The ABC-Quiz: Cultural Learning Through Movement

In the summer of 2022, I was lucky to attend a seminar put on by the Goethe Institut titled “Sprache, Landeskunde, und kulturelles Lernen” that explored the concept of integrative Landeskunde in language instruction. That is, exploring how to teach our students not only facts about our Target Cultures, but also skills of intercultural communicative competence and discourse about cultural phenomena – all through the Target Language. It was an absolute blast to take the course entirely in German with German teachers from four continents, and the ABC-Quiz stuck out to me as a fun way to get students thinking, moving, and engaging with cultural concepts.

Why should you do it? Because our dear kids need a bit more movement in their school day, even if it is just a little bit of standing up and walking around! Plus, they tend to get competitive about finding the “right” answers, which ups the engagement factor as they think about cultural Products, Practices, and Perspectives.

When do I use the ABC-Quiz?

The ABC-Quiz is primarily an input-oriented activity as students read and process questions about cultural phenomena in the Target Cultures, voting with their feet as to what they believe to be the correct answer, and it can be inserted into a unit just about anywhere – either to introduce a topic and relevant vocabulary, or to extend learning about a given topic.

If you use an ABC-Quiz early in a unit, you will definitely want to preview new vocab in some meaningful context, or build in that contextualization into the Quiz itself.

In this example slideshow that I can use very early in my German 1 course, new academic vocabulary is bolded, and contextualized given students’ knowledge about the world. Even if they maybe think that “Hauptstadt” means “largest city” at first, they quickly learn that it means “capital,” and can then use that knowledge immediately for the next prompt to guess / state Germany’s capital. The number ranges in the population and number of states questions also give clues as to what is being talked about before students are asked to guess facts about Germany, based first on their learning the new vocabulary in German as relates to the home country (in my case, the USA).

Otherwise, the vocabulary in this example is very limited to basically “is,” “has,” and then names of countries! With more language proficiency, students will obviously be able to read and contextualize more information and new vocabulary.

How do I do it? – Logistics

The main principle of this activity is that students are given a multiple choice question, and move to a designated part of the classroom to indicate what they believe to be the correct answer. You can simply use scrap paper, writing “A” “B” and “C” in large print on three separate sheets, and then lay those sheets across the front of your classroom to designate three areas. Perhaps you already have a “Four Corners” procedure with country names, cardinal directions, or some other indicators in your classroom that you can use in the same way.

You will also need to prepare either some slides, or, much more challengingly, an oral text with multiple choice questions about your Target Cultures. This can range from geographical facts, like in the example above, to questions about the Products and Practices of your Target Cultures. See below for more inspiration in this regard!

How do I do it? – Procedure

  1. Explain to your students that you will be asking them questions to see what they already know about the Target Cultures (and maybe also their Home Cultures!).
  2. Tell learners that they will answer the questions you ask by moving to what they believe to be the correct answer, and indicate the areas for A, B, and C (or whatever other system you use in your room).
  3. Start with a question that could be fairly easy to answer, and model wondering aloud about any new vocabulary that might show up. Referring to the example above, maybe you say, with special emphasis on the italicized words, “[In the L2] The capital…of the United States is…Los Angeles…New York…or Washington DC.? Hmm…the capital. What does capital mean? I wonder…What do you think? Go to A, B, or C, and we’ll learn together!”
  4. Reveal the answer to the question, and celebrate all students’ answers. Reread the complete sentence with the correct answer in it, and do a comprehension check on any new vocabulary (or maybe even the meaning of the whole sentence) by asking, for example, “[In L2] What does capital mean in English?” Celebrate the answers you get for that!
  5. You can easily reinforce new vocabulary by asking follow up questions using the newly-learned word, indicating with a gesture when students can give a choral response (or if maybe they should just shout it out). “[In L2] Ah, so Washington, DC is the capital of the United States! Is [our city] the capital of [our state]? What is the capital of [our state]? What is the capital of France?” All along the way, restate the correct answers, using the new vocabulary, in complete sentences.
  6. Continue on asking content questions, having students move, showing the correct answer, and extending the input with further questioning. If you want to make sure any new academic vocabulary really sticks, you might limit yourself to 3-5 new terms that you use in a variety of contexts throughout the activity.

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

Because you may be introducing new information to students through this activity, it is recommended that you follow up with some sort of review activity. Maybe you do a Write and Discuss with your students about what they learned, or just engage in some oral questioning.

In the example slideshow above, I provide students a gap-fill reading that reviews all the information students learned in a short paragraph that uses connecting words like “and” and “but.” It is simple enough for a Novice learner to understand, and all they have to provide in that example is place names and numbers! You could confirm correct answers as a class by reading the completed paragraph aloud, and then have students complete a Volleyball Translation in pairs. Gap fill paragraphs like this could easily have larger gaps or more complex clauses for students with higher proficiency, like “When entering a restaurant in Germany, it is polite to…” or “Something that is similar to my culture is that…”

This activity is a great way to discuss cultural Products and Practices, so written reflection or discussion about the underlying Perspectives is also a natural place to go after an activity like this. I like ACTFL’s reflection question that is included in the Intercultural Can Do reflections: “What new insights about yourself and others have you gained from thinking about this?”

Pro Tips!

  1. Extend the learning! To drive up the amount of input and thinking in the activity, make a discussion out of every answer. Use new target vocabulary to ask personalized and knowledge questions, and share experiences with any cultural phenomena come up.
  2. Follow up! A gap-fill text, multiple choice questions, whatever – just make sure that students have to recall the information they learned. It can get exciting to move around and try to “win” during activities like this, so it helps to have a paper-to-pencil component that confirms what was learned and what might need reinforcement.
  3. Go beyond facts and products! For illustrative purposes, my examples above use geographic facts about Germany, but we could train our students’ Intercultural Communicative Competence even further by discussing social situations and phenomena that students may discover in the Target Cultures. (This would be the Practices P of the 3 Ps!) Let the image below provide some inspiration for possible topics for an ABC-Quiz:

What do you think? Do you have ideas for an ABC-Quiz you could do with your students? Comment below and send me any questions you might have!

For the German Teacher Stretched Paper-Thin: The German Club Ideas List

Many German teachers teach multiple levels of German, and/or are the only German teacher at their school. Added to that, with the pressure to “advertise” their programs so that they “get the numbers” such that their programs don’t fold, German teachers take on a lot of additional roles and activities to increase their “reach” within the school community, including international travel with students, German-themed events and festivals on weekends, honors societies, outreach clubs at other schools, culturally-themed events after school hours, making t-shirts and posters…the list goes on. It can feel like the individual teacher is the reason a program lives, or dies. That is a lot of weight to bear.

