Downtime Do-Nows: Easy-to-Implement Language Rich Strategies for Those In-Between Moments

by Dr. Lora Beth Escalante

What do students do right away when they walk into class? Are there a few minutes when they sit idly while you take attendance or get papers and materials organized from the last class? Maybe the lesson ended early, and you find your class with a glorious 5-10 minutes of “free time.” Maybe you read your audience half-way through a lesson and realize you’ve lost them due to too much sitting. How can we utilize these in-between moments to provide students with low-stress opportunities for meaningful language practice?

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The Versatility of Talking Chips

by Diane Kue

Step 3 of Seidlitz and Perryman’s (2021) 7 Steps to a Language-Rich, Interactive Classroom is all about randomizing and rotating student responses during whole-class instruction and group tasks to maintain engagement and accountability. Although I spend more time training other steps, the Step It Up! differentiation for Step 3 on page 40 is my favorite page to present to educators (Seidlitz & Perryman, 2021). In lieu of teachers randomizing and rotating which students speak, students self-regulate using Talking Chips. The purpose is to engage all participants within a group with the opportunity to express their thinking.

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