Month: July 2024

Volleyball / Ping-Pong Translation – Partner Reading for Scaffolded Success

To get our learners lots of input, we need to find ways to have them take texts and read, reread, and reread again! I love throwing a Volleyball Reading (which I call Tischtennis, or “table tennis” in German) to get me off the stage for a while, give students a chance to read the L2 aloud, and help their partners toward shared success. I use it enough that I can just tell students who to partner up with, say “Read the text Tischtennis!”, and they will hop to it without second thought. (I did it once during an observation, and the observer was impressed at the transition speed, and that the whole class was reading the L2 and working together!)

Why should you do it? Volleyball Translation is a great way to do a first, or second, or even third pass at reading a text, and allows students to do some partner work so you can make your next pedagogical decision. We all need that time off the “stage!”

When do I use Volleyball Reading?

Like I said above, you can use Volleyball Reading on any encounter with a text your class is reading. Maybe you’ve given a lot of auditory input on a topic, and students are ready to read the new language in text form for the first time. Maybe you’ve already read and discussed a text as a class, and want to give students some time to confirm their comprehension on a second pass with the text before moving on to extension activities. Maybe you’ve just co-created a Write and Discuss text as a class, and want students to reread the new text one more time. Or maybe – honestly – you want to buy yourself a couple minutes while you take care of whatever business comes across your Teacher Life / Human Person Life in the middle of a class. All you need is a text, and you can throw in a Volleyball Reading!

How do I do it? – Logistics

Students need access to a text (on the board or in hand), and to be partnered up in the manner of your choosing. Having one group of three sometimes happens, but everyone else should be in pairs. I like to display the instructions for the procedure to students as the activity is taking place, though they usually don’t need them the second or third time using it.

Here’s what my students see when we’re doing this activity!

How do I do it? – Procedure

  1. In the partnerships, designate who will begin – aka a “Partner 1.”
  2. Partner 1 reads the first sentence of the chosen text out loud in the Target Language.
  3. Partner 2 translates the sentence their partner just read out loud into English. Partner 2 then continues on by reading the next sentence in the text in the Target Language.
  4. Partner 1 translates the sentence Partner 2 just read out loud into English, and continues on by reading the next sentence in the Target Language.
  5. Students continue on, alternating reading aloud in the two languages, until they have finished reading the entire chosen text. (Or, just set a time limit, if you need/want!)

What do I do now that we’ve finished?

You can always follow a Volleyball Reading with asking questions about the text to confirm that students have understood the text well, to personalize the information in the text, or to extend student thinking about the topic.

You might also “park” on any new or troublesome vocabulary to give students more exposure to the new language by asking more personalized questions and/or comprehension questions related to the text.

Students have just finished reading a text, so you have the choice to assess, extend, or just plain move on!

Pro Tips!

  1. Model with a student first! As with any new procedure, we can help students do it more correctly the first time by modeling our expectations and what it looks like. Pick an outgoing student, and have them be Student 1 and read the first sentence of the text aloud. Model translating, and then reading the next sentence in the Target Language, and go back and forth until your class seems to get it. You could even model by having the entire class be Student 1, with you as Student 2! Seeing it in action helps students put it into motion quickly and accurately.
  2. Encourage partners to help each other out! Students are definitely encouraged to help each other when needed, whether it be pronouncing a word in the L2, or getting an accurate translation into English. If both partners can’t figure out a word or phrase, they can ask another partnership nearby for help! Students are encouraged to be resources for each other’s learning.
  3. Switch partners! For shorter texts, working with one partner is just fine. For longer texts, having students find a new partner using a procedure of your choosing can help give them a brief break and reengage with the text. One procedure I like is having the new partnerships show each other the spots on the text that they had read up to with their previous partner(s), and start reading the text at the spot closest to the beginning of the text, or the “earlier” stopping point. This means that any “slower” readers will still get to read the entire text, and the “faster” readers can provide confident support on text they have already read and processed before.
  4. Start from the top if you finish early! Some partnerships blaze through a text, while others need a little longer to work through a text. Have fast finishers start again from the top if they finish early, or maybe start writing comprehension questions about the text (you could say that you want to use them for a Quick Quiz!). Anything to keep students engaged with the language longer!
  5. Write common stumbling block words on the board! Because all students are working simultaneously and supporting each other, you have time to circulate through your classroom and listen for spots in the text where students are getting stuck. (Or just cheer students on if they are rocking it!) If I ever hear more than one pair stumble over the same section, I figure out the word/phrase that is tripping them up, and write that on the whiteboard with a translation or illustration to help the class.
  6. Review tough spots with the class using oral questioning! Any words that I write on the board to support struggling students can become quick targets for further questioning once we reconvene as a class. If many students struggled with a new word or phrase, I can give students more input with that vocabulary by asking comprehension and personalized questions using those words, making sure to point and pause at the words and their translations on my whiteboard to ensure comprehension.

