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.)
I’m writing this post from the airport in Boston, where I had a wonderful time at the ACTFL Convention meeting online friendos (haaaayyy!), and where I learned from some really inspiring, skilled educators. What a gift it was to have been here!
I’ve been thinking about a discussion that comes up on Language Teacher Social Media every once in a while: is Comprehension-Based Communicative Language Teaching (CCLT) inherently more equitable than legacy approaches? A few years ago, I may have quickly answered, “Yes!” Learners need lots of comprehended input to build their linguistic systems and be able to draw on them to communicate, and the learning of grammar rules and memorized vocabulary do not contribute much to building that fluent communicative competence, especially at the Novice level of proficiency.
Through the ensuing discussions I’ve been a part of on social media and the work I have done with LLLAB, I have changed my answer. I don’t think any method, approach, technique, what have you can be “inherently” more equitable because language does not exist in a vacuumas such. Methods, approaches, and techniques that work “better” for more language learners can still be instruments of harm.
When we communicate with our students, helping to build their implicit systems, we communicate content. We communicate messages. And these messages have an impact on the thoughts and emotions of our learners, which may change their level of willingness to even engage with the communication/input at all. It may also lower their willingness to engage with anything they perceive as “too different” from themselves. If the messages we communicate are comprehensible, but “other” our students, and/or reinforce stereotypes or disrespectful conceptions of other cultures, that’s not “inherently equitable.” Language always has content.
Well-meaning CCLT teachers may try to inspire communication in their classes by selecting content that they know their students will react to – something that students are interested in, something funny, something controversial. Nothing feels better than when students scoot to the edges of their seats, eagerly waiting their turn to contribute to the class conversation about something interesting. I want to use this post to make this recommendation to teachers as we are trying to pick content for our courses:
Think for one extra second when choosing hot-topic-discussion content.
If you are exploring the theme of Health and your prompt to get students to communicate is a photo of the bare torso of a plus-sized man, head out of frame, what messages does that send to your students about the humanity and worth of family or friends with that body type? What if they themselves have that body type? What if the class gasps in disgust? (I have been doing some learning and unlearning about anti-fat bias via the Maintenance Phase podcast, which I can’t recommend enough.)
If you choose to talk about a slideshow titled “Weird Breakfasts from Around the World,” how are you prompting students to react to foods that may very well be the breakfast foods of their classmates? Do you feel comfortable potentially labeling the eating habits of your students’ families as “weird?” Why not approach the same topic without the evaluative label of “weird,” and instead with curiosity?
If you display photos of any sorts of spaces in other countries (schools, homes, public spaces, etc.) from the angle of what they don’t have compared to your community, do you feel comfortable presenting another culture as deficient compared to the home culture? And do you feel comfortable potentially presenting areas of the Global South in confirmation of widely-held stereotypes, presenting them as monoliths of deficiency?
I am with you: I want students to talk, to engage, to see and learn new things. It is fun when students get a prompt and a conversation ignites immediately. But we have to take the small amount of extra time to wonder if the materials we select reinforce negative ideas about people and cultures that deserve dignity and respect, for there are many ways of living in this world.
This is hard work. Let’s keep learning and unlearning together.
Phew. The last day of school was only 12 days ago, but so much has happened in my personal (and even professional) life in those 12 days that it feels like a lifetime ago. Despite my best efforts, this summer will be as packed and crazy as my last two, so I’m looking to carve out time for reflection on the lessons from last year, lest the time escape me and I collapse like a dying star when we have to start up again in August. So, here are some reflections from our first year back in the classroom full time since the beginning of the pandemic:
It’s Time to Raise the Bar
Most days, right after school, my Spanish teacher colleague Laurel and I take a walk around our school and neighborhood. We chat for ~30 minutes about whatever comes up – sometimes it’s reflections from our teaching day, sometimes rants about unruly classes, sometimes it’s just talking about what’s going on in our personal lives. I always feel refreshed and reoriented after these chats, because they get me away from my computer right after school and help me process lots of stuff. If you read this and take anything away, let it be that you find a Laurel for after-school walks!
Many of our final conversations towards the end of the year were, of course, looking ahead to the 2022-2023 school year. The pandemic has taken so much from all of us, from just about every aspect of our lives, and has required us as teachers to be dealers of grace: not only to our students, but also to ourselves as professionals. There was so much from The Before Times that we just had to let go, because we could see that our students (and sometimes the exhausted professionals we saw when looking in the mirror) were just maxed out with all the upheaval and change.
But the agitation of all that change seems to be settling a bit, for better or worse. Maintaining the empathy and SEL skills that we have learned from these past two school years, it might be time for us to start raising the bar of our expectations a little bit. We want to make the most of our time with our students and see where denying ourselves the easy way out (with behaviors, learning, whatever) helps students flourish even more as they build their competencies. These last two years were definitely not a waste, but we, carefully and lovingly, want to push for more now.
An aspect of this conversation was definitely our students’ relationships to their cell phones, and the impact that they have on our jobs. I won’t get into that here because there is, uh, plenty of great writing about that online right now, but it has helped to see that other teachers have struggled with this these past two years and are looking to try to demand more from their students, as well.
Moving My Posters Around
Last year was the first year I had a classroom allllll to myself, and I have to admit to not being the best decorator slash practical user of wall space. (Luckily, this is one of the many strong suits of my husband-to-be, phew.) I am going to demolish some old (bad) displays I have in my room to make way for spots for the Sweet 16 verbs (also written about here by Mike Peto), common classroom phrases (“Excuse me?” “Can you give an example?” “Can you repeat that?”), and also rejoinders. I think these will be crucial in giving students language with which to create their own responses to what’s going on in class, as well as remind me to recycle these super important bits of language over and over throughout the year.
More Retells
Input is what drives acquisition, but I’ve found my students build a sense of momentum in their language journey by remarking how retelling class stories becomes easier over the course of the year. The first retell is a little bit of a struggle, but it gets better as we go! I tried Blind Retells for the first time this year, and they seemed to go really well. Plus – it’s actually a secret input activity!
