All Of My Daily Activities, etc.
– input-based strategies & activities
If this stuff interests you, consider putting a few things in place to support the move towards a more comprehension-based and communicative approach. Here are the practices fundamental to my teaching, making the daily stuff possible:
Core Practices
CI
Grammar
Textbooks
Curriculum
Grading/Scoring
Look, Listen, Ask
Course Grade
Assessments
Speaking & Writing
Continue reading for explanations of each…
Continue readingQuintus is a gamester who really likes to gamble. The problem? He’s terribly unlucky and never wins! In this tale, Quintus gets himself into a dicey situation, betting all sorts of valuables he can’t afford to lose. Will he come out on top, or lose it all in the end?
16 cognates, 34 other words
840 total length
This is my third novellula written to be short, very much on purpose. Since Latin novellas first started popping up, teachers have noted that the whole-class reading experience can drag on for beginners. I’ve been finding that books under 1,000 total words seem best for a quick read at the start of Latin 1. This new tale is about gaming! I grabbed some dice-cups, dice, and knucklebones online to play as we read the book. Give it a try. Enjoy!
In the original draft of this post, I compared two data sets of students taking the ALIRA. However, I’m not really comfortable publishing that. I really don’t need anyone trying to play the victim when it’s been me going on a decade now defending my teaching practices and the kind of Latin that I read (and write) with students. It’s too bad, too, because the data are quite compelling. Some day, I’ll share the charts. Until then, you’ll have to take my word on it. You probably already know that I don’t fuck around, either, so my word is solid.
In short, the charts will contradict the claim that reading non-Classical Latin leaves students unprepared for reading Classical Latin. They will suggest that reading non-Classical Latin texts, such as those rife with Cognates & Latinglish via class texts and novellas, is of no disadvantage. They will also suggest that reading Classical texts is of no advantage. That’s all I’m prepared to share, for now.
Once a lot more data like these will be presented, though, the jury will start to come in on the matter of what kind of Latin prepares students for any other Latin. From what I’ve seen so far, it looks like A LOT of any Latin can prepare students to read other Latin, and that’s a good thing. These emerging data show that concerns and claims over certain kinds of Latin don’t play out in reality. Still, it’d be good to have more scores, not just the 532 ones currently submitted to that ALIRA form. If this all seems mysterious, it kind of has been. I haven’t shared the spreadsheet yet for viewing. That changes today!
Continue readingAt CANE’s Annual Meeting last week, Bethany Sawyer shared a reading comprehension strategy “in chart form” that I’m calling Table Qs. This EZ format breaks up a text while giving students something specific to do while reading that focuses their attention. I think of this as giving students’ minds a job to do. When I brought this idea to our Director of Curriculum & Instruction, she (also an ELA teacher) found it similar to when they first do annotations. Instead of just “hey, annotate,” there’s always an “annotate for ____” prompt to guide students. It follows, then, that a “hey, read” prompt very well might result in students looking at the text, and maybe registering certain words, but something short of processing the Latin and really comprehending. Table Qs is one support for that. This kind of structure is also a great example of schoolifying CI. In short, students answer a question in the left column, underlining/highlighting its Latin in the right column. All you gotta do is drop text into a Doc, and make some Qs.
The key?
Don’t make obvious questions that allow students to avoid reading altogether! That would defeat the whole purpose. While it took me about 15 minutes to put a front/back Table Q page together, I’d consider it wasted time if all students were to do would be skimming the Latin to answer a question. While making these Qs is certainly a skill, consider rephrasing ones that call for a single word that’s basically already given in the question. Also consider avoiding “who?” Qs when there’s only one proper noun in the selected text. If that’s the case, at least add a follow up (e.g., “who ____ and then what do they do?”).
