Teaching for Proficiency 102: Intercultural Communication

In writing my Teaching for Proficiency 101 post, I stated my goal is teaching for intercultural communicative competence, teaching so that students become proficient, thoughtful users of the language. That post ended up focusing mostly on aspects of instruction related to communicative competence and linguistic proficiency.

This post seeks to complement the last, and expand on what I find to be fundamental in language teaching with regards to guiding learners towards becoming thoughtful intercultural communicators.

What is Culture?

From the April 2012 edition of The Language Educator

If we want to explore interculturality and meet our national Cultures standard, we should have a working definition of what “culture” is. ACTFL uses the “3 Ps” model: Products, Practices, and Perspectives.

Products are tangible and intangible creations that emanate from the beliefs of a culture. These can include food, music, books, laws, homes, and so much more. Practices are how people in the culture interact with each other: how does one show respect, and to whom? What rites of passage exist in a culture? How do people show that they are listening in a conversation, or during a presentation?

Products and practices reveal underlying perspectives, how cultures make sense and meaning out of the world. Understanding perspectives, and being able to explore them empathetically, helps people become more thoughtful and respectful towards others they deem “different.”

What is Intercultural Communication?

Graphic by Ben Fisher-Rodriguez, with reference to the NCSSFL-ACTFL Can-Do Statements, Proficiency Benchmarks, and Performance Indicators

Again, I have turned to ACTFL for a definition of intercultural communication. Through exploring Products and Practices at a variety of skill levels, learners become increasingly able to interact in empathetic and culturally sophisticated ways, with the aim of being able to serve as a mediator between and among differences in cultural Perspectives. This ultimately helps the world interact more peacefully and productively.

In putting the skills of intercultural communicative competence into a similar framework as the linguistic skills, we have a helpful trajectory that show us how we might push students to grow. Students have to start by being able to just identify and list Products and Practices in the Target Cultures, while also reflecting on how they think these Products and Practices reflect underlying cultural Perspectives. Then, they can make comparisons between (and among) the Target Cultures and the Home Cultures. This builds towards understanding and explaining diversity in Products and Practices, and being able to suspend judgment in evaluating them and the underlying Perspectives. Note that I have put “objectively” in quotation marks on the graphic above, because I do not believe that objectivity exists in the strictest sense. Each person brings their own experiences and biases to every situation, and will have to be cognizant of those in mediating differences in cultural perspectives.

I think that this sequence is not a fixed, step-by-step sequence for learners that just aligns to their linguistic proficiency: students can list Products and Practices, and then make some comparisons. Through more in-depth exploration, they might be able to begin explaining some diversity, even if they were exploring the topics linguistically at the Novice level. They might even be able to help others avoid cultural misunderstandings by acting as a mediator with limited linguistic skill in the Target Language! But that is the key: culture is so many things, so students need practice in applying their skills of interculturality to a variety of cultural Products and Practices. With an increase in knowledge about and experiences with the Target Cultures, students will perform more consistently at the higher levels of skill.

So if these are the skills of intercultural communicative competence that we want to teach to, what principles can guide our planning? (Because these skills only grow via thoughtful planning from us as instructors – not by chance!) Here is where my thinking is right now:

Build an Understanding of the Home Cultures

I have found that many students, especially white, US-born students, think that only other places “have culture.” They can’t quite see that every thing we do is culture, and need practice in identifying the aspects of culture that are all around them. This is where activities like Card Talk and Special Person Interviews can help reveal the cultures of our school community by making discussions of students’ preferences, opinions, and experiences the topic of discussion. There is so much diversity even within our own classrooms, and building awareness of the cultures in the room helps prepare students for making more thoughtful, nuanced comparisons.

I try to think aloud with students about things that are familiar to them to point out that the way things are indicates a lot about culture. I use questions like the following to make our US-American culture a little weird to them:

  • What do our hobbies say about us as a culture? Why do you think that?
  • What do you think it says about our US-American cultural values that our schools schedules are the way they are, instead of like German schools?
  • Why do you think these foods are very popular here and not as popular in Germany? Why are their foods popular to them and not here?
  • Why do the downtowns of their cities look like that? Why does the downtown of OUR city look like that?
  • At what points in history has the US censored artworks in a way similar to this art exhibit in 1930s Germany? What do you think was the aim at that time?

Students need to build the reflex not to just think “oh, they’re so different/weird,” but rather to think “they might also see some things we see as normal as different/weird…I wonder why they might think that way?”

Push Students to Be Descriptive Rather Than Evaluative

Learners sometimes get stuck when exploring culture because of a gut reaction they have to what they’re learning. We cannot accept “that’s weird” or “that’s gross” and also “they’re so much better than us [US-Americans]” without interrogating the “why” behind those statements.

If we hear statements like these, we just need to pause and ask, “Why?” “Why are you laughing?” “Why do you say that?” The thinking that follows reveals even more of the underlying cultural Perspectives of our students, which we can reflect back to them to help them see their own cultures as objects for study and comparison in our classes.

Provide Frequent, Repeated Exposure to Cultures

Students need A LOT of exposure to cultures, in the same way that they need A LOT of exposure to comprehensible language in context. We have to plan for culture to be everywhere in our curricula for them to have a fighting chance at being able to be intercultural mediators. My students have commented that as much as they love growing more proficient in their use of the language, they love exploring cultures, so building more exploration of Products AND Practices into our learning increases student motivation and investment into learning the language, too.

This can also mean seeing the same text more than once. One thing I learned from Alicia Dallman Shoemaker‘s TOY presentation is that in order for students to have “aha!” moments about their learning, they sometimes need to revisit texts/photos/media multiple times to give their brains time to digest all the new information they are taking in. Students might need to read a text more than once, or watch a video again on a different day, after having time to process and live some more, in order to get the most out of their cultural explorations. We can then ask how students’ thinking has changed over time to build the self-awareness and empathy necessary to become intercultural mediators.

Cultural “Texts” Can Be Many Different Things

To give students access to cultures, we can use a variety of media in our classes. Here are some ideas of things we can “read” as texts in our classes:

Photos, videos, infographics, songs, their lyrics, their music videos, children’s rhymes, games, books, posters, websites, TV shows, movies, blogs, maps, guest speakers, physical objects from the Target Cultures, postcards…

The possibilities are really endless, and all offer opportunities for learners to explore Products and Practices with our guidance to increase their understanding of the underlying Perspectives.

Provide Many Perspectives on Cultural Products and Practices, Including from Historically Marginalized Groups

To develop the ability to see the variety of ways Perspectives express themselves in Products and Practices, students need many different takes on the same topics. If we hear from one German speaker about What German Schools Are Like, we might believe that that is the authoritative One Answer To The Question, when really schools in any country are quite varied for a variety of reasons, for example. We have to be careful to paint a more nuanced picture of the Target Cultures by letting there be multiple (sometimes contradictory) takes on cultural phenomena.

My finding is that centering voices that have been historically marginalized can also helps us better see the cores of the cultures on whose margins those people live. I have personally learned a lot about how Germans conceptualize their national identities from Black and Muslim Germans, about how accessible German culture is from disabled Germans, about how Germans feel they “live diversity” from LGBTQ+ Germans. Consider adding voices from historically marginalized groups to every topic and unit to build a fuller picture of the Target Cultures, and increase empathy and understanding of those who are considered “different.”

Plan for Language to Explore Cultures through Own Voices

Any exploration of another culture is always filtered through the identities of the students doing the explorations, as well as that of the teacher selecting the materials and topics. To access the most authentic picture of another culture, we need to let members of those cultures speak in their Own Voices.

This necessitates building the linguistic capabilities to be able to explore authentic media from the Target Cultures. When we are planning for specific language functions in our curricula, as mentioned in the previous post, we can plan for one of those functions being the interpretation of authentic texts. Having pedagogical tasks that front load vocabulary and perhaps some cultural understandings build the scaffolding towards those functions.

The Fourth P: People!

Many who teach for proficiency acknowledge that language is too abstract and complex to teach explicitly, but we are also working in a model of culture that focuses on three abstract nouns: Products, Practices, and Perspectives. The way culture emerges is with people, their actions, and their use of language, rather than by stepping outside of it. This is much like the acquisition of a language, which happens with communication and use, rather than by observing a languages features from outside of it.

