Wheelofnames.com is one of my favorite websites. You can customize what items are on the wheel (and the colors, if that's your jam. it is my jam.), and you can save those wheels to use later. I have one for each of my classes, and then periodically, classes and I will build one together.
One of the ones we recently built had numbers on it. I picked about twelve people and asked them qui numerus acceptissimus tibi est? and they told me. This is hilarious, because they didn't know what they were being used for, and Mark's favorite number is 18, which is Known.
Everyone was mad at Mark about five minutes later.
In any case, I now had 1, 4, 18, 12, etc. I had the kids stand up in pairs facing each other and gave them a topic. (you could also have a wheel of topics if you want to leave it to chance)
We spun the wheel, and the wheel told them how many items in that category they had to come up with. There are virtues both to giving them the topic and then spinning the wheel, and to spinning the wheel and then giving them the topic. I encourage you to experiment and decide which you like best.
Depending on the level of chaos you thrive in in your classroom, you can have the pairs:
-shout their answers at each other in an attempt to get the requisite number of items before their partner (encourages both hilarity and quick thinking in the TL, but necessarily discourages listening)
-work together to come up with the requisite number of answers in a set amount of time/before other pairs.
Having shouted at each other for X number of seconds or until it sounds like they're winding down (my usual method of deciding when they're done), I pick a few pairs and ask them to share their best answers. You can just accept those answers as is, or it can lead to more PQA/circling/input.
The topics can be anything. In Latin two, they had (among other things) letters of the alphabet (we had a gimme to start :P), body parts, things you do in the baths, jobs, food words, and - I kid you not - things you can do to save energy in the home.
We did not spend time in any unit discussing "ways to save energy in the home." But you bet they know things like "turn off the lights" and "close the fridge," and they've never been asked to apply it in that way. It allows them to stretch and realize just what they can talk about. It's a good warm up or brain break, and the kids get a kick out of doing it.
Showing posts with label Speaking. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Speaking. Show all posts
Thursday, May 28, 2020
Sunday, March 10, 2019
Scene Charades
Warning: some prep (though not a huge amount) involved.
I love charades. It's great for discrete vocab rehearsal, it's funny, and it gets people involved.
But it's really only good for discrete vocab rehearsal. Sometimes you get to a point, especially at the upper levels, where vocab is great, but sometimes it's odd, or you've got it in a chunk and you'd like kids to be able to use it outside that chunk. So try this:
Write one or two sentence scenes that are funny, divorced from the text you're having the kids read, and involve the vocabulary you want them to practice.
[Here were some of mine:
Scaena: femina diem nubendi petit, sed vir territus est. (a woman is looking for a wedding day, but the man is terrified)
Scaena: Vir it cibum petitum, sed subito homine pulchro obstiupit. E rupe cadit. (a man goes looking for food, but he is suddenly stupefied by a beautiful person. he falls off a cliff.)
Scaena: Puero ire ad scholas non licet nisi scutum suum inveniat. (a boy is not allowed to go to school unless he finds his shield.)
Scaena: Femina rem magni ponderis tollere conatur, sed braccia ei desunt. (a woman tries to lift a heavy thing, but her arms are missing.)
I'm rehearsing the vocab I bolded for you (which isn't bolded on the work I gave the kids), and I'm also getting in repetitions of certain grammatical structures I want them to hear more of (e.g. diem nubendi, nisi inveniat, it petitum).]
Cut the scenes you've typed up into strips and put them in a bowl/hat/cauldron/whatever.
Put your class in groups of three or four (I find more than four is just too many, and pairs isn't going to be enough for this activity). Instead of calling a single person up for this charades game, you're going to call the whole group. They'll draw one of the scenes out of the bowl/hat/cauldron/whatever. I gave them eleven seconds to figure out how they were going to act out the scene. They were allowed to make noise but not say words.
While they were doing the scene (which they had to do three times), the rest of the groups were busily conversing, trying to decide what the scene was. They knew they got
-1 point for describing the scene correctly
-2 points for using recent vocab
-3 points for hitting on the vocab I was targeting
-4 points for making me happy in some way with their descriptions (I like rewarding them for things I maybe couldn't have predicted they'd do)
After the third iteration of the scene, each group got to describe what they felt the scene was. Points are awarded after all descriptions have been said.
Then I read the actual scene to them, and we circled and asked some questions and made sure everyone understood.
Notate bene:
-I called on a different speaker from each group to tell me their group's description each round. That way, it wasn't always "Oh Grace does better than all of us," and it ensured that each of them had to be invested in the discussion.
