This Day in History

This is a warm up activity which I learned from Justin Slocum Bailey. If you have never attended one of Justin's sessions at a conference, then you need to! I always learn so much from him, as he expands the way in which language can be used in the classroom. Justin and I have roomed together numerous times at conferences, so we both know each other's quirks.

The premise is quite simple: for a particular day (preferably the day on which you will do this), from among three choices, ask students to pick the event which they think happened on that day. I have found this activity to be a good example of Krashen's Forgetting Hypothesis, where due to the compelling nature of the message in the target language, students "forget" about the language per se, because the message itself is so compelling.

Planning

1. Find an event in history which happened on the day which you plan to use this activity. I use the following websites: On This Day, Thought Co - Inventions, National Day Calendar.
2. Find two other "false" events ("false" as in not having happened on that day) as distractors. 
3. Create a slide presentation with choices A, B, and C, and write the three choices in the target language. Add pictures related to your choices.

Implementation
As a warm up, project the slide presentation, and ask students which historical event they think happened on that day. Here is what I say in Latin every time which I do this:

Latin script
Discipuli, quid hōc die in historiā accīdit? Hodie est (ordinal number) dies mensis (month), ergo, quid hōc die in historiā accīdit? Discipuli, quid putatis? Littera A (read letter A choice)? Littera B (read letter B choice)? an littera C (read letter C choice). Quid putatis? (Get students to call out the letter). Ah, audio litteram _____ saepius quam audio litteram ____ an _____. Videamus.

English script
Class, what happened on this day in history? Today is the (ordinal number) day in the month of ____________. Therefore, what happened on this day in history? Class, what do you think? Letter A (read letter A choice)? Letter B (read letter B choice)? or letter C (read letter C choice)? What do you think? Ah, I am hearing letter ____ more often than I am hearing letter ____ or _____. Let us see.

Example for September 28 - press on slide presentation to see answers.



Observations

1. In order to preserve the novelty of the warm up, I only do this 2-3 times a week.
2. The first couple times when I did this, students were not very receptive due to it being new. Now as I do it more often, I have found students to be quite engaged. A few students have said to me, "Gosh, I wish we did this in my social studies class."
3. This warm up gives me a way to give the date in Latin in a NATURAL CONTEXT, since it is part of an activity, as opposed to announcing it at the beginning of class outside of a context.
4. I have chosen to give the date in a modern Latin context and not in a Roman context (Kalends, Nones, Ides, etc.), because quite honestly, I myself cannot keep track of how the Romans did their calendar dates. Since I want to treat Latin as a modern language, I have chosen to use the modern way for dates.
5. When picking historical events (both true and false), it is important that these events be compelling for STUDENTS! What I find compelling as a historical event is NOT what students find compelling. I suppose that I could do "what happened on this day in Roman history?" which I would find interesting, but would the majority of my Latin students?
6. Although this was not my intention, I am getting in LOTS of subconscious repetitions of phrases like "was born," "was discovered/found," "was invented," and "made its debut" in a natural way (even though I have never formally taught these phrases), since these phrases come up a lot in this warm up. In addition, because I say the same thing every time as part of the script, students are starting to be able to say it with me now.

Sentence Picture Relay

This is a great post-reading activity which I learned from my colleague Rachel Ash, who has her own write up about how to do it. There is a degree of work on the front end, but the actual activity is a great cooperative way for students to demonstrate comprehension of a known reading.

Pre-Activity Preparation

1. Take a story familiar to students, and divide it into 10-15 sentences.
2. Draw pictures for each of the sentences. It does not have to be anything elaborate. To quote the great Latin teacher Sally Davis, "everyone can draw stick figures." Example of my pictures. I created a table on a document to draw the pictures.
3. Type up the sentences. I created table on a document to type up the sentences. 
4. Make 10 copies (for a class of 30) of the pictures and sentences onto cardstock. You can use regular paper, but the cardstock makes the pictures/sentences sturdy.
5. Cut up the sentences and pictures - this is what will take up the most time in preparation. I had students cut these up for me.