Check out the fourth Q in the screenshot below. That could’ve been “Marcus is what?” or “Is Marcus confused?” However, the Q allows for a number of responses that all indicate comprehension, such as “he’s not Egyptian” or “he doesn’t know hieroglyphics,” and encourages reading the whole segment (i.e., NOT just picking out only the Latin needed to answer a poorly formed Q). As a confirmation of understanding and to support their answer, students underline (or highlight if a digital Google Doc) the specific Latin. The following screenshot is from the second chapter of Mārcus et scytala Caesaris:
Here are some common numbers floating around the language teaching world, their misinterpretations, and some clarifications to go with each one:
90%
This figure comes from an ACTFL position statement on target language use. The biggest misinterpretation I’ve seen is thinking something like students should be speaking the target language 90% of the time. The 90% figure is actually about percentage OF language during class that IS the target language. For example, if you’re reading a 100% Latin text during class and ask SOME questions about it 100% in English, it’s quite possible that target language use is still above 90% (e.g., students read 1,000 total words of Latin and hear 100 words of English questions = 90% target language use). Students need input. This 90% figure is an attempt to prioritize high quantities of language. The alternative to avoid would be something like doing a close reading on a short paragraph of Latin with the discussion entirely in English, perhaps resulting in the opposite 10% target language use, which was quite common in the teaching of languages prior to ACTFL’s statement. Somehow, you’ll still find such low levels of target language use today, despite ACTFL’s efforts back in 2010. N.B. if you do a general search, some ACTFL page might come up that contradicts their original 2010 statement, referring explicitly to class time. It also name-drops Krashen, pointlessly throws in the i+1 concept that itself became misunderstood, cites Vygotsky in some kind of weird sociocultural nod, and ends with an obligatory reference to Long & Swain’s work on output theory. This hodgepodge of ideas is startling, but probably represents how ACTFL tends to remain as NEUTRAL as possible, taking bits and pieces from way too many popular ideas and approaches as if it makes sense to combine them all. Don’t fall into that trap. Follow principles that you know align with each other and don’t conflict!
95%
See 98%, below.
96%
Perhaps more commonly known as “4%,” the figure of 96% represents the students who typically do NOT continue beyond the second year of language study, here in the US, with the dominant paradigm having been grammar-based teaching. Although programs have been moving to comprehension-based, and/or communicative approaches, it’s still possible that the 4% figure represents some programs today, though the origin dates back to a 1969 speech, detailed in this post. A common misinterpretation has been to claim that individual “4%ers” are the only students capable of learning a language via grammar-translation (GT). This is untrue. The “4%ers” are simply those who tend to stay enrolled. Recently, I’ve argued they represent the pedagogically immune.
98%
I’ve seen this (as well as 95%, and even 90% in some cases) shared as “minimum comprehension level” that students should have when reading. This figure actually represents recommended minimum text coverage while reading. It’s from various studies, detailed in this post. In short, a text coverage as high as 98% has been shown to produce comprehension scores as low as 70%. That’s not incredibly good. Also from the studies, a text coverage of 95% produced scores as low as 55%! You don’t want to know what the scores were for 80%!
100%
I’ve heard people say that knowing 100% of words means a text will be 100% understandable. That’s not true (see above). In an age of promoting “productive struggle” and “grit,” the accusation is that a 100% understandable text is undesirable because students will somehow not get their +1 level to their i (again, see this post on that whole concept demystified). This is most definitely untrue. Even when comprehension is 100% there are aspects of language (e.g., word order, forms, etc.) that can still be learned. Given what is known about text coverage, there’s very little justification for using target language students don’t know, like above-level texts. Therefore, the 100% figure should be a goal for text coverage or known vocab.
I’ve written about sneaky quizzes in the past. Originally, they were intended to get a grade for the gradebook (I had not discovered ungrading) while being another source of input. I called them “quick quizzes,” rebranded as “comprehension checks,” and then went back. Call them whatever you like. This update is a new way to go about them, scaled to whatever you need, like breaking up a long class with a 5-minute quiz, or adding group collaboration to get a 20-minute activity. In a nutshell:
About quizzes…I haven’t been putting a single score on anything this whole year, and I’m not going back. If you do, though, have students score their own work. I also haven’t assigned any specific work to turn in this whole year (see portfolios), and I’m not going back. If you do have specific assignments students are expected to turn in, though, report these scores in the gradebook like you would anything else. Here’s more detail…
Continue readingAs part of “schoolifying CI,” here are two more follow-up activities in addition to Read & Summarize and the ole’ standby, Read & Translate:
Read & React (or Listen & React)
Students react to narrative events. You could choose a variety of prompts, having students respond to a certain number, etc. based on your class needs. Here’s a selection from Novella Month, which for me is now going to end the school year instead of occupying the February weeks before break. I’ve selected 5-8 of these, and given “respond to 2” etc. instructions depending on scope of text and time:
Read & Reflect
Unlike responding to prompts about the narrative, this reflection focuses on the reading experience itself:
Listen & Reflect
For listening, the prompts can be slightly different, recognizing that a lot of the experience is out of the student’s control (vs. reading):
It’s all there. All the evidence that humans baaaaaaasically need to hear/view/read language (i.e., input) that they understand (i.e., comprehensible) is at this point un-questioned. N.B. While the second language acquisition (SLA) field has dropped the word “comprehensible,” now referring to “input” only, teachers are far more likely to identify these researched practices under the broad “CI” term. Bottom line, CI-based practices cannot be dismissed. They can’t really be expected to cause a stir anymore. Instead, it’s discussion involving a mix of opinion and research about “the X amount of Y beyond input” that causes a stir these days. However, let’s recognize the outcome of that discussion is not nearly as important as providing input. It’s not equal. It’s not even 3/4ths. Focusing on input gets us probably 90% there. Add some interaction and purpose for hearing/viewing/reading input, and that’s like 99%.
