Strategies & Activities

First Week…err Day…

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I live by the “low-prep/no-prep” mantra. Yes, there’s life outside of school (maybe not if you teach high school ELA, sorry folks), and I enjoy sharing with others ideas on how to regain their personal life back while also being a damn fine teacher. As part of this, I pride myself on having not taken home student work for a few years now.

This first week, however, is different…

I’ve been used to starting the year with a half-day devoted to essential rules, some routines, and that school-required housekeeping stuff. Then, in next 8-10 class days over about 2 weeks, I would get into Circling with Balls (CWB), Total Physical Response (TPR), Discipulus Illustris, not to mention the No-Travel Story Script I was looking forward to trying out. Not this year. I see my students just 1 hour per week, which means those usual beginning activities would take us up through Thanksgiving! That’s simply too slow for he brain craving novelty. Expectations must be lowered. I’m just now recognizing exactly how much lower, too. This first week—one class—had to combine all that housekeeping with only a little bit of Latin…very little. You know what we did? placet (= likes). Yep, that’s it, at least as the only verb, although eī, tibi, -ne?, an, nōn, et, harpastum, minimē, and certē also made appearances. The focus was on just one student, and another parallel student to compare.

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Parātus sum

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Preparing for the new school year is kind of crazy. I just read how someone feels like they have to “learn how to teach all over again.” This resonates with me. It’s the 5th time asking myself “OK, but what do I DO?!” just before everything starts. I’m preparing to plan a little more than I normally would, at least in the beginning, but really just to sleep well at night. This is exactly like what Jason Fritze mentioned about writing a quick story script ahead of time, even if you plan to roll with compelling diversions and give students most of the control over story details (noted in my NTPRS 2017 Takeaways). I know that once things get rolling I’ll be able to relax, and the daily stress will dissipate. I’m prepared for stress, and in doing so will avoid anxiety. In my first year, another teacher shared with me how he began his 9th year filled with anxiety, and later vowed to prepare enough so that he could replace it with stress. He knew how to deal with stress, but anxiety was too much, even for an experienced teacher. Here’s how I’ve prepared myself for the upcoming year:

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Expanded Readings (ExR), and Drum Corps: The Hose

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It’s DCI finals week, so you get a drum corps analogy. You have no idea what that is, you sort of know, or you marched colorguard in 1984? Well, this is what a DCI champion looks like these days. Drumlines usually begin the season in the winter months with complex and challenging music. In the summer, after hours and hours of rehearsal, that music is usually “watered-down” to something the performers can actually achieve, hence The Hose. I’ve long thought that it might be a more pedagogically-sound practice to write some basic “skeleton” music, and then expand it to be more challenging as performers improve throughout the season. The result would be music appropriate to the performers’ proficiency level (instead of spending time trying to reach something they can’t do, or can’t do well, only to ditch during finals week). Of course, it would take an incredibly patient drum line and staff in the winter to have faith that performer proficiency would improve beyond what appeared to be the “simple, easy beats” to play, and then become something impressive and worthy of playing in front of a crowd. In reality, though, the simple beats are quite rudimental to drumming, just like sheltered vocabulary is to second language learning.

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TPR: More Than Just Commands!

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Despite what many people think, Total Physical Response (TPR) is not just commands. A typical TPR sequence involves a) modelling an action, b) commanding, or narrating, and c) verifying with the class what happens. You can interact with the entire class, groups of students, and the individual. When you establish a gesture for a particular word/phrase, that’s TPR! You’re also doing TPR when you coach actors and narrate a scene during a class story via Teaching Proficiency through Reading and Storytelling (TPRS).

Assuming you’ve established names for two groups and the whole class (e.g. Rōma, Capua, and Italia, respectively), like what I saw Jason Fritze and Alina Filipescu do at NTPRS 2017, here’s what just two different phrases (i.e. says “oh no,” and “laughs”) can do for you:

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Latin Stories Videos Series: Mīnōtaurus

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This video series is inspired by Mike Peto’s straightforward Story Listening videos in Spanish, and Eric Herman’s structured English Class videos, both shared by John Piazza last month in an effort to get ones like these in Latin. Here’s the Minotaur myth retold using 21 unique words. The story is 229 words total in length.

