Category: Instructional Moves

90% Target Language: How to Work Toward This Core Practice

ACTFL recommends that teachers and learners aim for 90%+ of class time to be spent in the Target Language, and lists the facilitation of Target Language usage as one of its six Core Practices. Comprehensible Input is the sine non qua of language acquisition, of course, so in my view, Target Language usage is something we constantly need to be reflecting on as part of our teaching practice. Approaching that 90% has been a goal of mine for years (indeed, I made visiting as many sessions about 90%+ TL the focus of my attendance at ACTFL 2017 in Nashville), and I am finally getting to a place where I am feeling pretty good about my abilities to execute this Core Practice. Part of that is recognizing that 50% days, 70% days, 99% days, and 20% days are all okay, too, and part of the natural ebb and flow of working in a very human profession.

I have been reflecting a lot on how I have been working on this in my own classroom, and what I think are some key pieces in getting to 90%. I imagine this will be an evolving set of reflections, so let’s get started with where I am right now:

Trust

I really think one of the keys to getting to high levels of Target Language is building student’s trust that you will help them understand the TL at every step along the way.

This begins with an explicit commitment to students: “I want you to understand everything that is going on in our class, and I will do my best to make everything clear to you.” As an example, Cécile Lainé demonstrates this commitment with how she introduces the physical signal students give when they have not understood something: she asks students to make the audible signal (fist against open palm, snapping, tongue clicking, etc.) “when I say something and you don’t understand because I’m confusing you” so that she can “stop and help.” Students are also prompted to support their classmates by joining in making the designated sound – so if one student makes the noise because they don’t understand, everyone else also joins in to make sure that they can all get it.

This shows that she sees her primary goal as making sure every student understands, and that no student will be singled out for not understanding, no matter the reason. Students do have to show up and listen – and make the signal to show lack of comprehension – but their teacher is verbally committing to trying to be as clear as possible. If the teacher then celebrates the use of this signal, and clarifies spots where they confused students, that trusting relationship is built through words and actions. (Watch this video by Cécile to see the setup of these strategies in action – she is a master.)

You can also build trust by watching the eyes and faces of your students as you teach, and responding to blank or confused looks. If we explicitly verbalize, “I saw what looked like confusion to me, and I want to make sure everyone has got it so we can all learn together,” and then rephrase/restate/add a gesture or writing/etc., students will see that you are making good on your commitment to teaching them as clearly as you can. With a trusting relationship, teacher and learners can push each other to ever-higher levels of Target Language usage and skill.

Our Mindset

Sometimes, we as teachers don’t trust ourselves to make high levels of TL usage happen, and/or we don’t trust that our students will rise to the high expectation of 90%+ TL usage. On the Language Lounge podcast, guest Marnina Falk reminded listeners of an essential mindset for us while working towards this goal: everyone can learn an additional language, and with the right supports, everyone can thrive in a class with high levels of TL usage. I remember a presentation I went to at WAFLT with Paul Sandrock where he shared research showing that students expect high levels of TL usage in their classes, but the teachers are the ones who back away from it out of fear! Perhaps we need to make it into daily affirmations: I can maintain an atmosphere of high TL usage – my students will thrive hearing lots of TL!

“You are understanding”

Language classes are so different from content courses, and carry an air of mystique and difficulty (perhaps because of previous generations’ lack of success with older methods). It is essential that we give our students early confirmations of their success in a high TL usage environment. This can be Quick Quizzes where we confirm that students have been comprehending the content of the day and ending class on a positive note, or just being clear during frequent comprehension checks: yes, you are doing the work of acquiring a language! You ARE understanding! I don’t think it’s out of bounds to just tell this to our students directly, in L1. We want to develop an inner voice in our students that says: I can do this, I AM doing this. Frequent formative assessment helps us share with students the path of proficiency so they can continue walking it.

Having Communicative Goals

If your goal is to teach and assess student knowledge about the grammatical forms of your TL, it is likely that you will use a lot of L1 to talk about linguistic terms. At the end of the course, students may have heard TL, but they will mostly have learned about the language, rather than having used the language.

If we want students to use the language, and we want to use it ourselves, we need to set communicative goals. These can be psychosocial (building relationships), cognitive-informational (obtaining information for some purpose), or entertainment.

We can learn about our classmates, their families and cultures and experiences, and the target culture(s), and also share how we are doing, what our preferences and opinions are, and also just have fun. I think the ACTFL Can Do Statements do a good job at reminding us that language is for DOING things, so having clarity about what function(s) we are trying to elicit helps make planning for target language usage – modeling, selecting useful vocabulary, questioning, etc. – much more effective and targeted.

