Ping Pong/Volleyball Reading

This is a great partner reading/translation activity, and it is a staple of the TPRS/CI classroom when it comes to reading. Ping pong/volleyball reading is easy to facilitate, and this works wonderful for a re-reading/post-reading of an embedded version or for a VERY easy sight passage (meaning, students are already familiar with all of the vocabulary/language structures):

1. Group students into groups of four. Depending on the number of students in your classroom, it may be necessary to have a few groups of three or of five.
2. Within each group, two students will be a #1 and two students will be a #2. If it is a group of three, you will not number the students. If it is a group of five students, there will be three students who are #1.
3. Have a #1 student pair up with a #2 student in the group. Again, in the group of three, these students will not be numbered and in a group of five, there will be one group which has three students.
4. Give each student a copy of a Latin reading.
5. In their pairs, student #1 will read aloud the first sentence in Latin and then student #2 will translate that sentence into English. Then student #2 will read the next sentence in Latin, after which, student #1 will translate that into English. Student #1 will then read the next sentence in Latin and so on. If it is a group of three, then students will rotate in a clockwork fashion whose turn it is to read in Latin and whose turn it is to translate into English. If it is a group of five, the two students who are #1 will alternate turns.
6. If a student does not know a word, he/she can ask his/her partner. If neither of them know, they are to ask you the teacher.
7. After two minutes, then tell students to switch partners in their groups. If there is a group of three students, it will not change partners.
8. Now with their new partners, students will determine where each of them left off with their previous partner. The new partners will begin to read/translate starting at the EARLIER stopping point of the two. 
9. The new partners will continue to alternate reading/translating.
10. After two minutes, switch partners again in the group. 
11. If partners complete the story, they are to start again from the beginning.
12. Continue switching every two minutes until the story has been read at least 1 1/2 times by the groups (depending on the length of the story, this could be anywhere from 5-10 minutes.

Observations

1. This is such a great activity for you as the teacher, because all you do is facilitate.
2. Though students hate having to start again at an earlier point or to start at the beginning again when they complete the reading, it is a great way to get students to re-read the story and to get in repetitions!
3. If a student does not know a vocabulary word, mispronounces a word wrong or translates something incorrectly, his/her partner will help him/her out. Your job is purely to walk around and to be available as an aid.
4. Students really do learn from each other through listening.
5. I would not do this activity for more than 10 minutes with the same reading, because it gets old for students. 
6. This is a great way to do an embedded reading if the first story is relatively short. When students change partners, they can switch over to the second version, which should be easy to read, since the first version which they just read is embedded in the second version.
7. It is a different way of doing a re-reading of a story. As noted TPRS/CI presenter Carol Gaab says. "The brain craves NOVELTY!'