In-Class Directions

1. Divide the class into groups of 3. There may be groups of 4, but that can be kind of big.
2. On a table/desk, mix all of the sentences together so that it is one big pile. On another table/desk, separately mix all of the pictures together so that it is one big pile.
3. Explain to students:

• Their job is to match sentences to pictures. There are ____ sentences/pictures pairs.
• As a relay, one team member at a time will grab 2 pictures, 2 sentences or 1 of each and bring them back to the team.
• The next team member will grab 2 pictures, 2 sentences or 1 of each and bring them back to the team and so on.
• As a team, members will try to match sentences with pictures, as more sentences and pictures are added.
• As more pictures and sentences are added, team members will need to determine specific sentences or pictures which need to be gathered.
• If a team receives a duplicate of a sentence or picture, then the team needs to send it back with their next "runner."
• Teams will have to match the sentences with the pictures AND to put the story in order.
• First team to complete the activity “wins”!

Observations

1. When explaining the activity to students, it does not make much sense, but once it begins and students begin to bring pictures/sentences to their teams, students understand how the activity works.
2. This can get VERY competitive depending on your students. 
3. I love hearing students communicate with their runners, "Bring back the picture with _________" or "We need the sentence that says _________," as they now need specific sentences/pictures to complete the activity.
4. The activity took about 10 minutes. I thought that it would take longer but because students were very familiar with the story in the target language, they did not think that the activity was difficult to do.
5. Remind students that part of the task is to put the story in order! Many get caught up in the matching that they forget this part.
6. Alternate version - I have done this activity where I broke up pictures and sentences into clauses, instead of full sentences so that students were focusing on specific parts of the sentence.

Using Book Snaps/SnapChat

Although I have my Ed.S degree in Instructional Technology and am quite versed in the application of technology to one's curriculum "for the creation of a student-centered, 21st-century, blended-learning, critical-thinking classroom environment" (that last phrase sounds very Educationese, because I constantly had to use those buzzwords in my degree program), at the same time, I have been somewhat hesitant to implement technology in a CI-based setting for the following reasons:

1. Most world language technology is incomprehensible for novice-level students or focuses on forced output.
2. The majority of classroom technology focuses on low-levels of critical thinking, operates at a Substitution level on the SAMR model, and/or serves more as entertainment than true engagement.

(see here for my posts on Technology in a CI Classroom, part 1 and Technology in a CI Classroom, part 2)

Earlier this year, Meredith White, a Spanish CI teacher in my district, demonstrated how she uses SnapChat in her classroom, and while I was VERY impressed with how it can be implemented, I was also a bit tentative in utilizing it for both professional reasons (how can social media be properly applied to the classroom without crossing the line?) and personal reasons (what the heck is SnapChat, since I myself have never used it?).

This past summer, I learned about Book Snaps and realized that this is definitely something which can be applied to the CI Classroom. Essentially, Book Snaps is a SnapChat involving a reading of some kind. It is primarily used for students to interact with, to write commentary on, and to react to a text (think of students writing comments on sticky notes in a text but with SnapChat). Once I learned about this, I realized that Book Snaps could be used for students to "illustrate" sentences from a story!

Here is a video explaining how to make a Book Snap:

For the past few days, I have been going over the following story with students (it is based on a Movie Talk), so today, I had students create Book Snaps of the story:

Rock, Paper, Scissors Story

Ecce saxum. Terra saxum generat. Subito saxum aliquid audit. Aliquid magnos sonos facit. Saxum surgit ut videat quid magnos sonos faciat. Ecce puella in silva! Silva puellam generat. Puella est chartacea, et magnos sonos facit. Saxum puellam chartaceam videt, et credit puellam chartaceam esse valde pulchram.

Ecce forfex in silva! Saxum valde timet, quod videt puellam chartaceam et credit forficem velle occidere puellam chartaceam. Saxum in silvam cadit. Forfex multas arbores occidit. Saxum credit forficem velle occidere puellam chartaceam. Saxum vult fugere cum puella chartacea, sed puella chartacea non vult fugere cum saxo. Puella non credit forficem velle occidere eam (her). Eheu! Saxum puellam chartaceam tangit, et succumbit. Saxum et puella chartacea in silva fugiunt, quod credunt forficem velle occidere eos (them). Vis est forfici, quod occidit multas arbores in silva.

Eheu! Forfex puellam chartaceam occidit. Saxum credit puellam chartaceam esse mortuam, et est valde iratum. Saxum vult occidere forficem! Vis est saxo, et occidit forficem. Forfex est mortua. Saxum est valde triste, quod puella chartacea est mortua. Saxum vult servare (to rescue) puellam chartaceam, sed si (if) tanget puellam chartaceam, succumbet...