Advising a German Club can feel like Just Another Thing in that list of Extras, even if the students are wonderful and it increases your “reach” at your school. (This is the case for me – my officers this past year were incredibly fun, dedicated, and enthusiastic! And I was still very tired at times in trying to help make German Club happen.) Also, ask any German teacher who has hosted a Spaghettieis-centered event how it went and you will watch their eyes unfocus as they travel to a dark, ice-cream-sticky place. If you have to do Just Another Thing alone, in addition to everything described above, it can be all the more frustrating and draining.

So, fellow German teachers, maybe you shouted “FELT THAT!” at the previous 2 paragraphs. Let’s put our heads together and make German Club easier for us all so that we can endeavor to put control over the club into students’ hands and just enjoy it with them. With some guidance, ideas, and inspiration from colleagues across the world who have already made some German Club Magic happen, we can streamline our planning, reduce our stress, and maybe even learn some new stuff about the cultures we are interested in.

In April of this year, I put together a Google Doc that listed ideas for German Clubs I had culled from various teacher groups and websites. They are categorized into “Anytime” ideas, “Month/Day-Specific” ideas, and then full curricula. (Shoutout to Amanda Beck for the excellent year-long German Club curriculum that she shared!) There are already six full pages of ideas, and I feel like we’re just getting started.

Take a look at the doc linked below, and if you have any ideas that aren’t on the list, click the link at the top of each page to submit the idea for inclusion in this master German Club idea list. I thank you, and your colleagues thank you. Here’s to a less stressful year of German Club fun! ❤️🌈🇩🇪

German Club Ideas List

Reflections from the 2022-2023 School Year

Another post that was outlined three weeks ago and is only now getting written…oH WELL. I had a lot of victories last year, so now’s the time to lay out some goal areas for improvement!

Setting Appropriate Tasks to Avoid Online Translators

I have been lucky to avoid too much online translator interference by mostly doing on-demand, in-person, handwritten writing tasks. (Online learning made me too wary of writing tasks completed on the computer, so when I have students ultimately turn in something digitally, I make sure there was a handwritten copy beforehand that they truly did produce alone.) (Sidebar: another benefit of mostly doing handwritten assignments is that I have a long paper trail of student writing samples that are easy to refer to when I suspect translator usage. “I looked back at your writing from a couple weeks ago, and this latest assignment seems very…different from that!”)

Every time I ran into online translator usage this year, I think it was because I set tasks that were too intimidating for my learners. I believed that they had the capacity to complete the tasks in some form, but they did not share that belief, so they sought the path of least resistance. In my Teacher Brain, I thought we had completed enough smaller tasks to make the Big Task doable, but in the minds of my students, those tasks were in the past and unrelated.

I think students need more scaffolding for Big Tasks in the L2. This could be sentence starters, exemplars, models that we co-create in a Write and Discuss-like procedure…but I’m also thinking that we need to gather together all of the formative writing tasks we’ve done, lay them all out visually, and think aloud about how those tasks connect to the summative task. That way, all students are able to see that they actually have already done a decent amount of the cognitive heavy lifting and can draw on their past performances as inspiration for the Big Task.

Level Ups

I’ve been thinking a lot more about how to help students build the bridges in their writing to get to the next proficiency sub-level (blog posts forthcoming!), and something helpful that I did in the past was a procedure I learned from Mike Peto. I have transition words that I have printed on card stock and stuck magnets to that I then hung all around the edges of my board. While we were doing Write and Discuss, I would challenge my students to find ways to incorporate those words into their suggestions for the text we were co-creating. Students loved the challenge, and after seeing the words and phrases modeled in usage, they sometimes started showing up in their writing! Score! I just fell off doing that this year, and am looking forward to slapping those magnets back on my board in September and issuing the challenge once more. Transition words and subordinating conjunctions help move students from Strings of Sentences to Connected Sentences, the jump from IL to IM that introduces complexity and depth to their writing.

I have also been fascinated by this level up procedure I discovered by Erin Carlson (that I learned about via Bethanie Drew). The reminders to try to add Affirmative/Negative, Myself/Someone Else, and Answer/Add More Info to their writing will probably help them just write more words, which feels very satisfying and can help them reach higher levels of complexity and detail.

Circumlocution

I got to film one of my lessons as part of my ACTFL TOY portfolio, and one of the reflections to come out of that process was that I heard a lot of “How do you say…?” in my level 2 class. (That is to say, more than I wanted to hear!) It reminded me to train my students on the skills of circumlocution, and I think an easy and fun way to do that could be to play more 20 Questions (via AnneMarie Chase) as a sponge activity.

Classroom Jobs

When I taught middle school Spanish, I had a variety of classroom jobs to support the functioning of my classes, and even a whole whiteboard dedicated to listing who did what in each class. It was fun and a great way to build community, and I want to bring that to my high school classes. The truth of the matter is that there are plenty of little tasks that I would…prefer not to do (passing papers, etc.) that I can turn into jobs. I don’t want to lean too far into extrinsic motivators to make the students do the jobs – mostly just positive comments about how helpful these professional students are – but maybe once in a while, I’ll let a kid leave class a little earlier than everyone else, or give them a cool pencil or something. Or a sticker! Kids love stickers.

Claudia Elliott has an episode of her excellent podcast here where she talks to John Sifert and Annabelle Williamson about classroom jobs that I’ll be listening to, and Bryce Hedstrom has a great article here about classroom jobs that I’ll be reviewing.

What are we doing in the upper level class lol

The title of this section was a joke to myself, but I figured I’d keep it because it reflects how lost I’ve felt with my upper level classes for the past few years. I began offering AP German at my school a couple years ago, but it never ended up being a good fit for my school. Between COVID really hurting enrollments and preparedness, AP students always being put in a class with third year students who weren’t ready for AP-level tasks, and having students melt down under the pressure of multiple AP exams all at the same time, I never quite found a way to make it work. My pass rate was okay, but I didn’t feel great about being beholden to that specific test.

My students responded very positively when I told them I was thinking of changing to a College in the High School / Dual Enrollment German course for the third year and beyond. That gave me the push to get the program set up, and it looks like I’ll be offering a year-long college credit course starting in the fall. This is brand new territory for me, but I look forward to the challenge of planning towards the college’s very clear curricular requirements (the breadth of AP is what got to me a lot of the time), and refining my lower level courses to set those third/fourth year students up for success. I’m hoping it will be a better fit for my learners – and me! Luckily, I will only be teaching three preps next year (German 1, 2, and then dual enrollment German), so I will really be able to focus on making it great from the beginning.

