Today I worked more with students using "Reading Naturally." The students seemed genuinely engaged in listening to the stories, following along, and trying to read more fluently. As I mentioned previously, I'm not sure it's working so well for students who were already able to read the passage fluently, but for non-fluent readers, it seems to make a world of difference. I'd like to just sit them down for a longer period of time and see what happens. The "cold" and "hot" read timings are reinforcing to them and to me as an instructor. I'm impressed with this system.
The teachers have given up on DOL finally. What would have made this work? Probably introducing "new" concepts systematically -- e.g. starting with beginning capitalization and punctuation, then capitalizing names, places, etc. -- and adding on, being sure to go back and review periodically. Each week when we tested on Friday, we'd only test on what had been reviewed in the previous week and before. Additionally, if we had given points for a correct DOL sheet at the end of the week, perhaps students would have been more motivated to get started and to review their work when we reviewed it as a class. I'm sure it's not too difficult to get ahold of a plan of study for this type of grammar work.
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