Unas and Unas.

And then it even talks about if it's a

mixed group that it

uses the masculine form.

So it did all of this.

And all I had to do was

prompt a notebook to do it.

And then I go to the domain.

They do make like typos and stuff like

that sometimes in there.

So I read through it to

make sure it's all there.

And if it's not, I just

have them regenerate it.

But it is this is a nice little quick

guide for my level ones

to refer to really quick.

It's like no.

And it's I think it's a really useful for

things like pop up grammar.

And I mean, you said like just like an

anchor chart that you would make in a

classroom and hang up on.

You know, like the books or paper or

something like that.

But it's really clear.

It's easy. It's not

overly complicated and grammar.

So I tell you this.

One of the tricks I tell it to do, I say

when you make this, do

not use any grammar jargon.

Use language kids understand.

OK. Yeah.

So notice it doesn't say masculine and

feminine anywhere in here.

It's it's you know, it's stuff that my

kids can really, really grasp onto.

And yes, you can actually print these

into posters if you want it.

Oh, you know, I use I put that site up

here because this is

one I use all the time.

Short run posters dot com.

Because if you go to Kinko's or what they

call FedEx office now,

they don't they charge an arm

and a leg to buy one poster.

But short run posters for

less than seven dollars.

I think it's like six something.

They give me an 18 by 24

poster that's laminated.

Oh, wow. OK.

No, that's great.

It's called short one because you don't

you don't have to make,

you know, 50 of the same ones.

You can just do whatever ones you make.

So I have like you said, I have a lot of

anchor charts in my room

and I've had printed up.

But now I can start

having these printed up.

And instead of having kids take notes,

I can give this to the kids.

I project this on my screen and then I go

to my whiteboard and I clarify

so they can add to these notes instead of

taking them from scratch and scratch.

Right. Where they're just

worried about copying down

rather than really

understanding it anyway. Exactly.

And they might not have to

add anything if they don't.

I say you don't add anything

if you don't have any questions.

If you know if you're going through, but

anything that you go,

why didn't know about or that interest

me, add that to your little paper

and they have these as a reference chart.

So I'm telling you, notebook LM has.

And I said, I didn't really understood

because it says notebook.

And I'm like, so is

it a note taking thing?

And it's not a note taking thing.

I think the name is

really bad for what it does.

I never, ever would have guessed that

that's what this is.

And so this is part of Google Suite.

Yes. OK.

It's free to the kids

and it's free to, you know,

anybody who's got a Google account and

then you only get so many uses per day

of each thing if

you're on the free account.

But I pay for my because I pay for two

terabytes of Google Drive access.

So I get the paid version for free comes

part of that as part of the features.

But this is just such a well

worth it thing that it does.

And. It makes a whole lot of them,

and I just put them all in Canva so that

I can have one place they're all saved.

So I make my Spanish ones and I have all

the ones vocabulary,

then the grammar ones, I have them all

built in there and it

makes it just so much easier.

So this is something I said as

a teacher, it's really great.

And as a student, because if there it

doesn't even just use for language,

they don't understand a concept.

So you can share your notebook with them

and don't give them access to edit it.

And let's say now you created

an audio of explaining this.

So they'll come up

with a podcast of five,

depending on how complex to 15 minutes

I've seen some where it

goes over and it talks

and to real it's not a

robotic voice at all.

If I didn't know better, it sounds like

two people have in conversation

about the topic and they can re listen to

it and they're getting in a different way

than the way you explained it.

And it works for all

different kinds of concepts.

You can put it in for math concepts or,

you know, explain to me the

Romeo and Juliet type thing,

you know, any of that kind of stuff.

And so that's a little bit more engaging

for the kids as well to listen to that.

And they got their

headphones in their ear anyway.

So why not?

You know, just helps them learn a

different way and you can

teach them how to do that.

Oh, it'll make flash cards too from

vocabulary by a click of a button.

You don't have to do anything.

You click the button

and it makes flash cards.

You can share that with your kids and

they can practice with the

flash cards on there as well.

So there's a lot of

different things it can do.

And I said it's a really good and it's

free and I think it's a worthwhile.

And this is where AI is not the evil

beast that people make it out to be.

It is an assistant.

That's how I use it.