What about you? What are you looking forward to doing (or not doing) in the coming school year? Comment below!

Victories from the 2022-2023 School Year

PHEW it is already July 12th and I’m just now getting to a post I outlined right at the end of the school year. I’ve been busy busy with my honeymoon, my brother’s upcoming wedding, LLLAB summer work, ACTFL stuff, CI Reboot… Lots going on. But I really got a lot out of reviewing my victories last school year, so here we are again. Here’s what went well this school year:

Free Writes / Focus Writes

I use timed Free Writes as a way for students to show their language growth over the year, with each student storing all their Free Writes in portfolios that we keep in the classroom. This is consistently a winning procedure, as students love comparing their disjointed writing from the beginning of the year with the more fluent, detailed writing they are producing by the end of the year. Our greater consistency with doing them just about every 2 weeks helped me in my planning and gave us lots of evidence of growth to reflect on at the end of the year.

A related win has been doing something I’ve titled Focus Writes at the end of each major thematic unit. Students get 5 minutes to write about themselves in relation to the major topics we explore throughout the year. For example, for Level 1:

  • 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

It’s simple, quick, definitely not the only kind of writing they do, but kids get to see how much easier it becomes over the year to write more. We reflected on how comprehended listening and reading input becomes greater ease in writing about yourself over time. And my two Level 1 classes averaged 96% and 116% increase in word counts on these Focus Writes between Focus Write 1 and Focus Write 4 this year, which I brought to my evaluation conversation with my assistant principal, who loved it. Definitely keeping Focus Writes for next year – kids like increasing their skill in talking about the most important thing: themselves!

Reviewing and Clarifying Expectations

Every year, I have been trying to refine my classroom expectations so that they are clearer to students, both in what to do and why we do it this way, and making them expectations that I feel comfortable and justified in enforcing. Inspired by Lance Piantaginni, I used the following expectations this year:

I reviewed these expectations Every. Single. Day for the entire first month of school, and regularly thereafter. (This is especially important after long weekends, breaks, big events, etc.) In addition, any time we did a new activity type, I specified how these expectations applied to the new activity. And this year was so much more peaceful! It was easier to enforce clear expectations whose justification we went over thoroughly. I am keeping these expectations and these procedures for sure.

March Music Madness

I participated in March Music Madness this year in all my classes and it was a huge hit. If you are not familiar, excellent teachers across the world collaborate on a March Madness-style bracketed tournament for new music from our target cultures with the goal of finding a “winning” song from the contenders. Teachers can either link up with international online voting calendars or keep all the decision making up to their own classes (I opted for just doing a school-internal tournament this year because of scheduling). I had my TAs put up a bracket with images of the artists, pictured below, and my students grew so possessive of their favorites that it made my heart smile. They were arguing with each other about their preferences related to Target Cultures music – arguing about content – awesome! I can’t wait to participate again next year.

Free Reading

My students started reading earlier in the year, and read more than ever before. Kids traded books, talked through plot twists, and generally got so much in linguistic competence from daily free reading. Not to mention, it was an absolute joy to read outside when the weather was nice.

Something I touched on but want to do in greater depth next year is discussing with students what successful Free Reading in the TL should feel like. Students have different tolerances for ambiguity/volume of new vocabulary and thus need to try different levels of difficulty for themselves, and sometimes learners need reminders of how to use the glossaries of the books they’re reading. Reading can be a very efficient, effective way to acquire a lot of language, but not if students are frustrating themselves out of potentially successful experiences.

Teaching a Novel

I have only ever done free reading of novels in class, but this spring, I taught my first-ever whole class novel. And I loved it! I taught Mit dem Wind in den Westen from Fluency Matters, and the Teacher’s Guide made it so easy for me to plan and read with my students. My students loved learning about the former East Germany and its culture, and Reader’s Theater was a hoot. I tried a variety of reading formats with my students, including whole class reading, group reading, partner reading, and individual reading, and the group reading procedure pictured below was the favorite of my students:

1. Reader (reads text aloud in L2) 2. Explainer (explains what’s happening after each paragraph/page) 3. Dictionary person (looks up words) 4. Questioner (asks content/context Qs) [Roles change after every page / logical amount of text]

This Tweet

This Tweet was my most successful Tweet this year.

I asked my Level 1 students what color they associated with each school subject and it got…heated lol. Try it as a warmup some day and report back – lots of fun!

WAFLT / PNCFL / NEA

In October, I was named the Washington Association for Language Teaching (WAFLT) Teacher of the Year. This was a huge surprise to me, and I was deeply touched by the recognition. I have felt lots of love from colleagues I have met through WAFLT conferences, and I was honored to be chosen as a representative for language teachers in our state.

In February, I submitted a 30-page (!!) teacher portfolio to the Pacific Northwest Council for Languages (PNCFL) as the WAFLT candidate for PNCFL Regional Teacher of the Year, and interviewed with members of the PNCFL board for about 45 minutes, touching on topics of best practice in language teaching, the teaching of culture, advocacy for language teaching and teachers, and so much more. At our online conference, I was named the PNCFL Regional Teacher of the Year. This really made my head explode, and it has been so incredible to meet language teachers from across our 6-state region and learn from and with them.

The next step is the ACTFL Convention and Expo in Chicago in November of this year. I am one of five candidates for National Language Teacher of the Year, which makes my heart pound every time I think about it. The process of refining my PNCFL portfolio and adding to it as part of my ACTFL candidacy has been truly transformational for me. I am prone to self-deprecation and anxiety about my work as a teacher, and the reflection built into the portfolio process has really helped me identify what I do well, and areas where I want to grow some more. I feel really proud of myself, and no matter what happens in November, I am ready to use my teaching and advocacy skills for the good of all the language teachers I have the pleasure of connecting with.

If all that wasn’t enough to make my heart explode, I found out in April that I am Washington’s nominee for the NEA Excellence in Education Award. My lovely colleague Kei nominated me (knowing this feels like such a wonderful professional hug – professionally hug excellent educators in your life!!), and it means that I’ll be headed to an awards gala (!) in Washington DC in the spring of 2024. Wild. Wild! I am so thankful for these opportunities and can’t wait to see how they evolve over this next year.

