Tag: comprehensible input

Students Want YOU to Write a CI Novel

List of potential novel topics generated by the Comprehensible Cascadia 2019 Pre-Conference Reading Workshop

Reading is an essential component of any TCI classroom. Written input provides different data for the brain than oral input (think literary language, more passive constructions, sight cognates may be easier than when heard), and Stephen Krashen has compiled numerous studies that show that reading improves learners’ vocabulary, spelling, grammatical accuracy, fluency…you know, ALL THE STUFF. Students need to be reading in the L2 every day, because the benefits are too good to pass up.

Many programs have implemented Free Choice Reading (FCR), empowering students to choose whatever book from the classroom library they like, and read for a predetermined amount of minutes to get some great written input. Of course, the “C” in “CI” stands for “comprehensible,” so we need for reading materials to be leveled so that students’ brains don’t implode when we set them to reading. They need to understand their texts for the input to do its job!

We are lucky to live in a time where there has been a surge in “CI Readers” – compelling stories written in simplified language to help students both enjoy a story and get great input. Companies like Fluency Matters produce beautiful books that are meticulously edited and often have stories that students get hooked on. There are also other authors that sell through vendors like Amazon or Teacher’s Discovery. If you teach Spanish, you are especially blessed, as there are soooo many Spanish CI Readers when compared with other languages.

But what makes a student into a reader is the book that just “fits” them, the “Home Run” book, the transformative reading experience that makes kids unable to put books down. If you are a reader as an adult, chances are you can remember a book or two that was this experience for you. When the Harry Potter books were still being published, my parents took me to a couple of the “midnight premiere” events where you could get the book as soon as it was out, and kids my age were rushing to be the first to finish the newest book and know all the dramatic plot points. I remember powering through The Goblet of Fire at all hours (well past bedtime, with a tiny reading lamp) because it was a wonderful, gripping story. I was a reader!

We want these same experiences for our own students, to make them literate people who can use their reading to build empathy, as well as skill in the L2. And the texts need to both compelling stories, AND written in language students can understand with only a year or two (or maybe even a semester!) of language class behind them. But since comprehension-based readers are a relatively recent discovery for many language teachers, there aren’t a TON of authors or titles available. (Again, more for Spanish than any other language.) Additionally, “authentic” children’s books in the L2 may be more simplified when compared with the literary canon of the culture, but they often contain low-frequency vocabulary, and might not exactly be compelling for a reading-avoidant secondary school student.

This is where you come in. Yes, you! See those topics above? They were generated through observation of student reading habits and by directly asking what students would be interested in reading. Students want to read these books in the L2, but they don’t quite exist yet in large variety.

You – yes, you! – could write a simple, 10-chapter reader that could spark that love of reading in a child, a love that will push them to higher levels of L2 proficiency. A chapter could be like two pages, with lots of illustrations to support comprehension! Not feeling extra creative? Pick one of the Seven Basic Plots and map one of the above themes onto it. JUST WRITE THE BOOK!! WRITE A BOOK! WRITE ANY BOOK!

Your students want to read in the L2, and the benefits are undeniable. So lets put the magic into their hands with some new, exciting readers.

Want to learn more?

If you’re feeling like this might be something you could do (because duh you can) then reach out to Mike Peto. This post was inspired by him, and he is an excellent resource when it comes to all things reading in a TCI classroom. WRITE THE BOOK. WRITE IT!!

On Silence

My last post here was in December of last year, and the last post was a month before that. In the meantime, I was still teaching, still giving conference presentations, still going to PD, still trying to be a fierce advocate for communicative language teaching.

But I was also experiencing a darkness in my professional life that I hadn’t anticipated, a life-consuming shadow. My start in teaching had been great! I was making lots of teacher friends, kids seemed to like my class, and my teacher evaluations didn’t make me feel like a total failure. Why, then, did I feel like I was drowning? Why, then, did I silence myself when the rush of learning in my early career was still there, and my growth felt day by day, week by week? Why, then, was I thinking about quitting?

I was finding myself in the middle of the age-old problem: the more I learned, the more I realized I didn’t know. The more I found myself doing, the more I realized there was to do. The more I tried, the more I thought that it would never be enough. And this mode, this mindset was doing damage to my mental, emotional, and physical health.