If only it were that simple.
Continue readingAfter a most terrible teaching experience (i.e., remote year 2020-21), I wrote about wanting to double my storytelling efforts for the next year. In 2021-22, it didn’t really happen, with us creating only 10 class stories total, all very short, amounting to something like 700 total words of Latin. Come this year, we made just four (about 300 total words) up until November. This is not much Latin at all, and I’ve come to question its value in my classes.
Besides, I don’t miss it one bit, not really enjoying the storytelling process as of late. Did I ever? Not sure. The learning curve for collaborative storytelling is real steep. It’s hard to tell what might have been productive struggle or just stressful struggle. I certainly loved being a student in storytelling demos—what a friend dubbed “Workshop CI”—but I can’t say for sure that I loved asking stories to a classroom of actual teenage kids who were neutral at best, but who usually couldn’t care less. I know I know, the key is to bank on interests and personalize and make class fun and memorable and make students forget they’re learning a language, blah, blah, blah, but that just doesn’t match my reality. It never has (though it was much closer when teaching middle school). Such a magical storyland context certainly exists for some teachers in some schools teaching some languages to some students. Not mine.
So, I’m getting rid of storytelling.
No worries, though. We have plenty of other activities, and plenty of texts since I began writing these for the absolute beginner. Granted, we still need MORE low level books for independent reading options, yet we’ve reached a point where the number of books exceed what could be read as a whole class for the year (which would be boring, anyway, only reading these books by just one author). In terms of novellas (and now novellulas Pīsō… & Quīntus…), we really do begin reading a book the first week. No need to wait until the spring. So, books are a significant part of class content. They’re anchors we use to explore Roman topics. Aside from those anchor texts, we actually have enough sometimes feels like content overload:
I do, however, want to keep the idea of students-as-content. In my experience, this has helped build a safe learning environment and sense of belongingness right from day one of school. Our class stories were always based on something the student liked. Therefore, this new idea just eliminates the story…
Continue readingMy classroom days are certainly numbered. Just yesterday, the Unfair Game backfired tremendously, with a kid actually thinking I was picking on their group, prompting them to leave the room. I understand how adolescents can be, I’m just losing interest in this kind of stuff real fast. Anyway, I decided to remove myself as much as possible from gameplay next time, though in a way that still maintains high levels of input during the activity.
In short, students (re)read together in a group, as usual, but are also tasked with creating the questions and answers. When it comes time to use these Qs in the game, check to see if the answer the original team came up with was correct. If not, -10 points. Otherwise, the wheel has only positive values. Correct response from a team means they spin. Otherwise, move on to next team.
I also wanted to leave it up to the original team as to how specific and picky the answer had to be. For example, when I asked how a character was described, the correct answer being “more suspicious,” the response of just “suspicious” wasn’t quite right. Yes, I was being picky, but its place in “The Unfair Game” made things worse. In The Fair Game, however, a team can choose to highlight something like that comparative, requiring a specific answer. It’s up to them (and not me), adding to the competitive nature, but removing myself as some kind of arbiter.
Here’s The Fair Game.
You’re looking at my school desk. There’s some wormwood lotion for our desert-like winter classroom conditions here in New England, some peacock feathers (why not?), one of the deck prisms my great grandfather made in his line of work, the growing collection of my ancient wisdom series obsession, and what remains of this year’s unread novella order. What’s not there is the stack of articles and research reports that had been piling up since last spring. I’ve finally read them all during my planning periods. Of course, each report itself produced at least another to read, and often two or three more, making the review process more like attacking a hydra, but those are now tucked away in a “To Read/Review” folder in Drive. My desk is clear, and that’s enough of an accomplishment for me while teaching full-time. Aside from the reports, I’ve read 8 books, too:
In case you’re wondering and were to ask for my current top five, which includes Grading for Equity (Feldman, 2018) that I read a couple years ago, it’d have to be Ungrading, Pointless, Punished by Rewards, and Hacking Assessment. Beyond the books, this year I also completed a small-scale pilot study, which I’ll be presenting at the CANE Annual Meeting. While not specific to Latin teaching, a case could easily be made that *any* grading research can apply to *every* content area. In fact, it’s somewhat remarkable what researchers have found, yet the profession just doesn’t seem to know. And there’s consensus. I’m not prepared to make sweeping claims and cite anything specific, but my impression of the consensus so far is:
Magister P. 