Some scaffolds:
-you could have them write down their descriptions and read them out instead of discussing them
-you could choose not to put them in groups but have each kid write a description, and then call up 3-4 individual kids for each acting scene.
-you could give every group all the scenes typed out, and their job will be to find the correct one instead of devising a descriptions
I love charades. It's great for discrete vocab rehearsal, it's funny, and it gets people involved.
But it's really only good for discrete vocab rehearsal. Sometimes you get to a point, especially at the upper levels, where vocab is great, but sometimes it's odd, or you've got it in a chunk and you'd like kids to be able to use it outside that chunk. So try this:
Write one or two sentence scenes that are funny, divorced from the text you're having the kids read, and involve the vocabulary you want them to practice.
[Here were some of mine:
Scaena: femina diem nubendi petit, sed vir territus est. (a woman is looking for a wedding day, but the man is terrified)
Scaena: Vir it cibum petitum, sed subito homine pulchro obstiupit. E rupe cadit. (a man goes looking for food, but he is suddenly stupefied by a beautiful person. he falls off a cliff.)
Scaena: Puero ire ad scholas non licet nisi scutum suum inveniat. (a boy is not allowed to go to school unless he finds his shield.)
Scaena: Femina rem magni ponderis tollere conatur, sed braccia ei desunt. (a woman tries to lift a heavy thing, but her arms are missing.)
I'm rehearsing the vocab I bolded for you (which isn't bolded on the work I gave the kids), and I'm also getting in repetitions of certain grammatical structures I want them to hear more of (e.g. diem nubendi, nisi inveniat, it petitum).]
Cut the scenes you've typed up into strips and put them in a bowl/hat/cauldron/whatever.
Put your class in groups of three or four (I find more than four is just too many, and pairs isn't going to be enough for this activity). Instead of calling a single person up for this charades game, you're going to call the whole group. They'll draw one of the scenes out of the bowl/hat/cauldron/whatever. I gave them eleven seconds to figure out how they were going to act out the scene. They were allowed to make noise but not say words.
While they were doing the scene (which they had to do three times), the rest of the groups were busily conversing, trying to decide what the scene was. They knew they got
-1 point for describing the scene correctly
-2 points for using recent vocab
-3 points for hitting on the vocab I was targeting
-4 points for making me happy in some way with their descriptions (I like rewarding them for things I maybe couldn't have predicted they'd do)
After the third iteration of the scene, each group got to describe what they felt the scene was. Points are awarded after all descriptions have been said.
Then I read the actual scene to them, and we circled and asked some questions and made sure everyone understood.
Notate bene:
-I called on a different speaker from each group to tell me their group's description each round. That way, it wasn't always "Oh Grace does better than all of us," and it ensured that each of them had to be invested in the discussion.
Some scaffolds:
-you could have them write down their descriptions and read them out instead of discussing them
-you could choose not to put them in groups but have each kid write a description, and then call up 3-4 individual kids for each acting scene.
-you could give every group all the scenes typed out, and their job will be to find the correct one instead of devising a descriptions
Thursday, March 7, 2019
Self-Identification, Practicing Phrases, and Discretion
My ones are learning about family. In the course of learning about family every year, I sit down and have a conversation with my kiddos. In it, I tell them that we're going to be discussing things like parents and siblings and familial relationships, and that they get to define their families however they want to. If they have people in their lives they aren't blood-related to but they think of as family, that's a-ok by me. If they have a sister but don't like her, and they don't want to disclose that they have that sister, fine by me. They can disclose or not disclose whatever they want, include or exclude whatever is meaningful to them. I think that's a really important conversation to have, since
(a) it emphasizes the value of their autonomy,
(b) reminds them that we see/respect them as people before anything else and
(c) asks them to be respectful of everyone else in the room and their autonomy as well. Also,
(d) it doesn't call anyone out. When I was in high school, my feelings about my family were very complicated, and there are things I wouldn't have wanted to answer. When we give them power to make that call on their own and don't put them in a position to have to say things they don't want to talk about, we emphasize that that's something we value.
On which note...
Here's an activity I love.
I really want a lot of reps of potius quam, malo, conor, soleo, debeo and possum with my ones at the moment.
So I wrote on the board ______________ potius quam _____________ malo.
I indicated myself and said, coquere potius quam currere malo. Any kids who feel the same way were supposed to stand. You then have options: acknowledge that there are a lot/a few, call on a couple and ask some questions (what do you like to cook? have you ever tried running?), or just acknowledge it and have them sit.
I made a few similar statements. i prefer to eat breakfast rather than lunch. Etc. Then I started calling on kids, and they'd make statements. Wearing Vans vs Jordans. Petting cats vs petting dogs.