Mīnōtaurus
1) Class
2) Story (Google Doc link found in YouTube video description)
3) Questions

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Input: DENIED

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I shared the following picture of my language library to the “iFLT/NTPRS/CI Teaching” Facebook group to share how reading novellas has increased my Spanish and French proficiency:

library

Now, the books circled in red are either mostly-unadapted ancient Latin containing support (i.e. some words defined—in Latin—in the margins), or Latin translations of books unintended for the language learner (e.g. The Hobbit, or Harry Potter). These represent more than half of my current extensive reading options for Latin—the others nearby not circled being 10 novellas with sheltered (i.e. limited) vocabulary published within the last three years. Sheltering vocabulary has had a positive effect on my Spanish and French proficiency, so I got thinking about the effects of reading unsheltered Latin…

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NTPRS 2017 Takeaways

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Before having the opportunity to present a couple workshops, my mind was blown quite sufficiently during the week. Overall, the Advanced Track with Alina Filipescu and Jason Fritze got me thinking about aaaaaaaall the things I’ve forgotten to do, or stopped doing (for no good reason) over the years. Thankfully, most of them are going to be soooooo easy to [re]implement. As for the others, I’ll pick 2 at a time to add—not replace—until they become automatic. This will probably take the entire year; there’s no rush!

Jason referred to high-leverage strategies—those yielding amazing results with minimal effort (i.e. juice vs. squeeze), and I’m grateful that he called our attention to everything Alina was doing while teaching us Romanian. ce excelent! I’ll indicate some high-leverage strategies, and will go as far as to classify them as “non-negotiable” for my own teaching, using the letters “NN.” I’ll also indicate strategies to update or re-implement with the word “Update!” and those I’d like to try for the first time with the word “New!” I encourage you to give them all a try. Here are the takeaways organized by presenter:

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NTPRS 2017 Resources

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Here are links to my Thursday and Friday NTPRS presentations, and related posts for a) those who attended and are interested in reading more, b) those who slept in past 8am (I am slightly envious of that), but wanted to attend, or c) those who weren’t at the conference at all, but find the topics interesting just the same.

Presentations:
NTPRS 2017 – No Prep Grading & Assessment (PPT)
NTPRS 2017 – Same Skills Different Game (PPT)

Related Blog Posts:
No Prep Grading & Assessment

Same Skills Different Game

Picture Talk: A Discipulus Illustris Follow-Up

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Adriana Ramirez shared videos of her and her students doing Picture Talk on Facebook. I apologize if you can’t see them, but the reality is that most of my professional groups have now migrated to FB, which is becoming THE way to remain current in the field, apparently.

Adriana used old family photos for Picture Talk topics of conversation (keeping in mind “conversations” with Novice language learners are interactive, yet require just a few words from students. The teacher—to the dismay of evaluators in the dark—SHOULD be doing most of the talking, here). Once her students developed a higher proficiency level by the end of the second year, she had them bring in their own pictures to talk about. I find it amazing that Adriana continued to provide input, and encourage interaction all throughout the “presentation” of the main student by engaging the class with questions, and checking back in with the main student—basically using Storyasking actor questioning techniques. In a more conventional rule-based language classroom, the teacher would be hands-off, and other students likely bored after 5 or 6 presentations. Not in Adriana’s class.

I instantly thought of how this could follow up Discipulus Illustris (one of 7 language versions of La Persona Especial). Although Adriana had second year students do the presenting, you could do this early on with students of lower proficiency—just be the one providing input and encouraging interaction. To do this, a student emails you a pic to use as a prop. Yes, students are great props, but something novel to look at should grab the attention of others just because it’s different, and fools the mind into thinking the activity is completely different while you could be asking the very same Discipulus Illustris questions about the picture!

I love how it’s no-prep. Actually, it’s can’t-prep, which is exciting on its own. Sure, you could preview the pic (especially if you have students engaging in tomfoolery often), but part of the fun is keeping it lively with unexpected, compelling diversions from what is likely a boring school day. Teachers need to feel energized as well, so try something new.

Free Writes: Who can write the…FEWEST?!

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Whether it’s the first Timed Write (e.g. Free Write, or Story Retell) in September, or the final one during the last few weeks of school, you can turn any writing prompt into a game that everyone can participate in, with…

“Who can write the fewest words, but say the most…about X?”

What is X? Anything; describing oneself, TV show, sports match, or expressing thoughts on first days of high school, summer off, or graduating. The best part? This is a Personalized Questions & Answers (PQA) springboard.