Frequently asked questions

One day while driving to school, a grasshopper jumped onto my leg. Then it jumped onto my dashboard and all around the car. I freaked out and pulled over to try and get it out of the car! Still flustered during first period, I told this story and drew it out on the board. Years later, kids will tell me they still remember when I had a saltamontes en mi carro. This is what teaching with CI is like.

You get to speak the language…more! Everything can become a lesson! That’s one of the biggest differences right out of the gate in September, with all levels. Using repetition and sheltered (limited) vocabulary, you guide students toward comprehension with images, stories, games, and TONS of reading.

You can still teach grammar too, just in context and a little later in the year. It’s beyond thrilling when you can spend a whole class in September of level one, talking about the calendar, weather, and activities, all in L2, and have kids understanding you!

It’s all about filling them up with compelling and interesting input - like if their brains were empty filing cabinets, you spend your days adding to their files of language. Some language falls out…so you keep refilling the files until their brain can work the magic of acquisition.

Teaching with CI is so much for fun and engaging for both the students and for me! It is so much more rewarding seeing what they can are able to do with the language in level one compared to when I was teaching my traditional units. My level one students can fill a page with writing and I rarely get “I don’t know/speak/understand (insert language here).”

We believe the most powerful strategy is “write and discuss” - and it’s also the easiest to start with! Toward the end of each class, you just write a few sentences to summarize what you learned that day.

Imagine your level 2 students practiced conjugating reflexive verbs in class. Ask students questions about their morning routines, and then use their answers for a “write and discuss”. For example, you could write something like this either on the whiteboard or in a document you project to the class (you can keep adding to a live, view-only doc and post it on your LMS - it makes a great study tool or translation activity for absent students). Most days I have students copy it down while skipping lines.

“Normalmente, Tyler se despierta a las cinco y media pero él se levanta a las seis. Maddie se cepilla los dientes a las siete. Owen se viste a las siete y cuarto.”

You can ask for student collaboration as you write - “¿Cuándo se despierta Tyler?” or “¿Qué hace Maddie a las siete?” and even ask about spelling and syntax - “what do I end ‘despiert_ with, an o or an a? Why?”

After you write it, read it aloud chorally in Spanish and then in English. Ask students what they notice about any grammar or sentence structure that may differ from English. Now, they’ve reviewed reflexives and time, in context, with compelling language since it’s about their classmates. SO POWERFUL! Plus, the next day as a bellringer, you can have them translate it into English.

It definitely feels overwhelming at the beginning. There are so many techniques floating around like “running dictation”, “special person interviews”, “write and discuss” - how do you know which to choose?

Our advice is to pick one strategy and sprinkle it into your current routine. Practice it until you feel confident with it before adding another. We suggest starting with daily “write and discuss” - takes 5-7 minutes per class and is SO EFFECTIVE. It doesn’t require you to invent a story, describe a picture, or act anything out. You can just write about any topic mentioned in class.

Don’t start over! As a veteran teacher, you are highly skilled at teaching the language and managing a classroom. You can still use your materials, but with a twist - try to think of it through the lens of “teaching IN the language, rather than just teaching about the language”. Look at your materials and ask yourself these questions:

1) Is this content compelling to my students?

2) Is this activity demonstrating meaningful discourse or communicative purpose?

If not, you can make simple changes. To make the content more relevant, find a related picture on Google images of the topic and ask questions about it. Practice verb conjugation in context and then do a “write and discuss” about who does what or who goes where.

Even the smallest sprinkling of CI will bring you so much joy as you find yourself staying in the target language for longer and longer.

Grammar and CI aren’t the oil and water of World Language pedagogy. Sadly, we think maybe this has created an undercurrent of division within many WL departments. Rather, grammar and CI can and should co-exist in a WL program with perhaps some shifting in scope and sequence.

With a shift to holding off explicit grammar instruction until later in the year after students have had time to build a foundation of understanding, most teachers can still accomplish the required grammar and vocab goals by graduation. We feel with collaboration, partnership, and patience, the blending of CI with traditional methods is possible over time.

Targeted CI is essentially a unit based on specific vocabulary structures that are creatively repeated and recycled.

Non-targeted CI consists of repeated exposure to high-frequency structures over time to build acquisition. Certain high-frequency verbs such as the “Sweet Sixteen” are emphasized and recycled throughout the year.

Some programs use one or the other, or a mix. For us, we tend to fall into a mixed-bag where we provide some targeted structures at the beginning of a unit (internal vs external characteristics vocab, clothing and shopping, etc), but we also use the “Sweet Sixteen” verbs year-round. Also, if we are basing our unit on a particular movie talk or Señor Wooly video, we pull out key structures from it to help guide us in our storytelling and toward a performance assessment.

Yes! Science shows that language acquisition occurs through listening and reading. Speaking begins as memorized, parroted language but we still encourage this from the beginning of level one to build confidence and interest.

To keep the affective filter (the brain’s anxiety filter) low, we don’t assess speaking or emphasize errors since acquisition is slow and develops over a long time. Dr. Stephen Krashen, Dr. Florencia Henshaw, Maris Hawkins, and Dr. Bill Van Patten all have written extensively on this topic, and provide excellent data proving the efficacy of comprehensible input.

At first, we struggled to find compelling and comprehensible texts and lessons for students to read at various levels. We felt like prep increased since we often had to come up with stories to use for input.

It also was exhausting to feel ‘on’ so much, since much of the input came from us. Over time, we learned ways to shift the input source to reading, and even student-led (in a sheltered way so it’s accurately modeled input).

Behavior management changed as we introduced CI strategies. Creating a vibrant, conversation-based classroom community often led to blurting and chaos. Training students on the expectations and boundaries early in the year, combined with using a weekly packet to shift energy levels back to pencil-and-paper listening activities whenever necessary helped greatly.

We can’t say enough about the freedom CI brings. The language can just be fun and real and joyful! For all of the challenges teaching brings, using CI strategies breathes life into the day-to-day grind.

Language class feels FUN, RELEVANT, and ACCESSIBLE. You can teach culture in L2 and expose kids to a world of amazing people, traditions, and places.

There’s nothing quite like telling a story and watching your class laugh at a punch line or plot twist because they are so immersed in the story and they GET WHAT YOU’RE SAYING.

And their writing? Get ready to be blown away by how much even your level one kids can write by the end of the year.

We love using technology to gamify reading and bring energy into our lessons. NH has pretty strict FERPA and COPPA laws so we aren’t able to utilize everything that’s available, but we love Nearpod, Gimkit, Blooket and Peardeck. Nearpod is amazing for virtual field trips, real-time collaboration boards, drawing and matching games. Gimkit is great for vocab repetition and even verb conjugation practice. Recently we’ve been experimenting with AI and use cases for WL teaching …. more to come on this in future blog posts and how-to videos! Also, just a shout-out to Wooly for so many amazing videos and nuggets!