Behind all these Ps are People! Through the experiences of individuals, we can see culture and the 3 Ps in action, and also develop empathy for others who are different from us. A “different” culture is easy to write off as “strange” to the Novice eye, but it’s possible to find commonalities with any individual human, learn from their experiences, and see cultures through their lives. Individual lived experiences are more memorable anyways, versus just learning “cultural tidbits” as they are strewn randomly through textbooks and class “Culture Days.” If “adding more of the 3 Ps” to your curricula feels abstract and unattainable, try thinking of “adding more People” to your curricula instead.

Read this blog post for examples of how we might use People as the “Fourth P” to explore Products, Practices, and Perspectives further. A huge thanks to Cécile Lainé for putting this idea out into the universe!

That’s all for now on a high-level overview of teaching for intercultural communicative competence. What’s missing? What’s resonating? Let me know in a comment below!

Teaching for Proficiency 101: Communicative Competence

I’ve been reflecting on what helps me feel focused and calm when it feels like the world is accelerating around me and my head is spinning. What I’ve found is that reminding myself of my fundamental beliefs helps me do the harder stuff better, and make more confident decisions for “what’s next” in my teaching life. (Typing this makes me realize that this also applies to my life outside of school, but that’s a whole ‘nother post.)

So, I’ve figured out that my overall goal is teaching for intercultural communicative competence, teaching so that students become proficient, thoughtful users of the language. How do we go about that?

Input is indispensable

Learners need loads of communicatively-embedded comprehensible input in the language before they can be expected to produce the language themselves. This means multiple exposures to useful, relevant language, and that we, as instructors, have verified comprehension in some way regularly throughout each lesson. Constant formative assessment via talking with learners, rather than at them, is how we achieve this.

The sources of that input is where proficiency-oriented language teachers can diverge. Do we use exclusively authentic resources from the Target Cultures (or what we might think of as found media) to give the broadest possible view into other cultures during our classes, or do we use exclusively resources oriented towards language learners to ensure maximum comprehension of the input, and the best chances at acquisition (or what we might think of as created media)? I, personally lean towards texts created for and with language learners to try to most efficiently use the limited time I have with students over the course of our language program. Authentic resources provide access to cultural perspectives, so they are also very present, but explored with guidance and scaffolding to get the most out of the language.

Interaction, too!

Accessing the linguistic system built via comprehended input builds communicative skill and fluency, and interaction with learners about their lives and the world builds interest and attention to input, furthering acquisition. We can provide interact to students as a whole class, in pairs, and in teacher-student conversations.

We need to be prepared, as instructors, for students to interact at their own levels. Knowing that communication is not just achieved via language, this might mean that students begin by communicating using gestures, nods, or movements, graduate to using words and phrases, and move on to sentences and more complexly structured discourse over time. We can adjust our expectations and demands of students again through formative assessment, gently guiding our learners towards more extensive language use.

We are teaching communication, not “The Language.”

Using the language to express and interpret meaning in different contexts for different purposes is both our goal for learners, and the means to achieve that goal. Knowledge of abstract grammatical principles does not necessarily contribute to “accurate” language usage, and is a less useful investment of our limited time with students than just using the language in ways that students understand to accomplish nonlinguistic goals.

If we wanted to teach our students about linguistics, we could teach them that. But if our goal is to teach students how to communicate, then we are going to practice by actually communicating. One doesn’t learn to ride a bike by reading a description of how the legs work in conjunction with our balancing skills to propel the bike forward: one learns by simply riding, maybe first with training wheels, but actually riding.

Goals: Language Functions

What follows from the last point is that our goals for our programs, units, and lessons are oriented towards language functions. These include understanding audio and texts (often conspicuously absent from the goals of more traditional programs), asking and answering questions about topics (not “conjugating regular verbs”), expressing opinions, thoughts, and experiences (not using “gustar” and “gern” correctly), narrating stories (not using the preterite, imperfect, and perfect tenses), and so on. If we want our students to be able to use these functions about various topics, we need to show them the language being used for those purposes, and use these functions in our classrooms. You might draw student attention to how grammatical forms contain meaning, while also keeping in mind that this won’t mean that students will reproduce forms correctly, or soon. The focus should be on expression and interpretation of meaning in a given context for a given purpose (the definition of communication provided by Bill Van Patten).

Many who use a Comprehension-Based Communicative Language Teaching (CCLT) approach have found that stories, both fiction and nonfiction, model a lot of these functions very naturally in context. Added to the fact that narrative helps any learning be “stickier,” you might reflect on the role that stories play in your curriculum and choose to insert more narratives into your teaching. These can be novels, short stories, personal stories shared in class by either the students or the teacher, narratives the class co-creates with the teacher – there are lots of possibilities here.

Understand the Proficiency Levels: Realistic Expectations

If we are going to teach for proficiency (vs. for grammatical accuracy), then we need to have concrete look-fors when it comes to students’ developing proficiency. What are the differences between Novice and Intermediate language? What about in the low-, mid- and high- sub-levels? Any SLAyyy listener will know that Bill and I are huge fans of the Avant ADVANCE training offered by the creators of the STAMP test, which helped both of us develop a more granular understanding of the proficiency levels and sub-levels.

Once you have that foundational understanding, learning how long it typically takes for students to achieve specific proficiency levels will help you set realistic expectations for student production and comprehension. We can relax the grammar perfectionists living inside us, and live in the knowledge that language proficiency just takes time. Let’s celebrate when students exceed our more realistic standards, and celebrate when they meet those standards, too!

Understand the Proficiency Levels: Use Performance Assessments and Grade Accordingly

Once you’ve set realistic expectations for where students will get in their language proficiency throughout their time with you, you start creating performance assessments based on the topics you explore in class that ask students to use the language at the appropriate level. Your students won’t necessarily be set up for success on exams about specific grammatical phenomena because that is not what they are learning. They are learning to communicate – so assess their ability to communicate: to use the functions described above.

The grades we assign to these assessments should hopefully reflect holistic assessments of students’ language proficiency (vs. their work habits or classroom behavior). I work off the idea that students meeting the proficiency target for a course should be at a solid, low A, with A+s for students who exceed the target, B for a sub-level below the standard, etc. You might listen to our episode about Standards-Based Grading to hear more considerations about grades and proficiency.

Comprehension Is A Goal

It bears repeating that students need lots of comprehensible input to acquire and then use a language, so our goals for our programs, units, and lessons also need to include lots and lots of comprehension of Target Language input. These goals often get left out of discussions that are focused on only what students are producing, but it will be impossible for our students to go out into the Target Cultures and engage with others if they don’t comprehend what is being communicated to them.

We also need to take our students beyond just literal comprehension and into interpretation, which is to say that we want our students to be able to read texts deeply. This means making inferences and predictions about the text, making hypotheses about cultural perspectives, and using any text as a springboard to learn more (nuanced) information about a topic. We have the opportunity to reinforce the vital reading skills our students need across their lives, but only if we can let go of the feeling of control we feel when teaching the tiny elements of grammatical accuracy. Let’s embrace the big possibilities available to us when we embrace and teach to the humanity of our students, and the humanity living in our Target Cultures.

That’s all for now on a high-level overview of teaching language for proficiency. What’s missing? What’s resonating? Let me know in a comment below!

First Semester Reflections from the 2024-2025 School Year

Because we start school so late in Washington (typically after Labor Day), we ended our first semester in the second-to-last week of January. I’ve had some thoughts about the first semester simmering in the weeks since then, and I figured I’d finish typing them up here as part of my continuous reflection process.

More personalized questions!

There are many ways to provide communicatively-embedded comprehensible input to students, from storytelling to content-based instruction. I have adjusted my balance this year toward sharing even more pictures, videos, infographics, etc. from the German-speaking world and discussing them with students in comprehensible language. Somehow, I feel like I haven’t been using enough personalized questions to connect the content to my students.

Last year, I leaned heavily into Card Talk, which loans itself very well to learning more about the people in the room and building connections between them, and that helped me know so much about the people in my classes. I don’t feel that same level of connection this year, so I want to be more purposeful about connecting with my students and connecting them to the content, either by doing more Card Talk with students, or by planning more personalized questions related to the content I plan to teach about.

Move from just comprehension to language use

This somewhat relates to my previous reflection, which is that it seems a lot of my questioning has stayed lower-level (yes/no, this or that questions) or just comprehension checking (“What did I just say?” “Does _ mean this or that?”). I went to an excellent Garbanzo webinar last week about questioning, and was reaffirmed in my commitment to using questioning to advance language acquisition. It’s also making me consider more how I use questioning to advance discourse in my classes.