Rejoinders / Passwords
I was using both rejoinders and passwords in The Before Times, but they fell by the wayside as we adapted to the many changes coming our way. Time to bring them back! My third years (who were in their first year when things went sideways) brought them up a couple times this year, so I think they stuck out as something cool / helpful /important.
Ungrading
I recently read a fascinating book about Ungrading, a collection of essays by practitioners at different educational institutions about how they go about reducing the importance of grading within their courses while also increasing student ownership of the course content and also their learning outcomes. I am always uncomfortable with grades – they are so arbitrary and not helpful – especially as they relate to the messy work of acquiring a language. I would like to decrease their relevance in my classes as much as possible, while also not uh…getting in trouble at my place of employment.
To that end, I want to see if I can move towards a more portfolio-based assessment system with clear goals that students can personalize and work toward. Part of that will be changing my listening/reading quizzes from having “A/B/C” rubrics to just listing the approximate performance/proficiency level the student demonstrated instead, so that the emphasis is on building performances towards lasting proficiency.
Additionally, I want to try to give only feedback (no grades) on writing and speaking performances as much as I can get away with. Students just look at grades on assignments and trash the rest, so I want to make sure my feedback is actually doing something for them and that it doesn’t go to waste. They have to be able to do something with it, which might end up being revisions and resubmissions. Sooooo that will require a bit more thinking as well, as red-pen-ifying a piece of writing (or a speaking sample) doesn’t do much for a student’s acquisition. But some kids want that red pen! I’ll be thinking on this a lot.
Choosing / Creating Rubrics That Show Growth
I learned a lot from my Avant ADVANCE training about what the different proficiency sublevels actually look like. I think that this knowledge could help me craft better writing/speaking continua that help students see the stair steps they are making towards higher proficiency. They need to be granular enough to be able to demonstrate growth, but student-friendly / not crazy technical. I started creating a writing continuum based on that training, but I think it needs a lot of work for me to feel comfortable using it as a tool for my students’ reflection and learning.
Writing Moves for Each Level
There are certain phrases that came up as part of the Avant training (“Added Details”, “Complex Components”, “Transition Words”) that, again, are a little opaque to our novice learners, but they are the markers that help move them from one level to the next. I’m thinking of creating little cheat sheets of prepositions, conjunctions, and transition words, and then angling my use of them toward the levels that “need them” to move up to the next proficiency level. These could be good reminders to me to keep everything as rich as possible in class (so I don’t just resort to making them memorize the lists), while also being a nice resource for the students who actually do want something to study while at home. Mike Peto also has these brilliant magnets for whiteboards that remind everyone to draw these vital words into our Write and Discuss to make it flow better.
More Backwards Planning from Authentic Resources
My relationship to #authres is that it’s fine-ish if (and only if) I can find ways to use it comprehensibly without breaking my brain / spending 8,000 years preparing ancillary materials. I generally think that time is better spent providing more comprehensible input to students vs. having them hunt-and-peck for words and phrases in otherwise incomprehensible texts. But some things have just proven to be interesting conversation pieces, if just a bit above where my students are. So, I want to be more intentional about creating Embedded Readings or front-loading vocab for stuff that is really cool and merits a closer look.
Using AP Cultural Comparison Prompts as Research Questions
AP was kind of my Big Fail for this year. I taught it as part of a combined Level 3 / AP German class and I never found the correct balance between the two courses. Lots of students expressed frustration about it, and I was frustrated, too. There didn’t seem to be a logical throughline to the course, so I’m brainstorming ways to make that happen next year.
One idea I got from my AP German training last year was to take all of the Cultural Comparison questions that the College Board has generated over the years, assign one to each student, and make that student the “expert” on that area of culture. It allows them to go deeper on one specific topic and its related vocabulary, perhaps even teaching it to their classmates, and helps me broaden their cultural horizons in a way that also prepares them for that exam. That exam I love so much. What an exam. (Muffled screaming)
Answer Questions That Regularly Come Up for Our Whole Department
As department chair, I fielded some questions from parents at an incoming freshman night that I think would be powerful to answer as a department. There is quite a bit of diversity in teaching philosophy / beliefs in my department, which I think ends up being okay because there seems to be a lot of alignment within the languages themselves. That being said, it’s important for us, in both defending our jobs and promoting our content area, to be able to compellingly answer, “What does a successful language learner do to create that success?” “Why is it worth studying a language for more than two years?” “How can the home adults support a student studying a language they don’t know?” Having a, er, common language for this can help us promote our department and hopefully create stable enrollments (a historical problem for us as elective teachers). As we all know, there are plenty of adults who had poor language learning experiences in high school and can’t imagine the magic we create nowadays. 😉
What were your reflections from this year? Let me know what’s been on your mind as we transition out of the school year and go into summer mode!
School starts in just about a week – a week! – and I have started reflecting on what I would like my priorities and mindsets to be for this new school year. Last year was quite the punch in the face. But! For better or for worse, it refined many areas of my pedagogy and (I think) made me a better teacher.
Here are some ideas that have been bouncing around in my head as I prepare for a masked, fully in-person learning experience in the ’21-’22 school year.
Targeting
I trained in Teaching with Comprehensible Input (TCI) in a milieu that favored a non-targeted approach – no pre-determined vocabulary targets, and no mass repetition of those targets. I learned that letting go of targets would help refocus lessons on real communication with students instead of bogging the teacher down with preconceived notions of what students “should” acquire, when. Additionally, I learned that high-frequency language, by virtue of being high-frequency, would just show up enough for students to acquire without much effort, planning, or forethought.
After working with the SOMOS curriculum last year, I have decided to gently re-embrace targets, fully understanding that students will acquire our “targets” in their own time (aka not on any “pacing guide” that I, or anyone else, could create). But having vocabulary targets last year helped me streamline my planning, know and plan what sorts of questions I could ask students ahead of time, maintain focus as a teacher, and reuse previously-created readings and materials that I knew contained language for which I had planned ahead. Now, I can definitely still throw in activities like Card Talk and OWIs that generate tons of student-centered and interesting vocabulary, but I will also have rails to get back on should my brain implode and should I be in need of a “safety plan,” so to speak.
