The Card Game

In my B.C.I (Before Comprehensible Input) days, there were lots of vocabulary activities which I loved playing with students, because they enjoyed them so much. Now that I am a CI teacher, I realize that many of them really do not lead to true language acquisition, but at the same time, does that mean I should throw them out? However, with a slight twist here or there, they can be adapted and be used easily for CI purposes. The Card Game is one of these activities.

I learned the Card Game years ago from my district's world language coordinator. It sounds like a very basic activity, and quite honestly, when I first explain it to students, it sounds the stupidest game ever. However, the Card Game was one of my students' favorite activities, because it was so competitive. NOTE - because my class is deskless, it is almost impossible for me to play this game, but if I were to have desks, I would definitely play it.

Materials

1. 5-6 different colored stacks of 3x5 index cards, with each stack being 20-25 cards. Depending on the number of students, you may need more or less.
2. A list of 20-25 vocabulary words which students already know. Again, depending on the number of students, you may need more or less. You can also use short phrases if you want. I would not use sentences because they are too long.

Pre-Activity

1. In each stack of colored index cards, write one vocabulary word VERY BIG in the target language per card. By the end, you will have 5-6 different colored stacks, with each stack having the same vocabulary words.

Activity

1. As the teacher, take one of the colored stacks of cards.
2. Divide the class into 4-5 different teams (depending on how many stacks of colored cards which you have left).
3. Give a different stack of colored index cards to each team.
4. Have each team distribute its cards to its team member. Each team member may not necessarily have the same amount of cards. Usually 5-6 words is a good amount of cards for each student.
5. On the board, write the names of the colors of the cards in the target language on the board. Each color represents a team.
6. Have students lay their cards out on their desks FACE UP so that they can read what is written on the cards. Each student should have between 4-6 cards. 
7. Now ask students if there are any words which they do not know and to ask you for the meaning. This is really important in order to establish meaning. 
8. Explain to the students, "I am going to call out the English definition of a word. If you have that word, then hold up the card as high as you can as quickly as you can. HOWEVER, there are 4-5 other teams who have that same word. The first correct card which I see gets a point. Also, just because I call a word once does not mean that I cannot call it again."
9. As the teacher, pick a card from your stack, and call out the English definition.
10. If students have that word, they are to hold up that card. Whatever team's correct card you see first will get a point.
11. As the teacher, put the card back in your stack, and pull out another card. Repeat the directions - the first team which gets 10 points wins.
12. At the end of the round (when a team gets 10 points), have teams switch cards within themselves, e.g., students with green cards will switch stacks between each other. Now students have a new set of vocabulary words. If students do not know the words, they are to ask the student who just had them.
13. Play another round.
14. After 2-3 rounds, tell students that they are to either:
1.  do a writing in the target language which involves the words which they have in their stack OR
2. draw a picture which uses the words in their stack 

Observations

1. This became my students' favorite game (when I had desks). I played it as an adult when I learned it, and WOW, it is a very competitive game.
2. This game is FAST, so this can frustrate the slower processors.
3. What I like about this game is when students switch stacks and I call out a definition, students, who just had the card but switched with someone, can get very frustrated, because they no longer have that word. This shows me that those students know that word now.
4. Although you can have students do a writing afterwards, I have found that drawing a picture was easier for students and did not require as much thought as preparing to write something. 
5. Because this can be a fast game and students will argue which card was held up first, I will also pick a student who will help me judge which team held up its card first.

5 Ways to Use One Set of Ilustrations

In preparing a CI unit involving a story, sometimes I like to incorporate my own illustrations of a story into my lessons. I think that it adds another level of comprehensible input for students, as well as aids in engaging students. At the same time, however, I also do not wish to create a series of illustrations if I am only going to use it just once for five minutes in a unit. I want to get maximum benefit from my time creating them. As the brain craves novelty, here is a way to use one set of illustrations in five different ways in a unit. This will require you drawing a set of pictures only once, in addition to using a photo scanner.

NOTE - if you do not feel like you are good enough of an "artist," then you can always have a student illustrate for you. By no means am I a skilled illustrator, but I can definitely draw stick figures, and as the great Sally Davis once told me, "Everyone can draw stick figures."