It is helpful to remember how new language feels SO new to our students – it’s all brand new combinations of sometimes unfamiliar sounds! Lingering on new language until it feels very confident, and then adding one detail at a time helps build out communication more solidly. Just using one question word, using processing questions to get repetitions on the new information, and only adding additional info after eliciting confident reactions to questions about all the previous info will be key to building more extended discourse, instead of just series of isolated simple sentences.

Chat Mats, the Reawakening

I see the value in having Chat Mats for students. They feel that the language is at their fingertips, and the supports help them get input because they are more or less just reading the language off the mat. But I’ve struggled with feeling like I’m using them like giant vocabulary lists, expecting students to acquire all the rich language after what feels like a “reasonable” amount of time, rather than acknowledging that they are supports for tasks and the language will take its time to get acquired.

My colleague Missy told our PLC that she gives each class a single chat mat, and lets them use them for an extended period, like a week or two at a time. She lets them chat with each other about the chat mat’s topic, and challenges them to see how long they can keep in the Target Language, how many juicy follow up questions they can ask in the language, and how much they can learn about their partners. Students naturally rise to those challenges, and increase in their ability to stay in the TL and build their confidence.

What’s even better – she gives the same mats to every level! Even upper level students need time to revisit “old” language, and feel the growth they’ve experienced since they first “learned” those linguistic skills. The conversations are more confident, richer, more exciting for them. I can see trying this more as a great way to recycle older language, and give students a marker on their path of language acquisition that helps make clear how much they have grown.

Gestures work great!

If we have told any class stories with targeted vocabulary, I have been very consistent this year with teaching gestures as part of establishing the meaning of the new phrases, as well as reviewing older gestures for other targeted vocab. Kids every year write about how much they appreciate gestures, and they are eating it up this year. The other day, a student forgot the next word in our class password, and I did the gesture, which helped unblock their brains and get the entire (correct) password out. Getting stuff into the body works so well!

Research backs this up, and ever since I have leaned more into TPR in my classes, I have seen lots of easy growth in my students’ vocabulary. For a video I’m teaching after we get back from our midwinter break, I have already planned to TPR some of the vocabulary before we even watch the video, and I know that students are going to feel so comfortable with that vocab by the time it comes up in the story of the video. More gestures! Across levels! More!

WTF is my curriculum

This…is a yearly reflection. I am not tied to a curriculum at my school, which is a blessing and a curse. I get to decide everything my students learn, and I also have to decide everything my students learn. As a result, after I “cover” the “expected stuff” in my first two levels (hobbies, family and friends, school, food, cities, travel, houses, etc.), it’s kind of the Wild West as to what we’re going to learn next.

I decided over the summer that my goal is for every themed unit to center a marginalized group in German-speaking society, and got excited about making this happen. There are so many possibilities for me to learn more, and to open my students’ eyes to the world as it truly is outside of our little suburban bubble. Our unit about housing can center accessibility, the “hobbies” unit can center Black and LGBTQ+ German speakers, “foods” can explore the diversity of food cultures across the German-speaking world and the influences of immigrant food cultures on the German-language food scenes, etc etc. The possibilities are endless and so interesting to me from a curriculum design standpoint. But! These units are still in the “wouldn’t that be nice?” phase of design. I just haven’t had the time to solidly plan them out, and that’s okay.

This year, I have been teaching a unit to my upper level class about art in the German-speaking world that builds up to learning about the “Ausstellung Entartete Kunst” (“Degenerate Art Exhibit”) that the Nazis put on in the 30s to ridicule Expressionists, Impressionists, Jewish artists, and others. It feels like a really powerful way to learn about censorship, othering, and the variety of -isms that are brewing to the surface in our society right now. I have had the idea to teach this unit for a long time, but it was only seeing Carrie Toth’s “Bajo la mesa” unit that finally gave me a structure and ideas of how to incorporate lots of rich language into our studies of visual art, which admittedly is not my personal forte. But having someone else’s work to bounce my ideas against has been very powerful, and I’m grateful for the inspiration it has provided.

The conclusion that I’m coming to is that it will all just take time. I can only make and find new resources for a couple units each year before my brain gets overloaded with building the plane while flying it, so I am trying to be content with the new that I create, as well as the less-than-perfect old that I sometimes have to rely on. That’s okay! I also do well when I have a model to look at and build off of. Carrie’s unit is necessarily different than mine – hers is based on a music video that I don’t have for German, and my ultimate end goal is some informational texts about a Nazi art exhibit – but accessing someone else’s thinking is great way to see what works for me, what doesn’t, and where I need to go to plan the next improvement. If I can only revamp a unit or two every year, that is fine, because it just has to be. Everything will be okay.

Diversity, equity, and inclusion are the point

The new government has been launching an all-out attack on marginalized groups across our country, and it has been horrifying to witness. It affirms to me that although ideally, every student would come away from my program with Intermediate-level proficiency or better in German, what I really want is for them to understand the joys and benefits of diversity, equity, and inclusion, and to fight for them in their own ways in their own lives.

They will work and live in a world of diverse backgrounds and experiences, and need to be able to meet diversity with warmth and curiosity in order to thrive.

They will discover unjust systems through their lives, and need tools of critical thought to push towards equity for all.

There are forces in the world that seek to dehumanize and eradicate historically marginalized identities in grabs for power, and the use of inclusive practices is not only most likely to achieve the goals that we set for our students, but also model for students how to live in a democracy where all are truly equal and free.

I wish for teachers to not self-censor, to show the world exactly as it is to our students, and prepare them to make a better future for all. It will not be easy, but it will be the right thing to do.

What are your reflections as we are moving through second semester? Let me know in a comment!

Bringing Students to Culture and Empathy Through The Fourth P: People!

I was unable to attend ACTFL 2024, but lucky me, language teacher colleagues are nothing if not generous! After making the move over to Bluesky, I’ve been on the lookout for #langchat colleagues, and people I’ve met over the years on social media. I was able to reconnect with Dorie Conlon, whose work I really respect and admire, and saw this tweet about a session she attended by Cécile Lainé (another source of inspiration):

This post really struck me. Many who teach for proficiency acknowledge that language is too abstract and complex to teach explicitly, but we also work in a model of culture that focuses on three abstract nouns: Products, Practices, and Perspectives. The way culture emerges is with people, their actions, and their use of language, rather than by stepping outside of it. This is much like the acquisition of a language, which happens with communication and use, rather than by observing a languages features from outside of it.

Behind all these Ps are People! Through the experiences of individuals, we can see culture and the 3 Ps in action, and also develop empathy for others who are different from us. A “different” culture is easy to write off as “strange” to the Novice eye, but it’s possible to find commonalities with any individual human, learn from their experiences, and see cultures through their lives. Individual lived experiences are more memorable anyways, versus just learning “cultural tidbits” as they are strewn randomly through textbooks and class “Culture Days.”

I find it very important for my students to learn about historically marginalized communities to build their critical thinking and empathy. If students are only presented elements of culture and people that confirm their prior beliefs, which are often informed by cultural stereotypes, I have done nothing to build their ability to communicate competently with members of other cultures. The interactions of minoritized individuals with majority cultures reveal a fuller picture of those cultures, as well. I look to the ACTFL Intercultural Communication Benchmarks, which at the Superior level read as such for the “Investigate” strand:

“In my own and other cultures I can suspend judgment while critically examining products, practices, and perspectives.”

Furthermore, the “Interact” strand at the Superior level reads:

“I can interact in complex situations to ensure a shared understanding of culture.”

These are obviously skills that we are not expecting immediately from Novice learners. But in order to get to consistent “suspension of judgment” and “sharing understanding of culture,” students need practice being confronted with difference and engaging with the thinking of others. This supports working towards the Social Justice Standards of Learning for Justice, across all the four major strands, and builds their capacity for empathy.

So, I’m inspired. Here are some individuals I have shared with my classes, starting with level 1, and the activities I use to help students think more critically and empathetically about culture. The biographies are easy to share with students in the earliest stages of their language learning, and are easy to “level up” for higher levels by drawing in information and media from other sources. I think it’s important to follow up with reflection activities that help think more deeply about the individuals presented, and how their identities might affect their interactions within the Target Cultures.

Even if you aren’t a German teacher, maybe you will find some value in my thinking and planning for these experiences with German speakers!

Conchita Wurst

Student reactions to just seeing Conchita often quickly reveal their underlying assumptions and feelings towards the LGBTQ+ community. Students have sometimes been confused about the difference between a drag queen and a trans woman. Meeting Conchita, who presents both feminine and masculine personas, challenges students’ understandings of gender and sexuality.