What if I want to learn more?

Here is a blog post by the Comprehensible Classroom about Volleyball Translation. This post starts an interesting discussion about the use of translation in the language classroom, and how translation activities may move us away from the fabled 90%+ Target Language goal. I find that I use Volleyball Translation for brief enough periods that it doesn’t detract from my overall goal to use as much Target Language in class as possible – but it is always important to consider the When and Why of L1 use in our classes!

This is Chris Stolz’ take on the activity. I agree that we definitely don’t want to do it too frequently, and it loans itself best to reviewing to build confidence.

Here is a post by Señorita Spanish about two ways to read with students, including Volleyball Reading. I love the clear examples, and reminding students “3 Before Me” – ask your neighboring peers for help before stopping to wait on help from the teacher!

Lance Piantaginni introduces a variant on Volleyball Reading called Silent Volleyball reading here. This can help lessen any anxieties about pronouncing the Target Language, although I find that Volleyball Translation is a great time for students to try out pronouncing more of the language for themselves in a low-stakes environment.

Here is Keith Toda’s post on Volleyball Reading. He discusses a variation on grouping / partner-finding that I found neat!

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

Introducing Our New Podcast: “SLAyyy: Second Language Acquisition for Everyone”

Hi all! My colleagues Bill Langley (he/him), Bryan Smith (he/they), and I have decided to start a new podcast, and that podcast is called “SLAyyy: Second Language Acquisition for Everyone”.

Join us for our first episode Monday, July 29, 2025 as we gaslight (reflect on our teaching successes and failures), gatekeep (read and interpret SLA research), and girlboss (share successes) in our language teaching.

I respect Bill and Bryan as teachers and leaders so so much, and am so excited to talk to them in this format about the stuff we’re thinking about all the time! We are hoping to release regular episodes throughout the school year, so wish us luck in our new endeavor. And please, send us messages about the pod! We’d be happy to hear from you.

Check us out! Click here to subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.

Partner Speaking Game / Q+A Game / Interpersonal Speaking Game – Just Talking, plus Points

Fundamental for our learners’ language proficiency is access to boatload of Comprehensible Input, and so I spend most of my class time facilitating interesting reading and listening input in the L2 for my students. But some theorists argue that opportunities for negotiated output help learners gain easier access to the growing linguistic system, and are essential for building communicative competence. Additionally, most kids come to L2 courses expecting to themselves speak the L2 in class! If we don’t at the very least speak to their expectations, teenagers can get…restless.

But: how do we most efficiently facilitate this without raising their hackles, or having to take time as the teacher to try to talk to each individual kid? (FishRod is heard gently crying in the distance, reflecting on his class sizes of 30+) Enter: a “game” with many names that I learned from Tina Hargaden! You pose questions to the whole class, and in pairs, students alternate answering the questions, and recording the quality/quantity of their partner’s responses. Bam!

Why should you play the Partner Speaking Game / Q+A Game / Interpersonal Speaking Game? This can be a great way to build student awareness of the fact that all the input they receive is doing something, boost confidence, and give you a bit of a break! My students always come away from this game proud of what they are able to produce, and reflective on how they can increase their output for the future!

When do I use the Partner Speaking Game?

The Partner Speaking Game is a great game to put at the end of a sequence of lots of auditory/reading exposure on a topic or story. Students need to be comfortable with the language you will be using to pose the questions during the game, and if your questions will be about a specific text, they need to be very, very familiar with it.

If I were doing a Movie Talk, for example, I would give loads of auditory input by describing stills from the video, then have students read one or more texts narrating what happens in the video, and make sure that they have had plenty more interaction with any new language (through Personalized Questions) before setting them up to play the Partner Speaking Game. We want our learners to be full-to-bursting with language so the “game” feels like a breeze!