And it was funny because I'm in another

group, a mentor group

has not new teaching.

It's just a different

half a mentor group.

And we had our mentor meeting yesterday

and we were talking

about this and how people,

some people are really so far against AI.

They're like fighting it and saying it's

the evilest thing in the

world and it's using up

all of our resources and it's taking away

human creativity and all of that stuff.

I use it to augment those things, but the

word we've figured out this

happened, the same kind of

attitude happened in the 1800s with the

industrial revolution and

they were called Luddites.

We couldn't remember that

term, but we looked it up.

They were really about the automation and

creating textiles that the

machines were doing that.

But think about how expensive our clothes

would be if they were all hand sewn.

And how many people could afford to buy

clothes if every piece of

clothing that you bought

from your socks to your shirts were all

hand created every time.

We just have to embrace what it is and

anything can be used for good or evil.

So just use it for good.

But as my teacher's assistant, it saves

me so many hours of time and gives me,

I could never create these infographics

like this and these

literally come up in like

three to four minutes.

Even if I could draw like that, it would

take me hours, if not

days to work on one of those.

It's just not something sustainable.

I think there's a benefit

there for the kids is so great.

And I know the topic of AI was going to

come up in our conversation today and

talking about evolving

and teaching and in CI.

So I was thinking about it and I think

I'm glad you shared this tool

because I think it's a really

good example of exactly what you said.

It's of how AI is not, it

doesn't have to be the enemy here.

And I think back to, I think it was two

years ago, I was at

Waffle and in Wisconsin,

the annual language

teaching conference here.

And the amazing Jim Woolbridge was our

keynote speaker, a case in your woolly.

And he talked a lot about AI in the space

of language teaching and

his key message and his

key takeaway that I feel like really

stuck with me and sticks with a lot of

language teachers is

that language is innately human.

So the language part of it is the part

that I, and I feel like a lot

of us don't want to mess with

the AI part.

But when I see tools like this, which is

really just enhancing what

you can do with these stories

that are innately human and the

connection and the

communication that you can get from them.

Then I see its use, then I

see its power, I see its value.

And it keeps us from, like you said,

spending so much time on these things

when we could really

be pouring ourselves into the connections

with our students and

self-care and all these other

things that make teaching, that require

us to be good teachers.

Yeah, exactly.

We can focus on other things.

Like Kelly Ferguson, also a great person

from Wisconsin, she

always says like with student

jobs, she goes, "Anything that doesn't

require a college degree, delegate."

Yes.

Why waste your energy and effort on doing

stuff like collecting

papers and passing out papers?

You don't need a college degree for that?

Give it to a kid.

Child labor is cheap.

And it's the same thing.

We can delegate things to our AI that we

don't need to do ourselves.

I'll tell you another good example and

then I'm going to share my

screen because I forgot I made

this. This is another thing that comes in

Gemini, which is also part

of the free Google thing,

where I use it a lot because

this is where I get my rut.

This is a rut thing that I have.

When I write my quizzes or I write

stories and I create

comprehension questions,

my comprehension questions

tend to be the same every time.

So, I mean, that's the exact same

question, you know what I mean?

But the same style of question.

You know, I write my none of the above

questions always a certain way.

I always ask about the

age of the character.

I get in these ruts so the kids can

almost predict what

question four is going to be

because they've read

so many of my stories.

So, I'll write the story and I'll upload

it to chat GPT or to

Gemini, whatever you use.

I upload the story.

Then I'll tell it to make 20

comprehension questions at

the novice mid level in English.

Please make them slightly challenging and

please include 30% inference questions

because I want my kids to be able to

infer stuff as well, not just look for

the concrete stuff in

there. Now, I always created inference

questions, but my inference

questions would always be the

same style so my kids could always

predict them. And so I like this and it

made up the questions.

If you do a multiple choice, it'll make

multiple choice and it'll

create the answer key for you.

And then you can use it how you use it.

But I love this because you can actually

convert it to a, if you use Google forms

to make things, it'll do that for you.

You know, it'll do whatever you need it

to do. But I like that's

one of the ways that I really,

really enjoy using it because the

questions, I don't need a

college degree to come up with

questions. I wrote the story. That's

where the creativity is. And the