1. First, create a series of illustrations for Find a Sentence. This set of pictures will serve as your basis which can be used for the other four activities. N.B. - I actually will try to illustrate each sentence in the story (which could be as many as 15), so there may be a 2nd page of pictures, but for Find a Sentence, I will only use one of the pages.
2. Now scan each of those frames individually. Now that you have each picture scanned individually, create a slide presentation of your story with the text and corresponding picture. This can be used to project the story as a review.
   
   
3. Duplicate that slide presentation but now use it as a Cloze Sentence activity.
   
4. Now duplicate that slide presentation of the story but remove the text. Print that slide presentation (in color if possible) for a Picture Story Retell. 
5. Using the original page(s) of pictures, now create a Sentence Picture Relay of the story.

For me, Telling a Story with Pictures and then Cloze Sentences would be early in a unit, Find the Sentence would be in the middle, and both a Sentence Picture Relay and Picture Story Retell would be at the end - all in combination with other activities.

Observations

1. I have found that when using the same pictures of a story for different activities lends to their comprehensibility, since students become very familiar with them and what the illustrations are communicating.

Vocabulary Highlighter Game

Exams are coming up in a few weeks for my students, so every day this week, I have been trying to do some quick vocabulary review activities (such as Hot Seat and Quick Draw) that will both engage students in order to prepare them for the exam and will not take up more than 15 minutes of time. This is a popular activity which I learned from a colleague at my former school. Though not necessarily a CI activity per se, it is quick and engaging for students, and it involves highlighters!

Preparation
For this, you will need to create a word cloud of vocabulary words which you want to review. I have found that 25 words is a good amount. Unfortunately, finding a website/extension for the creation of word clouds has been difficult, because many websites like Wordle do not work on Chrome or are not compatible with Windows 10. I use a MS Word extension to create my word clouds. Google Docs also has an extension for word clouds, but I have found that MS Word has more capabilities.

Below is a video for creating a word cloud on MS Word.

In creating a MS word cloud for this activity, I use the following settings:

1. Font: Arial
2. Colors: Black on White
3. Layout: Half on Half (this will allow for words to be both horizontal and vertical)
4. Case: Intelligent

Here is a MS word cloud which I made for my Latin 2 students

Directions

1. Pair up students.
2. You can have students either sit next to each other or across from each other.
3. Students will need a common surface between them. It can be a desk, or if your class is deskless like mine, then I had students sit on the floor with a whiteboard between them.
4. Each student in a pair needs to have a different-colored highlighter, i.e., no two students who are paired up can have the same color highlighter.
5. Give each student a handout of the word cloud.
6. There will be two different rounds of play, so have each pair of students use only one of the word clouds for the first round.
7. Have each pair place the word cloud between them, and give students roughly 30-45 seconds to look at the words in order to familiarize themselves with both the words and the layout.
8. You as the teacher call out a definition in English.
9. The goal for each student is to be the first person to highlight the correct word.
10. After about 9-10 words, now tell students that they have to use their NON-DOMINANT hands to highlight the correct word. Do this for about 9-10 words.
11. After most of the words have been called, have students count how many words they each got correct. They will know based on the color of their highlighter. 
12. To start the second round, students will now use the other word cloud.
13. Tell students that they need to put this word cloud in a new orientation, i.e., if it was laid out horizontal before, now it needs to be vertical. This makes the second round more challenging, since although students know what words to expect, the words are in a "different place," since the orientation is different.
14. Repeat steps 8-10 again.
15. When finished, have students create their final totals for both rounds.

Observations

1. As I said, this is a fast, quick activity. It lasts about 10 minutes. 
2. Depending on your students, it can get VERY competitive.
3. I have a tub of different-colored highlighters in the event that students have the same color or do not have a highlighter. I suppose one can use markers for this activity.
4. Having students use their non-dominant hand for part of it adds to the novelty of the activity.
5. Variation: Because vocabulary does not exist in a language isolated outside of a context, you can make a word cloud out of phrases in the target language. I know that Wordle will allow you to do this.
6. It is not really a CI activity, but it is definitely fun to watch!

Camera Freeze Frame

If you are looking for a good 1.5 day project, this is a good one. Camera Freeze Frame is an activity which I learned from Carrie Toth at NTPRS a few years ago, and it is an extension of another activity which I had done in the past. Essentially, the basic idea is to give students a digital camera, with which they will take pictures which depict scenes from a particular story. These pictures can then be used as a matching activity (which scene is this from the story?) or as a digital storybook. Carrie Toth has taken this idea to a whole new level using the app Educreations.