Sidebar, I keep calling it a “game” (with the quotes) because it is basically a Retell or Interpersonal Speaking Assessment, with the addition of a “points” element so that students can push themselves for more “points” (aka – more output!). The game is just talking, plus points! Yippee!

How do I do it? – Logistics

  1. You can definitely improvise your questions about recent content, but I always prepare my question sets ahead of time. The page I provide below has spaces for 8 responses, but because only one student will be answering at a time, I would need to prepare 16 questions to cover both partners’ papers.
  2. Partner students up using your preferred method. A group of 3 could work, but only if you have an uneven amount of students. Designate a “Partner A” and “Partner B” in each partnership, as well. (Either let the kids decide, or say that Partner A is the person closest to the door, with the longer hair, etc.)
  3. Give each individual student a copy of a sheet something like this. If you don’t teach German, feel free to copy and modify to your needs! Have students write their partner’s name at the top, then their name and what Partner (A/B) they are, and the date.
  4. Depending on how comfortable your students are with the language/content of the questions, you might have key vocabulary posted for all to see, or any visuals created by the class (maybe a drawing of an OWI story, a cooperative mural, etc.).

How do I do it? – Procedure

  1. Explain to your students (in L1 or L2) that they will be talking about [the topic that we have been discussing recently]. One partner will talk at a time, and the other partner will listen.
  2. Explain that you, the teacher, will be posing a question in L2, and giving students a certain amount of time for their answer, also in L2. (I do somewhere between 20 and 45 seconds – 20 seconds would mirror the timing of the AP Simulated Conversation task. You might also just let students talk until they fizzle out talking in the L2 – follow your heart – but I find that the limits keep things moving and keep things more in the L2.)
  3. While one partner is talking, the other is listening and “giving points” to their partner about the quality of their response. For example, if the speaker hears the question, understands it, and responds in L1, their partner can still give them a point! But if they hear the question, understand it, and say even a single simple sentence in the L2, BAM. 4 points! The “scoring rubric” I use is pictured above, and I try to give quick examples of what each level might sound like before we play the first time.
  4. After each question, students switch roles, so now the speaker is the listener, and vice versa. During the game, I keep track of this by saying: “Okay, now Partner B speaks, question 4: [the question].”
  5. Begin! Ask the first question you have prepared, set a timer for the responses, if you’d like, and listen for half the class to be answering at a time.
  6. Continue asking questions, with students alternating roles between each question, until you run out of time or reach the end of your prepared questions (or whatever sheet you end up using).

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

Have students tally the points their partner received at the bottom, and then give their partner the points paper. Students then flip their sheets over, and answer some reflection questions about how their speaking experience went today. This is more or less optional, but I find it helps drive home the fact that the students were speaking a lot of the L2 just now!

I like to have students turn these sheets in so I can see how they did, as well as what their reflections on the process were. If students confess to not feeling confident, you can adjust your instruction to support them better by more frequently calling on them for comprehension checks (or checking more with the people around them, so that the student is hearing a neighbor with the correct answer frequently). Sometimes, the student might just need a pep talk from you about how they can do it, even if it feels hard at times!

I keep portfolios of my students’ “major works,” and I like to throw these sheets into those portfolios as mile markers of their progress and comfort with speaking the L2. Otherwise, you can return them to students with jubilations and compliments about how great they did! If I do assign a grade to these, it is typically a very small amount of points, just because it wasn’t actually me assessing the quality of student responses.

Pro Tips!

  1. Start from the familiar and move away! When I’m drafting my questions, I typically start with about 2 slam-dunk questions for each partner right at the beginning of the game, typically easy questions about the opening moments of the text we’ve been working with. This builds confidences and greases the wheels for more speaking, I find. My next questions typically than follow the narrative order of whatever we had been reading or viewing. Then, I end with about 2 or more questions for each partner that are more personalized! If the previous questions were all about the narrative of a Movie Talk, for example, the final questions might be about what the student might have done in the same situation, or questions related to the themes/topics of the Movie Talk, for example. If the Movie Talk was about a middle school crush, I might ask, “What were you like in middle school?” or, “Did you have a crush in middle school?” At this point, they have already been using the language of the video context quite a bit, and can try to extend it to talking about themselves!
  2. Circulate! While students are answering questions, move about your classroom to hear the things they are saying. This can give you a quick formative assessment of where students are confident, and where they are struggling. It also gives you space to encourage any shy students, maybe providing a key word or idea to help them start answering the question.
  3. Teach students to be supportive listeners! I always demonstrate to my students that it is intimidating to talk your L2 to someone who is staring at you in stoney-faced silence. Model how one might nod and smile at their partner, and maybe even gestures or facial expressions that could indicate, “Yes, keep going!”
  4. Try a simpler version! An alternative to using the scoring sheet I linked above might be to just have partnerships count the number of words in their partner’s responses, with each word being a point. This can save you on setup time, and if you felt comfortable improvising, you could just ask questions about the day’s Card Talk, Special Person Interview, or other daily content. Students could tally on scrap paper, or just count with their fingers!
  5. STICKERS! If you are overflowing with stickers, have students mark the quality of their partner’s responses by placing stickers in those boxes. That would require each partnership having a sheet of stickers to themselves, but boy do kids (even high schoolers! even adults!) love stickers!