Don’t be afraid of English

Some ACTFL publications take a hardline stance on English usage and basically tell you “don’t do it unless the building is on fire and you have to evacuate quickly.” I disagree with a hardline stance like that. (Obviously, uh, use L1 if the building is on fire, of course.) I read research somewhere (and am of course not finding it while I’m writing this, so thanks in advance to anyone who can send it my way!) that regardless of how hard we try to get learners to associate an L2 word with a wordless concept (vs. a related word in L1), they are still going to internally link new words to L1 meanings, anyways.

What this means to me is that sometimes, I can draw a picture on the board or do a gesture that makes an L2 word’s meaning clear, and sometimes, I’m just going to write the word on the board in L2 and L1 (usually in different colors to be clear what belongs to which language). I’m not afraid of that! If I am committed to using that new word in the service of some sort of communicative goal, I’m going to use it in the L2, and the time spent establishing the meaning of the word in L1 will not have dragged at my 90%+ TL goal too much.

I feel the same way about comprehension checks. Especially early in lower levels, I want to give the feeling of accomplishment and being-in-the-right-place to my students early, and often. Asking “what did I just say?” in L1 and hearing a confident choral response gives me the feedback that students are with me, and when I affirm that to my students, they know it for themselves, too. I find I use this sort of comprehension check less frequently as students move up in levels, but that’s because they have confidently acquired enough language to be more functional in the TL.

Instructions can be the same way. If a quick explanation serves to get us all back into the TL to do a new activity or procedure, then giving it briefly in L1 works for me.

We have to be practical in our use of time in class, because we don’t have much of it, so we are mostly going to be in L2. But! Sometimes the quickest way to get to more L2 is through a little detour into L1. Reading Justin’s post about the role of the L1 in a class really clarified this for me.

Model everything!

If you want students to do something, you can show them how to do it by narrating your own actions in the Target Language. If you have a movement prompt, model thinking about how you would respond to it, and then moving around your classroom to indicate your answer. If you have a new game or partner activity, either have the class be your partner to model, or pick a student you suspect will catch on quickly. You can play with this and just do classic TPR, too, modeling commands and then fading the modeling. Then: you can review any instructions with text on the board as a review before setting students to the task.

Rejoinders

Learners want to feel connected to others and not feel isolated in class. This can express itself with verbal outbursts in the L1 that have the power to derail class, but can actually be a positive sign: they WANT to be a part of the classroom community and contribute their thoughts! But how can we get them to do that without opening a floodgate of L1?

Using rejoinders in the L2 – short phrases that indicate your reaction to something happening – can give students tools to participate and share that connectedness, while also keeping it in the TL. You can teach students maybe 2-3 at a time, perhaps with accompanying gestures that get the meanings of the rejoinders across, and make a point to find situations to use them in your class for about a week or so. Any time a student uses one, I always try to respond with positivity and excitement – because “using these phrases really makes you sound like an [L2] speaker!” I sometimes also prompt students by asking: “What would be a logical reaction to what Soandso just said / what just happened?”

When students are shouting out “What a bummer!” and “How cute!” and “Awesome!” in the TL, it really does feel like you’re helping grow their abilities as L2 speakers, and makes it a sort of a game – in the Target Language! My students in particular like to use them ironically while staring me dead in the eye, and I mock outrage at their callousness. “Soandso has mountains of homework, and your reaction is ‘How lovely!’??! You monsters!” Boom: play, in the Target Language.

I learned a lot of what I know about rejoinders from Grant Boulanger, and offer you some rejoinders in German, if you should need them. I print rejoinders on card stock, two to a sheet, and hang them with magnets on an awkwardly-shaped portion of whiteboard. When students have a good grasp on them, I “retire” them, pinning them above our smartboard, where they become a visual reminder of our growing linguistic repertoire.

Non-verbal or single-word responses

Sometimes, we don’t need students to respond with words. They can respond with their movements! The “I don’t understand” signal from above comes first to mind. Students can also point at an option they prefer, or at an object (or sometimes person) in the room. They can stand up and move to Four Corners to share their opinions and experiences, or form a continuum. They can clap to agree, snap to disagree – or any variation on that idea. They can stand up to indicate “Me too!” All the while, we as the instructors are providing lots of rich input, interaction, and guided conversation.

Sometimes, it is also totally okay for students to give single-word responses. These could be choral responses to circling questions, making a choice after you provide a this-or-that question, or saying the name of a brand or place that they are familiar with in response to your prompting. These all require us to plan ahead to provide logical choices, and the more couched they are in TL sentences (“I like to eat chocolate/vanilla/strawberry ice cream” vs. just “chocolate/vanilla/strawberry”), the more input we can facilitate in the TL while also getting more information about and personalizing to our students.

“May I speak English?”

Above my whiteboard, I have the phrase “May I speak English?” in the TL on a small poster. I teach students what it means in English, and then use it myself whenever I need to tell the students something in English. This establishes an environment where we are working to have class mostly in L2, and will show deference to others’ goals of using class time to really practice the L2 by asking permission to speak L1. The more I do this, the more students ask for permission!

