Partnered Reading Activity

This activity is one that I created after wracking my brain last week to come up with a new, interesting, but short reading activity.
This is what I did:
1. After we read a text several times, circled, practiced the vocabulary, and I was sure that students had a good grasp of both the vocabulary and story sequence, I had them put everything away except for a piece of paper.
2. I instructed each student to write 5 sentences about the reading, in their own words. They could write any 5 sentences they wanted. I only required that they A.)wrote sentences that spanned the entire reading (I didn't want 5 sentences about the first paragraph), and B.)each sentence had to have at least 6 words.
3. I went around to each student as they completed their sentences and made corrections. This took a little time in French I with 27 students, but not much time in French III with 18 students.
4. I had students pair up and choose 6 sentences between the two of them. So, out of 10 possible, they chose 6.
5. Students copied their corrected 6 sentences onto a strip of paper: one sentence per strip.
6. Students illustrated each sentence on a sheet of 8x11 paper.
7. Students bundled their strips and pictures together and passed them to another partnership.
8. Each partner had to match up the pictures to the sentences and then, put the sentence/picture combo in order. When they finished, they mixed up and re-bundled their sentences/pictures and passed them off to another group.

Observations:
1. The prep time for this activity is ZERO.
2. The activity provides A LOT of repetition of structures and content.
3. The first matching and reorder took the kids about 3-4 minutes; subsequent efforts took less and less time as students became very good at reordering and matching.
4. I really liked doing this with the kids. The only thing that bothered me was the time to correct the initial sentences. I don't like taking class time to do that, so perhaps if I had kids prep their sentences the day before, I corrected them, and then we did the rest of it the following day, this would cut down on the "down time" while I'm running from kid to kid.

Reader's Theater

Whew! Where has the time gone?? It's already almost MID-MARKING PERIOD! I'm having so much fun with my kiddos this year. Every year that I teach using TPR, TPRS, and CI, I find new, exciting activities for my students. I update how I did things in the past and add or subtract as necessary. So far the best part of the year is that I FINALLY have a solid foundation of the curriculum, so I'm not reinventing the wheel each and every evening as a I plan. I can finally pull activities and use the rest of my (spare!) time to create new things.

One thing I decided to try this year was to do a Reader's Theater with only part of a text. I'm so used to having actors for the entire story, but on this particular day, I just didn't see the purpose for the first paragraph of the story.

I was teaching the first story "Cerberus" from the Cambridge Latin Series Stage 1 book.  I had already told two TPRS stories using TPR vocabulary and vocabulary from the Circling with Balls, so the students were familiar with appropriate story behavior. I read and circled the first paragraph to the students to set up the Reader's Theater. I circled heavily to ensure comprehension. Then, I put 4 carpet squares on the ground with a plate of fake food on top to serve as our table (mensa in Latin). I "hired" two gregarious students to act as the dog (canis) and the cook (coquus). The actors and audience had a ball. I circled what the actors were doing and directed the actors. On this day, I was missing about 7 students due to a class meeting, so I had the actors reprise their roles the next day. This was great because the majority of the class enjoyed a fun repetition, while the students who had missed were able to understand the story.

I really enjoyed doing the Reader's Theater with only about 8 sentences because it held the students' and actors' attention. Too often the actors get bored with background information or the audience spends too much time waiting for action. This paragraph was action-packed and perfect for a Reader's Theater. Total time, including set-up: 15 minutes. After the acting session, I again summarized for the students and finally, we read the paragraph in the book. The students were pleased by how easy it was!! Here are some pictures of my two awesome actors:

Week One...In the Books!

Today marks the end of our first week of the 2014-2015 school year. I'm exhausted beyond measure but I'm feeling pretty successful.

This year I've taken part of each period to not only remind students of the rules, expectations, and procedures, but to teach them WHY I do what I do. With the exception of about 2 students, everyone seems on board. I think taking the time to do this may eventually head off problems that typically arise during the October slump.

The other thing I've done this week is to keep the kids on their toes by switching activities frequently. I LOVE Ben Slavic's circling with balls, but with a 70 minute period, I will lose the students quickly if I only do the circling. So we do a mix of TPR, reading, Kindergarten Day, songs, circling, teaching procedures, PQA, comprehension checks, and (in French III) a little partner work.  In Latin I, I read the book "Quis Me Amat" and did PQA throughout, while the kids sat on carpet squares. We talked about maybe adding a small snack to kindergarten day and that idea went over very well! So far all of this is working well. I enjoy the first few weeks of the new semester because I love getting to know all of my students.

How was your week?