Then I changed the phrase: ______________ conor, sed non bene possum.
Cantare, I said, conor, sed non bene possum. (they made me demonstrate, and then they agreed.) Some stood, some didn't, we discussed. Then they made statements about themselves (voluntarily), and those who identified with those statements stood.
This is a great icebreaker, warm-up, bell-ringer, end of class and I have ten minutes kind of activity. You can do it to introduce something, to get reps of an idea, etc. And because kids really like to talk about themselves, it doesn't get boring. Change up your statements and keep them novel, and it gets everybody involved. This is good material for a quick quiz at the end of class if you spend time really using this to do PQA. This is also great fodder for PQA (either in the moment or later).
And there are endless things you could ask them to talk about. Just today:
______________ possum, sed me non delectat.
_______________ potius quam ____________ malo.
_____________ habere volo, sed non habeo.
______________ conor, sed non bene possum.
______________ debeo, sed non soleo.
______________ mihi est.
(a) it emphasizes the value of their autonomy,
(b) reminds them that we see/respect them as people before anything else and
(c) asks them to be respectful of everyone else in the room and their autonomy as well. Also,
(d) it doesn't call anyone out. When I was in high school, my feelings about my family were very complicated, and there are things I wouldn't have wanted to answer. When we give them power to make that call on their own and don't put them in a position to have to say things they don't want to talk about, we emphasize that that's something we value.
On which note...
Here's an activity I love.
I really want a lot of reps of potius quam, malo, conor, soleo, debeo and possum with my ones at the moment.
So I wrote on the board ______________ potius quam _____________ malo.
I indicated myself and said, coquere potius quam currere malo. Any kids who feel the same way were supposed to stand. You then have options: acknowledge that there are a lot/a few, call on a couple and ask some questions (what do you like to cook? have you ever tried running?), or just acknowledge it and have them sit.
I made a few similar statements. i prefer to eat breakfast rather than lunch. Etc. Then I started calling on kids, and they'd make statements. Wearing Vans vs Jordans. Petting cats vs petting dogs.
Then I changed the phrase: ______________ conor, sed non bene possum.
Cantare, I said, conor, sed non bene possum. (they made me demonstrate, and then they agreed.) Some stood, some didn't, we discussed. Then they made statements about themselves (voluntarily), and those who identified with those statements stood.
This is a great icebreaker, warm-up, bell-ringer, end of class and I have ten minutes kind of activity. You can do it to introduce something, to get reps of an idea, etc. And because kids really like to talk about themselves, it doesn't get boring. Change up your statements and keep them novel, and it gets everybody involved. This is good material for a quick quiz at the end of class if you spend time really using this to do PQA. This is also great fodder for PQA (either in the moment or later).
And there are endless things you could ask them to talk about. Just today:
______________ possum, sed me non delectat.
_______________ potius quam ____________ malo.
_____________ habere volo, sed non habeo.
______________ conor, sed non bene possum.
______________ debeo, sed non soleo.
______________ mihi est.
The Blessing of Useless Competition
This is something the great Justin Slocum Bailey taught me:
if kids can compete, and if it can be hilarious, that's a beautiful classroom tool.
I think about that approximately every other week.
How long can kids balance coins on their nose? Great question. No idea, but I can reinforce quamdiu that way.
Right now, we're talking about athletes and actors and other forms of entertainment, and I'm beginning to realize how much longer it takes to smush indirect speech into their brains than approximately everything else. So I'm using it a lot.
Check out my Latin II classes this week, which have been seventy minutes long (usually they're 52), and I keep looking at the clock and realizing the bell is going to ring in ten seconds, and I'm still on my warm-up (because they've dived into it, and it's beautiful).
1. Any super-well-known (notissimi) athletes in this room? Whom do you think is the best athlete in the room? Ask fifteen people that question, and they get fifteen repeats of quem athletam optimum in hoc conclavi esse censes?. They also, since I've written ___________m athletam optimum in hoc conclavi esse censeo on the board, get to say it without panicking about how it's said 15 times.
2. Narrow it down to two or three kids. Make them do ridiculous stuff. How long do you think Ian can stand on one foot? What's the heaviest thing you think Tyler can lift? We're blessed to have a pull-up bar on the field right outside my classroom, so you'd better believe the question "quotiens Latrellem se tollere posse censes?" came up. You'd better believe we trooped outside to see exactly how many times Latrell could do a pullup. (the answer is twenty. class went nuts. latrell --> very proud of himself. also mildly sore.) I can ask that question about twenty-five times. I can also ask it right before the pull-up bar. Who thinks Latrell can do four pull-ups? Three? Seven? Not even one?
