Comprehension checks

After NTPRS this year (and my experience last year), I realized that I need to spend a lot more time with comprehension checks, going SLOW, and making sure that EVERY student understands. Today, I started working on training my students (even the ones I had last year who feel like they know how to work this class) on how to make that happen.

We practiced several times what I expect from a choral response. I gave them a verbal cue..."Claaaasse?" in a very exagerrated question, followed by the question. I then listened to see if everyone answered. If not, I talked about how they should answer next time and we tried it again. Explaining what I was doing and why really helped my students understand what the heck was going on in class. I also said, "When I ask for a response from the class, it could be one word or several, depending on your level of comfort."

The next thing I did as I was doing a little circling was to have comprehension checks. At first, I just did a basic 10-finger check to see how much they were able to understand. If they were at a 7 or below, I reminded the class that they need to be stopping me if they don't understand. After a couple more minutes of CI, I did another comp. check, but this time I used someone's (Linda's?) word-by-word check. I had students give me a sign if they understood the word and could picture it and a different sign if they didn't know it. Then, I said the words I had been working on and checked them out. This was an AWESOME way to see my barometer students really quickly. It was surprising to me to see how many kids were struggling that were giving me all the "I'm okay" signs.

The last cool thing (at least I think it's cool) that I did was to have the kids tell me "oui" or "non" on the way out of class. Oui meant that they thought I was doing a good job and going at a good pace. Non meant that I was going too fast or too slow (and then I asked them to expand at the door). I was really surprised at how many Ouis I got...even with my second year students...considering that I was going sooooooooo slowly. Everything just reaffirms the power of going super slow. It's not the kids getting bored, it's us! (usually). I did have some kids ask what to do when I was going too slowly. I said that I would be checking in with them every so often and that if they were all on board that I was going too slowly, I would speed up. Otherwise, I wanted the faster processors to focus on something they could improve on or come up with an interesting story so they wouldn't get bored...

I love my job!