Teaching with Compelling CI

The Fair Game

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My 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.

A Year Of Grading Research: 30 Articles, 8 Books, 1 Pilot Study

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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:

  • Hacking Assessment 1.0 & 2.0 (Sackstein, 2015 & 2022)
  • Ungrading (Blum, 2020)
  • Point-less: An English Teacher’s Guide to More Meaningful Grading (Zerwin, 2020)
  • Proficiency-Based Instruction: Rethinking Lesson Design and Delivery (Twadell, et al. 2019)
  • Embedded Formative Assessment (Wiliam, 2018)
  • Assessment 3.0 (Barnes, 2015)
  • Grading and Reporting Student Progress in an Age of Standards (Trumbull & Farr, 2000)
  • Punished By Rewards (Kohn, 1993)

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:

  • Grading does more harm than most people think. It’s one of the few relics of antiquated education still practiced today en masse, in pretty much the same way, too. Considering everything that’s changed for educators in the past two, five, 10, 20, and 50 years even, now realize that the current dominant grading paradigm predates all of that. The fact that most grading systems are still based on the 0-100 scale with a “hodgepodge” of assessment products that are averaged together to arrive at a course grade is nothing short of astonishing.
  • Schools with a more contemporary (i.e., 30-year old) approach that claim to have standards-based learning (SBL) and grading (SBG) systems are actually still in their infancy, with some not really implementing the systems with much fidelity at all, thus, giving a lot of SBG-derived or SBG-adjacent practices a bad name. It’s mostly teacher/school misinterpretation and poor rollouts of these practices that render the efforts ineffective, not the practices themselves.
  • Gradelessly ungrading is probably the only sure bet for fixing the mess that grades have gotten us into. If you’re putting all your time and effort into SBG, I recommend that the second you understand the basics, see if you can skip right on over to a) using portfolios, b) getting rid of all those points, and c) having students self-assess & self-grade just once at the end of the term. You’re gonna need to provide a bit of feedback with this kind of system, too, so maybe try Barnes’ SE2R model.

Interverbal Fan Fic

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I haven’t given midterms in years. Back when I did, though, it was a self-assessed analysis of fluency writes (I no longer do any sort of timed write, either, but that’s another story). Now, aside from the infuriating last-minute “all courses must have a midterm” decision we got hit with coming back from holiday break, I had a major discovery when giving the [ungraded] midterm this year.

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Translating Isn’t The Problem

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When the updated Standards for Classical Languages were shared, one key difference was the near-omission of the word “translating” as an active task, mentioned just once under a description of advanced learners at the postsecondary level (i.e, “Learners conduct research in the target language or assist in the translation of resources for the benefit of others.”), and then appeared in one example learning scenario submitted by a university professor. Granted, these standards have been in draft form—somehow—since 2017, but Latin teachers have been lauding that lack of “translation,” preferring nowadays that students focus more on reading Latin than doing translation exercises. However, it turns out that translating, per se, isn’t the problem…

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Cognates & Latinglish: I’m Not Finished.

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Gotta love a trilogy, right? This is my final Winter 2023 post on the whole cognate kerfuffle.

One reason Chinese takes native English speakers a LOT longer to acquire than something like Spanish is because Chinese has approximately zero cognates. Terry Waltz has reported that Spanish has about 3,000 words most English speakers can understand without being taught any of them. Languages with more cognates are acquired faster because cognates play a role in the first developmental stage of second language learning. Check out what ACTFL has to say about the novice language learner and cognates:

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Quīntus et īnsula horrifica (the prequel): Published!

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Before Quintus and his parents had money and moved into their house, the family lived in a small Roman apartment. Times were simpler back then, but no less spooky! In this tale, Quintus is 100% scared of the dark, but wants to appear brave in front of his parents. To make things worse, Quintus receives paranormal visitors night after night…or does he?

15 cognates, 20 other words
750 total length

This one’s real short, on purpose. I’ve had the most success in class with the shortest books. Since Latin novellas first started popping up, teachers have noted that the whole-class reading experience can drag on for beginners. Therefore, books around and even under 1,000 total words seem best for a quick read at the start of Latin 1. This book is a prequel to Quīntus et nox horrifica. The new book is similar in reading level and scope to our first books read, Mārcus magulus and Olianna et obiectum magicum. It draws vocab from them, too. īnsula horrifica could also act as a stepping stone to the original for students who want to read what is now “the sequel” on their own once independent reading begins.

Beyond that, the content mirrors what has been our comparison of elite Roman villas and common apartments. This is part of our exploration of Roman topics in Latin 1, and this new book provides a backstory to the social mobility Quintus’ family experiences. Lots to talk about. Or not, and just read for entertainment. Also, there will be an audiobook just like the original tale. We’ve got until October for that, though. Stay tuned. Enjoy!