The concept is still the same: give students a digital camera and have them depict scenes from a story which the class has been reading.

PreClass Directions:
As the teacher, you will need to do the following:

1. Pick out a short story which students will depict using pictures. I have found that the story should be no more than 9 sentences due to time restrictions.
2. Organize the class into groups of 6 (if possible). I preselected the groups myself based on student personality types so that there would be a mix.
3. Set up a Google Drive folder where students will deposit their pictures
4. Reserve digital cameras for the class. Each group will need a camera. I chose not for students to use their phones, because since they will upload their pictures to Google Drive, every student's phone is different which results in interface issues.
5. Reserve a few laptops so that multiple groups can upload their pictures at the same time.

Class Directions
Day 1

1. Go over your particular story to ensure that meaning has been established for all students. For this story, I did a choral reading and then played a round of Stultus.
2. Here are the directions which I handed out: Freeze Frame directions
3. Go over the directions with the class to ensure that all understand what they are.
4. Give the groups time to select student jobs and to begin to stage each scene.

Day 2

1. Give a digital camera to the photo taker in each group.
2. Give students a choice of props.
3. Set out 2-3 laptops around the room.
4. Each group will have 30-35 minutes to "shoot their scenes." 
5. When each group is finished, the photo taker will upload the pictures to his/her group's folder. 

Day 2 Post Class Directions

As the teacher, you will need to do the following:

1. Using Educreations,for each group, create a presentation by uploading each picture onto a slide. Because each picture has the sentence number in it, it is easy to put the pictures in order.
2. For each presentation, record your voice narrating each story. Add any graphics using the whiteboard function.

Day 3

1. Show each group's video to the class.

Observations

1. What a fun activity for students! This activity also ranks high on Bloom's Taxonomy, as it is a high-level critical thinking activity; students are creating their own meaning and interpretation of the story.
2. Students actually want to see each other's videos. Because they are all familiar with the story, students want to see how others interpreted the story.
3. In showing the video to students, you are getting in repetitions of the story, although students do not realize it. All students care about is watching the videos, but this is a VERY sneaky way to get into subconscious repetitions of vocabulary and of structures.

Here are some links to a few of the presentations which my students created (you will need Flash to view them):

1) Group 1
2) Group 2 
3) Group 3

Thanks again to Carrie Toth for this idea!

Getting Caught Up in Activities and Not in Acquisition

Every time I go to world language conferences, I am always looking for new activities for my students. If you are like me, you find yourself getting into a rut with the same old activities, and you want to add some novelty to your classroom. A danger exists, however, in doing this, because we can easily get caught up in activities and not in acquisition itself. We look for the next "fun" activity to add to our arsenal. We so want to engage our students that we actually end up just entertaining them instead, and as a result, in blindly throwing activities at students, sequencing and scaffolding can become disjointed, and little/no language acquisition actually occurs.

Now do not get me wrong: I am not opposed to activities. I like a good game of vocabulary BINGO, because it is a nice break for students (and for me), and I definitely enjoy using Kahoot with students every once in awhile. At the same time, I do not want to rely on these as primary activities.

If I am going to be implementing Comprehensible Input in my classroom, regarding activities, the basic questions which I must ask are this: is this activity promoting language acquisition through the delivery of and interaction with understandable messages? Where does this activity fit in the acquisition process, i.e., if it is output related, has enough input preceded it that output is a natural overflow? These two questions serve as my litmus test.

But let me also say that teaching using CI is a process and definitely takes time to learn. By no means do I ever want to turn off someone from using a CI activity regardless of his/her familiarity with CI. I will be the first to say that I am still learning how to implement CI in my classroom!   

If you have never attended a Blaine Ray workshop or attended NTPRS, I highly recommend that you do, because you will get the chance to experience language learning first hand like one of your students. I feel like I have learned so much about sequencing CI activities just from attending Betsy Paskvan's Japanese sessions at these past two NTPRS conferences (and yes, in many cases, i have taken her Japanese lessons and Latinized them!). Apparently, Betsy's sequencing of activities has worked, because I can still retell her "Yoda, Darth Vader, and Oprah" story in Japanese, and that was almost two years ago! 

The Sex Game

Update - there is now a Sex Game 2.0 version  (7/14/22)

This activity is a lot more innocent than the title states. The Latin word for "six" is sex - yep, Latin students love this fact. It is actually based on a Spanish activity called Seis (one of my Latin colleagues calles it Surrender on Six), and I learned it both from a Spanish teacher at my school and from Miriam Patrick, who is a fellow CI Latin teacher in my district. It is a high activity game involving rolling of dice.