That was yesterday.
Today: We're going to talk about actors. The class knows who its good actors are, because those are the kids who often volunteer to do it, and whom the class wants to see do it.
So we talk for a while about who we think the best actors are. (this question - the "who do you think is the best/strongest/whateverest XYZ - almost never gets old. i can ask the same style of question for days, and they don't care. my first period argued FOR AN HOUR about who the best actor in the history of the world is, and my first period cares about nothing. For what it's worth, they don't think it's Liam Hemsworth, but they have real feelings regarding Kevin Hart.)
I eventually settled on three actors, told the class we were going to do five scenes. (target vocab: scaenam agere; eadem) All the actors would do the same five scenes (in which I can also use target vocab like histrio, discedere, carcer). Imitate a hungry lion (personam suscipere). Imitate a person trying to get out of jail. Take on the role of a person thrown down by hope.
Increasingly, the kids' scenes are hysterical. The students love watching this, the actors get attention, and you get endless repetitions of whatever you want. I NEVER end this competition by deciding who wins, because you end up with potentially hurt feelings there. But you can ask questions like, "who do you think is the best lion," because that isn't an overall question. Or "who do you think is a dramatic actor/tragic actor/comic actor." Target vocab, target structures, repetition, no hurt feelings. We applaud everybody, the actors are heroes, and I have no idea where seventy minutes have gone, but man there's been a lot of really good input in the last seventy minutes. And that input has real emotional ties, and it's stuff the kids aren't going to forget.
As an aside...I made the terrible mistake of giving them the instruction personam mei suscipere. The children...they know me well. And heck if they didn't pretend, down to verbatim the Latin things I tell them every day, to be me. Turns out repetition works?
A word of warning on some of these: read your room. You want to make sure you set up competition that is entirely friendly and completely useless. If it's going to result in hurt feelings, kids being on the spot, or judginess, this is NOT the way to go. Sam can move an Oreo down his face like nobody's business. That is a good, solid, useless competition.
if kids can compete, and if it can be hilarious, that's a beautiful classroom tool.
I think about that approximately every other week.
How long can kids balance coins on their nose? Great question. No idea, but I can reinforce quamdiu that way.
Right now, we're talking about athletes and actors and other forms of entertainment, and I'm beginning to realize how much longer it takes to smush indirect speech into their brains than approximately everything else. So I'm using it a lot.
Check out my Latin II classes this week, which have been seventy minutes long (usually they're 52), and I keep looking at the clock and realizing the bell is going to ring in ten seconds, and I'm still on my warm-up (because they've dived into it, and it's beautiful).
1. Any super-well-known (notissimi) athletes in this room? Whom do you think is the best athlete in the room? Ask fifteen people that question, and they get fifteen repeats of quem athletam optimum in hoc conclavi esse censes?. They also, since I've written ___________m athletam optimum in hoc conclavi esse censeo on the board, get to say it without panicking about how it's said 15 times.
2. Narrow it down to two or three kids. Make them do ridiculous stuff. How long do you think Ian can stand on one foot? What's the heaviest thing you think Tyler can lift? We're blessed to have a pull-up bar on the field right outside my classroom, so you'd better believe the question "quotiens Latrellem se tollere posse censes?" came up. You'd better believe we trooped outside to see exactly how many times Latrell could do a pullup. (the answer is twenty. class went nuts. latrell --> very proud of himself. also mildly sore.) I can ask that question about twenty-five times. I can also ask it right before the pull-up bar. Who thinks Latrell can do four pull-ups? Three? Seven? Not even one?
That was yesterday.
Today: We're going to talk about actors. The class knows who its good actors are, because those are the kids who often volunteer to do it, and whom the class wants to see do it.
So we talk for a while about who we think the best actors are. (this question - the "who do you think is the best/strongest/whateverest XYZ - almost never gets old. i can ask the same style of question for days, and they don't care. my first period argued FOR AN HOUR about who the best actor in the history of the world is, and my first period cares about nothing. For what it's worth, they don't think it's Liam Hemsworth, but they have real feelings regarding Kevin Hart.)
I eventually settled on three actors, told the class we were going to do five scenes. (target vocab: scaenam agere; eadem) All the actors would do the same five scenes (in which I can also use target vocab like histrio, discedere, carcer). Imitate a hungry lion (personam suscipere). Imitate a person trying to get out of jail. Take on the role of a person thrown down by hope.