What if I want to learn more?

Because this game can go by many names, I haven’t been able to locate any other blog posts / videos about it – if you find any, let me know! I’d be happy to link them here for further reading.

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

Focus Writes: Growing in the Ability to Talk About the Most Important Subject

My units are different every year because the people who come to my classes every year are different! I try to build in ample time into my year for “wandering” with my classes – following the interesting things that come up in conversations – but I have also found it helpful to have certain topics/themes that I “do” (which really means start discussing, because topics spiral up over time) at certain levels to give me some anchors for planning. I try to tackle these set topics/themes using all of the Foundational Strategies I list here on my site, including Card Talk, One Word Image, Small Talk, and Special Person Interviews, with just a bit of steering towards each given topic.

This also helps me in speaking to the proficiencies my students are building at each level. After a few weeks of Card Talk toward the beginning of level 1, I can discuss with students their growing capacity to talk about hobbies and interests. Every student is going to be in a different place with the acquisition of the various necessary structures, but having the set topics/themes helps connect to one very compelling Why for many students: growing in their capacity to talk about the most important subject – themselves! (Of course, there are many Whys in language learning, such as building global community, learning from and with other cultures, and wanting to learn the world’s most beautiful language, German, but if our young people are in the identity formation stage of their development, it’s nice to nod to it!)

A tweet by Profe Camacho led me to the idea of essentially using the same prompt all year long as a way to demonstrate student growth. And thus, the Focus Write was born into my practice!

Why should you do a Focus Write, then? A Focus Write can be a quick, simple tool to demonstrate student growth both to outside stakeholders (read: families, administrators, evaluators), as well as to our learners!

When do I use Focus Writes?

Focus Writes are a lot like Free Writes, which many CCLT teachers have written about. Here is Elicia Cárdenas’ post about Free Writes that covers what they are, and when/how to use them. Generally, you want to start using Focus Writes (and Free Writes) after students have had time to get lots of language input into their heads. I would do one no earlier than 6 weeks into the school year, preferably closer to 9.

It also helps if you can look back on language input that students have been receiving and group it into “topics” so that you can space out the Focus Writes over the course of the school year, and select the spiraling prompts for them (this will make sense later). I aim for five total Focus Writes on the “major” topics I cover in level 1, for example: Introducing Myself, Hobbies and Interests, Important People in My Life, Our School Life, and My Food and Drink Culture. These align with the expectations of the community college through which I offer my third year dual-credit course.

How do I do it? – Logistics

To help with word counting, I like to use special lined paper that has the number of words at the end of each line! I print out enough copies of this paper, modified for each unit to include the unit number and complete prompt, as well as a goal that I think will be attainable for most students. (I lifted the template from the inimitable Meredith White!)

The prompts spiral across the year to include everything that came before, as well as the most recent topic. Here are my level 1 topics as an example:

End of unit 1: Introduce yourself
Unit 2: Introduce yourself and your hobbies
Unit 3: Introduce yourself, your hobbies, and your important people
Unit 4: Introduce yourself, your hobbies, your important people, and your school life
Unit 5: Introduce yourself, your hobbies, your important people, your school life, and your food/drink preferences

My lesson plans are my slideshows, so I always have a slide prepared that looks something like the one below that I use after the fourth unit in my level 1 course:

Now, by the third or fourth unit, five minutes does not feel like enough time to answer all the prompts, and I’m actually okay with that! If my students feel like they have enough to write and talk about for five minutes, then I am content, and they will be able to see their own growth.