Let me give you the basic directions of the game and then my CI twist on it:

1. Make a list of vocabulary words. Around 75 words is good.
2. Divide the class into groups of 4. Groups of 3 work well too, but groups of 5 can get a bit big.
3. Students will need to arrange their desks so that there is one common workspace, with all desks touching with no spaces in between them.
4. Every student will receive a list of vocabulary words.
5. Every group will receive one writing utensil and one die.
6. At the beginning, each group will place the one writing utensil in the middle of its workspace.
7. Have students establish an order of rolling the die.
8. Each student will take a turn rolling the die. The goal is to roll a six. If a student does not roll a six, then the die passes to the next person.
9. The first student who rolls a six does two things: yells SEX (indicating "I rolled a six!"), grabs the writing utensil, and starts to write as many English definitions as he/she can. It is not required to go in order of the list; students can begin anywhere on the list.
10. Meanwhile, the rest of the group continues to roll the die until someone rolls a six.
11. At this point, that student will yell SEX, grab the writing utensil from the person who has it, and will now start writing as many English definitions as he/she can.
12. The activity ends when someone has completed the page or after a set amount of time.
13. Tell students to switch papers and to count up the number of correct answers. Only complete words count - if a word is halfway written, it does not count.
14. There are two winners: the individual with the most number of correct answers, and the group with the biggest overall total.

My CI twist

1. Although this is a fun vocabulary review game, vocabulary itself is not isolated in language and does not exist outside of a context. As a result, I use this as a post-reading activity. Instead of vocabulary words, I have sentences from the story which we have been going over. 
2. When a student rolls a six and yells SEX, then he/she begins to translate the sentence into English. Again, it is not required for students to start at the beginning.
3. At the end when going over the sentences, students receive one point for every correctly translated word.

Observations

1. This is a very HIGH energy and loud game! Students LOVE yelling out SEX when they roll a six - when I told the Spanish teacher from whom I learned this activity that the Latin word for six was sex, she said, "Oh, even better!"
2. Because students are translating sentences from the story which we have been going over, it is another way for them to see and to review comprehensible messages and to get in more repetitions of forms/vocabulary.
3. Because of their familiarity with the sentences, it is quite easy for them to translate the sentences into English.
4. This is a great student-centered, teacher-faciliator activity, as all you do as the teacher is walk around and monitor what is going on.
5. The student who wins is not necessarily the fastest processor but the one who had the most time to write while the rest of the group tries to roll a six.
6. It is so much fun hearing students yell SEX and then grab the writing utensil from the student who has it and who probably is mid-word when it is taken.
7. I love it when I hear teachers afterwards asking me what we were doing since all they hear is the word SEX being yelled out.

Three Ring Circus

This is a fun way to preteach three verbs in an active way. I first saw Nancy Llewellyn demonstrate this activity at Rusticatio in 2010 but had forgotten about it until I saw Alina Filipescu use this in her session at NTPRS this summer. If you have any students who like to act/mime, this is a great activity for them:

1. Pick out three verbs which you wish to preview/preteach and can be easily demonstrated by an action/gesture.
2. Write the three verbs in the target language on three strips of paper, i.e., one verb per strip.
3. Pick three students who will demonstrate the three verbs.
4. Hold up the first strip, say the verb in the target language, and define the verb in English to establish meaning.
5. Now have the first student demonstrate the action of the verb CONTINUOUSLY while you begin to circle, e.g. O class, Steven audit. (ohhh). Stevenne audit? (ita). Stevenne an Lady Gaga audit? (Steven). Lady Gagane audit? (minime). quis audit? (Steven). quid Steven agit? (audit)
6. Now tell the first student to take a break and do the whole thing again with a new verb and student. Repeat again with the third verb and student.
7. Line up all three students, and now ask three other students to stand behind them and to hold the strips over their heads.
8. Tell all three students to demonstrate their actions simultaneously and continously (hence, the "three ring circus" aspect), while you circle regarding the three actions.