Around semester (the end of January), I saw the need for change in the way I was living my teaching, but I was stuck in bad habits. Then suddenly, we had five snow days in February, and I had nothing to do. The scared part of me thought I should be creating or perfecting or learning something for school, but for the first time…I just didn’t. I rested and relaxed, and came back ready to go once school got mostly back to normal. (I played a ton of video games and ate a lot of vegetarian chicken nuggets, for transparency’s sake.)

I deleted the Twitter and Facebook apps off my phone during that time. This, paired with committing to spending less time on my phone in general, changed the things I was actually doing with my time. I was enjoying my relationship and my friendships more, and I suddenly had time to read for pleasure. I had justified my insane use of both apps for a long time by insisting that the professional development I got through both was helping me grow as a teacher and be better at it. That was true to an extent, but the drive to compare myself with other teachers on the internet was also causing me to reduce myself in my own eyes, minimize my own accomplishments, and constantly be on the search for something new. There was no joy and gratitude for what I had inside me and around me.

I left any books related to teaching at school. I was in a weird place of having teaching both as my job and as my hobby – I was always reading something about teaching, always trying to find new ideas and research, always trying to be “in the know” about everything in CI world. But no one can do everything, and you certainly can’t learn to do things well if you’re not focused. So school was for school, home was for home.

And I started leaving school earlier. I’d have days where I’d be getting home close to 6pm, having arrived around 7am, and scrambling to get dinner ready and try to have some time for myself before Brent got home. When I looked back, the time at school was spent socializing to avoid work, searching the internet for resources I wouldn’t end up using, and getting lost clicking around my computer. I started thinking: What did we do today, and how can it grow into more proficiency tomorrow? A lot of times, the answer was simpler than I had imagined.

I went back to basics. I found that everything I knew I wanted to do with my teaching was inside of me already. Realizing this helped me slow down, see my students where they were, and actually teach them something. Classes and students I had started feeling despondent about suddenly turned around and created interesting stories and moments for everyone (instead of just for the overachieving do-gooders and the overachieving distractors). And then suddenly, I was able to go to work on time every day, do my work with smiles in most periods, and go home and enjoy my life. MY life.

Sometimes, you need a period of radio silence, the silence going both directions. When you go silent, you often find that you can see and hear things so much more clearly. This was true for me, and I know I am a better teacher to my students for that.

There are lots of blogs, websites, videos, trainings, ideas out there. Forgive yourself for not being able to do them all. My plea is for teachers – thoughtful, hard-working, innovative, passionate, self-sacrificing beings that you are – to just focus on being with and loving your students. Silence the voices (from without, from within) that drive you to scuttle parts of yourself in the never-ending pursuit of more. It’s enough. You are enough.

Reviewing Body Parts and Reenergizing with a Brain Break – Peluche / Kuscheltier

Brain breaks as an idea has been showing up a lot in the Facebook groups that I follow, as well as the conferences I have been attending lately.  People are starting to catch on to how much our students sit every day!  TOO MUCH

I’m finding that it’s helpful for me to build them into the lessons at natural in-between points.  These are the gear-shifting moments of a lesson – when you’re moving from input to a Write and Discuss, or between segments of input on different subjects.  This guarantees that we do them, and I can experiment with specific brain breaks to see if the kids like particular ones.

Here’s one that’s been a hit recently in class!  Kids love competing with friends, and I get to review body parts with them.  I heard about this one while I was at the WAFLT-COFLT Bi-State Conference in Portland this October.

Peluche

I bought 10 stuffed animals the other day (at the dollar store, hollaaaaa) and have a little basket I keep them in.  Children LOVE stuffed animals, no matter the age.

In this game, pairs of students get a stuffed animal and place it between them.  The teacher then says some body parts, rapid-fire. The kids are listening and touching the body parts the teacher names with both hands.  (“Head! Nose! Arms! Knees! Shoulders!”)

When the teacher says “Peluche!” (or “stuffed animal” in your language!), the students try to be the first to grab the stuffed animal between them.  Having students use both hands prevents them from hovering over the stuffed animal…you know how we all get when competition is involved. After there are winners…you keep going with the body parts!  I imagine you could keep score or something, but my kids were content to just compete and play multiple rounds without too much extra.

Easy, quick, and the kids have fun!  A winner in my book – I hope you and your students enjoy it.

What brain breaks have really worked for you?  Let me know below!

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!!