Increasingly, the kids' scenes are hysterical. The students love watching this, the actors get attention, and you get endless repetitions of whatever you want. I NEVER end this competition by deciding who wins, because you end up with potentially hurt feelings there. But you can ask questions like, "who do you think is the best lion," because that isn't an overall question. Or "who do you think is a dramatic actor/tragic actor/comic actor." Target vocab, target structures, repetition, no hurt feelings. We applaud everybody, the actors are heroes, and I have no idea where seventy minutes have gone, but man there's been a lot of really good input in the last seventy minutes. And that input has real emotional ties, and it's stuff the kids aren't going to forget.
As an aside...I made the terrible mistake of giving them the instruction personam mei suscipere. The children...they know me well. And heck if they didn't pretend, down to verbatim the Latin things I tell them every day, to be me. Turns out repetition works?
A word of warning on some of these: read your room. You want to make sure you set up competition that is entirely friendly and completely useless. If it's going to result in hurt feelings, kids being on the spot, or judginess, this is NOT the way to go. Sam can move an Oreo down his face like nobody's business. That is a good, solid, useless competition.
Thursday, March 29, 2018
Fishbowl/Socratic discussions in an FL class
Socratic seminars have become a big thing in English classes, and they go a long way towards fostering discussion in a structured way. This is a handy way to discuss issues raised in a novella you're reading, discuss cultural ideas, or simply talk about a topic or two.
But it's harder in an FL class, especially when we're trying not to force production. So here's how we've been doing it.
Warning - I have only tried this with threes, and I'm not sure it's suitable at other levels. If you try this with lower levels and adapt it, let me know.
1. Choose the passage or passages you want kids to talk about, if it comes from a reading. If not, perhaps create something to have them look over to prime their brains. Have them spend time reading that however you wish - groups, individually, whole class, etc. That's up to you.
2. Write some questions to get them thinking about the topic itself. Would you like to have a pet? If your sister had a pet, and you didn't, would you be jealous? Etc. I wrote four questions, and then I gave them three minutes per question to write as much as they could in answer to the question. We went over each question and established understanding before they wrote, and then they had to answer all four (twelve minutes in total) - I told them when each set of three minutes was up.
3. Have them share some or all of their responses in groups, or with the whole class. We do it in groups, and then each group selects their favorite response to each question, and we share as a class and discuss a little.
4. Then each student writes four open-ended questions about the topic we're going to discuss (the last one we discussed was the Siege of Masada). We spent some time discussing what kinds of questions would be good for this (would you prefer... what do you think is... would you have...) and which ones are less good (yes/no questions, questions that require a factual answer). I typed up eleven of my favorite questions and projected them for support. Kids could ask their own questions, could make up questions as they went raised from the conversation, or the questions I was projecting.
5. We set up five chairs at the front of the room and a hot seat. Everyone else sat in a semi-circle around them. The hot seat was there in case you had a statement or response you wanted to make in the moment, but didn't want to be actually in the circle at that time. You had to make your response and get out. If the hot seat had been abused (people using it to get out of being in the circle, etc), it would have been removed, but no one abused it. The five volunteered themselves, and began. Students were told if they didn't understand something, they should ask for clarification or repetition whenever they wanted, and they didn't need to be in the circle for that.
My role was to answer "how do you say" questions and then write those on the board, to clarify as needed, and to gently steer if something got out of hand or off-topic.
People not yet in the circle tapped in when there was a question they wanted to answer, or they'd begun to have thoughts on a topic. To tap in, they simply came up, tapped someone's shoulder, and switched seats. They were required to wait 'til that person wasn't speaking, and they had to tap out people who'd been there longer first.
If you were ready to be tapped out, you could put your hand on your head, so that when someone was ready to tap in, they knew who wanted to be out. If you got tapped out but wanted to contribute again, you could use the hot seat, or you had two extra tap-ins left if you needed them.
Often by the end of the period, I had a few kids who hadn't been in the circle. Those students were required to choose one of the questions raised that day and make me a 1.5 minute video, to be turned in to Flipgrid (which is free!). They had a few days to do it and could practice, which for most of them alleviated the anxiety of impromptu speaking, and also allows them to produce at their own pace. I did NOT announce this as an option before fishbowl - I told them at the end.
But it's harder in an FL class, especially when we're trying not to force production. So here's how we've been doing it.
Warning - I have only tried this with threes, and I'm not sure it's suitable at other levels. If you try this with lower levels and adapt it, let me know.
1. Choose the passage or passages you want kids to talk about, if it comes from a reading. If not, perhaps create something to have them look over to prime their brains. Have them spend time reading that however you wish - groups, individually, whole class, etc. That's up to you.
2. Write some questions to get them thinking about the topic itself. Would you like to have a pet? If your sister had a pet, and you didn't, would you be jealous? Etc. I wrote four questions, and then I gave them three minutes per question to write as much as they could in answer to the question. We went over each question and established understanding before they wrote, and then they had to answer all four (twelve minutes in total) - I told them when each set of three minutes was up.