Assignment directions

Choose ONE of the following options:

Book Snaps

1. Using SnapChat, take a picture of the story text. This will serve as your background.
2. Type in the text of a sentence or two. NOTE - you cannot use sentences with the word ecce.
3. Adjust where you want the text to be on your picture.
4. Insert emojis, bitmojis, stickers, which apply to the text which you chose. NOTE - As this is an assignment, these emojis, stickers, bitmojis MUST BE SCHOOL APPROPRIATE.
5. You may also write or draw pictures onto your Book Snap.
6. When finished, save to your phone’s photo album.
7. Submit your SnapChat photo to me using your eClass Dropbox for Latin 2.

SnapChat

1. Using SnapChat, take a picture with you as a character depicting a particular sentence in the story. Either take a selfie or have someone take the picture for you. There may be other people in your picture but each person is turning in his/her own picture.
2. Type in the text of a sentence or two. NOTE - you cannot use sentences with the word ecce. 
3. Adjust where you want the text to be on your picture.
4. Insert emojis, bitmojis, stickers, which apply to the text which you chose. NOTE - As this is an assignment, these emojis, stickers, bitmojis MUST BE SCHOOL APPROPRIATE.
5. You may also write or draw pictures onto your Book Snap.
6. When finished, save to your phone’s photo album.
7. Submit your SnapChat photo to me using your eClass Dropbox for Latin 2.

Here are some examples of students Book Snaps based on the story:

My goal is now to create a Google Slides presentation of these slides and show them in class.

Observations

1. Most students opted to do a Book Snap, instead of a SnapChat. I do not know why (considering how often they take selfies in class!).
2. This is another way for students to demonstrate comprehension of a reading.
3. Even though students are very well-versed in SnapChat, I was surprised at how long it took students to create a Book Snap. I thought it would take 5-10 minutes to create a single Book Snap, but it took roughly 10-20 minutes.
4. Even though many students created Book Snaps of the same sentence, no two were alike; many students were very creative!
5. This was definitely another way for students to re-read the story to choose a sentence, thus getting in more subconscious repetitions of the language.
6. For those students who did not have access to a device or SnapChat, I had them illustrate a sentence on paper.

Read, Write, Draw, Pass

This is another awesome post-reading activity which I learned from Linda Li this past summer (Martina Bex also has a great post about this activity). It is loosely based on a party game called Paper Telephone/Telephone Pictionary, and it works great as a way to get students to review a known reading.

Directions

1. Every student needs paper, pen/pencil, and the reading passage which you want to review.
2. Divide students into groups of six. There may be groups of seven or as little as four, but try to avoid groups of three. Arrange students in a circle.
3. Have students fold paper vertically/hot-dog style. Tell students that they will only be drawing on one side of the paper.
4. Tell students to pick ONE sentence from the story and to write it at the top of their paper. Write it as it appears in the story, i.e. students are NOT to translate the sentence.
5. Have students PASS their paper to the person on their left. 
6. Now have students draw a visual representation of that sentence underneath it. Leave some space between the sentence and picture.
7. Stop students after 45 seconds, and have students FOLD the sentence over the back of the paper so that it cannot be seen. Only the picture should be showing.
8. Have students PASS their paper to the person to their left. It is important that students do NOT pass until you say so.
9. Now have students find the ONE sentence from the reading that matches the drawing. Students are to write the sentence underneath the picture. Leave some space between the picture and the sentence.
10. Stop students after 45 seconds, and have students FOLD the picture over to the back so that only the sentence is showing.
11. Have students PASS their paper to the person on their left. It is important that students do not pass until you say so.
12. Continue this pattern of drawing, passing, writing, and passing until students in a group of six have their original paper - it should be a total of six passes. For groups smaller than six, then they will continue to pass until the sixth pass. For groups larger than six, they will not get their original paper back so they will have to find theirs.
13. Tell students to unfold their papers to see how accurate others were with drawing pictures/writing sentences for their original sentence.

Observations

1. Having taken part in this activity myself when learning Mandarin from Linda Li, I can tell you that it is great activity for post-reading on so many different levels: re-reading of a known text (thus getting in more repetitions of language), comprehension of what is being read demonstrated non-verbally through a picture, comprehension of what is being communicated in a picture and writing that in the target language via the story/passage.
2. Depending on students' interpretation of the pictures/sentences given to them, this activity mimics the game Telephone, because the sentences and pictures can begin to change. It is always fun to hear some students at the end talk about how their original sentence changed.