If I were to Write a Latin Novella

(This blog post is a continuation of a series on literacy in the language classroom)

I have been asked a number of times why I have not yet written a Latin novella for students. Prior to April 2024, my response would have been , "I have no idea where to start or what to write about. I do not fully know what truly characterizes a novice reader for beginning L2 learners. While I do understand the concept of sheltering vocabulary, not grammar, and I do implement it with my own students when I create readings for them, the difference is that these readings are for my students, not the Latin student community as a whole." 

However, I have a completely different mindset now after reading several of the novice level Spanish novellas which Margarita Perez Garcia has written. For someone like me with very little knowledge of Spanish, that was such an incredible learning experience for me (see blog post here). Moreover, I am blown away and honored that Margarita left a lengthy comment on that post thanking me for what I had written and then explaining her thought processes in writing her novellas (read her comments at the bottom of the post - they are a goldmine of knowledge!).

In her About the Author section, Margarita notes that she "write(s) fiction and non-fiction in Spanish that beginners and struggling readers can read" and that she is "passionate about supporting beginning Spanish learners in their reading journey." I like that description very much, because it truly shows her heart, and Margarita's novellas definitely reflect that vision. So if I were to write a Latin novella, writing one which "beginners and struggling readers in Latin can read" would be my primary goal - one which would be geared towards Novice Low Latin students.

To achieve this, I would do the following:

1. Keep a low overall head word count, yet facilitate continued exposure of this focused vocabulary, i.e., shelter vocabulary.
2. Use short, simple sentences, which consist of predictable repetitive patterns of word chunks and sentence/grammatical patterns - these are characteristics found in the majority of Novice Low L2 readers, including English.
   
3. Include compelling subject matter and characters which create an emotional connection to readers.
4. Write the text not as paragraphs but as individual sentences which are formatted on the right margin of the page. The Foundation for People with Learning Disabilities suggests "Text should always be aligned on the right hand side of the page, and images should be aligned on the left hand side of the page [to help struggling readers]." Margarita Perez Garcia does this in her novice-level novellas - now I know why!
5. Implement other Easy Read standards (again from Margarita Perez Garcia):
1. No more than 15 words per sentence.
2. One idea per line, one sentence per line and if the sentence must break, then break it at a natural "breathing point" where it makes sense.
6. Include illustrations which can serve as additional input for text.
7. Maybe use Roman culture as its background. While I understand that L2 novellas are a great way to embed and to teach culture, quite often I do get tired that Latin readings are stuck in ancient times. I guess my SALVI, spoken-Latin background is screaming, "You do realize that Latin is still used communicatively to talk about today's modern world and is not bound to the first century!"

Now that I have some parameters, maybe one day I will get around to writing a Novice Low novella!

My Elevator Speech on Language Acquisition

If I were to give an elevator speech about language learning (especially to administrators!), I would pare it down to these five concepts (and by no means am I trying to oversimply the language acquisition process nor to reduce it to a series of general platitudes) - this is what I have learned about the language acquisition process over these many years from reading/listening to Stephen Krashen, Bill Van Patten, and so many others whom I deeply respect:

1. Language learning is unlike any other subject area, because it is not linear in nature.
2. Because of this, learners do not acquire language on a prescribed timeline or at the same pace.
3. The language acquisition process is subconscious in nature.
4. When encountering L2, the brain on its own is constantly creating, making connections to, and revising its mental representation of that language.
1. That language which the brain understands, it keeps and then creates, adds to, and refines those existing mental connections.
2. That language which the brain does not understand, it throws out.
5. As a result, learners need to interact with/have constant exposure to understandable, meaningful, purposeful messages in L2 so that the brain can create/revise its mental representation of that language.

For me, this elevator speech can then serve as a springboard to discuss other topics such as proficiency vs. performance, the need for compelling messages, the role of the affective filter in learning, the monitor hypothesis, etc.

My Journey into Bellringers

I am starting my 27th year of teaching, and I have seen A LOT of educational trends and new "flavor of the day" initiatives come and go. One of them is bellringers (also known as do-nows, entry tickets, and openings), and it is something which my district has been really pushing this past year as part of its "I do, we do, you do" curriculum model. I have resisted the idea of bellringers, because I have always associated them with "cookie-cutter" educational frameworks. Plus, the world language examples which I have always seen relate to grammar-translation models, focus on L1 discussions about culture, or do not involve comprehensible language. 