Sometimes they forcefully say “no” to my requests – and I go okay! And try to convey what I needed to convey in L2. Sometimes I gently say “no” to my students – but mostly if I suspect they are trying to tell a derailing anecdote in L1. And sometimes, when I “allow” students to use L1, I also give them a guideline for how much. “Yes, but just one word.” “Yes, but just one sentence.” “Yes, but you have five seconds.” This makes it a fun game, and I can see if there needs to be further questioning afterward beyond the imposed limit.

Go slow

Here’s some research I found forever ago: the average high school student processes their native language at about 140-145 words per minute. On the other hand, the average adult speaks at about 170 words per minute. There seems to be a mismatch here – we’re talking faster than our students’ brains are ready for, and that’s just in the L1!

If we want our students to understand what they hear in the L2, which empowers us to use even more of it in class, we need to be modulating our rate of speech. This certainly does not mean talking comically slow, but slowER, with more pauses between chunks and ideas. This can really make the difference between students understanding and not understanding what you are trying to communicate. We might also emphasize certain new words or sounds with our voices to draw attention to them and help students make more form-meaning connections. (This can be especially true in languages where endings indicate who is being talked about, and/or when.)

This also doesn’t mean speaking slowly…forever. As students are more familiar with the language, they can process it faster and faster. Part of the fun for us, then, becomes slowly increasing our rate of speech over time (sometimes within the same class period), and watching students come more confidently along for the ride. Then, when they encounter audio or video texts where the speakers are not worried about slowing their rate of speech, they feel more confident to tackle them – because they had slow listening “practice” to start.

Other resources

So many have had thoughts on this, and I will gather more resources here over time. That said, a huge influence for me (and an absolute gold mine of ideas) has been this post from the Comprehensible Classroom: How to Teach So That They Understand. Check it out!

Celebrate!

If using a lot of TL in your class goes well: great! If it goes less well: return to your principles and skills of L2 usage and see what moments in class you fell out of L2 use. Collaborate with a colleague on ideas! You might also film yourself and check your rate of speech, use of visuals, questioning, etc., while also keeping an eye on how your class reacts to you.

But overall: celebrate. You’re working towards a core practice in our field. It’s going to be tough at times, but it will most certainly pay off for you and your students.

What other reflections do you have about Target Language usage in language classes? Share in a comment below!

Warm Ups – Getting Language Flowing Before Class Begins!

Warm Ups (Do Nows / Bell Ringers / Entrance Tasks / etc.) inspire mixed feelings, according to my conversations with other educators. Some don’t want to deal with the paperwork of having students do that writing every day (and are unsure how much follow up / checking of the warm up sheets to do), or want to give students a chance to breathe a bit between classes before jumping into academic content. Others value the structure it provides to the beginning of class and appreciate the time it gives the teacher to breathe before jumping into academic content. (Jon Cowart lays out his arguments here for how having a Do Now procedure helps with strong classroom management.)

I appreciate the time it gives me as the teacher to take care of administrative tasks: taking attendance in a timely manner, signing stuff for students going on field trips, checking in with individuals. I also use my very simple warm up sheet as a note catcher for new vocabulary, grammar pop ups, and a place to write down the weekly password into our class. Warm Ups also remind me to spiral and retrieve older content in a more structured way instead of always forging forward. I try to make mine mostly input-focused, but scaffolded output is also possible!

Here was my Warm Up slide from the day I wrote this post!

Here are the formats I generally use for Warm Ups – I hope they serve you!

