Teaching with Compelling CI

Student Responses to 2015-16 Day 1 Survey Question: What Makes You Nervous? What Challenges Do You Foresee?

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It’s a good habit to really listen to your students. In fact, if all language teachers did so, there would be more Teaching with CI.

At the start of the year, I hand out Expectations, and assign a few questions to be answered with an adult at home. Let’s face it, CI classes aren’t like other classes, and it’s good practice to make sure everyone understands how that academic environment is different, and what makes a CI class flow. The following response samples are somewhat depressing, but reflect the current state of taking a second language in high school. I offer them as anecdotal evidence that forced language production/output is damaging, as well as assurance that this “CI thing” will reach more students, especially if we embrace the research.

So, what makes kids nervous, and what challenges do they foresee? Some responses:

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CI Flow: Participation & DEA

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Scott Benedict just blogged about his current Pagame system, which is essential for a CI class to flow. If class doesn’t flow, we begin to consciously learn. If we do too much conscious learning, we don’t acquire as much. In place of a participation system, I use an adapted version of Bob Patrick’s DEA. I agree with Scott and the grading experts (e.g. Marzano, O’Connor, etc.) that traditional participation scores should be reported, but never included in an academic grade, especially when using proficiency-based grading systems. There is, however, one distinction that I, Bob Patrick, and other teachers using DEA make, that justifies including it in the grade.

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Proficiency Grading: The last rubrics you’ll ever need

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**Updated Expectations Rubric**

OK, so maybe you’re not ready for a complete grading overhaul, or it might be that you are, but someone else isn’t. In this new post, I offer an example of how to use Proficiency goal rubrics independently within a traditional department-defined system using common grading categories. A simple process would be to keep the categories your department has, and use the Proficiency goal rubrics to grade work. A more complete process requires renaming grading categories for the sake of consistency, and communicating CI principles, but otherwise keeping the weights intact. I describe the more complete process in this post.

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“School isn’t even close to an L1 environment:” Why reading is KEY

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I’ve heard the argument that “it’s impossible to replicate a native language (L1) environment, so why bother with all this CI stuff in the classroom?” I used to counter this with “we’re trying to get as close to that environment as possible while lowering expectations to a realistic level given how little time (~400 hours) students have with a language in high school.” Sure, that’s all true, but we can do better.

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The Interview: “Do you have any questions for us?”

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Bryce Hedstrom has a great document for interviewing teacher candidates if you happen to find yourself on an interview committee. I’ve created a list of questions from the other perspective. Asking even just a couple of these should give you some great insight into the prospective workplace.

1) What is the goal of the [school]’s language program? ACTFL Proficiency level? Is there a different goal here for Latin?

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CI Curriculum

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**Updated 2.28.18 with the Universal Language Curriculum (ULC)**

The bad news; there isn’t one for Latin. The good news; we do have a list of Most Important Latin Verbs. More bad news; most teachers new to CI don’t know what to DO with the list, yet this is what they crave, and NEED the most. It makes perfect sense. There just isn’t time to create a realistic curriculum from the ground up, or tons of Embedded Readings while we’re just getting used to the idea of CI from reading blogs, articles, and research, let alone honing our craft when it comes to delivering understandable messages.

The role of a curriculum changes when a skilled CI teacher is able to use more student details to drive content, and can create teachable moments ex tempore. There’s also the case for non-targeted input which leaves a curriculum optional. STILL, all that’s advanced stuff, and this is about getting teachers help who crave it most.

Some support.

Although I’ve heard recently that some teachers have ditched TPR at the start of the year in favour of beginning storytelling immediately, I will continue to start with TPR since I really haven’t exhausted the possibilities. There’s an updated, or “evolved” version of TPR anyway, which I find is more powerful and I’d like to get some experience with that.

So, I’ve been working on an essential list of classroom vocab (remember, “shelter vocab, unshelter grammar!”) to use with the most important verbs…about the closest thing to the high-demand curriculum that’s needed.

Access the TPR Word Wall here.

 Update 10.08.15 DO NOT attempt to work through the TPR Word Wall as a curriculum to complete. Like EVERYTHING we teach, when something loses steam, move on. My pattern has been to work on a verb or two, then get some details from a student with DISCIPVLVS ILLVSTRIS, and read, give a dictātiō, etc. For reference, I am just past the 8 hr mark with my (online) classes, and haven’t begun storytelling.