Noticing

Maybe you have noticed the little reminder to the right of this blog page.  Maybe you haven’t.  These three little C’s emerged out of our CI Latin team’s own attempts to remind ourselves of what our real work is each day: comprehensible, compelling, compassionate.  Those three C words serve to remind us.  If not these three things, it’s probably a waste of time.
So, for today, notice your students.  The noticing can be very simple.  Rodriguo, you got your hair cut!  It looks good! Sarah, I missed you yesterday. Freddie, you have a different color shoes on every day.  That’s amazing.  How many colors do you have?  Marta, are you okay? You see kind of quiet today.  Sam, I heard about the swim meet last night.  Congratulations!
This kind of noticing makes connections.  It lowers anxiety in the room. It opens the door to the flow of good human interaction.  It builds trust.  It isn’t difficult.  It likely is not happening often enough through the day for it to feel routine, and in a CI classroom these things need to be routine. When you lower the affective filter, you raise the level of acquisition.
Bob Patrick