L2 -> L1 TranslationThis is a go-to for me: take sentences from a recent story, conversation, using recent vocab, whatever and have students translate them to English. This helps review previous content, see the written form of the language, and review any grammatical differences between the languages.
L1 -> L2 TranslationI use this one a little more sparingly, and only after students have had lots of input on any given structures. This can help students build confidence in their writing skills in the L2 if they see they can put sentences together.
Fill in the Blanks with New VocabCreate sentences that are missing new vocabulary terms to review new terms and build sense of how they fit into new sentences.
Sentence FramesI have seen Steve Smith call this “Start the Sentence” or “Finish the Sentence.” Give students a subject and a verb, and have them finish the sentence as makes sense to them. (“I play…” “I am…” “I have…” “I was…”) AND/OR give them a detail to incorporate into an original sentence. “on the weekend” “with my friends” “German and English”
Question and AnswerJust ask an interesting question! I sometimes provide a sentence starter to get students going, or I just leave the students to respond at their own proficiency level. (Words, phrases, sentences, etc.)
MatchingThis can obviously be done with terms and their definitions in the L1, or terms and pictures, but you can also do this with sentence beginnings and endings. This helps increase the amount of input and builds reading skills.
Reorder SentencesAlso sometimes called a discourse scramble, having students put events in a logical sequence (based on common sense, something discussed in class, or their predictions) can be another great way to get input and build literacy.
Imposter ReadingSometimes this is done with vocabulary terms (“Find the odd one out: corn – carrots – broccoli – pineapple”), but it could just as easily be done with entire sentences. For instance, if you’ve just done a Map Talk, having sentences about the area studied that are plausible, but one describes a different place.
True / False or Multiple ChoiceThese are good at giving sentence level input, and you could really target whatever language you like with this. You could also give an entire paragraph describing someone, for instance, and then have students choose from options of what that person might do in a given scenario.
Always / Sometimes / NeverProvide students with the words in your language for “always,” “sometimes,” and “never,” and then insert them into sentences where they would naturally fall in the language. Students then decide for themselves which is true for the prompt. For example “I (always / sometimes / never) am bored in English class.” “I (always / sometimes / never) sleep in my math class.” “This character (always / sometimes / never) does the right thing.”
Find the CognatesI use this early on in my level 1 classes to build student awareness of cognates: project a reading that is likely far above their level, but which contains cognates. Have students list as many as they can, defining them in the L1. (Works less well for some languages, of course.)
Find the Error(s)Write out some sentences with errors in them, and tell students how many they need to find and correct (or don’t tell them how many!). Use this to point out any tricky grammatical or spelling stuff.
Mysterious PersonDescribe a person in the L2, and have students guess who the person is. It could be a person in the class, in your school community, or from popular culture.
Retrieval GridsJust learned about this one from Steve Smith’s blog – give students a list of sentence elements (verbs conjugated to subjects, objects, added details) and have them create sentences with them. The task could be to create as many sentences as possible, or to make sentences that are purposefully outrageous. When checking, have students read their sentences aloud, and the class could translate them.
Guess What I Did Last WeekendIn preparing this blog post, I keep getting great ideas from Steve Smith: project a chat mat of weekend chat ideas, and have students pose questions in formal language about what you did over the weekend. They pre-write the questions, and then you can answer yes/no or with full sentences + details.
What’s the Question?Display an answer for a question, and have students come up with as many possible questions to elicit that answer as they can. Even more fun: have the answer be short and slightly ambiguous: “No, not right now.” “I can’t do that since the accident.” Or: focus on specific question words. “By car.” “Yesterday evening, actually!”

How do you start your class? Let me know if you have some more great warm ups below!

Feedback in the CI-Centered Classroom That Helps Students Grow

One of the things we are asked to do as teachers is provide feedback to students to help move their learning forward. It appears on any rubric for evaluation, and is a natural and necessary part of the teaching and learning process.

Best practice in teaching dictates that we set a clear goal for our learners to begin the feedback cycle. Then, we describe to the learner both where they are relative to that goal, as well as what the next steps for that learner are to meet or go beyond the original goal.

Often, we find ourselves giving lots of comments on student work, and then watch that marked-up work end up in the garbage after a cursory glance at the grade. So, to complete the feedback process, we have to create a need for students to use the feedback as part of their learning. The cycle begins again after students produce a new product or draft using the feedback given.

Here’s the thing…

These processes and practices have been researched and developed as relates to the explicit teaching and learning of facts and processes. Think skills like describing the functionality of a cell, crafting a historical analysis, or modeling a real-world situation using mathematical notation. If students “miss” something or make an “error,” the teacher can show students areas to consciously focus on to improve.

With language acquisition, we can say that there are no “errors,” but rather “developmental forms.” (I take this term from the writings of Bill Van Patten.) A learner’s linguistic system develops in an ordered way in response to basically one thing: comprehended input. Any of the “developmental forms” we hear in a learner’s production along the way are just indicators of where they are in their development, and this development is to be honored and celebrated.

So…the answer for what feedback is needed to develop learners’ linguistic systems: more input! Any explicit feedback about things like verb endings, adjective agreement, etc. will not necessarily make its way into the learner’s linguistic system, because language (in its abstraction, complexity, and implicit nature) does not reside in the realm of consciously learned facts and skills. Indeed, studies on explicit error correction show no lasting benefits for students’ accuracy so…let’s ditch it!

Our challenge, then…

…is to find ways to keep our learners calm and focused on input in a school system that shows great value in always being correct, getting things perfectly on the first try, and ranking systems like grades. To that end, teachers who have moved away from traditional language teaching must make clear to students what acquisition is going to look and feel like, that it’s okay to make errors in efforts to communicate, that progression is going to be messy and seem nonlinear, and that it all just takes time. We as teachers cannot be too explicit about these values – otherwise, students will have no reason to believe that this class is unlike any other class in school, when really, I think it should be. Language is special and different from content area courses.

I also know that there are the linguistics kids out there (bashfully raises hand because I was/am one of those) who want to know more about “proper” L2. It never hurts to throw them a bone with grammar pop-ups during readings once meaning has been thoroughly established! Meaning has to come first, so then we can draw connections between the forms and the meanings they create.