New School Year

     After a very busy summer during which I didn't do much actual schoolwork (even though I thought about it a lot), I feel refreshed and ready to roll. I attended a meeting Friday afternoon with my dear colleague, Cynthia Hitz, in Bryn Mawr, PA, organized by Carol Hill, Lori Belinksy, Anny Ewing, and La for the Tri-State TPRS/TCI Teachers Peer Network.  
     This was an awesome jump-start to my school year because it reminded me of how exciting those first few weeks of newness are. Since beginning my TPRS/CI journey, the first month of school is always my favorite. I start with Ben Slavic's circling with balls activity and just let the language flow. 
     For French I and Latin I, I plan to explicitly teach the students what I want them to do, and as Carol Hill put it, "Norm the class". This is the fourth year I've taught using the TPRS/CI strategy and I usually wait to teach them how to act until we are in the moment.  This leads to frustration later in the semester when I still have students who don't respond to my directions and questions, still blurt out in English, still don't sit with their heads up and eyes up. So from day one, I plan to teach them and tell them what I want from them every day. In both level I classes, I plan to start with a mini-story introducing "She has" and "She wants" just to get students into the groove of what a usual TPRS class will look like. From there I will move into circling with balls and toss in some TPR to get them out of their seats.
     For French III, I plan to review expected behaviors before moving into CI with student-provided pictures of summer activities.  These are students who came directly from French II in the spring, so I know them well. Last year's French II class was the best of my career, so I am eager to talk to them about their summer activities. 
     By this time tomorrow I will be one hour away from completing my 16th first day of school (well...34th if you count my own schooling--haha). I'm ready and excited to meet this year's students. Hope you are too!

Bonjour et Salvete!

     After much debating, coaxing and complaining, I decided it's time to post my teaching experiences online.  I am fortunate enough to teach next door to Cynthia Hitz, who owns the Teaching Spanish w/Comprehensible Input blog.  I say fortunate because without her to bounce ideas off of, on a daily (and sometimes hourly) basis, I would probably still be happily copying worksheets, writing verb conjugation charts, and pulling out my hair every time my students had to write in the language.
     Mind you, teaching with TPRS (Teaching Proficiency through Reading and Storytelling)  and CI (Comprehensible Input) does not make my day like a piece of cake. I struggle daily with the following issues: classroom management, student engagement, workload (I have 4 preps (well, 5 if you count my single French V student when I have her do different activities than the IV kids)), switching between 2 languages and variety. However, even with these struggles, I know more about my students than ever before. I feel like I have a better connection to them and their lives than I ever have before.  And I don't rip out my hair when I ask them to write in the language. 
    I hope that this blog enables me to vent about my failures as well as flaunt my successes.  Thanks for reading!

LOW Expectations...

I got a life-lesson in low expectations this week.
Well, let me explain first.
I don't have low expectations in that I don't work in my classes or that I don't expect hard work from my students. I mean that sometimes I need reality to bring me back down from my lofty ambitions.

I am the only Latin teacher at my high school, and we only offer 2 levels, because I am also the only French teacher and I teach 5 levels of French.  So I neither need to pass my students on to another teacher, nor do I need my Latin II students to be prepared for further study.  I teach loosely from the CLC I and II. We have 70 minute periods and are on a semester schedule, so my instructional hours are fewer than those on traditional, 45-minute schedules or 4x4, 90 minute block schedules. But I digress.

My Latin I classes finish CLC I and I pick up CLC II in Latin II.  Latin I is primarily a mix of TPRS/CI, cultural information, a little bit of word studies, an itty bit of grammar (mostly pop-up style) and a lot of reading. I try to use the book as a backbone to my TPRS stories and CI, but because my students are interested in more than slave-dealers, dishonest merchants, and elections, I branch out liberally as the mood strikes. When we do read in the book, I scaffold heavily because by the time the students reach stage 11 or 12, there are many words to which they just have never been exposed.

Fast-forward to Latin II. This class is tiny for whatever reason, 5 students.  I envisioned the aforementioned lofty ambitions, with the 6 of us in a cozy coffee-klatch, reading and discussing Latin every day for 70 minutes.
Screeeeeeech. 3 days into the semester the wheels fell of of that bus.

How can I expect students to read from CLCII and discuss the texts and grammar when they've not been prepared at all for this type of environment? I lost them fast. Suddenly my class of five had more classroom management issues than my class of 29. HOW is that EVEN possible? The students were bored and confused. They just weren't all that engaged by the story of the hairdresser. Or about the iron mines.

So this past Friday, for the last 25 minutes, I told them to put away the books. I listed 4 REVIEW structures on the board and announced "Erat vir".  They took off with that story. We didn't write anything down but I circled every structure and asked them lots of questions in Latin to elicit the story.  When I felt that they were off on a tangent, I brought them back and made sure to include the review structures.  There were no discipline issues. They were all engaged. It was weirdly magical.

This brings me to my low expectations.  I expected them to speak in Latin, respond to questions, participate, and contribute to the story.  I did not expect them to give me the gender, number, case, and reason of every noun-adjective pair in the reading. I didn't quiz them on the specific use of the ablatives and accusatives. We created a story together. For this 25 minutes, I had my group of students in a circle, discussing Latin in Latin. And it was exactly what I had envisioned.

Sometimes it pays to Keep it Simple.