Consistent Routines
As soon as I gave myself permission to reuse activity types last year, my life became SO MUCH EASIER. There is no need to reinvent the wheel for every class period. I have started creating a list of my best, favorite activities that reliably get a lot of language, and can just pick from that list if needed. (I am looking into building out my Essential Strategies page to reflect the menu of activities that I tend to choose from.)
In addition, it can be very comforting for anxious students (and teachers!) to know that each lesson will have a familiar contour to it, and that we will not have to guess at what is coming next on any given day. Do Now – Warm Up Reading or Speaking – Input Activity – Review – Closing. Boom. Fill in the blanks with content, but the structure is always roughly the same.
Do LESS, Go DEEPER
I typically plan for 5-6 big units over the course of a school year, with all sorts of fun asides sprinkled in, and last year, I got to about…3 per class. Kinda sorta. 3.5? Oof. My “Coverage” lizard brain was on HIGH ALERT but really, it didn’t matter. The deeper I went with any given content, the more that I felt confident it had been worth our while to dive into. I could feel it in the way students responded during lessons, and the confidence with which they tackled any homework or assessment I gave them. On the flip side, things I threw in “just to cover,” felt like such a waste of time, because we all just felt panicky and confused. So – no more of that! Go deep until we are ALL ready to move on.
Plan My Planning Periods
This will be important for me as I make the return to teaching in-person, on campus. I am…social…and can definitely while away all my planning time checking in with colleagues, spacing out, and just being a Silly Billy. I have five preps this year (German 1-4AP, Spanish 1), and want to use my time at work thoughtfully to reduce the amount of work I bring home. (Goal: zero time at home doing work!) This means setting up processes for each specific planning period to get things done and ready, and sticking to them. It will require me training my focus and writing down plans ahead of time, and those are skills I would love to build, anyways!
Be Explicitly Human
I am incredibly nervous for this new school year. And I don’t think it serves me or my students to pretend that things are okay, because I am sure they are nervous, too. It is a goal for me this year to be honest about what I am thinking and feeling. I want to open up dialogue with my students so that they don’t have to hide what they are thinking and feeling, and so that they can be heard.
One of my reflections during a staff meeting this week was that I have grown the most as an educator and person when I have been invited to explore and be myself in a given context. I want to extend that invitation to my students so that they, too, can grow.
What are your reflections and goals as we head into this strange, new year? Comment below, and may you and yours be safe and healthy!
Hey you! Long time, no see. You look great! What have you been doing???
I took this summer off to rest and relax, because unfortunately, that is NOT what I did last summer. All the work I was doing last summer made the launch into a difficult school year…even MORE difficult. I decided to prioritize my own health this summer, and spent 6 weeks at a summer camp in the middle of the woods. Long story short: just what I needed.
In June, I decided to read tons of LGBTQ+ Young Adult (YA) novels to celebrate Pride Month. My younger self did not have access to them when I was first coming out, and it is important for me to imagine new possibilities for young queer youth through art. It has been wonderful to revisit that youthful time of change and growth with hope, instead of with fear.
At about the same time I decided to read more queer YA, I became aware of TPRS Books’ donations to California’s Proposition 8 in 2008, and engaged with the discourse around that on Twitter. See here, here, and here for some thoughts about the donations themselves, as well as my reaction to the since-deleted response video that TPRS Books put out and the reactions of others involved in the conversation.
Part of what came of all that conversation and reflection is a sense that some straight US-Americans think things are “all good” for LGBTQ+ people in the US. I definitely feel that things are better since I came out in 2008, but we still experience homophobia and transphobia all. the. time. All the time! And that sometimes appears to be shocking news.
I’ve been called a slur in the past year. My fiancé, the man I’m fully gonna legally marry, has been called my “roommate,” repeatedly, even after gentle correction. I have been advised to act “less gay,” out of fear for my physical safety.
It makes me reflect that in my allyships, I will never completely understand the scope of how others have to move through this world, and how the world treats them in multitudes of moments. But it also has inspired me to speak more with my colleagues about LGBTQ+ students and issues, so that maybe, we can all be less afraid to live in our world.
I was delighted at the opportunity to speak with Kaitlin Leppert on her Preaching to Acquire podcast about ways to support LGBTQ+ students in the classroom. I don’t know if I expressed myself as eloquently or with as much organization as I would want from myself, but I am also happy to get my thinking and experiences out into the world and open a dialogue with you, Reader, about steps we can take to make our classrooms and schools spaces where students can be more themselves.
I would be happy to hear from you in the comments on this post, or on Twitter. Thanks for reading, and/or taking the time to listen to my conversation with Kaitlin.
Amongst the many triumphs, failures, victories, and indignities of Pandemic Teaching, I have found it incredibly important to stay in regular contact with teachers (and non-teacher!) whom I love and respect. This has meant planning Zoom chats, starting a book club, and rallying a local PLC to monthly meetings on Saturday mornings, even when we all feel tired and over it.
This dedication to planned socialization is what got me on Zoom with Mr. Mike Peto, who I have learned so much from at conferences like the ACTFL Convention and Comprehensible Cascadia. We talked about teaching online, frustrations and wins, and how to get back to the basics of providing rich CI to kids.
One thing that Mike said slapped me right in the face, and was a reminder that I hope can positively shape my planning and mindset as we journey into the darkness of our first winter of COVID: Real conversations do not have a planned outcome – you can’t expect what will happen next!
Now, on the surface, this is like “well…yeah.” We don’t launch into conversations with others knowing exactly what they are going to say, how we will respond, exactly what words we’re going to use.
But! In hearing this, I recognized how that need to meticulously plan and “cover” curriculum had creeped into my mindset for teaching, and I think it has been slightly stifling the sparks of real conversation that turn into real engagement in class. Not every moment in a CI class has to be wild and crazy. Most days are not! But taking time to ask about and pick up on the little details of my students’ lives is what has made me so happy as the teacher – and what has helped me provide loads of engaging CI.
The many anxieties of this year have me wondering things like “Are we where we are supposed to be?” “Is this class good enough for the level they’re supposed to be at according to the course title?” “Am I doing enough?”
That thinking is garbage, and I am done with it. Real conversations have participants, not performers. I don’t need to perform us “getting through” my curricular objectives when things are this difficult. I have less than half the contact hours I would have had during a typical year, and we are still in a global pandemic that is irreversibly impacting just about every aspect of our lives.