My experience has also shown me that it’s not until usually the third year (or even later!) that many students start to take an interest in how the language works at that grammar-y level, so I’m giving myself permission to hold off on too much grammar-y stuff until that interest bubbles up after lots and lots of input. Again, they need lots and lots of meaningful experiences with the language to contextualize any grammatical musings so, for now (and especially in this age of limited input because of all-virtual teaching!), I’m just going to focus on meaningful classroom interactions.

What about marking up student output?

Some kids might want it – most won’t know what to do with it. I have borrowed Meredith White’s idea of giving an option on any assignment to get corrective feedback on output, if students want it. I usually focus on one or two big ideas that students can focus on, and try to explain “fixes” in non-grammar-y terms that spotlight how the grammar contributes to meaning. (“Oh, this -o at the end of the verb tells us that we’re talking about ourselves, so if you’re talking about yourself, double check that it has that -o!”) Less is more, in this case – no one wants an assignment back that has been given the Red Pen of Death. 🙂

But really – the answer is more input! What systems or tricks do you have in your tool kit to focus mostly on providing great communicative input, while also satisfying the need students sometimes has for your class to look “like school”? Let me know in the comments!

What if I want a vocab list?

Generally, in CI World, we know that students acquire vocabulary most efficiently from comprehensible messages in the Target Language. That means that Ye Olde Vocabulary Lists of yore are not quite as helpful as we used to think. Trying to memorize them engages the brain’s explicit/conscious learning faculties, versus the implicit/unconscious learning that is capable (and more durable, in the case of language) when focusing on getting students as much comprehensible input as possible. For this reason, many CI World teachers have ditched vocab lists and just focus on providing rich, repetitive, compelling comprehensible input in class. And that’s all!

…but what if I want a vocabulary list? What if my students want one? There’s something satisfying about the neatness of a list. It implies and provides structure, and is something to refer to when feeling lost. And maybe your department/school/district requires that you provide and teach students thematic/semantic sets of vocabulary. This is the situation I’m currently in with my school’s Spanish department (I’m a singleton with German – I have more freedom there), so this is something I’m thinking about this year as well.

We have to be mindful that students sometimes struggle with classes that don’t “look” entirely “like school.” Especially in the early levels, we’re mostly asking students to just listen, read, and show that they understand. That is VERY different from any other class they have taken, where they may have to take and summarize notes, respond frequently with their own thoughts, elaborate on those thoughts, work out individual written responses to prompts, etc. Just understanding what you hear and read sounds like a murky goal – even if we as teachers know that it is what they need. But maybe having a vocabulary list gives students the comfort they want in “learning” the language when we secretly know that we are creating class such that they acquire the language.

This question actually opens up to two different contexts with distinct solution sets, so let’s explore each context and see how we can best support our students on their quest toward language proficiency.

Context 1: I have a mandated vocabulary list

This context is affecting my Spanish teaching this year. This year, I’m teaching second-year Spanish. I’ve come in to a new school whose Spanish department adheres pretty closely to the scope and sequence provided by a textbook, which is not how I teach. But! I was told that as long as I cover the vocabulary and structures present in the chapters my department uses over the course of the year, I can teach however I want. My district seems big on teacher autonomy, which is truly a blessing.

So, what am I going to do? Here have been my plans for “covering” the vocabulary lists I’m expected to cover this year:

  • Calendar Talk: Calendar Talk is great for introducing all sorts of new vocab, because it necessarily includes compelling events from students’ lives. In addition to reviewing the Spanish 1 calendar basics (days, months, etc.), we’ll be able to review future plans, and start talking about what students did over the weekend. A seamless and natural introduction to the past tense forms!
  • Card Talk: Card Talk can be angled to introduce any subject – check the linked post for ideas how to use Card Talk prompts to push conversation towards thematic vocab. School unit? Have kids draw what goes on in their favorite class. Talking about places in town? Have kids draw their favorite spots, and go in on what is around them, where they are located, etc.
  • OWI: Specify that the One Word has to fit some sort of theme – it has to be an article of clothing, it has to be a toy of some sort, it has to be a food, etc. This will likely draw in other related vocab – pieces of clothing are often friends with other pieces of clothing, for instance. #BillylaBufanda
  • Storytelling: As with OWIs, unscripted stories can be angled towards problems that mirror the language introduced in a thematic chapter. An OWI that is a pencil can be at school and have some sort of problem with its history teacher. Or, you can go the route of purposefully building in vocab list vocabulary into stories. Or let someone else do it for you! I am a huge fan of Anne Matava’s Story Scripts, just because they’re so wacky and fun, and I’ll definitely be using “You, In the Corner!” and “An Important Test” early on during the school unit because those have always inspired much hilarity.
  • Picture Talk: Picture Talk can be used to kill 2 birds with 1 stone – I can pull up an image from the Target Culture, and discuss both what is going on in the picture, and if it is different from an analogous context here in the US!
  • Story Listening: Now, I don’t do Story Listening exactly as Dr. Mason describes, but I love using it to include cultural tales in my classes. I think it will be a fabulous way for students to hear lots of natural language, and because I’m teaching Level 2, it will be good for them to hear the different Spanish past tenses in natural contexts.