I have only been doing this in level 1 as students develop language, but this could easily be transferred to other levels for the purpose of building student writing portfolios.

How do I do it? – Procedure

  1. The first time I do it, I tell students that we are going to be writing as much as we can in L2 for five minutes. The first topic is to just introduce yourself, saying as much about yourself as you can in the L2!
  2. Students usually have a question at this point about the grading. I tell students that we are going to do this 5 times total throughout the year, and they will get an A if they increase their word count of logical German writing over the course of the year. (Which hopefully prevents students from just writing “My name is my name is my name is” over and over again.) If you have to take grades with certain frequencies, you can just set a very low goal for students to reach and then give them a good grade if they reach it, with gradations below that goal.
  3. At this point, I distribute the ~special paper and tell students not to start yet, but to put their name, the period, and the date on the paper.
  4. For the first Focus Write, I reread the prompt in L1, and then think aloud about how I might answer the prompt myself. As in, “(L1) Hmm, introduce yourself in German…(L2) My name is Herr Fisher-Rodriguez, I’m 33 years old, I am from California but I live in Washington… (etc etc).” In input-focused classrooms, students can sometimes get nervous about output, and might just need reminders of the kinds of things they certainly already feel comfortable writing about.
  5. Then, I set the timer…and let them have at it! I usually just observe students as they write, prompting slow starters with ideas or inspiration, if needed.
  6. After the five minutes are up, I compliment my students about how smart and awesome they are! I usually say something to the effect of, “I was reading what y’all were writing, and it looked really great and right on target!”
  7. For the 2nd-5th Focus Writes, I just remind students that they have done this (successfully!) before, and that this is just a chance to show off what they’ve learned since the last time we did this. My encouragement is to just beat their own previous records!

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

As mentioned above, I usually grade these fairly gently, mostly looking for growth over time. Follow your heart (read: the specific context of your job) for how to grade these, but remember that output grows so much more slowly than comprehension, and be realistic with your expectations.

Reading student writing (made simpler by only having them write for 5 minutes, HELLO) can also reveal what structures have really “stuck,” and which might need some more input. For example, maybe your students need more exposure to numbers and talking about age, so you can just make sure that any future input also includes ages, as appropriate. Marking things up with a red pen won’t do as much for their writing proficiency as just reading more, so provide lots of opportunities to read rich, comprehensible texts!

I keep a portfolio of my students’ “major works” from their entire time with me (Free Writes, Focus Writes, tests, reflections, etc.), so each Focus Write gets filed into their portfolio. What’s fun is later pulling them out, and calculating their percentage growth. Getting to tell a kid that they’ve increased their 5 minute writing output by 200% is a great feeling for everyone.

Pro Tips!

  1. Decide on your topics! These may be determined by your district’s curriculum, or alignment with some outside source. Then, no matter what you do throughout the year, you can remind yourself to orient class conversations toward those topics as you move along. Maybe you add in some breakfast/lunch/dinner conversations to your opening routines, or characters in your stories just so happen to extensively describe their friends and family. There is flexibility in the “how” in working towards the “what” here.
  2. Model! Write and Discuss is a great way to model the skills of writing, and guide students towards greater success while writing on a specific prompt. Slipping in a lesson similar to an upcoming Focus Write, and modeling the writing process can really help students be more successful.
  3. Keep them! Even if you don’t have portfolios for each student, demonstrating student growth back to students increases feelings of competence, which can increase student motivation. Make sure they get tucked away for future celebration.
  4. Use them! I used this one year as part of a Student Growth Goal during my evaluation cycle, and my evaluator was blown away by the data I was able to provide. Admin love to hear informed statements like, “these students I chose to focus on increased their 5 minute writing fluency by 100%, while also growing from using mostly Phrases (NM) to mostly using Simple Sentences (NH) with some Strings of Sentences (IL)!” Focus Writes provided both qualitative and quantitative data for these conversations. Check!
  5. Do other types of writing! This is just one way to elicit output from students – building diverse portfolios of student writing is essential for us to know what students have acquired, and what needs more input. I mostly focus on input for the first two years I have my students, so there is not a crazy amount of additional writing for them beyond Free Writes and Focus Writes, but variety is the spice of life!

What if I want to learn more?

This original tweet by Profe Jackie Camacho is what inspired me to write this post, so check that out!

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