I like to show Conchita’s Eurovision-winning performance to let her undeniable talent shine. Students are blown away by her artistry and the theatricality of the performance. The key question I ask students after getting to know Conchita and her talent is: “What do you think the reaction to Conchita was like?” If given time and space to think, students often speculate about potential backlash from groups connected to European countries competing in Eurovision, and what cultural factors might influence that backlash. Conchita’s Wikipedia page provides a lengthy catalogue of the vitriol that she faced, as well as her defiant and proud responses. All this, because she dares to put on a dress, put on some makeup, and sing.

Leo Neugebauer

I’m a huge Olympics fan, and was so excited to hear about a Black German Olympian who also studies at one my alma maters, UT-Austin! Even better – he has a YouTube channel where he makes content in German AND English! Introducing my students to Leo Neugebauer helps to challenge the notion that “German = white.” “What it means to be German” is a cultural discourse that has evolved drastically over the last few decades, and we get our first steps into that discourse by meeting Germans with identities that don’t match our preconceived notions.

After reading Leo’s biography, my classes and I defined the ten disciplines of the decathlon (which was a learning moment for me), and decided which we would ourselves ideally compete in. (I would probably do one of the running events!) Then, we watched his video “CULTURE SHOCK in America!” and discussed our reactions, which was a lot of fun. While I was absent one day, I had my students rewatch the video and write a 2+-sentence reflection on each of his culture shocks. I included the following questions:

  • Does what he says surprise you? Why?
  • Do you think there is truth to what he says? 
  • What do you think it says about Germany and German culture that these things stood out to him?

For me, the last question is key to help students build their inquiry into “what German culture is.” After we analyze whether or not his “culture shocks” align with our own local cultures, we can form hypotheses about how the shocks reflect Leo’s own cultural expectations. This opens us to testing those hypotheses in future meetings with German cultures.

Taliso Engel

My Olympics obsession also introduced me to many German-speaking Paralympians, including swimming phenom Taliso Engel. I have been working towards including more disabled people in my teaching, and learning about Taliso Engel helped me learn so much more about the Paralympics, the various classifications involved for different disabilities, and the athleticism required to be a top-tier competitor.

After reading Taliso’s biography, I found a couple videos that detailed Taliso’s training and reasons for getting into swimming. The first video on the slideshow above also shows an approximation of what he can see, which helps provide some nuances to students’ understandings of vision impairments. Then, we can stand up and play “Either / Or,” showing our preferences by moving to the side of the room corresponding to the image of our preference. These “either/or” questions are asked to the Paralympians in the final video, which provides students another opportunity to get to know German athletes with disabilities. Connecting their own preferences to those of disabled athletes helps build empathy and understanding.

Bonus: Heiko Burak

I don’t have a biography written of hard-of-hearing German Sign Language teacher Heiko Burak, but I found his videos very clear and easy for students to understand. For Disability History and Awareness Month in October, I showed my students the video above to learn 10 essential German signs. This gave us a good opportunity to talk about the various sign languages around the world (Austria and Switzerland don’t use deutsche Gebärdensprache – they have different sign languages!), as well as compare to what we know about ASL. (I’m currently learning ASL, and have a few students who know some sign, as well.) Finally, students learned and practiced all 10 signs, which was really cool to see. Some have even continued to use the signs in conversation in class, well over a month later, which is even cooler. The German sign for “no” got a lot of love from my class, which will make sense if you watch the video.

But Ben, I don’t teach German!

Pech für dich. 🙂 But really, I encourage you to be on the lookout for people from your Target Cultures to humanize student learning and build empathy. Ask your teacher communities if they are familiar with inspirational and interesting members of the Target Cultures, and expand the lens of who gets included in your classes. Do you know speakers of your Target Language that are People of Color? Members of the LGBTQ+ community? Disabled? We need language classes that center the lives of the historically marginalized so that our students can treat others with dignity, and create a more peaceful coexistence.

How do you bring students to “the fourth P”? Comment below!

Horizontal Conjugation: Re-Reading and Grammar in Context

Rereading a text is a powerful way to increase students’ acquisition, so we have to get clever about giving students meaningful tasks that help them reengage with texts, giving their brains more chances to acquire different aspects of the language. In addition, any discussion of “grammar” or “language structures” needs to be contextualized and connected to the meaning that those structures convey. I love Horizontal Conjugation for hitting these two goals!

Why should you do it? Because Horizontal Conjugation gives an opportunity for another meaningful engagement with a text, while also contextualizing discussions what the “forms” of grammar actually mean. Once you have taught students how to do it, Horizontal Conjugation can go into your rotation for whenever you need a rereading activity that gets you off the “stage” for a while.

When do I use Horizontal Conjugation?

You will want to use Horizontal Conjugation with a text that students are very familiar with, and a narrative works best. These could be stories co-created out of an OWI character, or perhaps scripted stories. You could also conceivably do Horizontal Conjugation with information learned about students in class via Special Person Interviews, or Card Talk. In short, you need a text that is about a person or people, not a general informational text about a topic.

Student familiarity with the language is also key. I would use Horizontal Conjugation during a second or third “pass” at a text, so that the difficulty lies not in interpreting the text (as for a first time), but rather changing the perspective of the text.

How do I do it? – Logistics

Make sure students have a copy of the base text. You might project the text, but having a copy in hand is best. You can also provide a second sheet of paper onto which students can write the Horizontal Conjugation text, but they can always use the bottom half of the page, or the back of a page, if there is room.

How do I do it? – Procedure

  1. Tell students that we will be rewriting the text we have been reading from a different perspective. (Do this in L1 or L2, depending on the level of your students.) Use this to review perspective, which will maybe win you love points from their ELA instructors. “What perspective is this text written from? Hint: it’s ___ person…” Once they have identified the perspective (1st person, 3rd person, etc.), provide lots of examples of that perspective in L1 and L2. “Ah, this is 3rd person perspective because we’re saying HE does this, HE does that. ER geht in die Schule und ER sieht seinen Deutschlehrer Karaoke singen.”
  2. Tell students that we are going to pretend that we are now the character/real person in question, and will be retelling it from our own perspective. Instead of retelling events as if some 3rd person did them, we will be saying “I do this, I do that. I go to school and I see my German teacher singing karaoke.”
  3. Model this for a few sentences for your student. I typically have them translate a line into the L1, ask what that same line would sound like in the other perspective (still in L1), and then ask what that would be in the L2. I then write it up on the board.
  4. After completing a few lines of this together, I reread the new text written in the other perspective, and often have students translate it back one more time just to emphasize that it is in the new perspective. This is a natural time to point out the language features that convey the perspective (verb endings, pronouns, possessives, etc.).
  5. Once students are getting the hang of it with my guidance, I set them to working on it independently, or with a partner.
  6. Once most students have completed, I share how the text should look if fully converted to the other perspective, and usually have students trade their work with a partner for them to check it.

What do I do with it now that we’ve finished?

You have generated a new(ish) text with this activity, so you can do any literacy activities you like with it. That being said, it is also wise to not beat a text to death for fear of boring our students to death, so it’s also okay to move on once the activity is complete.

I sometimes take student copies of the new text for a completion grade, and/or have them put the newly created text into their binders as another text they can read as “review,” aka for more input.

Pro Tips!

  1. Provide lots of modeling! This is a very “language class” activity that takes a second to get your head around – it’s not something we do often out in the world. Thinking aloud about how to change the perspective helps students do this thinking for themselves, which is actually getting them to think about what parts of the language convey the information about perspective. Maybe this will help them notice and acquire these features, or maybe it’s just a good strategy to satisfy any demands for you to “teach grammar”.
  2. Provide a word bank! Students with a lot of language may be able to do this activity more independently without a word bank, but Novices can benefit from having correct forms nearby to help make the changes. This obviously is very helpful if you have stem-changing or otherwise irregular verbs and you want to give students the feeling of success on the first try.
  3. Maybe you don’t do this for some languages! As I was typing this post, I was thinking about Japanese and Chinese, which don’t have subject-verb agreement. If you were “changing the perspective,” it might be just changing out pronouns, and that could feel silly. Horizontal Conjugation works really well to show how verb forms influence meaning, so if this is not an issue in your language…try a different rereading activity!
  4. Retell story in the past tense! An alternative to changing perspective might be changing the tense. If a story is told in the present tense, it can be flipped to the past tense with a prompt like “Imagine this story happened yesterday. How might it sound then?”
  5. Try out plurals! I have seen some teachers use a prompt like “Imagine that the main character has a twin, and they are inseparable!” This forces students to use 1st person plural forms.
  6. Turn it into an opportunity to develop empathy! A story told about someone else puts some distance between the teller and the subject. Reworking something into a first person perspective might be an opportunity to place oneself in the shoes of another person. What are they thinking? What are they feeling? How might they be experiencing their story differently than I would? Why?
  7. Starting this later is okay! The temptation to “teach about conjugation” has historical precedent in how languages are taught: level 1 is for “mastering” the present tense, level 2 is for the preterite/imperfect, etc. Students need lots of written and auditory input of different forms to acquire them, so they will have a more intuitive grasp of this concept the further along they are in developing their linguistic systems. I start Horizontal Conjugations with my level 2 students – and it’s been a great at-level task because they have the linguistic resources to start thinking metalinguistically!