3. Have them share some or all of their responses in groups, or with the whole class. We do it in groups, and then each group selects their favorite response to each question, and we share as a class and discuss a little.
4. Then each student writes four open-ended questions about the topic we're going to discuss (the last one we discussed was the Siege of Masada). We spent some time discussing what kinds of questions would be good for this (would you prefer... what do you think is... would you have...) and which ones are less good (yes/no questions, questions that require a factual answer). I typed up eleven of my favorite questions and projected them for support. Kids could ask their own questions, could make up questions as they went raised from the conversation, or the questions I was projecting.
5. We set up five chairs at the front of the room and a hot seat. Everyone else sat in a semi-circle around them. The hot seat was there in case you had a statement or response you wanted to make in the moment, but didn't want to be actually in the circle at that time. You had to make your response and get out. If the hot seat had been abused (people using it to get out of being in the circle, etc), it would have been removed, but no one abused it. The five volunteered themselves, and began. Students were told if they didn't understand something, they should ask for clarification or repetition whenever they wanted, and they didn't need to be in the circle for that.
My role was to answer "how do you say" questions and then write those on the board, to clarify as needed, and to gently steer if something got out of hand or off-topic.
People not yet in the circle tapped in when there was a question they wanted to answer, or they'd begun to have thoughts on a topic. To tap in, they simply came up, tapped someone's shoulder, and switched seats. They were required to wait 'til that person wasn't speaking, and they had to tap out people who'd been there longer first.
If you were ready to be tapped out, you could put your hand on your head, so that when someone was ready to tap in, they knew who wanted to be out. If you got tapped out but wanted to contribute again, you could use the hot seat, or you had two extra tap-ins left if you needed them.
Often by the end of the period, I had a few kids who hadn't been in the circle. Those students were required to choose one of the questions raised that day and make me a 1.5 minute video, to be turned in to Flipgrid (which is free!). They had a few days to do it and could practice, which for most of them alleviated the anxiety of impromptu speaking, and also allows them to produce at their own pace. I did NOT announce this as an option before fishbowl - I told them at the end.
Friday, August 4, 2017
Uses for Small White Boards
Here are a collection of posts I've made on what to do with small white boards if you have them, plus a little extra!
Sunday, May 14, 2017
Project based learning as a performance final
At my high school, we're required to give written and spoken performance finals in addition to our objective multiple-choice finals. I'm a huge advocate for authentic assessment and have never loved the idea of kids recording into a void on what they call 'mind-control devices' (the language lab). I think the lab absolutely has its place, but when it comes to spoken assessment, I want them to have interaction, encouragement, be able to ask questions, and show off to whatever extent they can. I also want it to be fluid, low-pressure, fun, and forgiving - and most of all, authentic.
Thursday, February 23, 2017
Using language classes to teach other ideas
Every year for the last six years, I've sat down with my twos and threes and asked what they want to study curricularly the following year. Then I spend the summer putting together that curriculum. This year, for the first time, a student suggested the American Civil War. It didn't get voted for, so that won't be part of our curriculum next year, but it did spark a really interesting conversation about the things that are reasonable to learn in a Latin class.
The answer is: anything. It's a language, so we can talk about anything we want to. In the last year, we've done science experiments and hypotheses (Celsus proposes a lot of cures for a lot of things, so we hypothesized what they would actually do, and then we tried them all and kept notes on our experiments, comparisons, etc.), math (if we know how many people are in a contubernium and century, etc., can we figure out how many people are in a cohort?), history, reading, and art. I try very hard to touch on all the school subjects as often as I can.
The answer is: anything. It's a language, so we can talk about anything we want to. In the last year, we've done science experiments and hypotheses (Celsus proposes a lot of cures for a lot of things, so we hypothesized what they would actually do, and then we tried them all and kept notes on our experiments, comparisons, etc.), math (if we know how many people are in a contubernium and century, etc., can we figure out how many people are in a cohort?), history, reading, and art. I try very hard to touch on all the school subjects as often as I can.
Wednesday, February 8, 2017
Designing a Unit Around Culture
Last summer, a friend of mine said something that really stuck with me. He told me that language is culture, and that we have to examine our reasons for teaching kids certain cultural things. Do we just want them to have the information? If so, just tell them. But if we want them to be able to discuss that information, they have to have it in the target language. So with that in mind, I wanted to teach theater this year, and I wanted to do it in the target language.
