“AHA” Moment #4 from Mike Peto’s Guidebook: A Student Goal is Processing Speed

As I continue to reflect on my last school year, adding to what turned out to be a rather busy year was that my school was going through the first year of a two year renovation and my floor and classroom were a part of the first year. This means all of my classroom possessions were in boxes the first month of school. So instead of having all of my wonderful signs and word walls up and around the classroom, I was constantly finding and hanging them as the year went. At first I thought this was going to be an okay experience because I would only hang the signs that my classes currently needed and again would build the wall as we go. Of course, now I remember why I had my words walls up in the first place: when you teach three different levels, I knew the words I needed on my walls for successful classes. In accordance to Mike Peto’s approach, I will again start this year with my modified Sweet 16 verbs – I call them my TOP 20 verbs in Spanish on my wall and all of the other signs I have designed throughout my teaching. 

In fact, after the April session at MITTEN CI, I modified the fonts and sizes of my posters, and they are ready to go for this school year. These signs will help me stay in 90% target language so students can comprehend from the get-go. I am publicly stating that I want to shoot for 90%. I know this is challenging for me to do as a teacher and sometimes I am happy with 70%, but I think I can do better, and it should help my students in all levels. I do think it critical to mention that I will still develop classroom routines and systems in our common language, English, if need be.  

With regard to speaking target language, one piece that has been sticking with me after reading the book was this goal: it is our goal as teachers to get students to process language at the speed of a native speaker. I think this often gets lost in translation from training in the ADI/CI community, myself included. We talk so much about going slowly for students, and yet I believe this is critical in the beginning when students are first acquiring all new language, but the goal is to build up your speed as a teacher as long as students are comprehending. Any new piece of language that students are exposed to might need to be heard in a slow manner with great pointing and pausing to the new chunks of language, but the goal with time is to get faster at a natural speed in the target language. 

In truth, there have been so many more “AHA” moments from Mike Peto’s guide and site, and I encourage anyone who is interested to check out his website. For the remainder of the summer I will post about my experiences in his Brazilian Portuguese class in which I am simply watching the recorded video classes that he conducts with other language teachers via zoom. So far the classes have been great and I am left saying “Tudo bom” after each class – it is certainly “ALL GOOD!”   

Look out for upcoming posts about acquiring and learning Brazilian Portuguese. To not miss any of the reflections, sign up for the email feature that shares the newest post with you. 

Gary