I’ve revisited my list of TPRable (Total Physical Response-able) words with way more entertainment in mind, made a PPT to follow along, and also rebooted my safety nets for 2019. This is all in anticipation of students returning from holiday break, forgetting absolutely every routine we established…
Continue readingStrategies & Activities
Most Vivid Scene (MVS)
One thing that can bog down a great story is spending too long on many small details. At least that was my experience when taking 2-3 days to ask a story, finding that kids got bored with all that lack of action and stopped caring where the story went. Still, there’s something great about a vivid scene that’s often lost in otherwise simple, action-packed stories. Thus, I present Most Vivid Scene (MVS)…
Input Hypermiling Combo: 1 Activity, 6 Days, 24 Texts, 76 Storyboards!
Back in 2016, I wrote about five follow up activities based on one story. I’ve certainly been thinking differently since then, though I haven’t so much as changed my tune as I have changed keys. I’m now cautious of doing many activities over and over using just one story. Despite any novelty, the context remains the same. Surely, that can’t be ideal for acquisition, right? After a while, the student is probably just working with an understanding of the story from memory. Similarly, I’ve been highly critical of Latin teachers for remembering English translations they’ve studied and/or taught over the years instead of actually processing the target language itself. Because of that KEY change, I’ve been looking into creating new contexts with minimal planning effort. Here’s a workflow to hypermile your input:
1) Get a text
2) Read that text
3) Do a new activity that gets you a) more texts, b) drawings, or c) both
4) a) Read those new texts, b) Picture Talk the drawings, or c) both
5) Compile texts, drawings, and glossary into FVR packet
The Full Glossary Experiment
Yesterday, close to 10 students across all classes asked what auxilium meant. Oh, and here’s the excerpt from that text:
With questions like that, how often are students aware of all those glosses I intentionally put into class texts?! In the same classes, I also noticed that students were working much slower than I’d expect during Read & Translate. Surely, if they’d been reading at home the process would be much easier. Could it be that comprehension support during class time isn’t helping students read independently at home? Also, it just so happens that two new students began school this week too, so those in-text glosses certainly weren’t much help with almost every other word unknown. At what point might those in-text glosses make a difference, and what could I do to help these new students begin reading on their own?
Based on all those questions, I’ve decided to experiment…
Storyasking Templates & Workflows: Some Structure
I’ve been experimenting with more structure to storyasking. No doubt, I’m a bit rusty after a year teaching classes just 1x/wk, and for which I asked the first and only story on the final day of classes! Prior to that, it had been over a year and a half since I regularly asked stories, which itself wasn’t frequent given the oppressive teaching environment—ēheu! Here are supports that have proved quite useful in helping me get back into the swing of things. But first, what makes good storyasking?
Choice, not Chaos!
A lot of teachers try asking too many open-ended questions that leave students at a loss. The easiest stories to ask include some choice, but not so much that everything feels off the rails. Teachers who attempt the latter, bail quickly. The key is finding the right balance between personalization and control. Experienced storyaskers can release a lot of control over to students, mostly because they have a higher chance of being comprehensible, and the students are more mature, knowing what to expect. Less-experienced storyaskers, or those in particular creativity-resistant contexts, like mine, would benefit from having more structure. The following supports have been helpful in reawakening imagination, something all great stories benefit from, and which most grade students have forgotten about/lost by the time they get to high school, sadly. Give them a try…
RILFA 2018 Presentations & Takeaways
On Saturday at RIFLA, I presented some updates to two NTPRS 2018 presentations. After the conference, I made even more updates based on what we discussed, including MGMT issues each setup decision addresses. I also had the chance to see two presenters.
Optimizing Your Classroom Setup for MGMT – RIFLA 2018
No-Prep Grading & Assessment – RIFLA 2018
Matthew Mangino
- Signals Watching Matthew got me thinking: Have I been using signals?! In the past, we’ve had something for stop, and slow down. Matthew showed us one for faster, but I’ve never had the problem of speaking too slowly! Right now students just raise their hand. I might want to encourage the use of signals more.
- Story Cubes I’ve used these, and written about using them as more of a whole-class brainstorm and input activity. Still, I can now see an additional use for them with “unlocking creativity.” For example, I could roll two cubes under a document camera, and ask if any word comes to mind that could fill in the next story detail I’m asking for. This could be real good. I’ve been noticing how much better an either/or question is (e.g. students choose, or are inspired a third possibility they otherwise wouldn’t have come up with on their own). Matthew’s version was to provide a paper with 9 prompts (e.g. where, when, how many, problem, etc.), distribute the Story Cubes, then ask students about the image they rolled on the cube as well as what story detail they wanted it to fulfill. In his experience, this little bit of structure has helped quite a lot. Matthew also gathered the cubes as rolled, and snapped a pic of all 9. Essentially, this is the class story depicted, which could then be used as a Picture Talk, or some kind of story retell activity.
