read & translate

Read & React + Read & Reflect

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As part of “schoolifying CI,” here are two more follow-up activities in addition to Read & Summarize and the ole’ standby, Read & Translate:

Read & React (or Listen & React)
Students react to narrative events. You could choose a variety of prompts, having students respond to a certain number, etc. based on your class needs. Here’s a selection from Novella Month, which for me is now going to end the school year instead of occupying the February weeks before break. I’ve selected 5-8 of these, and given “respond to 2” etc. instructions depending on scope of text and time:

  • What could make the story better for you? Is there anything missing?
  • What other story does this remind you of? How did that connection help you understand the story better?
  • How are you alike, or different from any of the characters in the story?
  • How does this story make you feel? When have you felt that way in your life?
  • What is a message, or lesson in this story? Could it help you, personally, in life?
  • What can you figure out that isn’t directly in the book? What clues did you use to figure that out?
  • Why do you think the character(s) acted the way they did?
  • What do the character'(s)’ choices, or actions tell you about them?
  • What is the mood, or tone of this story? What makes you say that?
  • How did the character(s) change during the story?
  • What traits do the character(s) have? What clues in the story make you believe that?
  • What questions do you still have? What are you wondering? What would you like to know more about?
  • What would you like to ask one of the characters?
  • If you were to reread this, what would you be trying to figure out the second time?
  • What are the most important parts of the story [so far]?
  • What do you want to remember after reading this story?

Read & Reflect
Unlike responding to prompts about the narrative, this reflection focuses on the reading experience itself:

  • Describe how easy or hard it felt to read the text. Why do you think it felt that way? What was it about the text or your reading that made it easier or harder for you?
  • How many times do you think you flipped to the glossary in the back?
  • Did you look up the same word more than once?
  • Which kinds of words do you think you looked up the most? Were they names of places? Were they tiny words that can’t really be drawn, like the word “however?” Were they shorter words? Longer? Actions? Descriptions?
  • What might be a way that today’s reading has made you a better reader? Is your mind making new connections? Did it strengthen ones already formed? Did you notice anything different?
  • Were there any signs today that your reading has improved? What might they be?
  • Did you accomplish much during reading today? Why or why not? What might have caused that?

Listen & Reflect
For listening, the prompts can be slightly different, recognizing that a lot of the experience is out of the student’s control (vs. reading):

  • Describe how easy or hard it was to listen and follow along in the text. Why do you think it felt that way? What was it that made it easier or harder for you?
  • How often did you have to skip reading words/phrases you didn’t understand in order to not get behind with the audio?
  • Did the same kind of unknown words come up more than once?
  • What might be a way that today’s listening has made you better at understanding Latin?
  • Were there any signs today that your understanding has improved? What might they be?

Low-Prep Doesn’t Always Mean EZ

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Like usual, it took me a matter of minutes the other day to create the next day’s class agenda. Oh, you wanna know the trick to that? There are lots of them, but it all starts with a good grading system and ends with the basic Talk & Read format. Then, I try not to plan too far out knowing that something ALWAYS changes last-minute, and about 20% of our weeks aren’t even the typical schedule to begin with. I have a rough idea what’s coming up in following weeks, but never anything set in stone. Printing much ahead of time? Forget it. I’ve recycled WAY too many reams of no-longer-relevant activity sheets to know better. Anyway, I felt good about the time spent during my planning period, and had a solid idea of how class would go. The plans were simple and straightforward.

Yet, why was I exhausted by the end classes today?!

It turns out that low-prep isn’t always as easy as it seems to carry out. The good news is that it doesn’t take much more effort to avoid a draining class. In this post, you’ll find a list of the best low-prep AND low-energy-demanding activities generated from my input-based strategies & activities and how to get texts lists. Those lists have also been updated with the “EZ” code showing low-energy-demand typically required to carry them out.

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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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The Daily Lesson Plan: Talk & Read

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Teachers unaccustomed to speaking the target language in class are often a bit lost when it comes to providing input. Instead, the more familiar rule-based lectures and paired speaking activities of PPP (present, practice, produce), target culture projects, and perhaps target language movies all become quite alluring, seducing teachers back to the pedagogy of yore. Here’s a way to conceptualize class in a clearer way that maximizes input:

  1. Talk about something
  2. Read something

Now, from the student perspective, this would be “listen & read,” but the “talk” portion of class is very much led by the teacher, especially in beginning years, so it’s easier to think of this in terms of what you, the teacher, must do. Don’t get fooled by anyone thinking this is the kind of “teacher-centered” lesson that’s frowned upon. The content is student-centered, it’s just that students can’t express themselves fully in the target language. They don’t have to, and this is expected. They need input. Case closed. The “read” portion could be any reading activity, either independent, led by you, in pairs, groups, or all of the above…

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The Full Glossary Experiment

/ magisterp / 7 Comments

Yesterday, close to 10 students across all classes asked what auxilium meant. Oh, and here’s the excerpt from that text:

Capture

With questions like that, how often are students aware of all those glosses I intentionally put into class texts?! In the same classes, I also noticed that students were working much slower than I’d expect during Read & Translate. Surely, if they’d been reading at home the process would be much easier. Could it be that comprehension support during class time isn’t helping students read independently at home? Also, it just so happens that two new students began school this week too, so those in-text glosses certainly weren’t much help with almost every other word unknown. At what point might those in-text glosses make a difference, and what could I do to help these new students begin reading on their own?

Based on all those questions, I’ve decided to experiment…

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Input-Based Strategies & Activities

/ magisterp / 16 Comments

**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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