Observations

1. When all three students are demonstrating their actions simultaneously as part of the Three Ring Circus, be aware: depending on the action, it can be very tiring for them if you do it for too long. This is a great activity in which to practice circling, but wow, one can get in a good workout acting out a verb. At Alina Filipescu's presentation, I had to demonstrate the verb "fight," and after a few minutes, I was really tired! Next time, I will ask if I can demonstrate "sit" or "stand"....
2. I was surprised by how engaged students were in the activity. Maybe the choice in verbs and gestures lent itself to engaging students, maybe the students which I picked know how to ham it up.
3. The three ring part of the activity naturally lends itself to circling, because you can ask about particular students, what they are doing, what they are not doing, who is doing what, who is not doing what, etc.

I have definitely added this activity to my CI arsenal, but I will probably only do it every 5-6 weeks to preserve the novelty.

P.S (July 23, 2018)
Here is a video of Grant Boulanger demonstrating Three Ring Circus in Spanish.

Here is another video demonstrating Three Ring Circus at 1:36.

Pancho Cumacho

This is a VERY fun activity which I saw Alina Filipescu demonstrate at NTPRS this past summer. It is a great 5-10 minute activity which is a lot like Hot Potato, and it is definitely full of comprehensible (albeit fast) repetitions. My students LOVE this game and the fact that I the teacher will play the final round against them. Here is a link to a blog post which Alina has written up about Pancho Cumacho (there is also a video of the game). 

http://tprsforchinese.blogspot.com/2015/09/pancho-camacho-game.html

NOTE - for this game, even though I am using Latin words, I still keep the name Pancho Cumacho purely for the phonetics. I could not find a Latin name which would have the same effect.

Thanks, Alina for showing us this game!

The Marker Partner Game

Today, I played the Marker Partner Game with my students. This is an activity which Cynthia Hitz, a CI/TPRS Spanish teacher, mentioned in her ACTFL presentation last November. The game is a lot like Spoons, and yes, it is just as competitive and high-action! It is a great way to review a reading in the target language and to get in comprehensible repetitions of the language in a very fun way. If your class is in need of some much needed energy, this is a very dynamic activity.

The directions can be found on Cynthia's blog -http://palmyraspanish1.blogspot.com/2014/05/active-reading-review.html

Cynthia has SO MUCH good stuff on her blog. She's a wonderful woman whom I only really know through Twitter; follow her @sonrisadelcampo. I have met Cynthia a few times in person at ACTFL, and I have learned a great deal from her blog and presentations. I recommend that you bookmark Cynthia's blog, because it is definitely worth reading.  

Who is It?

This is a great listening activity to do at the last 10 minutes of class, and it involves whiteboards - like bacon, in my opinion, everything is better with whiteboards! 

Planning

1)  Write 3 VERY short comprehensible descriptions in Latin of famous people (characters, historical figures, or real people), where the first description is most general and the third is most specific, i.e., by the third description, it should be obvious who the character is

Activity

1) Have students grab a whiteboard and dry-erase markers.

2) Have students number 1-3 on their whiteboards.

3) Explain to students that you are going to read a series of descriptions and after each description, they should write the name of the person/character whom they think it is. All three descriptions are about the same person/character.

4) Read the first description, and next to number one, have students write whom they think is the character/person.
5) Read the second description, and next to number two, have students write whom they now think is the character/person. If they think it is the same person/character as what they wrote for number one, they are still to write down that name.
6) Read the third description, and next to number three, have students write whom they now think is the character/person. If they think it is the same person/character as what they wrote for number one and two, they are still to write down that name.
7) After reading the third description, ask students “quis est?” and have them respond aloud. Ask them to hold up their whiteboards so that you can see their series of answers.
8) Start again with a new person/character.

Examples:
Beyonce
1) femina
2) cantatrix
3) uxor JayZis

Laocoon
1) Troianus vir
2) sacerdos
3) interfectus a serpentibus

Observations

1. This is a GREAT way to review characters if you are reading a story with lots of characters.
2. This is a wonderful, low affective filter, output activity, since it just requires students to write down the name of a character/person.
3. Because it is such an easy listnening activity, I have found students to be very engaged whenever I have done it.

Sentence Flyswatter

This is an fun post-reading activity which I learned from Jason Fritze, and it is a variation of the activity Flyswatter. In the regular version of Flyswatter, you write a number of vocabulary words on the board but scatter them all over the board. You give two students flyswatters, and you call out the English meaning of a word. The goal is for students to "swat" the correct word, with the first student who does receiving a point.