There are so many ways to weave in “required” vocab – we just have to be a little creative in sequencing our classes and providing specific communicative contexts so that the vocabulary just happens to come up. (Or, it just seems that way to our students! *wink*)

I think you can also get your kids in on it a bit, too. I explicitly told my students that we have to do similar stuff to what the other classes have to do, but that we’ll try to make it as fun as possible. If we ever run into a situation where interest is waning, we can remind ourselves that we’re doing our best to have fun and “cover” all the stuff. Kids usually like a conspiracy…er…challenge. *wink again*

Context 2: I do not have a mandated vocabulary list

This is my situation with German this year! I am the best only German teacher at my school, and my district (again) provides teachers lots of autonomy, so I have a lot of freedom to teach whatever vocab seems best. For me, I am aiming for natural language usage. So, I’m creating contexts for communication, and we’ll use whatever language comes up!

This does lead to things being a bit unpredictable, and honestly, I’ve found it difficult in the past to keep track of what I’ve said to whom. Sometimes I find myself “introducing” a gesture for a verb, and the class is like “omg Herr Fisher get it together, we got this!” Other times, I have discovered that a fairly high frequency / useful word hasn’t come up in a long time, or at all, and I end up doing mental gymnastics trying to introduce it to the class.

Then, I stumbled upon this article by Justin Slocum Bailey, who is an outstanding Latin teacher and teacher trainer. He had an idea that was so simple, I went YEAH: just ask kids at the end of class what words/phrases were most central to the day’s interactions, and what seemed most useful. Boom! The students help you build out a vocabulary list, so there’s a feeling of mutual responsibility. You can then just make a spreadsheet (I keep mine in a Google Spreadsheet) with all the language you’ve used, so you know what each class has heard and used. Boom!

I also check back on my Write and Discuss from each day to see what has come up in class. I write mine by hand on the board to keep them shorter, and then type them up into a Google Doc during my prep. I do this in conjunction with asking the class, because sometimes certain language stuck out to them more, and that language doesn’t always necessarily show up in the Write and Discuss. (See: a super random vocab word a kid asked for during class, a fun interjection, you accidentally taught a swear word when you walked backwards into a chair and fell over and politely remind your students to never ever use ever, etc.)

Now what do I do with this word list, once I have it? The first thing is feel relieved, because if anyone ever asserts “we (they?) don’t even do anything in there!” I can whip the list out and be like “well then, what is all this language we’ve used?! (dramatic music)“

I also have thought out some other, non-affective uses for such a list, which could include:
– Building new readings that are recombinations of familiar vocab, either for days when I need to sit to refrain from dying, or for performance assessments (both throughout an instructional cycle, using AnneMarie Chase’s Quick Quizzes, or at the end).
– Spiraling the vocab that appears in my Bell Ringers, which are usually reading (input!)-based.
– Playing games! I could easily make these a Quizlet set for students to study, if they should so choose, which easily turns into either a Gimkit or a Quizlet Live. Same idea with a Kahoot!
– Printing the list for a parent or child. Sometimes they just want some sort of proof, something to study. This could be it!
– Reminding myself of other useful stuff that hasn’t come up yet – and then magically bringing it up!

Sometimes, you might want to target other useful vocab that could wow their next level teacher and make your classroom life more flowing. Slip a new word or phrase into the classroom convo when it makes sense, and boom! You have a more proficient user of the target language.

Overall:

If we communicate to our students via lists, they will produce…lists. I’m aiming to use class time to communicate in real questions, statements, stories, etc., so that hopefully one day, my students will be able to do the same. But for as long as we need to hold onto the idea of the vocab list for the world language classroom, then we can certainly provide – and make it useful to us, too!

What do you think? Do you have to follow a set list, or do you have more freedom? Do you have an argument for vocab lists that I’m not thinking about? Let me know your thoughts and ideas below!

Give ’em the dang sentence frames!

Recently, I went to a workshop with Lynn Johnston, who is an absolute rock star and will be PNCFL’s representative for ACTFL Teacher of the Year this November in Washington, DC. I have seen her present multiple times at WAFLT and WAFLT-COFLT conferences, and so appreciate her creativity and energy. I feel like her students’ brains must be bursting with L2 at the end of class – she has fabulous systems in place to make sure kids are getting tons of input every single day. She is also a reading rock star, and really turned me on to doing WAY more reading with my students.