What if I want to learn more?

Here is a blog post from The Comprehensible Classroom about Horizontal Conjugation, with a handy graphic at the bottom to remind you of how it works! This second post describes using student Free Writes as base texts, which would be so fun, and a way to honor student writing. Martina also made this video explaining the process!

Here is Elicia Cárdenas’ great post about how she thinks about grammar instruction in her classroom, and how she differentiates Horizontal Conjugation in her classroom.

Here is a video of Sil Perera presenting to the Northern Indiana TCI Conference explaining Horizontal Conjugation.

What do you think? Do you feel ready to use Horizontal Conjugation? Comment below and send me any questions you might have!

Story-Based Countdown to Halloween – Resources in German!

I am happy to share something I have been working on: a German adaptation of Cécile Lainé’s Story-Based Countdown to Halloween! Six stories, suggested extension activities, and a reading assessment! They are easy to adapt to different levels, too. Just make sure you preview the videos ahead of time. 🙂

Cécile made these materials available at no cost, but she put a lot of love into them. If you want to support her great work, donate what you can at PayPal (cecileflaine@gmail.com) or Venmo @Cecile-Laine.

Story-Based Countdown to Halloween Resources

And if you are my student Sofie, who sometimes reads my blog, don’t look ahead at the resources or else class will be boring for you next week!!!

Program Growth – Some Reflections

As world language programs suffer budget cuts and yearly uncertainty as to how employed each teacher will be, we teachers often ask ourselves:

How do I get students to join my program and stay with it?

This is the beginning of my sixth year at my current school, and since I began as the only German teacher at my school, student enrollments have grown 70%, from 87 students to 148 students. I am very proud of and excited about this, of course, but I wanted to know more about why I was able to get this sort of growth in enrollments. So, I asked students in my upper level (3rd and 4th year) German class about why they were still in German, and had many informal conversations with students and their families to determine what had worked so far. This blog post was born of those reflections.

Below are factors that have been attractive and motivational for my community, and helped grow the German program in my specific context. I would say that some of these factors are out of my control, but some are within my control. Perhaps something I write here will resonate with you, or challenge you.

Orientation Toward College

My student population is very oriented toward college studies, and are very aware that they need about 3 years of language study in order to get into the colleges they are interested in. German is not offered at the local community college that many Running Start students attend, so I get a bump of students in my third year class who are taking college classes, but need my class to stay in German.

College credit is also very enticing to students, as they know it looks good on college applications. Using AP German for that credit was tough because it seems like every university treats AP credit for languages differently (one student needed a 5 in order to get ANY credit at all, for example, while others took 3s and up), and I never had a standalone AP class on my campus. This made it hard to teach toward the AP exam when I also had (significantly more) level 3 students in the same class. I think a stacked class like that is doable, but I struggled with it. So, I sought an alternate arrangement for college credit!

Forming a partnership with a local community college helped secure college credit for my students, and gave me more flexibility in delivery of content. The professor I have been working with loves seeing what is happening at the secondary level in German teaching, and helped me make my upper level classes more college-y.

Extracurricular Activities

My school has a German Club that is very active, and I believe it plays a role in attracting students to my program. Students have said how much they love having a community of friends, and that they have even more opportunities to learn about German cultural products and practices that are hard to cover during normal class times.

The German Club Bundestag (parliament, our group of officers) makes extensive use of the German Club Idea List, a list of potential ideas for club activities that is divided between “anytime” ideas and month/day-specific ideas. This makes planning easier for everyone (me included) and makes sure that we are always doing something together. As much as the students like German Club as a social group, the activities give a unifying purpose that makes them feel like they learned something special by choosing to come to German Club that day. Our Club Time is incorporated once monthly into our school day schedule on a Friday, and we try to host a couple after-school events per quarter.

I have also created a chapter of the National German Honors Society that helps add some prestige to students’ study of German, as members of the Honors Society get special recognition at graduation. I’m trying to plan some more Honors Society-only events that add more fun and privilege to that group.

Proficiency-Based Instruction

Research indicates that moving towards proficiency-oriented language instruction increases student motivation and feelings of confidence, while also helping students attain better oral proficiency than traditional, grammar-and-vocabulary language instruction. We’re talking students that are more likely to stick with programs because they’re learning more. It can feel terrifying to shift away from the safe refuge of a textbook curriculum, but you don’t have to do it alone. Working with colleagues to change your instruction – identifying Can Dos to center your planning, using more of the Target Language in class, having more spontaneous, supported interaction in class, and so on – can help take away the fear and uncertainty. Many hands make light work.

Ultimately, proficiency-oriented language instruction chooses an asset mindset, versus a deficit mindset, in regards to students’ language development. We are focusing on cultivating what students can do with the language, versus what they know about the language, or what “errors” they make in their first attempts at communicating in a new language. That mindset is refreshing and inspiring, and helps learners focus on how they are being successful in their language classes instead of “failing” at this or that verb ending or sentence structure. Success motivates – and students want to stick around where they have been successful!

Choosing activities that increase student joy also increases student attachment to the course, and makes it more likely that they will keep it in their schedule as a bright spot in their day. My students have described German as “a break from my other classes” in the way that it makes them feel.

I suspect that some of this comes from spontaneous, co-created content. This includes creating stories with TPRS, creating characters with OWIs, Special Person Interviews, small talk and chit chat in the language, and any activities where you don’t know how students are going to creatively respond. It is terrifying to jump into a class and not know what content is going to be “covered” in the period based on student responses, but giving yourself as the instructor bail-out moves and skeleton structures to support you while leading these activities can help you still get students lots of language, no matter what. And students find the spontaneity exciting, memorable, and motivating.

Motivation and Inclusion

The through-line of a lot of the ideas mentioned above is an orientation toward that which motivates as many different students as possible, based on their basic psychological needs. I view motivation through the lens of Self-Determination Theory, which I learned about from Dr. Liam Printer. According to SDT, people are motivated by their basic human psychological needs for autonomy, competence and relatedness.

Being flexible and responsive to student curiosity and creativity gives choice, fulfilling student needs for autonomy. They help co-create our stories, share their interests with me and their peers regularly, and are provided differentiated activities to show their growth in a way that most speaks to them.

By choosing Comprehension-Based Communicative Language Teaching, I am giving my students a greater chance at developing competence in the Target Language by teaching in a way that is acquisition-supportive and aligned with how their brains actually process language. Partnered with realistic expectations for how acquisition works (and the time that it takes) and regular formative assessment, students get to notch consistent victories in their language classes (which can turn into college credit, more opportunities to create community with others, etc.).

Building relatedness does not stop after the first weeks of the school year. Every activity is an opportunity for personalization and connection to others, building a sense of community. A student once left the feedback, “I feel like I could say something interesting about each person in our class,” and that felt like the greatest indicator that we had taken time as a class to get to know each other well in the Target Language.

This only works if every student builds the belief that they can learn another language, and we treat every student as if they will become a very proficient user of the language. Our vision, our curricular choices, and our practices must all be viewed through a lens of inclusion. How can I make as many students as possible successful in this class?

I can do that by reading IEPs and 504 plans. I can do that by auditing my curriculum to increase student access to windows, mirrors, and sliding glass doors in their learning, and challenging them to grow as thinkers and people. I can do that by challenging myself in the ways I think about “difficult” students, and seeking ways to make certain that they are successful.

An inclusive and motivating classroom is a place where youth will want to be.

What factors in and out of your control affect your program growth? Every context is different – let us know about your obstacles and successes in the comments below!