I want to participate in my students’ lives, participate in them maintaining and growing in their hope, their joy, their intellectuality. We can participate in each others’ lives through genuine engagement around topics that kids care about. Which means that I can let go of including every single little assignment, reading, and word that I “would have” got to in an ideal world, and just be where I am. Be, where we are.
Now, I’m obviously still a teacher paid to grow the students in their proficiency in an additional language. I am going to recommit myself to using as much TL as possible (though 90%+ is definitely not in the cards for this year) because I believe you can make genuine, strong connections in the L2, even with Novices. And I will continue to touch on themes and topics that are interesting, continue to have my students question their assumptions about culture. It will not be the same as a typical school year because it cannot be so. And that’s fine. We need this connection now more than ever.
Maybe I can do myself a favor by keeping a list of high-frequency verbs nearby to serve as springboards for every conversation. I think of this post by Mike that talks about the advantages of having those high-frequency verbs in your classroom – if all students had these verbs rock solid in their acquired language, they would be capable of quite a lot, and there would be so many ways to keep our conversations going without having to just repeat the same sentences or vocab over and over and over. Maybe the minimal-seeming goal of just the Sweet 16 as curriculum is what this moment calls for. Imagine the possibilities…
In any case, as our students are being crushed by trying to learn difficult subjects on line, crushed by mountains of homework after hours seated in front of screens, crushed by missing their friends and their teachers, I am recommitting to connections over curriculum. (I think I may have got that from Martina and Elicia at The Comprehensible Classroom.) Let our classes be those that lift the weight for them.
Do you feel connected? Cheer your fellow educators on in the comments below!
I am very lucky to have a local PLC of CI-oriented teachers that keeps me sane. We meet once a month to exchange ideas, experiences, joys, and frustrations. The problem solving power of the group has only grown with time as we have worked together longer. No, really: get yourself a PLC of people who are focused on the same (or similar) goals as you and who can grow in trust and capacity to push each other. I am a better teacher for this group’s love and support.
Today, our check in question was, “If you were to give advice to another language teacher who is teaching online, what would you say to them?” Everyone shared for two minutes each. Our shyest members tended to begin their sharing with something like “well, I’m here to mostly listen for advice for myself, so I don’t promise anything profound. But I’ll give it a try!” …And then they laid down some absolute wisdom. Reader, teacher friend, please don’t discount the expertise and wisdom that you do have. Sometimes, we just have to dust it off in trying times like these and let it shine again.
If you’re reading this and thinking that you yourself could use some advice, I even challenge you to search deep within, right now, for the wisdom that is already there. I’m a big fan of journaling (and I keep a separate teaching journal for this purpose), and it has helped remind me of the many things I have learned in my life. Give it a try.
Whether you try to retrieve the wisdom from yourself first or not, here is some of the food for thought that our PLC produced. I hope it is thought-provoking, or maybe even comforting for you. I am so thankful for the group that generated it.
Some Advice from October 2020, Month One Million of Quarantine, the Zoom Mullet (Button-Up Up Top, Pajama Pants Down Below), and Unthinkable Challenges:
Input is the data learners need to acquire a language, so remember that it is still a top priority. We play a long game when teaching for acquisition, but that input is definitely doing something in learner’s brains, even if it is impossible for us to see it. Personalize it, make sure it is comprehended, repeat.
Find a fairly predictable and productive schedule of activities or routines that works for you, and stick to it. One of our colleagues is doing martes de música (Music Tuesday), and showing cooking videos in the language on Fridays. When they haven’t followed the routine, the kids have asked for it. Because they love it! There is comfort in routines and predictability. Routines and schedules make planning for the teacher easier, too – you just find the song, the game, the recipe that fits into the open block in your lesson plan and you’re good to go.
See how early and how often you can get learners to respond to prompts in the chat, if you are virtual or hybrid. This can be for answering personalized questions, comprehension checking, whatever. Give students plenty of opportunities to show their engagement (and help prevent them from spacing out too much, though spacing is natural and necessary).
Work smarter, not harder. Find one single goal you want to focus on for a week, and make it your everything. When you are feeling confident in your growth, move onto a new single goal. Go back and forth between goals as you ebb and flow in your progress, as needed. One. Single. Goal.
Maybe sometimes, an activity’s secondary (or primary!) purpose is just to give students (and you!) a chance to socialize a bit in the L1. Many of us are lamenting the slip away from 90% TL, but we are in a pandemic. It will definitely be forgiven, and both you and your students need that connection. I have been leaving my kids in breakout rooms for slightly too long, and they’ve told me how nice it was to get the task done and then just talk to their peers in L1.
Slow down. Put a post-it on your computer, write it on your lesson plan, do what you have to to make sure that you are bringing all students along for the ride with slow, comprehended language.
Don’t try to teach like you’re a YouTuber. YouTubers are known for breathlessly moving from topic to topic, talking mostly to themselves with insane amounts of energy. It will be natural if you take a pause to come up with a good question during instruction, because you are in conversation with your students. You are not attempting to garner a “like” from them with a roller coaster of “content.”
Create self-grading assignments. You will thank yourself when everyone turns in homework and you just get to sit back and watch results roll in. Glorious.
It’s okay to not put as much emphasis on output this year. There certainly may be good opportunities for it, but you may save everyone a ton of stress by focusing on personalized, comprehended input.
Sing! Frequently! Poorly! It’s food for the soul, and music is a great connector.
Alternate between pushing students forward, and moving back into their comfort zone. If they’re starting to break down, walk back into safer territory to let them know they’re on the right track and experiencing a good, necessary challenge.
Challenge students’ fixed mindsets. Be prepared to repeat “Everyone can learn a language” like an incantation with students who are struggling. Let them know that you believe they can meet your high standards because you want so much for them to be a multilingual rockstar of the future.
Ask yourself: what can I let go of? It may be much more than you initially think.
What advice do you have for language teachers right now? Do not be afraid to share – who knows whom it may help!
