Hello everyone! Welcome to our new blog. My name is Brett Chonko and my colleague and joint blog creater is Erin Anthony. We both teach Spanish through Comprehensible Input techniques in the greater Richmond, Virginia area.
We thought this project of creating a blog together would be useful in that Erin teaches CI in a public middle school and I teach at the high school level. As we have collaborated this past year, it has been shocking to us how different our experiences have been in experimenting with and implementing CI. This space will explore what makes CI successful at both levels.
We also hope to launch a few specific projects. There are so many wonderful, terrific CI blogs out there that have guided our CI learning curve. However, we think there is a need for a Storylistening database where teachers can access and download story scripts to use in class. We hope that the Storylistening database can help crowd source great scripts, so please send us your work to be shared among the CI community. All languages and levels are welcome – although we only speak Spanish. We won’t be editing for accuracy, just providing a platform for people to submit work.
Second, we both are incredibly grateful to Ben Slavic and Tina Hargaden for creating the Invisibles technique of teaching non-targeted CI. In the Invisibles Archive section of our website, I hope to create a database of Invisibles stories that teachers from all over can print out and use as SSR material for level 1 and 2. So, please send me your classes’ Invisibles stories to add to the database.
Who knows what other forms this space will take on in the future, but we’d love to have your input along the way.
All the Best,
Brett & Erin
ComprehensibleRVA 