However, last year, my colleague John Foulk began to open his classes with a bellringer, and I was intrigued by this. In addition, this past summer at both the Fluency Matters Conference and the CI Summit, I had some good conversations with some CI/ADI folks about how they use bellringers successfully in their classes. I also then found Cindy Hitz's blog post about how she uses bellringers, and I decided to give it a try (Cindy was one of the first CI/ADI people whom I met - it was at the 2013 ACTFL Convention in Orlando, and she was working at the TPRS Books exhibitor book. Over the years, I have learned so much from Cindy at conference presentations and from her blog, and finally this summer at the Dallas Acquisition Academy, I was able to see her again in person after many years!).

When school began this past August, I started every day of my classes with a 5-minute bellringer. I DO NOT KNOW WHY I WAITED SO LONG TO DO THEM, BECAUSE I LOVE THEM! And yes, they can align with CI/ADI pedagogy and be communicative!

If you have not read Cindy's blog posts about bellringers, read it (link here). She does such a great job of explaining the purpose, gives examples of bellringers, and details her observations of their efficacy. My blog post here will mirror hers.

Examples of my bellringers (again, refer to Cindy's blog post here, since many of these mirror hers):

1) Vocabulary bellringers

2) Scenarios

3) Translation

4) Tables

5) Graphics/Writing

6) Cloze Sentences

7) Who Would Say? (yes, the man in the picture has three arms - the perils of using AI to create an image lol)

Observations - many of these line up with Cindy's own observations:

1. Bellringers require commitment on your part so that it becomes part of the expected beginning-of-classroom routine. 
2. I am AMAZED by how focused students are after the bellringer is completed compared to when I did not implement them previously. 
3. The whole bellringer time should take 10 minutes - I give 5 minutes for students to complete it (while I take attendance) and 5 minutes to go over the bellringer as a class. My class periods are 53 minutes.
4. The bellringer itself needs to connect with the current unit/lesson. The point of the bellringer is to activate current background knowledge needed for the day's lesson or to reinforce past knowledge.
5. Bellringers are a source of input, so they need to be COMPREHENSIBLE! If they are not, then input disruptions occur, and the brain will toss out what it does not understand. 
6. Bellringers do not need to involve critical thinking/higher order thinking - the goal is just to transition students into an academic frame of mind.
7. Bellringers need to be "easy" so that students feel successful with them. When students feel successful with bellringers, they are more apt to buy into them.
8. Much like classroom activities, bellringers need to be scaffolded accordingly.
9. I allow students to have their phones/listening devices out during the 5 minutes when they are completing the bellringer, but when that time is up and we are ready to go over it, I then begin my cell phone ritual.
10. Bellringers need to involve students writing them down and interacting with them. I require students to have a composition book solely for bellringers. Partly I do this to ensure that students are doing the bellringer, but mainly more because...
11. I use bellringers as a time to toss in pop-up theory! Daily I tell students, "Please write down the bellringer. Whenever you write down understandable messages in Latin, your brain makes a connection. That which the brain does not understand, it throws out. If there is a word which you do not understand, ask me so that your brain can start making a connection with that word!" I am sure that students are sick of hearing me say that lol.

What has your experience been with bellringers?

Smashdoodles

This is a great post-reading activity, and I feel like I have come totally late to the party on this one. A Smashdoodle is a way for students to interact with a reading, to demonstrate comprehension, and to summarize these interactions in various ways. It is called a Smashdoodle, because essentially, one is "smashing together" various components of a reading in one place to demonstrate comprehension, reflection, and/or higher order thinking. A Smashdoodle can be done digitally on a slide or on paper. Students can create a poster summarizing different parts of the text, fill out a foldable graphic organizer, or fill out boxes on a sheet of paper.

You can ask WHATEVER questions you want on a Smashdoodle, but the purpose is that the artifact is a holistic summary of the text. Possible questions to address - students can answer this as written sentences or as images (digital or drawn):

• Copy five sentences which best summarize the text.
• Who are the characters in this reading?
• Where is the location of the reading?
• Draw a picture which summarizes the reading
• Write down any words from the reading which are new to you
• Write down (parts of speech) from the reading.
• Reflection questions
• I learned that…
• I was surprised/shocked to learn that…
• I found it interesting that

Below is my first attempt at a Smashdoodle - it is very basic and on paper:

As I said, there are SO many different ways to do a Smashdoodle, and I feel that others explain it so much better than I do (and they have student examples to show). Below are some blog posts from where I learned how to do a Smashdoodle:

• Scott Benedict Smashdoodle write up
• Martina Bex Smashdoodle write up
• John Piazza Smashdoodle write up
• Elizabeth Detlinger Smashdoodle write up

For those of you who have done Smashdoodles, what do you like about them?