The Marker Game: A Listening Comprehension Competition!

I love using games to provide more input to students – it feels like disguising the vegetables in a meal for a child. And when students are pin-drop silent to be sure to hear every single word of their L2? Those moments are *chefs kiss* in the always-hectic teaching profession. The Marker Game is a tried-and-true for my classes, and I’m happy to share it with you.

Why should you play? Because this game is a great way to review with students, and the competition aspect gets them listening veeeerrrry closely. It also works as a great, no-prep formative assessment!

When do I use the Marker Game?

Play the Marker Game after students have learned about a topic – this could be the information covered in one class period, or over the course of a unit. It’s a review game, and could be a great way to help students retrieve things they have learned over the course of a unit of study. Or, it can just be a way to sneak in more listening input of new language before beginning a Write and Discuss!

How do I do it? – Logistics

It’s called the Marker Game, but really, you just need to have some sort of physical object that students can put on the ground or table between them. I have used dollar store stuffed animals for this, highlighters, markers, my students’ own pencils – so long as the object is easy for your students to grab. (I actually generally prefer my stuffed animals because they are less…stab-y…)

You will also want to think about the statements you will be making as part of the game. You can prepare a list of statements about the topic of study, with some true and some false all mixed together. This can help make sure you hit specific informational points, or use specific language. I have also consulted the texts we have created during Write and Discuss as a source of ideas and inspiration for statements about what we’ve been studying.

Or, you can do what I do 90% of the time, which is: make the statements up on the fly! As I’m often doing this with the information learned in that specific class period, I just refer to whatever images or new language have been up on my board, and work from that. Follow your comfort!

How do I do it? – Procedure

  1. Have students partner up in a manner of your choosing. A group of 3 could also work!
  2. Give each partnership the “grabbable” object, and instruct them in the L2 to lay it on the table/ground between them.
  3. Tell the class in L2 that you are going to make statements about [the topic.]
  4. Tell the class (and demonstrate) that if you say something true/correct, to grab the object and hold it in the air.
  5. Tell the class (and demonstrate) that if you say something false/incorrect, to do nothing. Don’t pick up the object, don’t touch it, etc.
  6. I always start the first play-through of the game by stating in L2, “My name is…Barbara.” If the kids do nothing, I go “yeah woohoo y’all are so smart!” Then, I say in L2, “My name is…Herr Fisher-Rodriguez!” If they scramble to grab the object and hold it aloft, boom! You’re ready to go.
  7. Make a statement about the learned content in L2, verrrrrry slowly. Students often get excited during this game, so slightly lowering your voice is a great way to get them to lean in and hang on every word.
  8. Heap some love on correct responses (either they didn’t raise the object at a false statement, or DID raise it at a true one), and let everyone who answered erroneously/didn’t get the object know that it’s alright, they’ll get it next time. I usually reiterate correct statements, maybe asking for a quick translation, and repeat false statements while shaking my head or saying something like “how silly!” in the L2.
  9. Keep going until your energy is gone, their energy/focus is gone, or you have nothing left to say about the topic at hand! (Though if you want, you can start throwing in even older content to shake things up and keep the review going!)

What do I do with it now that we’ve finished?

Game over! Since this was such a great session of reviewing auditory input, it is a good idea to have that information in text form for students to read, as well. If you don’t have a prepared text, Write and Discuss is a great way to create a level-appropriate text that demonstrates writing conventions, spelling, etc. that you can use for further extension activities. I find that using this before Write and Discuss actually makes it flow better, as the language is fresh in mind and has been repeated quite a bit!

Pro Tips!

  1. Puppy guarding and head bonking are no-nos! Some students, in their competitiveness, try to hover their hands over the object to best their partner. Perhaps indicate where student hands should rest unless they are decidedly reaching for the object. Sometimes, my students also lean their whole body into getting the object (it kind of looks like a football tackle), which can lead to head bonking injuries. You might also indicate that the objective is to grab the object first, not maintain possession after a fumble.
  2. Tally marks! I usually don’t keep score because the moment-to-moment competition is enough to keep students engaged, but if you want, you can have students keep score in whatever way is simplest for you. I sometimes just give a scrap of scratch paper, and then students use the marker from the game to tally their scores as they go. Winners get a sticker, a piece of candy, or just points in my heart and many days of future happiness!
  3. Formatively assess and reteach! Sometimes, students won’t rush to grab the object, or erroneously grab it at a false statement. This is data for me as the teacher! I can then give a quick translation/gesture/drawing of any tricky bits to reteach vocabulary or information, and/or make sure to incorporate the tricky vocabulary/information into future statements during the game to give students helpful repetitions and more chances at success.
  4. Make them work for it! Sometimes, I’m evil and save a huge twist for the end of the sentence (works great in German) so that they really have to be paying attention to meaning and not just listen for familiar words. Make them work for it!!!
  5. Thinking! You can rephrase information so that it doesn’t appear in the same form as it did when students initially learned it. This sharpens listening skills a lot. You can also make statements that require inference from students, based on the information learned, as an extra challenge toward higher-order thinking.

What if I want to learn more?

Here is a post from the Comprehensible Classroom that introduces a team competition variation on the game – students form two lines facing each other, and points are earned by how many players on each team raised the object OR by which team had the majority of the successful object grabs. So fun! (See also Martina’s expert note on why not to use bouncy balls as the object for the game, lol)

Allison at Mis Clases Locas projects the statements on the board, which allows for more reading input and for projecting the correct answers!

Both posts point to Cynthia Hitz as the originator of this strategy, so check out her blog!

What do you think? Do you feel ready to play the Marker Game? Comment below and send me any questions you might have!

Calendar Talk – Keeping Your Fingers on the Pulse of Classroom Cultural Life

Calendar Talk often comes up in conversations about “essential” techniques, and for good reason: it can be a fantastic way to participate in the lives of your students, and provide windows into other cultures! The class is able to share about important events and moments in their lives, and the teacher keeps their finger on the pulse of what is current and important to the students in their class. (The older I get, the more I find myself thinking, “The what? Why is that cool? What are they doing? My lower back hurts. This is just a rehash of the 90s. What is happening.“)

Why should you use Calendar Talk in your classroom? Calendar Talk allows everyone to talk about the things that matter in their lives lately, while also providing an opportunity to learn about and connect to important dates in other cultures, and can thus build deep, powerful connections between classmates and the instructor for maximum joy and acquisition.

When do I use Calendar Talk?

Calendar Talk is a very flexible technique: it can be incorporated into instruction as just part of an opening (or even closing) routine, or it can be a standalone activity itself. In any case, Calendar Talk generates a lot of language that is personalized to the class.

As for when in the school year to use this technique: literally whenever! I find myself starting the year with it because it can be a very safe activity, but I find my use of it ebbs and flows based on student (and instructor, hello) interest. But then, it can be a great palate-cleanser between lots of new activity types, units, or at points in the year when everyone just needs a win (and some connection to go with it). It can be the comforting home base to return to when the class has taken the midnight train to Crazy Town. (This never happens to me, what are you talking about…)

How do I do it? – Logistics

First, get ye a calendar! You want to find a format that works for you.

I typically draw a calendar grid onto a large piece of butcher paper or a giant Post-It. You want it to be big enough to be visible to students and also usable for an entire month. I have joined the legions of Mr. Sketch-addicted teachers to draw and mark the calendars. I find that you can use one calendar for all classes, though sometimes classes get a lot of information out onto the calendar OR feel a strong sense of ownership that might require you to get separate calendars for certain classes. Take into account cost and materials and do what makes sense for you.

Much more economically friendly is just printing a blank calendar template from online onto printer paper, and writing on it using a doc cam. I typically search “[month] calendar” in the Target Language to see if I can get relevant cultural celebrations already built into the calendar, and because the format is often different from US-American calendars. (German calendars, for instance, start on Mondays, not Sundays. Culture!)

If you want to go a digital route, get a template that is easy to use and reuse. During distance learning, I used this free calendar I found online (in German and in Spanish) with easy to copy/paste graphics to move around the calendar pages. It is also easy to make copies of pages so that each class can have its own calendar, and you could even link the calendar slide in view-only mode to a course website.