Whew – enough from me. What were your victories from the past school year?

CI Reboot 2023 – Reboot Your Skills and Passion!

Are you looking for a summer professional development opportunity that is fun, focused, and uplifting? Let me tell you about the CI Reboot!

I attended and presented at the CI Reboot last summer and was blown away with the format, presentations, and connections that I came away with. There is a variety of tracks for different experience levels with Comprehension-based Communicative Language Teaching, which makes it easy to find sessions that fit where you are in your teaching journey. There are sessions about content-based language teaching, applied DEI in the language classroom, and fundamental techniques that we all need refreshers on!

What really made it awesome for me was the availability of the presenters after their presentations to engage in deeper conversations. After the day’s presentations, presenters move into an online conference lobby of sorts where people can group up by topic of interest and go deeper. I got some burning questions answered last summer, and got to hang out with some really inspiring figures from the language teaching world. Conversations ebbed and flowed like they might in a convention center lobby, and it felt very natural (and fun!).

My teaching journal is full of notes from last summer that I refer to all the time. (I just looked at those notes earlier this week!!) This is learning that lasts, inspires, and improves outcomes for our students. And at only $149 – it’s so inexpensive! (They even have college credit available?? Slay.)

Check out this link to learn more, and I hope to see you there!

Pictured: a handsome devil inviting you to join the CI Reboot this summer in July!

Will I see you at the CI Reboot this summer? Comment below with questions – or to tell me that I’ll see you there!

The Mysterious Person – A Community-Building Review Game

One of the tricky bits of acquisition-drive language instruction is providing meaningful, contextualized repetitions of new language without simply repeating the same sentences over and over again, or beating new information to death with a battery of activities that sap the fun out of what was learned. The Mysterious Person in a game that always has my students at the edge of their seats, processing language to win against their classmates.

Why should you play? Because the Mysterious Person is a fun way to get in repetitions on new language and information, while also insuring that you and the class are building greater knowledge of each others’ lives.

When do I use the Mysterious Person?

The Mysterious Person is a great review game that you can start using after about the first or second week of class, and whenever you like thereafter. You need enough shared class experiences so that students know information about each other (or figures from the Target Culture, perhaps!), which is the material for the game.

How do I do it? – Logistics

This can be played with no prep, or minimal prep!

No prep: Literally, you’re just making up the prompts/descriptions on the spot and providing them orally. (If you Just Can’t, you could also write them on the white board or doc cam.) Rely either on your own memory of what the class has learned together, or a compiled Write and Discuss document, for inspiration.

Minimal prep: Type up some descriptions of students from a given class, which you can project for your students to see. (I use the “Fade In One Paragraph At A Time” transition to make sure we’re focused on one description at a time.) These are descriptions using known information (preferences, ambitions, physical descriptions, etc.) that slowly get more specific so as to point towards one student that everyone knows about.

How do I do it? – Procedure

  1. Tell the class (probably in L2) that you are going to describe a Mysterious Person, who is someone from our very own class! If they know who the person is, they should raise their hand to give their guess.
  2. Using known language and your skills for comprehensibility, describe someone from the class. I recommend starting with the most general/vague (“The mysterious person…is a girl…” “The mysterious person…is wearing glasses…”) and slowly getting more specific (“The mysterious person likes…to read…comic books…” “The mysterious person is a girl…who is wearing glasses…and the glasses…are black…”). This helps you get in a lot of language input, while also keeping students on their toes.
  3. Describe the Mysterious Person as much as you care to, and then take guesses from the class – only from raised hands. If a student guesses wrong, celebrate them anyways, and then repeat the description! (I only allow each individual to guess once each “round.”)
  4. If a student guesses correctly, celebrate! Then: repeat the description, using the student’s name. I usually confirm with the student that everything I said was correct. You might also spell the student’s name in the L2 on the board, just for fun.
  5. After celebrating the guesser and the Mysterious Person, start describing a new Mysterious Person! Keep going until you run out of time, run out of known information to use as game material, or the class runs out of gas for playing the game.

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

This game is a great way to synthesize any new information you’ve learned about your students, and also retrieve old information from students’ memories! This leads nicely into an activity like Write and Discuss, where you co-create a written summary of the class conversation. (This can also serve you in the future as reminders to you as the instructor of what has been learned about the class. I have a horrifically bad memory, so I rely a lot on each class’ Write and Discuss document to have material for each Mysterious Person game.)

This activity can also be a nice sponge activity if you have a few awkward minutes, so maybe now that you’re finished – brrrrring! The period’s over and your kids played a fun review game.

Pro Tips!

  1. Add rules to prevent wild guessing! Students sometimes get squirrelly and want to guess after the first syllable. One rule I have used is that if someone guesses correctly, their whole row/group gets some sort of prize (points, stickers, candy, etc.), but if someone guesses incorrectly, the whole row/group cannot answer for the rest of that round. This helps put the brakes on students guessing at random without listening to the information.
  2. Don’t tolerate blurting! Blurting ruins the fun for everyone. If a student blurts an answer, you can 1) eliminate them from guessing for a round, 2) eliminate their row/group from guessing for a round, 3) make them write their answers on paper or a whiteboard, or 4) just end the game. Preempt this by modeling how to answer as part of the instructions, and cutting the game short if students aren’t ready to follow instructions.
  3. Weave in physical descriptions! I have had a hard time working on physical descriptions in my lower level classes – I just never seem to incorporate them as a topic somehow – so The Mysterious Person is an easy way to weave in tall/short, hair and eye colors, glasses, clothing, etc.
  4. Use famous people, perhaps from the Target Culture! This game is not only limited to the people in the classroom: you can also bring in figures from your school community, or people you have learned about from the Target Culture(s).
  5. Learn more about your students! If you’re struggling to come up with material to play the game with, it may be time to learn more about your students through other strategies, like Card Talk, Special Person Interviews, or Small Talk.

What if I want to learn more?

I wasn’t able to find tons of resources related to The Mysterious Person game, but I did find this great video of a teacher playing the game with her middle school French class!

What do you think? Do you feel ready to play The Mysterious Person? Comment below and send me any questions you might have!

Special Person Interviews – Making Students The Stars of Your Curriculum!

I tend to forget about Special Person Interviews for a while, and then when I start doing them again and kids are CLAMORING to be interviewed in front of the class in German, I’m like…what have I even been doing? They are easily adapted to align with curricular goals, interesting, and FUN.