Online learning, for me, has been about simplifying and streamlining my planning processes to yield maximum results without sending me into internet search spirals that last hours and generate maybe one slight adjustment to what I was already going to do in the first place. (It has not, however, cured me of my tendency to write giant compound sentences like the previous one. #BAinGerman)
I have been feeling pretty successful in providing high-quality, personalized CI, given the circumstances. But I had been missing those little bits of memorized language that I was using as “Passwords” (a la Bryce Hedstrom) to get into my classroom – how can I get students those helpful phrases in this online way? Enter The Question of the Week!
Why should you use it? Because often times, students enter language courses with expectations of what they should be learning, and how that learning should look. We can definitely through them a bone with these phrases, which are very useful and help us ensure that they have natural, powerful language for use right away!
When do I use the Question of the Week?
I use the Question of the Week outside of my normal lesson cycle, usually during the “Warm Up” or “Do Now” portion of the lesson, before we really get going where we’re headed that day. It has been a nice ritual for my first lesson of the week with each class because it is expected, and it makes it easy for me to remember to plan it ahead of time!
How do I do it? – Logistics
When thinking of potential Questions of the Week, I have been thinking about phrases that might be expected by the student, given the class or unit content, or are just difficult to weave into stories or discussions. For example, it’s helpful for students to know how to say “My name is…” but awkward to ask it of them if…Zoom just tells me their name on the screen at all times. (These are called “Display Questions” in pedagogical literature – questions to which we either already know the answer or for which the answer is apparent to all and thus for which there is no communicative purpose – they are only for “language practice.” “What color is my shirt?” is not communicative if all students can see it.)
Here are some examples from the first units of my current courses to help clarify even more:
Level 1: What is your name? Where are you from? Where do you live? How old are you? What languages do you speak?
Level 2: What is your favorite food? What is your favorite drink? What do you think about that? (or, “What’s your opinion?” after I make some statement) What do you like to cook?
Level 3: How do you feel? (reflexive in both Spanish and German) What are you interested in? (also reflexive in German!) What does that remind you of? What is important to you?
How do I do it? – Procedure
I introduce each Question of the Week during the first class meeting of the week. I have students note down both the question, and the sentence frame that they can use to respond to it! For example, they would note: “What is your name?” –> “My name is…” in L2, as well as what it means in L1.
Then, I have my class answer in the chat all at once (which I have turned so that they can only chat with me), and I repeat and comment on their answers. “Oh, Soandso is from California? I am also from California! Where are you from specifically, Soandso?” etc etc.
After I get all these initial answers, I move on with my lesson. BUT ALSO: throughout my lesson, I randomly ask the question to my class to make sure they are there and engaged! This helps both reinforce that memorized language, as well as help me make sure that cameras aren’t just off because students are off secretly recording Tik Tok dance videos or something during class.
After we have built a repertoire of these questions, I sometimes cycle through a couple and have students respond to all of them in the chat. Great spaced practice – especially if you ask “Level 1” questions in level 2 or 3!
What do I do with it now that we’ve finished learning it?
Use these questions all the time! I have built the Questions of the Week into stories I’ve told with class, just to build out what we know about characters and setting. Variations on the questions and statements have also appeared in readings I have given my students to reinforce the different forms (person, tense, etc.)
My level 1s have talked a lot this year about “wanting practice speaking,” which we know can be very pleasurable even if it doesn’t necessarily lead directly to language acquisition itself. So I am creating an assignment where students introduce themselves by answering all the Questions of the Week. Because they have practiced and heard these questions and their responses over and over again over the weeks of class we have had together, this will be a slam dunk-easy assignment for students to just speak their memorized answer and get comfortable with the new language in their own voices.
Truly though, if you pick a meaty question (“What is your favorite movie?” “What do you do in your free time?”), you could make the question your entire lesson. Once you start a discussion, you can just focus on a couple answers, write up a summary of the discussion with Write and Discuss, and have spent a good long while getting to know your students and the way their minds work.
Pro Tips!
Pick useful questions and sentence frames! What are some basic sentence frames that allow students to describe, express an opinion, show their emotions? With an eye to useful functions, we can give our students a strong and flexible set of conversational moves that they can apply across their language learning experience. I tend to forget to build some of these phrases into my class stories and experiences, so planning like this ensures that I get the students the useful stuff they need.
Recycle them! Use them over and over as attention getters, in new contexts, make them really stick.
What if I want to learn more?
Bryce Hedstrom’s post about his passwords (which students have to say before entering the classroom) can be a great source of inspiration for ideas of what sorts of things you can build in to your Question of the Week repertoire. Check out his posts about his higher levels, too, to see how the idea scales.
What do you think? Do you feel ready to use the Question of the Week? Comment below and send me any questions you might have!
If you are in the CI Blogosphere or in any of the numerous fabulous Facebook groups dedicated to discussing Teaching with CI (TCI), you may have heard of an activity called a One Word Image, or OWI. (Another TLA for you!) (TLA = Three Letter Acronym) (Buh dum tss) You may have seen teachers raving about how fun they can be, or the wacky images their students create. But what even IS this activity, whose creation is attributed to Ben Slavic? Let’s explore!
Why should you do it? Because our students are wonderfully creative, and it sometimes seems extremely rare that they get to explore that creativity in the current pressurized school environment. Building a character together as a class can be a fun outlet for them (and you!), in addition to accomplishing your Secret Language Teacher Goals. Aka – they get a lot of language input out of it! Not to mention, this character could become a class icon who goes on many adventures, or at the very least lives on in your classroom as a symbol of cooperation and fun.
When do I use an OWI?
The Create phase is a session of Guided Oral Input.
An OWI belongs in the “Create” category of activities in the Star Sequence, or what we might also call the “Guided Oral Input” part of a lesson. This is an experience that generates language and common experience in the classroom, which become the basis for the literacy work of the other star “points.”
A One Word Image is an inanimate object or animal that your class customizes and anthropomorphizes through your questioning and the collective use of imagination. The image gets drawn up (more on that below) so that you can revisit it later and use it for more literacy!