One thing I have been thinking about a lot is how Lynn uses sentence frames to give students opportunities to express themselves, while also modeling higher level language use. In CI World (disclaimer: not a real place slash no one owns “CI”), teachers are often discouraged from “forcing” output – that is, pushing students to output beyond whatever mental representation they have acquired. This makes sense: you can’t wring water out of a dry sponge. But we also know that outputting can be motivating to learners (especially secondary learners), and that it may provide opportunities for their interlocutor (here, usually the teacher) to provide even more input as they follow up on whatever the learner said.

So, maybe we can provide sentence frames with most of the language filled in, and students can use those to express themselves at higher levels than they would be ready to produce on their own. This can give the teacher a brief break from providing all the input, while also modeling correct language usage.

I saw someone say once that even if students are working on super complex/”advanced” grammar and topics, if they are filling in a blank, they are only functioning at a Novice level – just words! With this in mind, if I’m working with Novices, I can provide them the structure to use their Novice-level words and phrases skills to build simple sentences. We each provide about 50% to get them successfully functioning at 100% Novice High, and we can do this early! Then we can push them towards Intermediate-Low (strings of sentences with supporting details) by modeling how to do that, too.

Ultimately, you get out what you put in. If we consciously feed our students a healthy diet of comprehensible language steps above their level, they will eventually (truly eventually – we’re playing the long game) be able to work at that level independently – because they have had repeated opportunities to see what that level looks like. If we’re only speaking to them in short, choppy sentences, or just short phrases, or via vocabulary lists, then…that’s what we’re going to get back. (“Hey Jimmy, how’s it going?” “Pencil…teacher…desk…Sit down please…”)

So! I’m going to try to give my students comprehensible, useful sentence starters/frames that match our topics. I can use them for quick turn and talks, as support for whole-class interactions, or even as exit ticket assessments. Again – I will be providing the grammar/vocab that pushes them up the proficiency scale, and they are filling in with information personal to them. I will have to support that with helpful vocab and input, too, and it will lead to some satisfying student language use in class.

I’ve been doing a training recently to assign performance levels to L2 writing, and I’ve learned that one of the indicators that a student has moved from Novice-High (simple sentences) to Intermediate-Low (strings of sentences) is the inclusion of supporting details, usually in the form of prepositional or verbal phrases. So maybe if we’ve been talking about food, I can model for my students the addition of details that move it towards Intermediate-Low writing/speaking. Take the simple sentence “I like to eat pizza,” for example. If it were in a composition with other similar sentences like “I play videogames. I rarely shower.” it would be rated at Novice High. But with some prepositional phrases, it can look like this:

With this image, I enter the Great Internet “Pineapple on Pizza” Debate. (For the record, I think it is a nice sweet counterpoint to the saltiness of the pizza, so I like it.)

Again, not life-changing in terms of wild L2 complexity, but by adding on any of these details, you’re moving out of Novice and into the Intermediate range. If we, as teachers, can model a variety of ways to add detail like this to our sentences (either through using these sentence frames as conversation pieces during class, or during Write and Discuss), we will push our students to use them more, as well. And all we would have to do is put up a sentence frame like “I like to eat _____ with _____” or “I like to eat _____ at _______” and students can fill in to their heart’s content!

The jump from Intermediate-Low to Intermediate-Mid is marked by increased use of “Complex Components,” which are dependent or subordinated clauses. Think clauses like, “When I was younger…” or “I like people who are…” or “I shop in stores that…” Those conjunctions build complexity by linking together clauses, and this is what really makes a student’s writing/speaking flow. Upper-level students could definitely benefit from getting sentence frames like these, especially when applied to AP/IB themes or topics!

This year, I am going to try to use more sentence frames so that students can “get practice” speaking the language and feeling successful. (Even though I know that this does not necessarily contribute to their acquisition of the language in the most efficient way, as I’m taking a bit of time away from providing more compelling input, we serve many masters in school jobs. This might help students feel more like they’re “doing something” in class beyond just trying to understand, and might head off possible administrator comments about a class being too “teacher-centered” or that the students never “actually speak the language.”)

But I can start small! Early in level 1: My name is _______. Then: I like ______. Do you like _______? Then: I eat a lot of __________. I can leave these frames posted for a certain amount of time, so students can refer to them and secretly get a bit of input if they look at them. Maybe I can put them in a pocket chart, or dedicate a section of wall to them. I want to commit also to changing them out regularly, so we don’t get to April and I’m like…uhh…Why is “Me llamo…” still cheerfully posted? (Last year, I was super gung-ho for rejoinders, but sadly only managed to post like…5 different ones. Oops. Growth area!)

This use of sentence frames for structured student output will also (hopefully) remind me to create related Writing Checklists for our class Write and Discuss work that will help us incorporate more strong writing moves into our shared writing. I’ll start small with conjunctions like “and” and “but,” and work my way up to including storytelling elements like “First…then…finally…”, nice transition words like “Nevertheless,” and those subordinating conjunctions that help build “Complex Components”: that, who, which, when, if, etc.