Why should you do Special Person Interviews? There is no easier way to make your students the stars of your curriculum than by literally making them the “Estrella del día” / “Stern des Tages” / “Class Superstar” for an entire lesson! Students also get natural modeling of so much beautiful language, and, as Mike Peto says, we can effectively model the Interpersonal skills of thoughtful, engaged conversation for our learners. We need these skills perhaps now more than ever.

When do I use Special Person Interviews?

The Special Person Interview occupies the “Input” portion of your lesson, creating a common experience for your students as they engage in the interview of one of their classmates. It is highly recommended to follow up with some oral or written review of the information learned in the interview during the same period the interview is completed, and to do a Write and Discuss to summarize and review the information you learn about your Special Person!

As for when in the school year to do Special Person Interviews: I recommend doing them early in the school year, and regularly throughout the year thereafter. The Special Person Interview process establishes students’ lives as the focus of the curriculum, build community and connections between students, and build student skill in listening and responding during whole-class interactions.

How do I do it? – Logistics

The first step to conducting a Special Person Interview is…finding a Special Person! This could be any student, and maybe after a while, anyone from your school community. You definitely want to pick someone who shows some interest in being interviewed / being a star. An unwilling interviewee will likely give you very short, deflective answers that won’t be compelling to your class and won’t give you much language to work with as the instructor. I generally sweeten the deal by rolling out my Very Cool Swiveling Teacher Chair from behind my desk for the Special Person to sit on during the interview, and you might offer a cool prop or costume item if that’s your style. (And if all else fails…stickers…)

Ahead of the interview, you will also want to prepare about 5 interview questions. That doesn’t sound like very many, but between the follow-up questions that you end up asking to get more details, the reactions from the class, and your comprehension checks / review questions, you will likely end up with an entire period’s worth of conversation that you have to cut off for lack of time. If you have questions that you know that can be simpler to answer (“How old are you?” “Where do you live?” etc.), you can fill those in as makes sense, too, but 5 juicy questions are a safe bet.

You will likely get the most compelling answers if you allow your students to answer with a short response in the L1 (designate ahead of time “a phrase or single sentence” “2-3 words”) so that you can reframe the response in the L2 to control the flow of new language. Remind the class that though the class is interviewing the Special Person, the instructor is the one framing the interview and keeping it in the L2 so we can meet our two goals of 1) learning more about our classmates and 2) learning lots of L2. (Obviously, if the class has the proficiency and confidence to ask questions and follow ups…GO FOR IT! That is when it gets really fun for you and them.)

I display the questions on slides like the one shown below, with an option for the student to answer in a sentence in the language. This models different language forms very naturally for the class and gives high flyers a chance to try out some L2 for themselves. You can always prompt the interviewee to respond with the 1st person form once you have introduced any needed new language, which also helps recycle the information for the class as listeners.

This year’s most compelling answer: “moldy spinach.” Our Star had seen some really terrifying moldy spinach, but chosen not to eat it. (Phew.)

How do I do it? – Procedure

  1. Introduce the Special Person Interview to the class. I always try to frame it as the class interviewing a local celebrity who is really cool…someone in our class! You can accept volunteers, skillfully select an outgoing student who is game for most things, ask a student ahead of time and then announce them, or pick randomly (with the option to decline). To avoid the awkwardness of uneven clapping volumes for more or less popular kids in the class, I always prompt the class for a “dignified golf clap” as they take their seat in the SPECIAL CHAIR or don the SPECIAL WIG.
  2. Introduce the “Star of the Day” “Special Person” “German Class Superstar” or whatever you end up calling your interviewee. It usually goes something like this for me:
    “(in L2) This is Billybob! The class says, ‘Hello, Billybob!'” “HELLO, BILLYBOB!”
    “The class says, ‘Good day, Billybob!'” “GOOD DAY, BILLYBOB!”
    (something silly or ridiculous) (the class repeats that)
    AND THEN: I spell the interviewee’s name out loud and on the board in the L2, confirming with them once I am done.
  3. Quietly instruct the interviewee in L1 to answer however they feel comfortable, but try to keep it to [your limit of L1] for the answer. Tell them you’ll have sentence starters on the screen if they want to try to respond in L2, and of course, you as the instructor will help!
  4. Instruct the class that their job today is to learn information about their classmate’s life, react to what they learn in the L2, and answer any review questions you have for them!
  5. Pose your first question with linguistic support. Repeat the question in L2 as the Special Person thinks, pointing at the supports you have on the board (translations, images, etc.), and maybe slip in a reminder to keep their response either in the TL or within [your limit of L1].
  6. Depending on how the interviewee responds, either reframe their response in the TL, adding anything to the board that may help (the new terms plus translation/images/etc.), or just repeat what they said back to them (in the 2nd person). Then, report out to the class in the 3rd person, prompting for reactions if the info is especially interesting, or perhaps a “Me too!” if the class has commonalities with the interviewee. (Credit to Annemarie Chase for this!)
  7. Ask natural follow up questions. Shelter the language in the follow up questions to known language or that which you can easily support, such as with Sweet 16 postings or question word posters. It is easy to introduce tons of new vocabulary words in a lesson with open-ended questions, but we have to be careful to not overload our students with mountains of new language. I try to set a limit for myself of how much new language I allow into an interview, such as just down one side of my whiteboard.
  8. Bounce between interviewing the Special Person, and comparing / reviewing with the class. This helps with class engagement. I typically try to ask the class a similar question with a “yes/no” answer, or something that can be answered with a hand raise so as to not get lost in a side conversation. (“Class, are you also afraid of spinach?” “Billybob said he has a cat. Who has a cat? Who has a dog? Who has a hamster?” etc.) Once I’ve moved on beyond a question, I always try to go back and review what we’ve learned by asking review questions. (“What did Billybob say he was afraid of, again? Oh yeah, he’s afraid of moldy spinach. Did he eat the moldy spinach that he saw? No way!”)
  9. Linger on each question for as long as there is interest and material. Again, it’s prudent to limit the amount of brand new language that is generated from an interview, so keep that in mind as you follow up with the student. The length of the interview and follow up questions will likely correlate to the proficiency of your students – teach to their eyes, and keep track of how confidently they are following along and responding.
  10. Celebrate the Special Person at the end of the interview, perhaps bestowing upon them a sticker (kids love stickers at any age), or Knighthood in the Micronation of Fisherlandia. (Wait that might only work out in my specific classroom…)

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

Review review review! You likely just learned some cool new info about one of your students through the interview. Oral questioning (of the whole class or maybe individuals) can be a simple, but effective, follow up.