As for when during the school year to create an OWI with your class – it can be whenever! Many teachers use this strategy early on as a bridge to whole class, co-constructed storytelling, but it can pop up whenever in the year if you want to inject some fun and energy into the proceedings. Plus, it is easy to angle an OWI towards whatever unit you’re in. School unit? The image has to be a school supply! Food unit? Food with a face on it is hilarious! House unit? One of my most successful OWIs was a Roomba! (By the way, the German word for “vacuum cleaner” is “Staubsauger” – literally, dust sucker. Ding!)
How do I do it? – Logistics
Before you get started with anything, you’ll need to set up a way to get the image drawn for you! Most teachers find it useful to hire two student artists to draw the image as you and the class build it. This allows you to use the image later as an anchor for further discussion and literacy activities. Elementary teachers sometimes draw the images themselves to make it easier to see and more accurate.
Tina Hargaden once recommended announcing that you need to hire someone who is very good at drawing, so everyone needs to point at someone who is very good at drawing on three! One, two, three! A lot of the time there are 1-3 artists in a class that just rock and everyone knows it. You can use positive peer pressure, or just asking the student to get them on board. They then will need an assistant to help them out, so I take volunteers for that part and let the primary artist choose someone with whom they are likely to work well.
I set my students up at an easel with a giant piece of butcher paper, some chart paper markers, and some colored pencils. (You’ll also want for them to have a pencil sharpener and maybe a ruler, just in case.) My instructions to the the artist duo are as follows: 1. Draw exactly what I say (not what the class says…it’s easy to get distracted), and the Assistant has to follow Artist 1’s direction and vision 2. Take up the whole piece of paper so that the image is easy to see 3. It should be more cartoony than realistic – like a logo! 4. Do the outline in marker, and then color in with the pencils 5. Do not talk at more than a whisper so you can hear me and we don’t get distracted 6. Work quickly! They will have essentially 20 minutes to make this happen, in most cases
Many teachers also choose to hire a Professor #2 in this moment. This student will make the final call on details if there is a huge disagreement in the class. It is best to choose a student who may be quiet or not quite fully integrated into a group in the class, as this gives them a moment to be an important part of the classroom community without being overshadowed by the more…uh…active participants in your room. When there is a knockdown, drag-out fight about whether the Roomba is blue or red, Professor #2 makes the call and it is final. Instruct the students to respect the decision and move on.
How do I do it? – Procedure
The first time I do it, I say in L1 that we are going to create a character as a class using the power of our imaginations. We are going to create something that doesn’t exist already – so no rehashing of a famous character or person. It could be any sort of object – a car, a food, a piece of clothing – just not a person, or a character that already exists!
Then I start taking suggestions. Don’t bother translating to the L2 at this point – you’re going to get lots of excited suggestions. I take raised hands, and if students say anything that causes The Teenage Giggles (something inappropriate or that could be construed as such), I just say, “No,” and give a lingering glance to the student who suggested it.
A lot of the time, there will be one suggestion that has a lot of resonance with your class – pick that one! If there are a couple warring factions, propose 2-3 ideas and then just make a decision for the class. Write the object in L2 with L1 below it on the board. (Be prepared to learn a lot of random words in your L2…like when your students want to create a muskrat and you have no idea how to say that in German…)
Switch into the L2 (I have a student yell “DEUTSCH” to make that happen), and repeat the word for the object in the L2. I then tell the class to look at the object (again, in L2), while gesturing to a space in the front of the classroom. Saying the word with wonder and admiration, even asking students if they see it too and exhorting them to really look, adds a bit of magic to this initial moment. (I usually try to find a good moment to pop over to the artists and quietly whisper that they should start drawing a basic outline of the object, but without a face or color yet.)
Then, ask students in the L2 if the object is big or small. Use your body to convey these terms to students if they are not quite fully acquired – for example, I usually draw out my arms really widely for “big,” and then say the word in L2 so that students’ brains are cued up to hear the L2 word for its meaning. Then, do the same for “small.” If there’s a split decision, send it to the Professor #2 to make the call. Then, repeat the size with wonder, looking at the imaginary object you’ve established. I also say things like, “Wow, this muskrat isn’t small, no…it’s big!” in the L2 to just give more input. After that base detail has been established, you can play with the degree. For example: is it big, or VERY big? Is it VERY big, or is it GIGANTIC??? (Gestures galore!) This can be a fun way to up the ante and introduce students to similar words in a natural context.
After size, I usually ask what color the object is. It is helpful to have some sort of colored poster, like this number poster from Teacher’s Discovery, to quickly establish meaning for the colors. After the class chooses the color (or you defer to Professor #2 to make the call), it can be fun to compare this to objects in the class. Is it red like a Coca Cola bottle, or is it red like Jackson’s sweater? All the while, gesture to the imaginary object in the space you established earlier. Tell students to look at it, and repeat what it is. “Wow class, look here. We have a gigantic, red vacuum cleaner in our classroom. Hello up there! My name is Herr Fisher! How are you?” HAVE FUN. HAVE FUN!
After size and color have been established, compared, and wondered over, ask if the object is happy, or sad, establishing meaning through gestures or writing on the board in L1 and L2. With both options, I usually go back to the object to play with that a bit… “Hey! How are you doing? Badly? Oh no!! Don’t cry…it’ll be okay!”
For the first attempt, having these three class-decided details may be enough. Make sure you ask some questions along the way as a memory refresher for you and your students (“Wait…is our vacuum red or blue? Oh yeah! Thanks, y’all. It’s red! Wow!”), and don’t be afraid of playing with the wonderment of creating something together. This also can buy your artists some time to finish up their drawing.
You can do this as part of a written exit ticket, or asking the class as a whole: ask why the object feels the way it does. It helps to contextualize the emotion with details that the class has established. For example: “Why is this gigantic, blue muskrat so sad??” This can help focus the problem that students generate. Have them create the problem in L1 so their creativity can run wild! If it is written, you can tactfully combine ideas for the next class (or see if there is a dominant theme you could follow), and if you decide as a class, you’ll have to be prepared to do this live, gently turning down ideas that are too insane/violent/whatever.
I like to wait on the reveal of the character until the next class meeting, but whenever you do it, make sure it is done with a drum roll and some celebration of the artists for their contribution to the class’ history!
What do I do with it now that we’ve finished?
So you’ve created a character, and somebody (maybe you, maybe some students) drew it up! What’s next you ask? The possibilities are endless!