Backwards Design for a Reading - CI Summit Example

A HUGE question which many novice CI/ADI practitioners ask is "I have readings/authentic literary resources in my textbook which I need to cover. How does one lesson plan for a reading?" This is a really good question which we experienced CI/ADI teachers/trainers need to do a better job of addressing, because so often at conferences and trainings while we may teach skills and demonstrate various strategies, we leave out this very important component.

The key to lesson planning a reading is backwards design, but to be honest, it can actually be a very detailed process. I originally learned this from Karen Rowan years ago (and she may have learned it from someone else) as well as from others in recent years. I have found that although this process can appear onerous, it really does provide a good map for where to go and what to cover. My goal is that when students see the actual textbook/literary/ authentic reading, 98%-100% is already comprehensible to them.

The following is from this past summer's CI Summit and how I did backwards planning for a reading. During our daily cohort time, as a team member of Cohort 2, my task was to teach Latin to this group of 50 teachers (most of whom knew NO Latin) with the goal that on the last day they would be able to read a short cultural reading IN LATIN which I had written up about the city of Pompeii and Mt. Vesuvius. These Latin lessons were roughly three 25-30 minutes sessions over 3.5 days.

Mons Vesuvius erat mons iratus in Italia antiqua. Pompeii erat urbs in Italia antiqua per litora. Quod Pompeii erat urbs per litora, erat urbs popularis! Multi homines iverunt ad visitandos Pompeiios, quod Pompeii erat per litora. 

Sed Mons Vesuvius erupit, et urbs Pompeii deleta est! Sed cum Mons Vesuvius eruperit, mons iratus multam terram addidit! Pompeii non iam erat per litora, sed erat procul a litore! 

Hodie, Pompeii est urbs in ruinis. Multi homines ad urbem Pompeios eunt ad visitandas ruinas. 

Mons Vesuvius adhuc est mons iratus activus! In futuro, Mons Vesuvius erupiet! In futuro, multi urbes in monte et per litora deleti erunt!

How I backwards planned this:

1. I wrote the cultural passage first. Since these were novice-low Latin learners, my emphasis was on “sheltering/limiting vocabulary,” with the intent of lots of repetitions and predictable sentences/structures. In addition, I made a conscious effort of utilizing as many cognates as possible
2. I made a list of EVERY vocabulary word/phrase in the passage and categorized them as follows: 
   
3. I determined which words I would TPR/gesture - mons iratus, per litora, iverunt
4. I determined which words I would use as a password - deleta/deleti sunt.
5. Using the words which i determined for a preview vocabulary story, I wrote a “silly story” 
6. I determined which words I would gloss and provide the L1 meaning in the cultural reading. Because I only had a few 30-minute sessions of Latin before revealing the cultural reading, I felt that I glossed a lot more words than I normally would have. If I had one more Latin session, I would have been able to target many of the glossed words.
   
7. I determined the activities to be used with this story
8. I determined how to introduce the cultural reading 

During CI Summit, my daily lesson plans were as follows:

• Day 1 (15 minutes) - TPR/Gestures, TPR/Gestures with Story
• Day 2 (30 minutes) - Password at the Door, Review of TPR Gestures, What is Behind the Door, Readers Theater of "Silly Story"
• Day 3 (30 minutes) - Post Reading of Silly Story - SEL Reading, Is this Relevant to the Story, Hot Potato
• Day 4 (25 minutes)- Cultural Reading, Read/Draw/ Discuss

Observations

1. Why did I not use an authentic resource about the eruption of Mount Vesuvius and the destruction of Pompeii? My primary goal was comprehensibility and readability. If you know of an authentic Latin resource which communicates this event for NOVICE-LOW learners, please let me know!
2. I think too many times CI/ADI critics get caught up in an assumption that all we CI/ADI teachers do is focus on "silly stories" and never do anything beyond that. While I can understand that misconception, my use of a "silly story" was very deliberate and was to preview vocabulary and sentence structures which participants would experience in the cultural reading. In other words, it was part of the process and not the end goal.  

Hope this helps some!