If you’ve done a couple interviews, you can play The Mysterious Person by describing someone from the class with info that the class has learned, and having students guess who is being described. This is a fun way to recycle language and also make sure that you are regularly making students’ lives the center of the curriculum: it’s hard to play Mysterious Person if you don’t keep learning new information about your students!

Always following up with a Write and Discuss helps turn the interview, which was mostly sound, into written language. In addition to modeling strong writing in the L2 and helping connect sound to form, this can become material for a class yearbook, a comic about the student’s life, or a display about the students in your class!

Rounding off the period with a Quick Quiz gives students one more recycling of the new language from the interview, gives you as the instructor formative assessment data on student comprehension, and gives the whole experience a “school-y” sheen.

Pro Tips!

  1. Ask natural follow up questions! Through this process, we are modeling conversation skills in the L2, so if a follow up question comes to mind based on the student’s response, ask it! You’re doing this on behalf of your class, who may not yet have the L2 to ask the question but want to learn more!
  2. “With whom?” and “Where?” are often great follow up questions! If you draw a blank when trying to pose follow up questions, these two power questions are often very interesting to pursue. Generally, leaning on question word posters will give you the inspiration you need for a follow up question.
  3. Go slow! If we want to model being a thoughtful conversation partner, it is natural to react, repeat, and rephrase the things we hear about. If you need to stall to think of a good next question, just repeat what you just learned. That is much better than rushing through to fill the silence and feeling frantic.
  4. Switch up the questions! Mike Peto recommends coming up with a new set of 5 questions after using them for about a week, and Annemarie Chase builds up from having her first interviewee answer just about 5 questions, to a slideshow of almost 20 questions. Maybe not all 20 questions get asked, but the idea is to add variety and build on students’ growing proficiency.
  5. Switch up who gets interviewed! Why not bring in a person (whether or not they speak the L2) from the community to be a Special Person? This could include L2 speakers from your community, your administrators, or L2-speaking friends and colleagues from across the world!
  6. Switch up who does the interviewing! I sometimes ask for volunteers to read the questions off the board, and then I (the instructor) reframe and ask the follow up questions. Students with more language might be able to do some follow up questioning of their own!
  7. Orient your questions towards the unit you’re teaching! If you have a pacing calendar to keep up with, or certain themes/vocab that you need to hit every year, use the Special Person interviews to introduce, deepen, or reinforce those themes. Here were some questions from a “Food Unit” that were super engaging for one of my German classes and helped reinforce tons of relevant vocabulary:
    – What did you eat this morning for breakfast?
    – What can you cook?
    – What is the name of your favorite restaurant and what do you order there?
    – What food do you personally find gross?
    – What is a food that you could eat every day?
  8. …or don’t! Maybe your goal is not “hitting this specific vocab,” but rather, “learning more information about my class.” That is a very worthy goal – pick questions that you think would be fun and interesting for your students!
  9. Teach rejoinders to help the class stay engaged! If students have a way to react to the new information that they’re learning, they will more likely stay engaged in the TL. Easy ones to start with are “Me too!” and “How cool/interesting!” (Credit again to Annemarie for this idea!)

What if I want to learn more?

I am so lucky to have learned about Special Person Interviews from Bryce Hedstrom, whose post here is a response to someone who had been trying Special Person Interviews and was experiencing some frustration. His response is clear, helpful, and illustrative! Here is a video where he discusses Special Person Interviews with La Libre Language Learning.

I refined my approach to Special Person Interviews after learning more from Mike Peto, who has a great primer on them in his CI Master Class (paid subscription necessary). This free blog post discusses how to make the most of the “untargeted” approach to these interviews and provide students with lots of repetition, interest, and joy.

This post by Annemarie Chase is a treasure trove of Special Person/Star of the Day ideas. Her ideas for keeping the class involved are (mind explosion noises) and I am immediately stealing.

Cécile Lainé created this post as an FAQ document for Special Person interviews, and has potential questions aligned to ACTFL proficiency levels, graphic organizers if the instructor wants, and a helpful list of ways one might follow up on the interview process.

Here is a video of Brett Chonko conducting a Special Person interview in one of his classes. Lots of great stuff happening in this video – and it’s great to see the process happen live with real students!

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

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!

ACTFL 2022 Reflections: Saturday

ACTFL 2022 brought so much new learning, and gave me the chance to synthesize so much of the learning I have been doing mostly online over the past 2.5 years.

I decided to break up my reflections posts by conference day, so Friday’s reflections are linked here if you are interested! Otherwise, here are my reflections from the Saturday sessions, in addition to as many links as I can muster to the presenters and their resources:

Why It Matters: Black Social Justice Movements in Austria and Switzerland (Karin Baumgartner and Amanda Sheffer)

Working with and listening to Ben Tinsley’s presentations reminded me that I want to make conscious efforts to center the lives of Black and brown German speakers in my teaching, so I chose this session to help start filling some of the gaps in my own knowledge.

Dr. Baumgartner’s part of the presentation focused on the M-Köpfe debate in Switzerland. I appreciated how she created a unit around the discourse that gave learners multiple access points to the debate and the thinking behind it, ranging from interviews with business owners, to using the Schweizerisches Idiotikon (new to me!) to look up the “official” Swiss definition of the M-word, to predicting and then analyzing public perception statistics, to connecting the debate to similar debates in the United States. The unit was text-rich, and really aligned with the learning I had done this summer about a discursive mode of cultural studies: asking questions about texts and cultural phenomena, and critically questioning our assumptions and reactions to them.

Dr. Sheffer focused on Black Lives Matter solidarity protests in Vienna, which really showed the ever-increasing connectedness of cultural discourses across the world. At the same time, regional/national cultures have influences on how these debates and discourses play out – I learned here for the first time about the Opferthese, as well as the life of Angelo Soliman. Context is so important in building learning, and the connections of each of these units about Switzerland and Austria tie closely into debates that have also been present in the US in recent years. I can see each of these units being easily integrated into my upper level courses, as my students are at an age where they have more capacity to engage in cultural discourse about race and society. A question from the audience reminded me, though, that learning about and reproducing slurs, even if in the L2, can be potentially triggering for our students, and we need to create and maintain brave spaces for students to explore these topics.