So I designed an entire unit around theater. One of the dangerous parts of topical units is we teach a bunch of specialized vocabulary (like greaves?!) that never gets used again. So when I do this, I try to pick vocabulary to focus on that I think is going to be useful universally. When we did magic, we acquired 'sermone secreto' and "pallent superi," each of which phrases was present in the reading, but has been otherwise useful for communicating. In medicine, we learned 'iuvamen vitae' and 'ex consuetudine.' While it's true that we also talked about livers and some random measurements, those have not been the major vocabulary focuses - the culture-specific words have become icing words, more or less.
So I designed an entire unit around theater. One of the dangerous parts of topical units is we teach a bunch of specialized vocabulary (like greaves?!) that never gets used again. So when I do this, I try to pick vocabulary to focus on that I think is going to be useful universally. When we did magic, we acquired 'sermone secreto' and "pallent superi," each of which phrases was present in the reading, but has been otherwise useful for communicating. In medicine, we learned 'iuvamen vitae' and 'ex consuetudine.' While it's true that we also talked about livers and some random measurements, those have not been the major vocabulary focuses - the culture-specific words have become icing words, more or less.
Thursday, October 27, 2016
Collective interview
I began with an idea from Martina Bex that can be found here.
A collective interview is a set of questions given to a group that is asked of the group in circuitu. The questions can all center around a topic, a grammatical structure, a set of vocabulary - or can be about completely random things. Up to you. People in the groups can answer as themselves or, as we did today, as a character.
We've been reading Tres Ursi, so we worked with that today.
A collective interview is a set of questions given to a group that is asked of the group in circuitu. The questions can all center around a topic, a grammatical structure, a set of vocabulary - or can be about completely random things. Up to you. People in the groups can answer as themselves or, as we did today, as a character.
We've been reading Tres Ursi, so we worked with that today.
Monday, September 19, 2016
You and I
One of the things my kids struggle with is you and I, particularly in the perfect tense. This year I've decided to spend a lot of time on conversational exchange, particularly about events in the past, particularly in the first and second person. Here are some things I've done:
Wednesday, March 23, 2016
O Captain, My Captain
I got this idea from a department meeting and then tweaked it a little.
Because we're talking about monsters in Latin I, we spent yesterday telling the story of Bellerophon. We talked about Sthenoboea, Proetus, Iobates, Bellerophon and the Chimaera, the letter-writing, the law of xenia, et ita porro. We hired five actors and dressed them up, and we acted out in detail the whole story, which was hilarious. We also took the opportunity to review some body parts as we discussed what exactly it was the Sthenoboea liked about Bellerophon (turns out: his cheeks, his left hip, his eyebrows, and the backs of his knees).
Because we're talking about monsters in Latin I, we spent yesterday telling the story of Bellerophon. We talked about Sthenoboea, Proetus, Iobates, Bellerophon and the Chimaera, the letter-writing, the law of xenia, et ita porro. We hired five actors and dressed them up, and we acted out in detail the whole story, which was hilarious. We also took the opportunity to review some body parts as we discussed what exactly it was the Sthenoboea liked about Bellerophon (turns out: his cheeks, his left hip, his eyebrows, and the backs of his knees).
Wednesday, March 2, 2016
Tuesdays in Latin III/IV
Every Tuesday in Latin III/IV, I like to find absurd pictures that relate to whatever we're talking about - a kid going crazy during a soccer game, my brother sneaking up on his best friend with a screwdriver, et ita porro. I ask the students to get into pairs and give them two minutes to answer a question. Some of the questions I've asked:
Mettius Fufetius in rounds
Mettius Fufetius is a re-do of the Spanish game Pancho Comancho. In Pancho Comancho, five or so students are called to the front of the room and given white boards. You can do this with any structure you want, so imagine we're doing it with adjectives. On one is written purple, on one 'tall,' on one 'angry,' on one 'sick' and on one 'sleepy.' The teacher asks a question of one student: Is Pancho Comancho tall? and starts a timer (I usually do one minute for the first round). That student says, "No, Pancho Comancho is not tall; Pancho Comancho is ________ (any of the other adjectives on any other board)." It then becomes a game of verbal hot potato. The student speaking when the timer goes off has to sit down.
Blind Retell
This activity is based loosely on Betsy Paskvan's awesome Blind Retell. I like to do this after a Movie Talk because it provides an image with a distinct story attached with which all the students are already familiar. The ones have been watching, for example, Monsterbox (which is adorable, and if you've never seen it, I highly recommend it). I showed them them this screen shot:
Monday, January 12, 2015
It's been a while - using one activity for many things
For those of us teaching multiple levels, it can feel like a struggle to come up with distinct lesson plans for each level. That isn't always necessary, though - many activities can be adapted to whatever level you want, up to and including literature. It just has to be embedded, and then you can keep the passages you're reading consistent throughout levels, scaffolding up appropriately with each level.