Here are some example sentence frames, linked to their performance indicator and a theme you might find in AP or IB.

Can you think of sentence frames that you could incorporate into your units or daily lessons that will push your students towards the next proficiency level? (Oof, there were prepositional phrases and two subordinated clauses in that one sentence! You get Intermediate-Mid, Benjamin.) Comment below with your thoughts and wonderings!

3 Takeaways from the 2018 WAFLT-COFLT Bi-State Conference

Teachers are wild.  “Let’s get a sub so that we can…do more school stuff.”  But seriously y’all I love conferences.

It has fully been like a week and a half since the WAFLT-COFLT Bi-State Conference in Portland, OR but I still have so many thoughts bouncing around in my enormous head!  My practice has actually shifted in the past few days as I’ve taken more time to work through my notes and reflect on the changes I want to make to increase student enjoyment and learning!  (Well…acquisition. Whatever.)

Let’s keep it short(ish) – three thoughts I’ve been playing around with:

  1. 90% Target Language Usage is Scarier for Teachers Than for Their Students
    Paul Sandrock, the Director of Education for ACTFL, reported during his session on Facilitating Target Language Comprehensibility that teachers have FAR MORE anxiety about using 90% TL in class than their students do!  This blew my mind. Kids are actually pretty chill if we’re like, “yeah, let’s just drop the English and DO THIS THING, MUCHACHOS!”
    Maybe they actually expect it.  Like, they go into a language class thinking that the teacher just WILL use the language most of the time. Because as a young person, YEAH THAT SEEMS LOGICAL. It’s us adults that come up with reasons not to use the language in class.  This is probably because we’ve tragically developed the ability to overthink things.  (How…wonderful.) J. Marvin Brown talked in his book From the Outside In about how adults struggle so hard in language classes because they, unlike children, let their thinking and their brains get in the way of just experiencing the language and enjoying it (and being able to subconsciously acquire the language).  He posits that we don’t lose the ability to learn languages as we age, but rather gain the ability to overthink things and ruin it for ourselves. I can see this same thing happening with target language usage. Of course it seems natural to use the language all the time in class because…duh.  But!!! But what if they don’t understand! But what about management! But what will I say! But what if I don’t feel strong enough in the L2 to fill awkward silences! But!!!
    Y’all, we can do this.  Our kids want this. They want the input, they want the language, they want to be good at this.  So let’s stop holding ourselves back and make it happen! I’ve started having little interactions (before class, in transitions, giving directions) in Spanish and surprise…everything is going fine.  Just more opportunities for me to work on my skills for comprehensibility! (That thing I present on…gulp.)
  2. You Are Putting On a Silent Film (+TL)
    In presenting with Tina Hargaden (of CI Liftoff and The CI Posse) about body and voice skills for comprehensibility, I learned something seemingly small that has made a big impact on my class flow.  Any time I do a gesture, point to something on the board, or do any of the other magical tricks to make language comprehensible (#futureblogpost) (#magicaltricks), I have to do that thing, then give a beat, then say the word in L2, then give a beat, let students process, then move the interaction along.  I see them anticipating what I’m talking about, hearing the word in the L2, linking the meaning, and having greater chances for success in interacting with whatever we’re talking about because they for sure GOT IT.  Silent film actors had to show EVERYTHING and know that it was going to sink in. I have to do the same! I’m working my silence more to watch their eyes and know that the connection is there instead of breezing through comprehensibility links and later thinking “but I showed them everything!”  They just need that bit of processing time. And the eye contact I’m able to make in that slower way is helping students know that I’m there with them.
  3. Think (Don’t Speak!)
    Laura Terrill gave a keynote on Friday that was great for so many reasons.  But the killer quote from this one was “think (don’t speak!).” Often we employ a turn and talk as a way for students to process some new information.  Buuuuut if they turn and talk with someone who maybe is a faster speaker or faster processor, the “slower” student may lose the opportunity to synthesize their thoughts, and/or make them into something they can express.  If we really demand that students think, but don’t speak just yet!, we are giving room for 100% of our students to do some processing and have some more success once the turning and talking actually begins. (I tried this during a PD with teachers the following week and lo and behold…everyone had something very interesting and thoughtful to express.)

I LOVE CONFERENCES LA LA LA.  But dang, it takes time to process all the great info you get and put it into practice.  I’m trying to take my own suggestion of just picking a few things and working them in. More than that feels like way too much for my poor brain.

(Also every conference reminds me that I should be doing more brain breaks.  Every conference! Goodness. This will surely be a lifelong quest. #futureblogposts)

What is your most recent learning from a conference, and how is it growing your practice?  Have a fantastic day, you pedagogical flower of excellence!!