Simplifying for Equity (Abbi Holt)

I missed this session to go to the Swiss/Austrian session above, but luckily, Abbi posted her slides online! In her presentation, Abbi illustrated the journey she has taken to make her Latin class into one where all students have a chance to succeed based on what she could control in her own classroom. This led her to dropping homework to level the playing field of home environment (dis)advantages, and then on to dropping other things that have often been staples of language classes: tests weighted more heavily than other classwork, vocabulary quizzes, and explicit grammar instruction. All this seems to have helped raise her reading scores – score!

One key seems to be the use of daily exit tickets. Abbi writes on her slides that she changed from using a calendar to set the pace for her instruction to pacing with the exit tickets. This is so simple and brilliant. Exit tickets can show us what truly stuck and where students are struggling. By “publicly committing to not moving on until everyone is ready,” as Abbi puts it, we make adjustments to our instruction that benefit ALL students – and they can always use more input!

If you are able to plan ahead sufficiently to have pre-made exit tickets for content, go for it! The shorter the better. I am a huge fan of trade-and-grade because going over the answers can serve as more input for learners. If pre-made exit tickets aren’t possible for you, I am a huge fan of the Quick Quiz as a formative assessment. (My observing principal thought the Quick Quiz I gave during an observation was just about the coolest thing ever…ding!)

I also appreciate this post by Lance Piantaginni that takes a Twitter thread by Abbi on the same topic (simplifying for equity) and lays out how it aligns with the research on best practice. Check it out for more mind explosions!

Level 1 to Level 4 and Beyond: Creating Vertical Alignment (Briana Bailey and Hannah Whyard)

I currently teach one section of Spanish 1, and then the rest of my day is all levels of German. I am also the only German teacher. Foreseeably, I will only teach German next year, but I want to make sure I’m sending my current Spanish students to the next level with confidence and skills, so I was interested in seeing what this session suggested in terms of aligning with other colleagues. I really loved the protocol Bailey and Whyard presented and think it could be very powerful for departmental conversations.

Where I still struggle is finding the time to do this work. The long term ROI for me personally is kind of low because I might not be teaching Spanish next year, so I tend to invest my time in things that will make my immediate planning for five different courses more manageable. We have been doing a smaller version of this protocol in my department this year by all trying out Puedos as ways of designating appropriate skill checkpoints in our Spanish curriculum, and it’s been helpful to open conversations about what’s needed and then taught at each level.

This session also reminded me that I should collaborate more with others, for a couple reasons. One: hopefully, it would eventually lessen my workload by distributing the creation/curation of resources. Two: by doing some grading calibration of assignments, I could figure out appropriate expectations for each level of German I teach (for which I create my own curricula), and talk in a more concentrated way with colleagues about how we get students to those expectations. It’s hard feeling like you’re doing everything alone. Part of it is that I am an Einzelgänger in some respects, and the other part is that I just don’t have time to seek out collaborative relationships with other German teachers in my area. But dang it, I’m going to try!

Making Authentic Materials More Comprehensible Without Changing a Word (Maria Goebert)

I’m trying to build more #authres into all of my units as I flesh out my curriculum, so I’m always looking for new ways to use them. Goebert’s process was pretty straightforward: take a text, and highlight certain categories of essential information in the same color (who, what, when, where, causes, effects, whatever you could want, each with its own color). Then, have students fill in graphic organizers to show their understanding of the categorizations and information from the text. Finally, give students another text on the same topic, and have them highlight the information relevant to the categorizations they worked with earlier using the same colors. (So, same color used for the “who” in both articles, same color for the “where,” and so on.)

I think this is a cool idea – it helps students focus on the specific information they really need to understand the text. Sometimes, blocks of texts in the L2 can just feel massive, and this helps narrow the focus and concentrate on the really key info. For high fliers or heritage speakers, they can certainly go beyond the highlighted info to read and learn more. Something for everyone!

ACTFL’s Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Committee Listening Session

ACTFL’s DEI committee held a session to hear people out about their areas of focus in making ACTFL a more accessible, equitable organization. I got a friendly invite from a committee member to come, and was happy I did.

The session was closed for photos, recordings, and the like, but I feel comfortable sharing the question that I came to the session with: how does ACTFL vet (if at all) the vendors in the exhibit hall for each convention, especially when there were vendors on the floor this year with documented histories of contributing directly to structural inequities?

I felt confirmed in the importance of posing this question at the listening session when I saw this tweet from Carrie Toth about something she purchased in the exhibit hall. We have to demand better materials – our students deserve culturally-sustaining reading materials and curricula – and I am so appreciative of all teacher-leaders who use their platform to make these demands.

Representation and Multiculturalism in Comprehensible Input Readers (Dorie Conlon Perugini, Pam Wesely, and Diane Neubauer)

I am very proud to work with the Language Learner Literature Advisory Board, serving this year as the President of the Board. We provide feedback on language learner literature (CI readers, novelettes, etc.) with regards to issues of identity and positive representation. Through this work, we’ve read and reviewed tons of books and discovered how many of them contain harmful, disrespectful tropes. Students need CI to build their language system, but that language always conveys a message, so we want to make sure that the books we put in our students’ hands are transmitting positive, culturally-sustaining messages about cultures and people (in addition to providing compelling input).

This presentation dovetailed very nicely into the work we’ve done with LLLAB: the presenters did a survey of 90 language learner books (30 each across 3 languages) to see who was represented in the texts, and how. Confirming our readings of individual titles through LLLAB, their study found that language learner literature is overwhelmingly white, male, and heterosexual. Additionally, they found that most texts have little or no cross-cultural representation, meaning that the titles we are serving our learners just serve to reinforce US-American cultural viewpoints about the world. This can lead learners to believing that cultures are monolithic entities expressed through one ethnicity, or by the government of a nation, and that culture is something that is static across time.

I had so many thoughts during this presentation. Again, it confirmed from a birds-eye view what we had seen in up-close discussions of particular books: there are many books for language learners that represent and reinforce majority stereotypes. There remains a great need for readers across a greater variety of genres, as well as representing more aspects of identity ((dis)ability, mental health, neurodiversity, religion/faith, LGBTQ+ issues, etc.). I encourage you, reader, to find a community of CI teacher-authors and think about writing a novel yourself. At the very least, audit the books you already have on your shelves, and see what adjustments need to be made to your classroom library. Additionally, our community needs to find ways to support authors from minoritized identities in creating texts from their own voices so that the representation in these works remains thoughtful, positive, and nuanced.

We can also build our learners’ critical awareness of what they read by having them complete an audit of the books they are reading. I thought this could be a whole-class activity: after doing the Free Reading for the day, stop to take a tally of the genders of the characters in the books we’re currently reading, the skin color(s), how the male, female, and nonbinary characters are represented, and so on. I think it would be very revealing to everyone involved – what are we reading? What are we not reading?