For example, last week my Latin III and IV students were reviewing some subjunctive and passive structures, while my twos are working on demonstratives and relatives - very different ideas. I wanted to do an interactive activity with both levels, but I didn't want to design two separate activities.
For example, last week my Latin III and IV students were reviewing some subjunctive and passive structures, while my twos are working on demonstratives and relatives - very different ideas. I wanted to do an interactive activity with both levels, but I didn't want to design two separate activities.
Thursday, October 23, 2014
Team Windows - teacher break
I needed a break today. I shouldn't have, because I wasn't at school yesterday, but for whatever reason, teaching the day after you've been out is just enervating, so instead my kids provided comprehensible input to themselves.
Wednesday, August 27, 2014
Read and Draw
This is a summarization technique that I use with some regularity to great effect.
I am fortunate to own ten giant white boards (which can be gotten at CostCo or on Amazon), but this could just as easily be done with butcher paper, on the surface of a desk with whiteboard markers, or on 8.5x11 printer paper. This is a two-day activity.
Day one: I set up the desks in pairs facing each other. Each student was armed with a copy of a familiar passage, and each PAIR had a giant whiteboard and marker. This began almost as a popcorn reading. The first partner read a line to the second partner, who drew a picture and did NOT erase it. The second partner then read the second line and the other one drew it. The goal was, at the end, to have the entire passage illustrated.
I am fortunate to own ten giant white boards (which can be gotten at CostCo or on Amazon), but this could just as easily be done with butcher paper, on the surface of a desk with whiteboard markers, or on 8.5x11 printer paper. This is a two-day activity.
Day one: I set up the desks in pairs facing each other. Each student was armed with a copy of a familiar passage, and each PAIR had a giant whiteboard and marker. This began almost as a popcorn reading. The first partner read a line to the second partner, who drew a picture and did NOT erase it. The second partner then read the second line and the other one drew it. The goal was, at the end, to have the entire passage illustrated.
Wednesday, August 6, 2014
Summarization activity
I was at an immersion program this summer, and I was playing an ongoing game with a good friend of mine from Australia. One of us would tell a story with several details to the other. The other would then have time to think about the story and, when ready, would retell the story in one sentence. We were practicing periodic sentences and subordinating clauses. It was entertaining and also surprisingly helpful.
So today with my Latin III/IV students, I handed out pictures of monsters to them. There were nine kinds of monsters (gorgons, sea monsters, unicorns, dragons, etc), and the first thing they did was silently, for five minutes, write in their journal about the monster they had. Then I asked some of them which monster they had, and as a class we talked a little bit about each monster. When I hit on one (and it varied by class) that the students knew about and could describe and found interesting, we established a list of facts about the creature. Some of these were made up (apparently there are six harpies, of which three are dangerous and three are nice), and others were legitimately facts about the monsters (Medusa is a gorgon, and she is snakey-haired). Then we circled the information. Circling is a TPRS technique intended to get in repetitions (although it is absolutely not the only way to get in repetitions) and, to a certain degree, check comprehension. For example:
So today with my Latin III/IV students, I handed out pictures of monsters to them. There were nine kinds of monsters (gorgons, sea monsters, unicorns, dragons, etc), and the first thing they did was silently, for five minutes, write in their journal about the monster they had. Then I asked some of them which monster they had, and as a class we talked a little bit about each monster. When I hit on one (and it varied by class) that the students knew about and could describe and found interesting, we established a list of facts about the creature. Some of these were made up (apparently there are six harpies, of which three are dangerous and three are nice), and others were legitimately facts about the monsters (Medusa is a gorgon, and she is snakey-haired). Then we circled the information. Circling is a TPRS technique intended to get in repetitions (although it is absolutely not the only way to get in repetitions) and, to a certain degree, check comprehension. For example:
Sunday, July 27, 2014
Locutiones Latinae
I have found in my journey in Latin speaking that the most difficult thing for me (other than, good heavens, convoluted clauses within clauses) has by far been speaking Latin. We tend, especially as tirones, to start speaking English but using Latin words. It's a really easy thing to do, and it's a harder thing to do to start acquiring real Latin. I don't mean to sound like a broken record, but hours and hours and hours of input is the only real way to do that - for us or for our students. Sometimes, though, a list of nice idioms can help, so I'm putting forth a small list here of idioms I've found to be useful, ways we can start saying things more Latinly, if you will - either with our students or simply ourselves.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)