- “Oooooooooh” Matthew shared the 2016 video of Blaine Ray teaching English in Brazil, and the first thing I noticed was how every time Blaine made a story statement, he cued the “oooohs” from the class. If I had been trained to do this, I’ve certainly forgotten. I like how it kept students engaged on even the most basic of sentences! I think I’ll give this a try.
Viviana Hardy
- The sēx game! Viviana captured our attention with a MovieTalk in Portugues. Afterwards, she shared a host of input-based followup activities. I had forgotten about the game Keith Toda shared. In groups of 3-4, students get a text, as well as a 6-sided die and 1 pencil. They take turns rolling until someone gets a 6, yells out that number in the target language (TL), and begins translating sentences from the text. They continue to do so while other team members keep rolling. Once someone else gets a 6, they grab the pencil from who was writing, and play continues. First to finish wins, or give points for understood sentences and highest points wins.
Flyswatter PictureTalk
- Do something to get you drawings from each student (e.g. Listen & Draw, or Silent T/F Reading).
- Project & describe as two students compete to indicate the correct drawing
OWI: Compiling Profiles Across Classes & Instant Parallel Characters
Last Friday, I suddenly found myself without a document camera after a Listen & Draw with our first One Word Image (OWI). Realizing my error, I scrambled to snap a pic of just one student drawing, send it to my email, sign in, download and orient, turn on the projector, etc. all just to discuss student artwork. No bueno. Not only did I lose a few kids during the shuffle, but I avoided repeating the process, meaning we looked at just one student’s work. No bueno mas. With a document camera, we used to look at several different drawings easily, keeping interest high throughout class. That absence was obvious, and I was unhappy with how things went. Still, I was determined to use the stack of hilarious drawings somehow…
For Every Sentence, What Can You Add?
Cognates
The Super Clear Cognate list is up to 475! Aside from making posters of a small selection of them to have more readily available to use during class, I’ve forgotten major plans I had for the growing resource. Late July, I posted the following to Latin Best Practices Facebook group:
My latest plan is to browse the list before writing any texts (e.g. editing class stories, adapting ancient texts, etc.), and just adding at least 1 cognate—maybe per part of speech (while also REMEMBERING that adverb forms exist).
Exempla:
– Have dialogue? Toss in a cognate instead of “dicit!”
– Describing size? Check for more interesting adjectives!
– Introducing a new character? Give them a role!
Yeah…that didn’t really happen. Granted, I did use compacta for something small, but I haven’t made this part of my workflow of typing up the day’s events in class to read the next day. So, despite writing 1300 total words for learners by second week, I wonder if I could’ve been providing more varied input as we focus on those frequent verbs. The good news is that one week won’t have disastrous negative effects, which means I can implement the new workflow right away.
Every Sentence
In addition to the cognates, consider what you can add after every sentence. Not only does this increase exposure to vocabulary, but also creates more of an image. Instead of moving onto the next sentence, action, though, or event…
- …could you describe something you just wrote?
- …could you restate the whole message from a different perspective, then add another detail (known, or possible), like how an action was done?
- …could you add a nōn sentence?
- …could you give background motivation for what just occurred based on character traits, or what they like/dislike?
The answer to all those is probably “yes.” Don’t get carried away with bogging down the text with super long sentences, but do consider how you might elaborate and expand the input without introducing any new words beyond those super clear cognates. This is one way to deliberately spiral (i.e. recycle) vocabulary that has already been used.
Card Talk 2 for 1: Double The Input
This year, I’m very on top of providing learners with texts. Each class section has been reading at least a half page of Latin every class, which I’ve also been able to print (all during my planning periods!), and give to learners as reading options at home. These texts also double as what some schools call “Do Now” or “Activators” as the first thing we read in class.
The texts include somewhere between 50-70 total words every day. Since I always print extra copies, I’ve shown learners where to go to get new texts if they’ve already read the ones from their own class. Why would they? Well, the texts from each section has different content written with frequent vocabulary that all learners understand. For those who have read all the texts available from other classes, that’s about 1300 total words after just one week! It’s worth noting that almost all of the content is the product of Card Talk, and a single Picture Talk. These are extremely low prep; the work is just typing up what happened in class, made even easier when doing a Write & Discuss at the end of class. Also, in typing up today’s events, I just stumbled upon a way to double the input from any X Talk (e.g. Card, Picture, Calendar, Item, etc.)…
Extending the concept of parallel texts to Card Talk is an easy way to double the input. Say the day’s prompt is “draw up to 4 things you don’t like, and circle them.” In class, 5-10min could easily be spent comparing two learners, their drawings, and the thoughts of others.
Now, instead of typing up what everyone heard and learned in class, review other drawings and type THOSE up. Project, and/or read using your favorite input-based strategy and activity, and you will have doubled the input in a more communicative and compelling way (vs. reading content that learners already know).
Magister P. 