ACTFL Dinner with Authors

At last week's ACTFL Convention in New Orleans, I had the opportunity to have dinner with a few CI novella authors. Erin Almeranti, the President of Teacher's Discovery, was hosting a dinner outing with them and invited me to join them. I know Erin from having worked with her at CI Summit (sponsored by Voces Digital) these past three summers, and the chance to have dinner with some CI authors (as well as to engage in CI fellowship) was not something I was going to miss!

In attendance were Erica Peplinski, Bryan Kandel, Esmerelda Mora, Grace Sotomayor-Mantri, and Andrea Caulfield. Since I was the only one there who had not written a novella (besides Erin), I asked what the catalyst was for each of them to write their first novella and then to continue writing them. Although this question was coming from a place of curiosity, I was also asking from a more personal place: I am thinking of writing a Latin novella but am not sure if I know what/how to do it.

I got a myriad of varied responses:

• "[This event in the novella] actually happened in my life, so I thought I'd write about it."
• "I wanted something for my students to read on X topic."
• "I did not like how X were portrayed in X novella."
• "I had to cover X theme in my school curriculum, so I wrote this novella to cover that topic."

Essentially, each saw a need/hole that needed to be filled. Many of their novellas were originally readings which they had written for their own students which then turned into novellas.

I currently feel the same way now as these authors once felt: I too see a need/hole in current Latin novellas. This is not to say that those novellas which are currently published do not have any value - I do not feel that way at all! Over ten years ago, there were NO Latin novellas out there, and now I see so many out there. However, the hole/gap which I see is that there are very few Latin novellas which are truly written for novice-low/novice mid readers. While many Latin novellas are marketed as being for Latin 1 or 2, the writing resembles textbook readings which tend to be heavy on vocabulary, sentences which are too long, or do not incorporate the repeated sentence patterns which novice low/mid readers so desperately need to gain reading confidence. 

So I do not know where I will go from here. I do have a number of writings which I have written over the past two years which have turned into rough drafts for possible novellas, but I have just never taken the next step. However, it is very encouraging to have heard from these authors that they felt a need to write their first novellas. At least, I am heading in the right direction!

ACTFL Presentation - Detoxing from the Textbook: Creating a Purposefully Communicative Classroom

This past weekend was the the annual ACTFL Convention, this year in New Orleans. I had the privilege of presenting this year, and I was deeply honored that my presentation was sponsored by the Comprehension-Based Communicative Language Teaching SIG (special interest group). My topic was Detoxing from the Textbook: Creating a Purposefully Communicative Classroom, and it was a updated (much needed) version of a presentation which I had given in 2016 but now focusing on purposeful communication. 

Below is a modified document of my presentation which I posted if you wish to check it out. 

Detoxing from the Textbook: Creating a Purposefully Communicative Classroom - PDF

Guided Choice Writing

As I have posted earlier, I am teaching Latin 1 again and am doing things much differently than I have in the past. So much of this is due to my own increased understanding of what is considered realistic language proficiency at this level (Novice Lowish) and that in many ways in the past, my own expectations of student proficiency for Latin 1 were wrong. I have focused on sheltering vocabulary BIG TIME, targeting high frequency words, with the intent of going "deep and simple" and not "shallow and complex."

As a result, when it has come to writing, I have been experimenting with students doing "guided writes" instead of doing timed writes. In a "guided write," like the name states, I am guiding students through what I want them to write for the creation of a story, since they are novice low writers. There is a degree of student choice where they can add their own details, but I tell them EXACTLY what they are to write for each sentence based on a word bank. I am also only focusing on words which we have been targeting. Below are some examples from throughout the semester:

Week 6

Week 10

Week 14

Observations

1. If you take a look at the three examples, you can see that I keep adding more details or focus on different aspects as the semester progresses. In the last example, you can see that the focus is on creating guided longer, compound sentences using and and because.
2. I like the guided aspect, because for these novice-low students, I do not think that they are ready to just "write" without very specific parameters
3. In many ways, the sentences are like those in Rotating Desks where I am telling students what to write and that they have choice in adding details.
4. This is a form of purposeful communication on a low level, since students are playing around with the language by choosing their own details to add. 
5. Will students' grammar be correct? Most likely, no! BUT I also have NO expectations of it to be, since they are novice low learners. I am only interested in "Are they communicating in a way which I as a sympathetic receptor can understand?" I cannot tell you HOW FREEING that perspective is as a teacher!
6. Even though I am telling students what to write, hopefully as they write these sentences, students are understanding those messages which they are writing. Thus, this is adding to/refining their mental representation of the language. 
7. This is a precursor to the 4-Word Story writing activity which I will introduce to them next semester. By then, these students should have a foundation where they can write more freely on their own.

Have you done something like this? If not, give it a try, and let me know how it goes!