An alternative for both of these is to just use Small Talk Slides that can help cover the same sorts of information, but without the same calendar visual. A disadvantage is that the actual calendar page serves as a visual scaffold and memory bank – I would venture a guess that most students have seen a calendar and would have its format as a starting point for understanding – but an advantage is that having a closed set of choices can help students be more expressive and not be intimidated by trying to come up with what’s going on in their lives lately, in the L2, when they might not feel quite comfortable doing that. (But also: accepting relevant L1 as part of Calendar Talk can help lower the affective filter, and if you can just rephrase into comprehensible L2, students can acquire personalized, highly relevant vocabulary.)

Pick a format that feels easy and workable for you and your classroom context! And if you have found any sweet templates in your internet browsing, please share them in the comments.

How do I do it? – Procedure

  1. Display the calendar of your choosing so that all students can clearly see it. Or, if you want, you might just draw out the calendar live in front of your students, narrating what you are doing in the L2. “I am going to draw a calendar. I am drawing a line, a line, etc. Hmm…let’s think. Monday…Tuesday…Wednesday… What month is it? Oh, it’s September!” etc.
  2. Introduce the calendar in language at your students’ level. This can range from: “This…is… a calendar! Look…at the calendar! Wow! Let’s talk…about the calendar!” to “Today, we’re going to talk about what is going on in your lives lately, and what’s going on at our school. Let’s also learn about what’s going on in [Target Culture community]!”
  3. To ease into the activity, it can be nice to start with just the date, and the weather. For upper level students, or level 1s who are familiar, just asking “What day is today? What is today’s date?” gets the job done, where beginner students will need more scaffolded questions. You might point at the relevant spots on the calendar and ask this-or-that questions, like “Is today Tuesday…or Wednesday? Is tomorrow Wednesday…or Thursday? Is today or tomorrow Tuesday? Ah yes, today is Tuesday, and tomorrow is Wednesday.” Writing new-to-your-students vocabulary on the board in L1 and L2 can help support making this early-in-the-year activity 100% comprehensible. Writing words like “today” directly onto the calendar can help with this, too.
  4. Then, you can move on to the weather! Beginning with “How is the weather?” you might offer choices again (“Is it sunny…or cloudy?”) with visual supports (drawings or writing in L1 and L2), show the class a list of options, or with students who are ready, just let them answer however they can. You can draw that onto the calendar to record it and scaffold understanding.
  5. If students are familiar with Calendar Talk, everything before this was just the warm up…here’s where it gets interesting! Now, ask the class if there is anything important or interesting happening today, or this week/month. Anything! This can be birthdays of students or their family members, sports matches, performances, school events, holidays – anything! It is likely that students will offer these ideas in L1 – that’s totally okay. You can just let them share, or set a limit for how much L1 you accept, and then rephrase their sharing into comprehensible L2. Aim to use high-frequency vocabulary in doing so – leaning on the Sweet 16 verbs and writing new vocabulary on your board – so that your students can use and reuse that language when talking about their own lives. “Oh! Soandso…has a football game…on Friday! Does Soandso have a football game or a football practice on Friday? etc etc”
  6. Ask lots of natural follow up questions to what students share. “Where?” and “With whom?” are great questions to get more information out of a student’s sharing, and these added details allow you to see a fuller picture of your students’ lives. “Where will you play the football game?” can lead into discussions about how students get to and from their sports practices, how much time they invest in their extracurriculars, and so much more. “With whom do you play video games?” can easily lend itself to a discussion about favorite games and genres, the trials and tribulations of online gaming lobbies, what gaming systems they had when they were younger, and if students have favorite streamers they like to watch play. Generally relying on question words (which I always have posted in my classroom) gives you a lot of ways to go with whatever students share, but also – follow your own curiosity! Especially if you don’t know much about a student’s hobby, this gives them a chance to teach you something. All the while, check frequently for class comprehension, and ask processing/circling questions about what is learned.
  7. See if you can connect events and happenings to as many students as possible. If you’re discussing a birthday, poll the class on who has birthdays in what month, if it’s better to have a birthday during the summer or during the school year, how old everyone in class is, who’s the oldest and youngest, etc. (We had a student in one class last year that we affectionately dubbed “Grandpa” because he was an older junior in a class of freshmen, and the next oldest student was “Uncle Soandso.” I, of course, was “Great Grandpa FishRod.”) Sharing about video games or sports can lead to questions about who also enjoys playing, or who just watches, or who has a sibling who plays. The discussion is never just about any one kid – it always can involve the whole class. Any new words are going up on the board, and getting repeated in processing/circling questions frequently throughout.
  8. Discuss upcoming events for as long as students maintain interest and attention! This is something you will just have to feel out. Sometimes, students are quiet, but engaged, and you can continue discussing for a while. Sometimes, the rambunctious sharing energy is too much, and you just have to move on. Sometimes…you just want to get to the next activity. Move on when you’re ready to move on!

What do I do with it now that we’ve finished?

At the end of a session of Calendar Talk, I try to review the new information we just learned about our classmates. This can be as simple as oral questioning, or could be playing The Mysterious Person game. This can help students acquire more of any new language through more comprehensible repetitions, and give you a chance to shine the spotlight one more time on the students in your class.

I also like to make sure I have saved what is learned on the calendar in some visual way. Whether it’s writing key words in L2 (“Football game” “New video game” “No school” “Tech week”) onto the calendar, or just drawing little icons to jog everyone’s memory, recording what was learned onto the calendar visual stamps the lives of your students into an important classroom document. This can serve to remind you later to check in with students about things they mentioned: “Hey, how was the track meet? Where did you end up going to eat on your birthday?” Nothing makes someone feel more special than getting checked up on.

The visuals on the calendar can also serve as great scaffolds to start a Write and Discuss text. This gives students a chance to see more complete written sentences, and notice anything interesting about how the L2 is written. This can also serve to reinforce any new vocabulary that came up spontaneously during the sharing from your students’ lives, which ends up creating a sort of personalized vocabulary list for your class.

To round out the experience, you might also administer a Quick Quiz as a formative assessment. This can give students even more repetitions of new, relevant vocabulary, and can be a real confidence booster.

Pro Tips!

  1. It is not about teaching calendar stuff! Sure, we can use the calendar to learn the words for “today, yesterday, tomorrow,” the weather and numbers, etc., but the calendar is really a springboard for asking students what else they are doing in their lives besides just being your students, and how they are doing in their lives. If we focus on the “calendar vocab” instead of on the lives of our students, we are missing out on opportunities to learn more about their lives, connect with them, and connect them to each other. Calendar Talk is about building community, and discovering the cultures of your class.
  2. Share from your own life! Don’t be afraid to put events from your own life on the calendar, because you are also a member of your classroom community. As much as you feel comfortable sharing, this can help build even more connections between you and your students.
  3. Favorite day of the week! I have learned some fascinating things by asking the class what their favorite days of the week were. Many students pick weekend days, with specific reasons why one day is better than another, but sometimes students will pick a weekday for an interesting reason. One student picked Thursday and told me that it was because it was the day her favorite webcomic dropped new panels. Glad I asked instead of just saying “we all love Saturday, right?”
  4. Find the style that suits you! Some teachers feel comfortable with sprawling discussions that can take from 10 minutes to the entire period, and feel comfortable managing the flow of new language into the activity. I try to ride the energy of my class, which is variable every day, and feel comfortable improvising a bit as students share their various life events. Some teachers want to keep an activity like this more controlled. In that case, offer choices that students must choose from, as opposed to leaving things more open. “Who has a game this weekend? Do you have a football game or a lacrosse game? etc.” And if you are ever feeling so overwhelmed that it isn’t feeling worth it: move on! It’s okay! You can always try again.
  5. Day of the Day! There are tons of declared holidays around the world, some interesting and historical, some just wacky. Writing them into your class calendar and discussing them with your students as a way to personalize the calendar can be really rewarding and fun. You can use this excellent website for ideas, or look at calendars in your Target Language to see if anything comes up.
  6. Make cultural connections! Keeping an eye on current events and holidays in your Target Culture(s) can make Calendar Talk a natural opportunity to introduce more of the Target Culture(s) into your classes! Write them onto the calendar ahead of time to remind yourself, and open discussions that allow students to make cultural connections and comparisons. My students have always been interested in holidays that offer time off of school in the Target Culture (haha!), elections, regional festivals…
  7. Make connections with people from the Target Culture(s)! It can also be fun to introduce celebrities from a Target Culture, perhaps on a day when they did something significant, or on their birth or death days.
  8. Hire a meteorologist! Once discussing the date and weather loses its luster for the whole class, you can hire for the class job of “Meteorologist.” This person can stand up at the beginning of Calendar Talk, sometimes to the applause of their peers, and briefly report on the date and weather. One of my students used to run out the door to get the absolute best read on the current weather and return in a dramatic burst, and another used to give some sort of encouraging message to the class to start the day. Great fun!
  9. Look up the weather in Target Culture locations! While you’re on the topic of weather, it can be fun to look up the weather in other cities around the world. This naturally allows you to make comparisons between your city and the other city or cities, and might also teach your students about Fahrenheit and Celsius! You might find a link to a weather website in the Target Language – I always use wetter.de and show students the capital cities of the German-speaking world, as well as the city where I used to live.
  10. Do it however you like! This blog post is informed by years of practice and learning from other teachers, and I’m hoping it offers you lots of options for how you might go about doing Calendar Talk. But! Don’t feel like you have to do it all. Again, Calendar Talk is only kind of about the calendar. Mostly, it’s about learning more about your students’ lives and cultures, and connecting them to each other and you. If you focus on that, you can’t go wrong.

