quick quiz

Crowdsourced Quizzes/Comprehension Checks

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I’ve written about sneaky quizzes in the past. Originally, they were intended to get a grade for the gradebook (I had not discovered ungrading) while being another source of input. I called them “quick quizzes,” rebranded as “comprehension checks,” and then went back. Call them whatever you like. This update is a new way to go about them, scaled to whatever you need, like breaking up a long class with a 5-minute quiz, or adding group collaboration to get a 20-minute activity. In a nutshell:

  • Collect quiz content from each student.
  • Use those for the quiz.
  • Go over the quiz.

About quizzes…I haven’t been putting a single score on anything this whole year, and I’m not going back. If you do, though, have students score their own work. I also haven’t assigned any specific work to turn in this whole year (see portfolios), and I’m not going back. If you do have specific assignments students are expected to turn in, though, report these scores in the gradebook like you would anything else. Here’s more detail…

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Grades: Going, Going, Gone!

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Here’s a quick report having gone nearly 100% gradeless. I say nearly because at my school, the halfway point of the quarter (i.e., progress reports) requires a grade. So, as of right now there’s a course grade that shows up. This practice isn’t quite in line with a true ungrading approach that would have a grade only at the very end of the grading period. I’m nearly there, and have a feeling this is as far as I’ll go, too. But that’s not a problem. There’s already been a big difference in the most important areas, and I expect things to get even better.

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Quick Competition: Most Points Wins!

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Here’s a competitive reading activity I came up with on the fly the other day. You could consider it one of those “sneaky” re-reading strategies, almost like an annotation task, but more fun. It’s no frills, has an element of chance (like Lucky Reading Game), and adds a novel twist to reading any text. Here are the instructions I project:

  1. In your notebook, write down as many X as you can, in English.
  2. When the time is up, we’ll review, and you get a point for each detail the teacher calls out.
  3. Most points wins!

What’s “X?”
Anything you want. We just read about Sagittarius from sīgna zōdiaca Vol. II, so X was “facts about Sagittarius.” Students feverishly read through pages to scoop up details.

What Details Get Points?
Anything you want. In the zodiac example, I set a timer for 5 minutes, then started reading back from the beginning, making up points as I went (e.g., “If you wrote down something about Sagittarius being the 9th sign, give yourself a point). Just like The Monitor Assessment, I also gave points for details as a way to check comprehension.

What Do Students Win?
My go-to reward is “glory and honor,” which honestly is enough for students. Besides, they get a laugh out of the fanfare knowing I won’t try to bribe them into playing games with anything other than winning as the purpose.

Total Words Read

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Last year, I reported total words read up to holiday break, and it’s hard to believe that time of year is upon us again. Since part of my teacher eval goal is to increase input throughout the year, let’s compare numbers. 2018-19 students read over 20,000 total words of Latin by this time. However, this year’s students have read…uh oh…just 11,000?!?!

Hold up.

Something’s going on. I’m positive that students are reading more now, and for longer periods of time. Classes are now structured to be roughly half listening and half reading (i.e. Talk & Read), too. So…why don’t the numbers add up?! Surely there’s a reason. Let’s look into that, starting with this quote from last year’s post:

“Over the 55 hours of CI starting in September up to the holiday break, students read on their own for 34 total minutes of Sustained Silent Reading (SSR), and 49 minutes of Free Voluntary Reading (FVR)…“

This year’s independent reading time has skyrocketed to 99 and 233. That’s nearly 5x more independent choice reading! Now, last year’s 20,000 figure included an estimated 1,900 from FVR. Therefore, it’s not unreasonable to estimate that this year’s students have read something like 9,500 total words during FVR, which would be like reading a third of this paragraph worth of Latin per minute. If so, the year-to-year comparison would be very close (i.e. 20,000 vs. 20,500). However, I’d expect the numbers to be much higher now with even more of a focus on reading. Seeing as it’s really difficult to nail down a confident number during independent choice reading due to individual differences, then, let’s just subtract all that FVR time from both years, arriving at 18,100 to compare to this year’s 11,000, which is still quite the spread. Let’s do some digging…

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Rethinking MGMT: No-Prep Gradebook Evidence

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Today, I greeted students at the door as usual, waiting for their class password and making a personal connection before class. When the bell rang, I went to my desk, a bit like Vanna White drawing attention to the projected “Do Now!” with the instructions to read a new text I had placed on each seat. After a minute or so, I began walking around with a clipboard marking a) who was reading, b) who wasn’t/who was talking, c) who was coming in late, and d) who was absent.

This went into the gradebook.

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How To Plan So Your Plans Never Get Messed Up

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On any given day, it’s common for teachers to have wrenches thrown into their plans without warning. Sometimes these wrenches appear during the very class teachers are required to plan for! Other times, it feels like the whole damn tool chest is being tossed our way! This post offers tips on how to structure your planning so those wrenches have absolutely no impact, whatsoever…

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Input-Based Strategies & Activities

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**Updated 9.30.23**with Reverse Questioning
**Here’s the list of older ones I stopped using**

When choosing the class agenda beyond the Talk & Read format (now Talk, Read & Reread), it dawned on me years ago that I couldn’t remember all my favorite activities. Thus, here are the input-based strategies & activities I’ve collected, all in one place, and that I currently use (see older ones above). Everything is organized by pre-, dum-, and post- timing. You won’t find prep-intensive activities here beyond typing, copying, and cutting paper. Oh, and for ways to get that one text to start, try here. Enjoy!

**N.B. Any activity with the word “translation” in it means translating what is already understood. This should NOT be confused with the more conventional practice of translating in order to understand.**

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