I took notes from student reflections at the end of last school year, but never made it to typing out a blog to process my thinking, as I had intended. So, better late than never, here are some thoughts I am carrying in to the coming school year!
Unexpected Ways to Make Students Feel Cared For
When I solicit feedback from students, I usually ask students to signal their level of agreement with the statement “My teacher cares about me.” I want their German class to be a place where they feel safe to explore their identities and the world, so I try to pay close attention to which students are marking just “agree” or disagree with the statement. I’m shooting for “strongly agree” for all students. I want to make sure that there’s no barriers in our classroom to feeling like they can come along for the joyful ride of acquiring another language.
Sometimes, students use the language of care when providing feedback about class activities and routines at the end of the year. I was surprised at what a couple students interpreted and highlighted as care, and it’s making me reflect on how to provide more of these things throughout the coming year.
The first thing that made students feel cared for was when I ensured comprehension. Taking the extra time to add a gesture, define words in the L1, check whole class comprehension, provide examples, show or draw images, circle back around to check in with students whose demeanors showed struggle: these actions communicated more than just language input to students.
It makes me consider the inverse statement: students feel like we don’t care when we just plow through, even if they are not understanding. This really makes clear to me that we must do everything in our power to support and check comprehension, and continuously work on our skills of providing comprehended input. Without this, students won’t acquire anything, and they will come away thinking, “That person just didn’t care about me.”
Another surprise was a student mentioning feedback on their writing was a way they knew I cared about them. Writing feedback?! Don’t all students fear The Red Pen of Death? Not necessarily. I think because I provided options for what kinds of feedback students could receive (credit to Meredith White for this idea), they always got just what they asked for.
I know from research and working on the podcast that feedback on writing doesn’t produce the greatest ROI for student acquisition and output, but we can’t always do everything for our students in a mode of “SLA Purity” or whatever. Students interpret this feedback as care, and are showing genuine curiosity that I, as a relative language expert, can speak to.
I will just need to find a way to streamline my feedback process, and really pace myself so I’m not giving feedback on 8,000 compositions at once. This will require very clear project guidelines, and walking students through our Presentational Communication rubrics so they know where I’m coming from with my feedback. I will also have to make sure that students have to do something with the feedback (probably a rewrite and resubmission) so that it is worth all our while.
Whole Class Novel Working Arrangements
I have been ending my school year in levels 2 and 3/4 with whole class novel reading, and it has been a great way to relax out of the school year when my brain has been turned into sauerkraut. I follow the teacher’s guides, every year adding some new cultural exploration and activity embellishments, and it’s been a great choice for me.
The books are usually about 10 chapters long, and I like to give students a variety of options for how we read the books. I usually start with me reading chapters 1 and 2 aloud, then do a couple chapters each of partner reading, individual reading, and group reading with reading roles. This year, I also used the audiobook recordings that came with the teacher’s guides, and the voice acting and sound effects were a huge hit. We always end the book with me reading the final chapters aloud so we can all share the experience of getting to the end!
My assumption going into this year was that students preferred working in the small groups most of all because who doesn’t like sitting around chatting? It sometimes would be in English, but it was the end of the year, I was exhausted, and students were making steady progress through the books, so I let it slide.
It turns out that students did NOT prefer the group setup! They preferred me reading to the class, or using the audiobook. I’ll have to try to learn more as to why that is, but my guess would be that when I read aloud, I provide clarification and paraphrasing that increases comprehension and feelings of success (see above). My guess for the audiobook is that they loved the voice acting, because it was hilarious. Good to know for this coming year, where I’m going to even try to end level 1 with a novel! (gulp)
Gamifying Class Target Language Usage
To help with student blurting and English use, I started using Annemarie Chase’s Timer Trick to incentivize staying in the Target Language for long stretches. Basically, I set a timer, and for every 7 minutes that students didn’t say anything out of turn in English, the class got a point. Once the class had 5 points, we played a quick game all together. Score!
Students really enjoyed it, and it helped reset some…energetic classes towards the end of the year and throughout Testing Season. Favorite reward games were Hachi Pachi and ¿Dónde está la araña?, which we played with my adorable plastic octopus. Many students were Pop Up! haters, but that won’t stop me!!
The Two Minute Drill
I implemented the Two Minute Drill by Ben Tinsley with my 3/4 class, and one student shouted out that it helped them feel like other students were really interested in their lives with the questions they asked. I, too, felt like I learned a lot about what made many students tick, either through the questions they asked, or the answers they gave. And it was a joy to hear them all speaking to each other, laughing, and learning about each other’s lives!
I kinda fell off doing the routine towards the middle of the year, but I think I’ll reserve a day every week for the Two Minute Drill because it was very cool. And if they want more (more students interviewed per day, or more days of the week), then we can add more!
I would also love to summarize what we learn through the Drill in a Write and Discuss text, either by taking quick notes during the Drill and then using them to review with students, or just by asking for the most interesting/surprising things the class learned. I want to get more mileage out of the language, and highlight how important each individual is by purposefully making them the subjects of our texts. Maybe I’ll even expand the routine down into my level 2 class!
My Level 1 Students Wanted…Homework?
Are these children okay? Just kidding, kind of. But some students were requesting homework for German class, and I was a little stumped at the time. I don’t generally give homework as a philosophical choice, but I also know that getting students to engage with the Target Language and Target Cultures outside of school hours fulfills the Communities Standard and helps them become independent learners of the language.
When I was a Spanish teacher, I made a homework choice board that I was pretty proud of, so I could try to make something similar for German. Notebook homework, where students read and translate a text from our class to a home adult, could be another option. Real World Homework, a more open-ended option that probably needs some scaffolding to get students pointed in the right direction, has been a hit with my high schoolers.
I am still on the fence about assigning regular homework in my classes, but if I do, I will try to lean on self-grading listening and reading work to avoid having to police student use of online tech tools to create their output, and to avoid me having a stack of paperwork to deal with every week. I may lean more on my subscriptions to TextActivities and EdPuzzle to provide more reading and listening input to students, while sprinkling in some of the assignments I named above for some healthy variety and cultural exploration.