  1. For Sets, Packs, and eBooks order here
  2. Amazon
  3. eBooks: Storylabs

Flex Time & Google Days

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“You teach the kids you have.” I like this nugget of wisdom. It doesn’t matter if previous classes of students did this or that. Everyone must teach the students they have in the room, not anticipated students, or former students. Sometimes what the students in the room don’t know can be surprising, but the only thing that matters is what we do about it. For example, I’ve been perplexed by the lack of digital literacy I’ve been seeing with incoming 9th grade students. Rather than shake my head, pretending that lack of skill isn’t my problem, I’m going to do something about it. I’m going to do something even if it has less to nothing to do with Latin. Why? Because I teach the kids I have, and these kids need to be able to navigate Google Classroom, and I’m tired of pretending it’s fine. The plan? Each week, students will have 20 minutes to organize their learning after another 20 minute independent learning session. The latter part isn’t really new, so let’s start with that:

Flex Time
This independent learning time worked out really well last year. I checked my planning doc and saw that between December and June we had Flex Time a total of eight times. I’ve curated the options, most recently removing Quizlet since I find it less useful when not immediately followed by a whole-class Live session before reading the text. New for this year will be to encourage an ongoing project. Is the goal to read as many novellas as possible? Is the goal to work through an entire textbook? Is the goal to learn about a specific Latin-related topic? Instead of bouncing around the Flex Time options every few weeks or so, students will now choose an ongoing option for this new weekly routine every Wed/Thurs. Yes, they can switch if they really want to, just as long as they reflect why (e.g., “I liked the idea of having textbook structure, but I think Caecilius is boring.”).

Google Days
The second half of Wed/Thurs each week gives students time to check feedback and submit learning evidence (Google Classroom) for Latin class. Once done, or if already caught up, the remaining time is for checking school email (Gmail) and responding to other needs, such as correspondence with teachers, and/or completing other class Google Classroom assignments. No, it does not bother me if a student ends up doing 8 minutes of math at the end of Latin. I’m teaching the students I have, and it’s clear that they need something like this. What I will do is make sure this rolls out smoothly. What I won’t do is hang out at my desk and overestimate my student’s independent learning capability. This kind of work with 9th grade requires heavy monitoring, not unlike the first minutes of independent reading. That is, if I think students are going to magically grab a book and be quiet on their own within 10 seconds, I’m fooling myself. Yet every time I take those first moments to ensure the majority of students—yes, majority, because we can’t have it all, all the time, everywhere, all at once—settle into a task, I’m always rewarded with my own quiet time to read, with the occasional look up, make eye contact, and stare down the kid who’s goofing off until they get back to the book. It works. You just have to commit to both: monitor the room, getting kids on task at the start of an activity, and being unwavering with a teacher look at the ready.

So, the second 20 minutes of Wed/Thurs is also for students to add learning evidence, submitting work from the previous week in addition to what they did during Flex Time. For example, they could attach a notebook pic from Mon/Tues annotation task, as well as a statement about something they learned from their Flex Time findings, how much they read of a book, what they were working on, etc.

Cognates & Unranked Caesar/Virgil

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Cognates. Whether you love ’em or hate ’em, how much Latin are we talking about? When they’re used, do cognates end up comprising most of a book’s Latin? Are we talking half? A quarter? Less? And then what does that mean about the rest of a book? How much of a book’s Latin is being dismissed amongst the cognate concerns? One of the concerns is that cognates weren’t used by Classical authors, the claim being that using infrequent words is a problem, and the conclusion being that cognates are unhelpful for today’s Latin learner. I don’t have this concern or have found evidence to support the claim. Nevertheless, I have been wondering just how much—or little—the concerns constitute, percentage-wise, of a book. I also have been wondering if there were many words Classical authors themselves used that other Classical authors didn’t really use. N.B., I don’t mean hapax, just words that were rarely used by others. Thus, if Classical authors preferred to use rare words, too, that would help illustrate how the current cognate fuss is more about preference than anything else. Let’s see…

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Pedagogical Immunity

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Certain learners exist who possess what seems like complete immunity to whatever pedagogy they’re subjected to. College students are a good example. Professors rarely have pedagogical training, which is perhaps the most ironic thing about those in charge of training pre-service primary and secondary teachers, but most college students are able to persist through a lack of solid pedagogy. How? Using their interests, some independent learning skills, and a bit of determination. Polyglots are another good example. They’ll learn many languages under all sorts of conditions that don’t transfer to others, claiming they found “the secret,” yet relatively few who adopt their “methods” report success (except for other…polyglots!). Upon thinking this over, many high school students—and not just those studying a second language—are often pedagogically immune, too. These students manage to pass courses even when teachers have wacky pedagogy with unhelpful practices. Consider the teacher using some pre-fab curriculum with loads of busywork. Students will put up with all that busywork. They might not learn much, but they’ll earn credit, then graduate. In that sense, then, these students made it through. They were immune (though not to learning…which we’ll get to). They just made it past the next level. They…”succeeded.”

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How To Ungrade Gradelessly In Two Steps

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I’ve been told that going gradeless and ungrading are different. While that’s certainly possible, I haven’t seen a clear difference so far. That is, between blogs, Facebook groups, books, and the rare research report under either term (plus more), the similarities stand out way more than any notable differences. There’s quite a bit of consensus among even the most discerning of grading systems related to reducing or eliminating grades. Even a few systems that fall under a generic “standards-based” approach have basically the same features as those that fall under the “gradeless/ungraded.” Whatever you want to call these approaches, this post will show you how to get rid of all the points, scores, and assignment grades while keeping the focus on learning. There are two basic steps:

  1. Have students put all their classwork, assignments, and assessments into a portfolio.
  2. Students self-grade, citing evidence from the portfolio.
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