I was very thankful for this presentation and look forward to when the research is published so I can share it far and wide!

Phew!

That was Saturday! I have two more posts with reflections from Friday and Sunday, as well, if this has served you in any way. Happy reading and stay reflective!

ACTFL 2022 Reflections: Friday

This was my third ACTFL, and I’m noticing that it always feels the same: whirlwind, like I didn’t do enough, FOMO even while being there.

But I have definitely felt refreshed today while teaching, and looking at the list of sessions I attended, I got lots of the inspiration that I needed to continue through the doldrums of the winter. Here are the sessions I attended on Friday (too many thoughts for one post!), as well as my main reflections from being in those sessions. Where possible, I have linked social media accounts/websites/presentations from each presenter so you can also go check them out!

This Can Be Done: Materials for a Task-Based Curriculum (Dr. Claudia Fernández)

Tasks always seemed to be BVP’s pedagogical goal, but I have never felt comfortable claiming I knew exactly how to implement and evaluate them. Dr. Fernández’ presentation helped me feel more secure in what they are and how to build up to them.

In a Task-based curriculum, we are aiming to create conditions for language use in class. This means that we are setting students up to communicate: having goals with non-linguistic purposes: psychosocial, cognitive-informational, entertainment. Or, in plainer English, exchanging information to build relationships with others, learning something or sharing our own learning, or just being creative and having fun. Dr. Fernández said she doesn’t go to the ACTFL conference to practice her English as an L2 learner; she goes to give information to others about her professional experience. She has her communicative purpose!

This reminded me of one of the main through lines I found while reading Common Ground: always asking, “What are we going to do with this information?” Often, adding good Bloom’s Taxonomy-style verbs to our Task goals (rank, decide, design, convince, etc.) help add that purpose and make the Tasks more…Task-y. This helps the heavily input-based “pedagogical tasks” (as Dr. Fernández calls them) still maintain their communicative nature while building towards the final “target task.” I often think that it goes “input input input input TASK,” where the “input” is just trying to “expose” students to the necessary language via comprehensible input in whatever medium, but they need to be doing those actions listed above to keep it all communicative. What do students DO with any input?

I’m still mulling this over (and trying to be clearer with myself about the communicative goals of any given lesson), but this helped me synthesize some understanding of how to move towards a Task-based curriculum.

Incorporating BIPOC Practices and Products in the ML Classroom (Ben Tinsley)

[I am a huge Tinz fan (and work with him on LLLAB) so I’ll try not to gush too hard.] I ended up coming late to Ben’s presentation because I walked out of another one (woops), AND YET I still had my brain going wooooosh with the great ideas he was sharing.

One thing that really clicked for me during this presentation is the true power of context. Providing comprehended input is not just doing the fundamental CI skills (writing on the board, slowing down, using cognates, etc.). It is also building the context for the language and information to make sense in, and for the learning to find its seat in. This can be a story, a photo, a calendar, whatever.

Ben uses Map Talks to teach his students about the geography and cultures of countries with which his students might be less familiar, providing the context for learning about the products, practices, and perspectives of Black and brown French speakers across the world. My brain blast came when I realized that Map Talks can contextualize LITERALLY EVERYTHING.

A map is something students at the high school level know well enough as a schema, and it is easier to map any new language onto something that is very familiar to them. When we start discussing the 3 Ps after giving context with a Map Talk, students have a greater understanding of where even in the world we’re talking about, as well as what human geographical influences may have shaped those 3 Ps. Holy cow.

No joke, I planned Map Talks for 3 levels of German during this session that 100% made sense with everything I am presently teaching, and will provide such rich context to the cultural information and new language we are learning. Level 1 is going to talk about the hobbies of German youth based on a series of video interviews? Map Talk shows them where those kids live and how their area may have shaped their interests. Level 2 is talking about houses and dwellings in Germany and Switzerland? Boom Map Talk, the materials for those houses have to come from somewhere, and the climate will influence how the house has to be shaped. Level 3 learning about the education system of Germany? Boom Map Talk they get to see the 16 Bundesländer that each set their own education policies, and situate Germany’s notable universities in their geographic contexts. Boom goes the Map Talk! (Oops, I gushed, as I foresaw…)

This presentation also reminded me that even though there are no majority-Black German-speaking nations, there are still communities of Black German speakers across the world. My education, very much in white spaces, did not teach me about those communities, so I will have to do some searching for myself. (This had an influence on the sessions I ended up picking for Saturday!) If I don’t, there is a non-zero risk that my Black and brown students will hardly see themselves in my curriculum, and I don’t create the conditions for them to become joyful German users.

Alle für alle: Supporting LGBT+ Students in the Language Classroom (Alysha Holmquist Posner, Mariah Ligas, and me!)

I was lucky to present with my WA German teacher bestie and our awesome East Coast colleague Mariah (met her for the first time about an hour before the presentation!) on a topic that is incredibly important to me. Click the link above for access to our slideshow, with resources in Spanish, French, German, and more!

One thing that came out of this was a conversation I had with a teacher after our presentation was over. She was worried about teaching her nonbinary student a “wrong” pronoun or one that “people don’t use or understand.” It is tough for us language teachers in the US to find access points to discourse about gender and language from here – nothing beats actually being in community with other LGBTQ+ people to see how they talk about their lives. From afar, we have to do our very best to piece together what we can through lots of online research.

Whenever I do teach “xier” as a nonbinary pronoun in German, for example, I make sure to let students know that some German speakers may not recognize it, either because of not having heard of it yet or because they deny the existence of nonbinary people. (And then they might have linguistic qualms with it!) I also explain that there may be more NB pronouns that are less common, but still used. (Neopronouns abound!) I think ultimately, a nonbinary learner asking for information about this is seeking mostly to know that their nonbinary identity will be validated 1) in the language used in class and 2) by their instructor. It will take learners time to find the intuitively “right” pronoun in the L2 as they increase their exposure to the language. We can be their language guide and show them one nonbinary pronoun, validating them in our language and inclusion of their identities in the class. If we commit to this, and to continuing to learn, I think we’ll be alright.

Phew!

That was just Friday! I ended my evening with a great dinner with a colleague, and then some chats in the Omni lobby with so many teachers that I respect and admire. Not a bad deal for Day 1. I have two more posts with reflections from Saturday and Sunday, as well, if this has served you in any way. Happy reading and stay reflective!