free voluntary reading

Story Template Using Top 16 Verbs

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Keith Toda just posted about writing simple texts and parallel stories for extensive reading use, such as during Free Voluntary Reading (FVR). Follow this template to create simple texts from scratch using the Sweet Sēdecim (Top 16). Also follow this template starting with any text (e.g. the simplest version of an Embedded Reading, a parallel story, a textbook chapter, a Write & Discuss, details from Discipulus Illustris, a myth, etc.). This will get you practice writing for the novice:

  1. Setup:
    (is, is in, likes)
  2. Conflict:
    (there isn’t, doesn’t have, wants [to ___], wants to go)
    – Interactions: (sees, hears, says, thinks, knows)
  3. New Location(s):
    (leaves, comes to, is in, goes)
    – Interactions: (sees, hears, says, thinks, knows)
  4. Resolution/Unresolved Ending:
    (if item/object: someone carries, puts, gives, if action: character is able)


Example: Here’s a 250 total word length story I could add to the FVR shelf as another comprehensible option…

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Free Voluntary Reading (FVR) Myths & Starting Your Library For $0 – $250

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Myth 1 – “My students aren’t ready.”
Face it, this is a myth. Your students might not be ready to spend 15min/day reading 300-word, 5k length novels, but they’re probably ready to begin self-selecting short texts like class stories to read very early on. Once you have about 5-10 class stories, make some booklets and start FVR for a few minutes 1x/week. For this reason, I intend to make TPRS a priority early in the year after some TPR. In the past, I’ve built this up too much, spending a whole class or two on a story. My new plan is more shorter stories, at least 2/week.

Myth 2 – “There aren’t enough resources.”
Curating that collection of class stories takes care of this second myth, at least for a while. Also, don’t forget about writing/adapting short texts yourself!

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Student-Provided CI Training & Output to Input

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Can’t get to a workshop, or conference? Well, first try Comprehensible Online, which starts tomorrow! Otherwise, have you watched every CI YouTube video out there, and want more training? Take a step back, be a CI ninja, and realize who’s in front of you each day. Our own students are usually an overlooked source for training us to provide comprehensible input (CI)! Sure, we hone our questioning skillz every day, but students can provide something more…

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Sample CI Schedule: The Week & The Day

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**Use this schedule with the Universal Language Curriculum (ULC) Updated 2.4.18**

Shifting one’s practice towards providing more input can feel like it’s a daunting task. All of a sudden, certain routines and practices don’t seem to make much sense, especially after looking at how few messages in the target language there might have been on a daily basis! The big picture of what a CI year looks like should be liberating and alleviate concern. Still, there are questions about what happens daily throughout the week…

The Week
– Telling/Asking stories, then reading them
– Learning details about students
– 1-3 unannounced “open-book” Quick Quizzes

The Day
– Routines
– Reading
– Students
– Stories
– Write & Discuss! (Added 3.10.18)

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fragmenta Pīsōnis: Published!

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Here are 50 new lines of poetry including dactylic hexameter, hendecasyllables, and scazon (i.e. limping iambics)!

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This collection of poetry from the Pisoverse features a prose description of what inspired Piso’s poetry prior to each verse itself. This provides context and exposure to the words found in each verse, adding to its comprehensibility. Despite the lack of a single continuous plot, students should find fragmenta Pīsōnis more readable than the Pīsō Ille Poētulus novella, especially with any background knowledge from reading the other, much easier novellas in the Pisoverse (i.e. Rūfus lutulentus, Rūfus et arma ātra, and Agrippīna: māter fortis). The poetry in this collection includes more “big content words” to clearly convey meaning. fragmenta Pīsōnis can be used as a transition to the Pīsō Ille Poētulus novella, or as additional reading for students already comfortable with poetry having read the novella. The only new word added to the 96 word count from the entire Pisoverse is fragmentum. This collection is 2200 words in total length.

Use fragmenta Pīsōnis as a Free Voluntary Reading (FVR) option, read as a whole class together, or introduce each fragment as “poetry of week.”

fragmenta Pīsōnis is available…

1) Classroom Set Specials (up to $80 off!)
2) On Amazon
3) As a free preview of the first section (includes 12 lines of poetry) (text only)
– Poetry of the Week (free audio files to use)
4) Email me for Purchase Orders and classroom set discounts

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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Chapter 1: Paramount

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I was sitting next to my friend and NTPRS travel buddy, Angie Dodd, as she read Rūfus et arma ātra to pass the time on the flight down to San Antonio. I’ve observed Angie teaching Spanish in VT, and she’s great. Angie took a few years of Latin back in high school, but remembers very little other than the opening lines of some Caesar, and Cicero (which she had to memorize, of course). “I feel like I’m reading more fluently by page 28,” she said. Truth.

