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
- 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!
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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!”
- 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!
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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!
- 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!