Interactive input with Mira Canion

The idea of this workshop was that any question is a good question.  I'm assuming that Mira is thinking of the pressure we have started to feel the last couple of years to have Higher Order questions.  She began the session by giving us an example of a simple question that could have a simple answer, but says a ton...  Ready?  Here is the question: Who are you?  Depending on how you answer, we can learn a lot about you: the first thing you say tells us what you hold in the highest regard and tells us what you are most proud of.

So, she started by telling us how she begins a book (her example was her own book, which takes place in Ecuador).  She starts with a numbered map with pictures of animals on the different countries.  Start small by saying: The cat is from Ecuador...Ecuador is number 17.  Then, you can circle and gradually add more animals/countries.  Then, you can ask questions like: What number is Ecuador? and they can start learning geography.  Then, she went into talking about the rain forest and asking us where the rain forest is and could we make any guesses about why the rain forest grows there geographically.  Continue with talks about volcanoes or earthquakes or whatever.

She talked about personalization and how it doesn't just have to be about the student him/herself.  It can also be about a student's interest.  For example, being a bit of a Pokemon go player, I could talk about where we find different types of Pokemon (being in Reno, in the desert, I have found a ton of fire and desert Pokemon that don't live in Missouri).

Then, she pre-teaches the vocabulary of the novel using a parallel story.  Instead of telling the story of Anne, we can tell a story of a boy who has a different problem.  Anything to get the vocabulary in their head.

THIS IS WHERE I HAVE FAILED!!!

Once they have gotten a pretty good handle on the vocab, she writes a bunch of questions on index cards and hands them out.  The students find a partner, ask the partner their question (and answer the other question), trade cards (so they have a new question) and find a new partner.  I have always avoided doing activities like this because it feels like too much forced output and I have nightmares of students doing an information gap activity from a textbook...but I realized that this activity is not really about speaking...it's more about getting more information that I can circle.  I also LOVED this activity as a student because I realized that it allows the students to go at their own pace.  If I want to start a conversation based on the card, I can because I don't have to be done with my partner right away.  It also allows slower students the chance to breath for a minute.

The next awesome thing about this is that you can then circle the structures again.  Ask your students "Who said that their mom was nice?" or other questions like that to get more repetitions on the structures.

Great stuff from Mira.  Super glad to have gotten more time to hang out this year...