The obvious first step is to reveal the artwork to students. Now, because you’re working so heavily in the imagination during the creation of the character, you’re going to have as many imaginings of the character as there are students in your class. I like to preempt any negativity by saying, “Now, we’re going to show our appreciation to our classmates for creating this artwork for us! How much positivity and love can we give them?” (You may still have to address students privately who think they “could have done it better,” or publicly if the class is being unkind. Just prepare a set statement like, “Soandso took a great risk by volunteering to create something for us, so we will only honor their bravery and artistic choices!”)
After revealing the artwork and having the class show appreciation for the artist(s), talk through the character again in the L2. Maybe some features are easier to see than imagine all together – the large image is a great visual scaffold for you to talk about many more aspects of the character’s life. Maybe it has especially expressive eyes, the artist gave it a shock of crazy hair, or it’s interacting with its environment in an interesting way! Talk about that in the L2, conveying wonderment with your voice to show appreciation to the artists.
It is easy to segue from describing the character to a Write and Discuss, where you write up a description of the character with the class. At this point, you’ve repeated the language of the character description a lot, so students may be able to contribute to the paragraph that you write up on the board with ease and enthusiasm! A nice Quick Quiz after writing the description and rereading it can make the whole thing feel like a very academic experience – even if it was insanely fun!
If you feel like you want to try your hand at storytelling, you can use the problem generated at the end of the OWI process to turn into a very simple story. For example, the aforementioned vacuum cleaner was sad because he didn’t know where his parents were. Easy peasy! Mike Peto suggests a sequence of story creation that goes along these lines: 1. Describe the character again, where they are, and who they are with (usually a friend of a similar character species) 2. Describe their problem and the character’s reaction to it 3. Attempt to solve the problem a first time, and fail 4. Resolve the story by either solving the problem, failing, or failing and rethinking the problem
This can generate a quick story that can then be used for more literacy! And the language will naturally repeat, so student will get lots of CI in many restated contexts.
Beyond the Basics
Usually after a first class character, you can extend the time you use to create the class character, as well as the breadth of the questions you ask about the character. I got many of these ideas from Ben Slavic and Mike Peto. Consider asking about the following traits:
Kind or Mean
Intelligent or Dumb
Rich or Poor (gets old quick… Gucci belt Gucci belt Gucci belt #seventhgraders)
Brave or Scared/Timid
Optimistic or Pessimistic
Hardworking or Lazy
Honest or Dishonest
If you find some of these not-so-inspiring, try different traits! This keeps it fresh and can also help start discussions about these values.
Also consider asking the following, which can be hilarious and so fun:
Character’s name
Likes and dislikes
Age
Job that they have
A superpower they have
Pro Tips!
You don’t need to have a certain personality to do this! I am a zany person, but you do not need to be loud and extroverted like me to make this (or any “TCI” strategy) work. I have seen teachers regarding their imaginative creations with calm, professorial wonder, where I’m hopping around, crawling on the ground, etc. Try this strategy again and again until you develop your own relationship to it – don’t feel the need to BE any one teacher until you’ve experimented and found what works best for you.
Don’t let it run wild, part one! Kids are extremely creative, but it’s easy for things to get out of hand if you allow students to interject constantly with “Does it have seven legs?” “Is it wearing a tophat?” “Does it speak with an Italian accent?” You, as the teacher, need to make clear that creating with large groups of people can be very difficult because everyone is creative in different ways, so YOU will be the one asking the questions and will only accept answers to those questions. And when you have to cut it off, you will for the sake of actually getting something done and created. This can feel creatively disappointing, but we sometimes have to accept our ideas not getting used, and maybe they will be used next time!
Don’t let it run wild, part two! Kids like inappropriate stuff. When you are creating something in a more open-ended way with students, they will attempt to push the boundaries and say things that will make their classmates laugh. If you get a sense that there is a secretive in-joke laugh going around because of a suggestion, just nip it in the bud by lightly turning down the suggestion and giving a meaningful glance to the students suggesting it.
Sometimes you just have to make the choices! Students will likely feel very strongly about this activity, as it is quite unlike the rest of their classes and assignments. Sometimes you just have to make the call for students (often with the help of Professor #2), and accept that not all students will be satisfied. (“No one even wanted that one!”) Understand that these are your loudest voices and don’t necessarily represent your whole class. Let them know that a decision just had to be made, and that we can all accept our feelings of disappointment and hope that our ideas get chosen next time. (Sometimes students will strike deals with each other about a detail, saying that they’ll save something for next time…hilarious. And quite cooperative!)
Offer choices! Sometimes, asking questions such as “What color is it?” can lead to seemingly hours-long discussions that never get anywhere. Especially early on as students are acquiring these terms, just offer 2-3 choices – one that is kind of logical, one that is a little more out there. “Is the apple red like normal, or BLUE??” Students will usually have some sort of response as long as you show them what each word means, and you can decide if it will be normal-seeming or…not. (Most of the time, asking the class, “Is this a normal ____?” leads to an emphatic “NO!”)
Make it quick! As I said above, lingering on an open-ended question can just feel like an endless L1 slog of pain and misery. Keep the conversation moving: offer choices, allow for a short moment of lively debate, and then make a decision (relying on your Professor #2, when necessary). This can be a very fun activity – don’t let it, uh, fester.
End it if you have to! Some groups are not used to their teachers offering them such fun choices, and can get overstimulated very quickly. We (people who teach with CI) have all had a class who just couldn’t even. In-fighting, debates that got personal, no consensus building, etc. If that is happening to your class and it is starting to feel a little out of control and not so fun for you, tell the class you have all you need for today, and shift gears to something like a Dictation or a Quick Quiz. It has to be something quiet to signify, “hey, this didn’t work so well this time.” Reuse whatever language you were able to come up with as a class, and maybe add a detail or two yourself as the teacher, clearly establishing meaning and making sure your artists are with you.
