OWI

Hypermiling: Mine!

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Having turned my focus to One Word Image (OWI) for the rest of the year, I’m noticing little tweaks that make all the difference. The first tweak is that the entire OWI process works best when limited to 20 minutes. Even storyasking the following day after artwork is presented limited to 20 minutes (e.g. 5 minutes per section in the pic below) keeps everything more comprehensible, compelling, and novel. You might think shorter stories lack input, but that’s not true. Since so many stories can be created, exposure to frequent vocabulary are found in many new contexts, rather than one monster of a story that takes an entire class (or more!) to co-create.

That tweak now a part of my M.O., here’s another one that adds 5 minutes to the storyasking process, but has really helped my students reawaken their imagination, not to mention something that gets X new parallel stories…

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#teachersunday: No-Prep Monday

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OK, so it’s still holiday break, but we can celebrate the third #teachersunday in a row, especially to get more teachers on board after the New Year (just post a pic of your Sunday in the Twitter sphere, and/or FB). Even though it’s still break, I’ve already heard teachers beginning to plan their upcoming week. Not me; I took care of that work—at work—before I left work. In fact, I’m not even sure what’s been planned, and don’t really need to know until school begins Wednesday. Come to think about it, I don’t even really have to plan for Mondays at all because the options are bountiful. Having some Monday routines on hand are a must for teacher sanity…

Before you check out my #teachersunday activities from this week, here are some favorite no-prep options for every Monday so you don’t have to think very hard on a Friday, and definitely not during a holiday…

  • Weekend Talk/Holiday Talk/Card Talk + Simple Survey (e.g. “What was good? What was bad?”)
  • Calendar Talk
  • Special Person Interviews
  • MovieTalk (always have the next one cued & printed)
  • One Word Image (OWI)
  • Free Voluntary Reading (FVR)

Also, whatever you do, make sure it’s something without printing (do all that by Friday). Heading to the copier Monday morning is about as bad an idea as driving back to any major city on a Sunday afternoon.

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Making some house compound gin (i.e. legal infusing, not illegal distilling)
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This ambient music show is free on Sundays, and you can stream the show all week free on the app.
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OK, so watching double bass videos isn’t exactly relaxing, but #teachersunday is more about not planning for school than it is about chilling out. #teachersunday is about making sure you retain free time, and doing what you want with it.
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Calm Quincy water from a cozy corner at Aunt Pat’s.

Most Vivid Scene (MVS)

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MVS (mūs = mouse)

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)…

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Diversity-Positive Quālitātēs, Word Wall, Super Clear Classroom Cognates, TPR Wall & Chair Stations

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My new room down the hall is just about set up. I’ve kept things from last year that really helped, ditched things that didn’t, and introduced some new things I felt I was missing.

Taking a cue from the diversity-positive practices Anna Gilcher and Rachelle Adams shared at NTPRS a couple years ago, I now have a bunch of qualities at the ready. I’m looking forward to having deeper characteristics other than the baaaaaasic small animal that’s smart and pretty. We can do better than that, right? So, the next time we ask develop a character, either by itself during One Word Image (OWI), or in a story via Teaching Proficiency through Reading and Storytelling (TPRS), I’ll ask if they’re sociable, or quiet…honest, or curious…observant, or courageous, etc. Here are my quālitātēs:

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CI Sects

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If conventional language teaching is grammar-translation, then we’re all somewhat a group of heretics! Still, there are so many sub groups of CI that it warrants a bit of elucidation. At some point, John Bracey and I were talking about if either of us just started discovering CI right now, we’d have NO IDEA what to do or where to begin. Here are descriptions of all the different CI groups I’ve observed over the past 5 years already in existence, or just emerging:

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Comprehensible Online 2018 Takeaways

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In its debut year, Comprehensible Online offered a different kind of PD, allowing participants to watch as many presentations over three weeks as they could from their computers and phones. #pdinpajamas was trending for many teachers sneaking in loads of PD from the comfort of their own home. In fact, I was able to watch most videos during my part-time job (shhh)!

Like other conference takeaways, I’ll consult this post over the years, and the info will be here to share with all. I have a code system to help me spot new things to try, and others to update. High-leverage strategies I consider “non-negotiable” for my own teaching are “NN.” Strategies to update or re-implement are “Update!,” and those I’d like to try for the first time are “New!” I encourage you to give them all a try. Here are the takeaways from some of the presentations I got to, organized by presenter:

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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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Sample CI Schedule: The Year

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**Use this schedule with the Universal Language Curriculum (ULC) Updated 2.4.18**
**Read a post on the Week & Day Updated 12.9.17**

A major reason to ditch what you’ve been doing (or what others expect language learning to look like), and teach with CI is for the flexibility in planning. In fact, the longer I teach with CI, the less I plan, and the better the results. This is probably the least intuitive concept as an educator, especially for anyone still green from their teacher training that included an obsession over Wiggins and McTighe’s Understanding by Design, the push for posted objectives, a need for required lesson plans tied to Bloom’s, etc.

I’ve written 13 blog posts and a summary about what should be considered and/or put in place in your classroom in order to continue teaching with CI. Here’s a perspective on a full year of teaching that might help you see the big picture of how simple it is to actually make this happen:

The Day **Added 12.9.17**
– Routines
– Reading
– Students
– Stories

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

The Month
– 1-2 unannounced, no notes, 5-10min Fluency Writes

The Grading Term
– Students self-assess Rubric (but check these to see if they’re being too hard on themselves)

The bulk of “planning” then becomes varying how you tell/ask stories (e.g. One Word Image, TPRS, MovieTalk, Magic Tricks, etc.), what you do with them (e.g. Choral Translation, Airplane Translation, Read and Discuss, Running Dictation, Draw-Write-Pass, OWATS, etc.), and how you’ll learn more about each other (e.g. ask students for a new batch of  questions to use during La Persona Especial/Discipulus Illustris, etc.).