What if I want to learn more?

Here is Claudia Elliott’s post about why she uses Calendar Talk, including a video of her doing it with a Spanish 3 class. She also has a whole episode of her fabulous podcast on the topic!!

This is Maris Hawkin’s post about Calendar Talk, which comes with some very helpful linked resources!

I also loved this post from Spanish with Stephanie that includes lots of great resources and examples.

What do you think? Do you feel ready to use Calendar Talk? Comment below and send me any questions you might have!

Classroom: Managed – Physical Skills to Practice and Refine

I have been thinking about the school year beginning soon – I still have about three weeks to get my last bits of rest in, and plan for my best year yet. In addition to thoughts of curriculum and activities, I have been thinking about classroom management, and how to always be improving my skills.

It’s easy to think that classroom management is either something you have, or something you don’t, and that this is based somehow around your personality. Some teachers just look like naturals, and teachers who share online don’t often share their management struggles. But with time, experience, and practice, I have joined management expert Jon Cowart in finding that classroom management is actually a skill set that you can develop, and having solid management is essential to making all the amazing curriculum and activities happen.

Classroom management encompasses so many different things, including teacher-student relationships, student-student relationships, physical classroom setup, the way we phrase our instructions and expectations, how we respond to student behaviors, etc. In this post, I want to focus on some physical skills – how we use our voices and bodies – that have helped me feel like I am managing a more positive, productive classroom with clear, learning-supportive expectations.

Breathe: This is Classroom Management Skill #1 for me. No matter what is happening, taking a moment to take a deep breath is how we can calm any nerves or annoyance that we are feeling, and access our best, most responsive selves. Consciously breathing deeply slows us down, and makes us more present to the real people in front of us. This can be the difference between snapping at a student in a way we later regret, and communicating calmly how an expectation has been broken, and how best to move forward. Breathe. Do it now while you’re reading, even!

Plant Your Feet: In my home life, I’m always pacing around the house to get out all my nervous energy. In front of a classroom, this pacing and constant movement can be infectious, and distracting. To lend gravity and focus to what we are conveying to students, we can plant our feet squarely on one spot as best we can, not move from that spot, and just turn our bodies from left to right to scan the entire class. If we want to move to a new position, we can use it like punctuation: landing where we’re going at the end of a statement, and then continuing our next idea from that new planted spot. This helps bring physical cohesion to the words we are saying.

Speak Slowly: Taking time to breathe can slow our bodies down, which can help us also speak more slowly. Speaking slowly increases the chance that students will comprehend what we are saying, regardless of language. This can also decrease the frustration at lack of “keeping up” that can lead to disengagement. It’s good for management, and good for making sure students are getting the comprehensible input they need for acquisition! We need not speak in an exaggerated or unnatural way, just slower than our conversational speeds. Think how comforting the cadence of Mr. Rogers is, or Miss Rachel! (This one is particularly difficult for me, being a Hyper Speed Yapper.)

Look Into Your Students’ Eyes: In public speaking, we are often told to look just above the heads of our audience to help with nerves and delivery. If we take the time to look all our students in their eyes, we can often stop disruptions before they start. How often do students really feel seen at school? I try to look every student in the eye at least once per class, which gives me space to smile, nod, encourage, show interest, raise my eyebrows preventatively – so many small gestures that are not invasive for their peers, but let kids know that we are present with them.

Proximity: I think proximity often does get talked about in relation to classroom management, but it’s worth reiterating. I use it in a spectrum, beginning just with eye contact with a student that is beginning to interrupt others’ learning. Then, I turn my body to face that specific student, while still addressing and teaching the whole class. Then, I move slowly toward the student in question, building in pauses and planting my feet for a while in one spot to see how close I will need to get to redirect the student. All the while, I am making eye contact more frequently with the student, even as I continue to just teach class. Sometimes students catch on and change their behaviors before I even move very much in their direction. If I make it all the way to a kid, I bend over or crouch so I am closer to their seated level, and quietly tell them what I want them to be doing at that time. This sounds something like, “Right now, we are answering questions about the map in German.” Or, “We can respond to the video with rejoinders or words in German.” Always seek the least invasive interaction, as best you can, and describe what you want your students to actually do (versus not do).

Self-Interrupt: If a student starts talking L1 while we are talking L2, we can simply stop talking immediately. The break in classroom “noise” often snaps loudly in students’ attention, and if we can patiently hold the pause in whatever we were saying until it is clear that we are responding to talking out of turn, then we can reinforce how we will focus and participate in class. I am usually turned toward the L1-speaking student in question, and once they stop, I carry on with whatever I was saying in L2, after a pause. Adding a smile back at the student who changed their behavior a few seconds later can convey, “That was an oops! Thanks for getting back on board.” Of course, if a student doesn’t respond to this intervention for whatever reason, use proximity or an attention-getter to redirect that particular student.

Respond Every Time: Every time a student does something that disrupts their peers’ learning, and especially if their actions serve to belittle, demean, or intimidate other students for any of their preferences or identities, we must respond. Even just stopping what you were doing and saying, “That is not how we behave here” or “We don’t talk like that here” is better than no response at all. Much of classroom management is setting boundaries for what we accept as part of the classroom culture, and we are the leaders in that boundary setting. Choosing to act, rather than to just look the other way, models to the rest of the class how we can positively deal with offensive, interruptive, or just plain annoying behavior, and can convey a commitment to protecting students with marginalized identities. It’s never “just a joke.” Respond. Every. Time.

Address the Class But Look at the Student Who Needs Support: When a student has done something offensive or demeaning, it is tempting to direct all your righteous indignation right at them. It can be more powerful to turn to the whole class and remind the whole class of the classroom/school expectations (“At our school, we show respect for the differences of others” etc.), and then look the offending student in the eyes to make clear that we registered their behavior and are responding to it. This can prevent a bigger interruption should a student try to engage in a power struggle, and gives you both time to cool down until you can request a follow-up with that student later in the period.

Give Instructions, Then Freeze: This is a small thing that has had a huge impact for me. When students are about to begin a task in groups, or independent work, I make sure the instructions are understood clearly, with lots of comprehension checks. Then, I say: “You are going to do XYZ starting in 3…2…1…Go!” Then I freeze. And I stare at them. All of them, in the eyes! This conveys, “No, really, get started,” and allows you to very quickly see who needs more support or resources to get to the task at hand. If I start myself moving too quickly after giving the “Go!” signal, it takes students longer to start, and I miss out on formatively assessing who feels confident to dive into the task straight away.

Demon Voice: This is goofy, but sometimes, if a student is not following expectations while I address the whole class, I will just say their name quickly in a deep, dark demon voice, and then continue on with my normal voice toward the rest of the class, saying whatever I was trying to say. It is usually just surprising enough to help the student readjust toward the classroom expectations, and can get some smiles and laughs, as well. Make sure you have good relationships with your students before you try this, though, because it is admittedly…wacky. 🙂 “Alright, everyone. Today, we are going to JOANN be learning about sports in German-speaking countries. (smile and wink)”

Practice: Teaching is Everything, Everywhere, All at Once. There are so many microhabits that make up the art and science of teaching, and it can feel very overwhelming. But! Olympic runners did not get down the mechanics of a technically strong start that transitions into a technically strong stride on the first go. They practiced, failed, tried again. So, with all these skills and the myriad other skills I didn’t mention here, it just takes time and practice to get them to work to their best. Have faith, gentle reader. You’ve got this!

What other physical skills do you consider essential for classroom management? Comment below!