In a novella with only 40 words, most of them will have been read long before the end of the book. It should be no surprise, then, that the most frequent words occur within the first chapter or two. This explains why reading the book actually became easier as Angie continued. This can be applied to all novellas that shelter (i.e. limit) vocabulary, and those with the lowest word counts have most of their words front-loaded within the first chapter or two, also obvious in my other books, Pīsō Ille Poētulus, and the latest, Agrippīna: māter fortis .

Therefore, if students feel the most strain in the first chapter or two, perhaps we should begin novellas together. Laurie Clarcq would often read half a novel together as a whole class before it would go on the Free Voluntary Reading (FVR) shelf. The rationale being that those interested/hooked will pick up the book to find out how it ends, and those disinterested will have a better chance of reading something else they find compelling.

BTW, Angie decided to reread the Rūfus—having had meaning established on the first pass—knowing that she would then “actually be able to read.” She did, with chuckles throughout.

CI is amazing, isn’t it?

p.s. Rūfus was inspired by Mira Canion’s El capibara con botas containing just 55 Spanish words. That book was a breeze and a blast to read, and I knew that Latin students needed something like this. Granted, the word count figure excludes a lot of Spanish cognates (twice as many?), but that seems to be the industry standard practice. For Pīsō, however, I strayed from this practice and instead chose to include cognates in the word count figure of 108 since I don’t believe cognates are necessarily transparent. I also excluded the ~30 additional meanings established in footnotes, as well as all different forms of words (e.g. est and esse) that students encounter when unsheltering (i.e. not limiting) grammar. Agrippīna has ~20, and Rūfus just ~10 additional meanings established in footnotes. If the word count figures irritate you, it’s fine to say that while Pīsō has under 150, Agrippīna has under 90, and Rūfus has under 50 words—figures still worthy of note!

Storyasking: Mixed Tenses

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“Sheltering vocabulary while unsheltering grammar” refers to using ANY grammar necessary to express ideas while limiting words. This mantra has been instrumental in the design of our latest Latin novellas since it simultaneously reduces cognitive demand while casting a broad net of input, exposing students to different verb forms as they attend to fewer “big content word” meanings. Despite this unsheltering, sometimes we have to make a decision about when our story takes place! This establishes a focus—perhaps unwanted—on one tense or another.

If we, indeed, want to expose students to that broad net of input, we can respond appropriately without sacrificing any communicative value. Here are some very practical ways to conceptualize the use of different tenses in stories, and what to do in order to add variety to the verb forms used in stories and readings:

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FVR Library: Easier Than You Think!

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**Updated 3.7.19**
Hypermiling to add packets of text to the FVR shelf regularly!

Mike Peto had great things to say about Free Voluntary Reading (FVR) and Sustained Silent Reading (SSR) on Episode 6 of Teachers That Teach.

How could it possibly be easy? Mike recommends building your FVR library by first making booklets of known class stories that are 100% comprehensible.

THAT’S SO SIMPLE!

This is obvious, yet doesn’t seem to be a common practice, especially for Latin teachers lamenting over the legitimate lack of understandable reading material! If you think about it, the typical Latin teacher engaged in collaborative storytelling/storyasking probably has 10 stories by the holiday/winter break, and maybe even twice, or thrice that! Unless the class has been reviewing old stories as part of a detail-adding, or story-improving activity (which is great, BTW), there’s a good chance that students have forgotten details from the earliest of stories and wouldn’t mind a gentle walk down memory lane. Oh, and students should be able to read them fluently (speed + accuracy), which is a great confidence booster!

So, with everything you need to build an FVR library before more hideously easy books are published and you get funding for several copies, go format those typed-up class stories for booklets, print ’em out, and start setting aside class time for reading!

How? How much time?
An FVR program is simple to begin. Remember, this is FREE reading, so it’s best to avoid assessments and accountability. If all students are reading the same book, it’s known as Sustained Silent Reading (SSR), although Mike said that he calls it that anyway just so students don’t say something snarky like “well if it’s voluntary I’m gonna just sit here.” Once you have a few materials, be sure to hold FVR consistently. If you can’t do it daily, start weekly. As far as time goes, Mike says “if students can read for 7 minutes, give them 5—you don’t want them to get bored with it.” This is good advice. I’ve been doing 15 minutes every few days, but I’ve noticed that a murmur develops towards the end…looks like I’ll drop down to 12min or so and see what happens.

Lingua Latīna: LOVE the textbook, but is it right for my students?

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No.

Lingua Latīna per sē Illustrāta (LLPSI), the Latin textbook entirely in Latin, has a cult following. I understand the appeal. Personally, I love it, and am currently rereading it for the nth time. Still, I’m wary whenever people suggest LLPSI as the panacea to common pedagogical problems, or assume it’s the most appropriate resource to use when teaching Latin communicatively. Again, I understand, but LLPSI is still a textbook, and comes with every downside of using a textbook to teach communicatively.

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