If it fails, try again! Sometimes, we try a new strategy, and the first go-around feels quite…train wreck-y. Students don’t get it, you feel unsure, you question your abilities to teach “this way,” it doesn’t seem like it did anything for your classes, etc. We can have any number of thoughts go through our heads as we try something new, and this is absolutely normal. You’re learning something new and those muscles aren’t conditioned yet for maximum performance! I encourage you to try the strategy again, and as SOON as possible. Get back on the horse! That way you can implement the lessons you learned the hard way RIGHT AWAY and leave class with a sense of accomplishment, not a sense of defeat, embarrassment, or bitterness. End on the best note possible – practice again and again!
What if I want to learn more?
Check out the Bite-Sized Book of One Word Images by Ben Slavic and Tina Hargaden – this is an excellent resource that I have drawn a lot of my inspiration from. Ben Slavic is credited with creating the OWI, and his work with Tina in this book is very illuminating when it comes to how using images inspires our students’ imaginations and gets them so focused on creation that they effortlessly acquire the language used along the way.
Sarah Breckley has this video that shows her trying an OWI for the first time, with real kids!! It is very brave of her to show a first attempt – and can give you some inspiration as you learn for yourself.
Here’s Brett Chonko seamlessly working from an OWI to a Write and Discuss – what a pro! This can show you how these two strategies interact and lock together seamlessly to provide some awesome CI to your students.
There are many more videos of teachers doing OWIs on YouTube – search “One Word Image” for a treasure trove of different teaching styles!
What do you think? Do you feel ready to create a One Word Image (OWI)? Comment below and send me any questions you might have!
Ah, November. The time of year when students’ general goodwill towards school has shrunk a bit, there have been sports events and field trips galore pulling your kids out of class, and you might just be feeling a lil tired. I know this is the case for me, so this post is about taking the time to develop a plan of attack further so we are prepared for days when things are starting to feel tough.
I’m writing these as reminders mostly to myself, but I hope they help you in whatever you may be struggling with to make this time of year (aka…DEVOLSON).
I can also tell you that some of these reflections come straight from the hearts of my students: though I was recently in a negative head space and worried that students would tear me up, I again asked for student feedback on my teaching (using this form) on the Friday after Halloween (gulp). I learned that 1. things were so much better than I catastrophically had thought to myself and 2. that young people will truly surprise you with their helpful insights…if you just ask!
So, here we go!
Develop Your Vision
Do you know exactly how you want your class to look, moment to moment? This is a bigger, long-term mental project, but when you run into moments in the classroom that are irritating to you, ask yourself, “Why?” How do those moments divert from your vision of how class “should” be? I find that I often haven’t expressed to students a specific expectation that I take for granted, so it would be almost miraculous for them to just meet it. We all know that students can be very…inventive…with their behavior, so we can be the ones to express a vision of fun productivity that truly works in everyone’s favor. I’ve been writing down specific items of behavior that I envision, and then explicitly teaching to those expectations.
Tell Them Why
Language is so different from typical school subject matters that it needs to be taught in a very different way. This can be disorienting from kids who have learned how to “play the school game,” and then get into a language class where we “just talk all the time,” so explicitly stating why we do any given practice can help students understand and meet with our visions. I’ve been repeating since the early weeks of school that “we learn languages by hearing and reading messages we understand in the language,” so when I explain that talking English isn’t helping our language acquisition, kids are like…oh yeah, that’s right. But then! I give them alternatives that allow us to stay in the language as much as possible. They’re more likely to use these new mental/communication tricks if they understand why they are necessary or desired in the first place.
Energy!
When things are going right…tell them. And telling them can look like different things. Strong choral response after pumping them up? “(in L2) Yes, class! Wow, y’all are so intelligent. You’re getting it.” Long stretch of whole class interaction uninterrupted by L1? “(in L2) Wow, this class speaks a lot of [L2]! And so well!” Or save it for the end of class: “(in L1) Y’all, in the middle of class, we had a stretch where it was only in [L2], and it was so glorious. I could tell so much [L2] was going into your brains, and you are going to be the super awesome, multilingual citizens of the future. BAM!” And also: never discount the power of a high five, eye contact with a smile, a covert thumbs up…
Go SLOW
If I keep in mind that my desired purpose in each class period is, at its core, communication with the people in the room, I get better at looking for evidence that communication is actually happening. Am I learning new facts about my students and verifying them with their classmates? Are students reacting to those learnings and sharing more about themselves? Am I sharing new information about the Target Culture and gathering students’ reactions to it?
I must look into their eyes, check their comprehension, and speak to them in ways such that they understand. (Check out this post by Martina Bex about ways to make that happen.) This often involves going much slower, using lots of gestures, pausing, and taking the time to savor silence. This is a long-term struggle: I have literally presented at conferences about the importance of SLOW, and more than one of my level 1 students asked me to slow down a bit. It is important, and difficult! So, I will be slowing down in the name of comprehension and real communication.
Self-Interrupt
If I’ve shared how languages are acquired – hearing comprehensible messages – then I can just interrupt my own speech if a student starts to talk out of bounds in L1 while we’re talking in L2. I try to scan my class broadly as I do this, so as not to come off too aggressive with the student or students who spoke out of turn, but I do try to go back to them and give them a wink or a nod as we carry on.
Just Walk On Over To the Rules
This is a trick I learned from Tina Hargaden: just stop, saunter (really, saunter) over to the class rules, and indicate which has been broken while scanning the class with a smile. Because it’s so calm and quiet, students tend to get uncomfortable and push each other to quiet down a bit.
Get Feedback
Ask students what activities are working best for them, as well as what is a change they might make to class that would help them learn the L2 better. Most of the time, students are reasonable and helpful in their suggestions, as long as I frame the feedback giving as something that will help us have a more successful, fun class.
After getting the feedback, positively acknowledge that you have considered their feedback, and then try to incorporate their suggestions as much as possible. It turns out my level 1s love stories – let’s do more of those! Level 3 asked for me to actually be more strict about not starting side conversations in English after every sentence, so I know that there will be students in class that will help me out when I am managing towards a more L2 environment. If I am able to incorporate things that students have suggested, then bam! Goodwill towards the class that will help us be more productive and successful, and I will hopefully grow my influence as a classroom manager of their time.
This post only begins to scratch the surface of all the many philosophical considerations and moment-to-moment techniques that go into “doing” classroom management…do you have any quick tips or thoughts that might help others? Comment with your gems below!