I love Flyswatter, but in light of Comprehensible Input, it is a rather limited vocabulary activity; we know that vocabulary is never presented as isolated words but rather in a meaningful context. Jason Fritze's version brings in the Comprehensible Input factor yet still preserves what makes Flyswatter an enjoyable activity for students. Instead of vocabulary words, you will use pictures from a story which the class has been reading.

NOTE - this activity takes a bit of prep work on your end. 

Instructions

1. Take sentences from a story which you have been reviewing. These sentences need to be 100% comprehensible to students! I would not use sentences with which students are unfamiliar.
2. On a piece of paper, draw four quadrants and in each quadrant, illustrate a sentence from the story.
3. Repeat the same thing with 2-3 more sheets of paper with a variation of sentences
4. With a document projector, project the pictures onto a screen. NOTE - you can also do this activity using a plastic overhead sheet and projector, but do those exist in the classroom any longer?
5. Pick two student volunteers and give a flyswatter to each
6. Explain that you are going to read a sentence aloud in Latin which corresponds to one of the pictures, and AFTER the sentence has been completed, the first one to swat the correct picture gets a point.
7. Best 3 out of 5 wins
8. Pick two new volunteers and repeat with a new set of pictures.

Observations

1. Wow, what a great way to get in repetitions of the language in a VERY fun and meaningful context. Students are hearing the language and associating them with pictures.
2. Students LOVE this activity due to being able to "swat" the board. I only do this activity though a few times a semester in order to preserve the novelty.
3. It is another great way to review a story in a completely different modality.

Here is an example of a story which used for Sentence Flyswatter. 

1) Marcus duos filios habet

2) unus filius est bonus, sed unus filius est malus

3) bonus filius dicit, "mihi placet esse bonus!"

4) malus filius dicit, "mihi placet esse malus!"

5) bonus filius dicit, "mihi placet currere in silva!"

6) malus filius dicit, "mihi placet currere in urbe nude!"

7) bonus filius dicit, "mihi placet pulsare malos iuvenes"

8) malus filius dicit, "mihi placet pulsare senes!"

9) bonus filius dicit, "mihi placet consumere crustula!"

10) malus filisu dicit, "mihi placet consumere infantes!"

Here are the three "storyboards" which I used - can you guess which picture is which sentence?

  

Quick Draw

Here is another fun Comprehensible Input activity, which I tried out for the first time this week. I learned Quick Draw from Lauren Watson, a fellow CI French teacher in my district (she is the one who gave me the idea for Scrambled Eggs). Lauren, in turn, learned this activity from Dr. Sherah Carr, who had conducted some professional development at Lauren's school awhile back. This is a fun way for students to review already-acquired vocabulary.

The activity is called Quick Draw and for good reason! It is essentially Pictionary involving white boards and a great SILENT partner activity! You will need to create a powerpoint, where each slide has a category (such as nouns, adjectives, verbs, emotions, anything, etc) and four vocabulary words which relate to that category. Here are Lauren's directions:

1. Students are in pairs, and each have a dry erase board with markers.
2. Designate Partner A and Partner B.  
3. Each partner divides his/her dry erase board in quads with a marker. Number the quads 1-4
4. For Round 1, Partner A faces the screen and Partner B turns their back to the screen.  Project the PPT. I tell everyone the category for each round.  
5. Partner A looks at the list of words on the screen and draws a picture for each vocab. word.  S/he draws picture 1 in quad 1, picture 2 in quad 2...etc.
6. Partner B writes the vocabulary word which s/he thinks the picture represents in the appropriate quad.  
7. They can't talk or gesture or write words/numbers - ONLY pictures.  
8. The round ends with the first pair who successfully finishes all 4. 
9. Switch roles between partners for the next round

My variation: Instead of having the round end with the first pair who successfully finishes all 4, I gave 75-seconds for each round. This way, there was still a feeling of having to draw quickly but it gave the slow processors a chance. At the end of each round, I had teams simply tally their score, and they kept a running tally throughout the game,

Observations

1. Students LOVED this activity and asked for more rounds (even though we had played 5 rounds!). 
2. The silent aspect of guessing the words makes it a lot more manageable and enjoyable for students. I have played regular Pictionary with students before, and it always gets really loud.
3. Giving students a set amount of time helped lower the affective filter, because it was not a competition to finish first.
4. I was surprised at how easily most students were able to write down the vocabulary words, based only upon a picture. This is more proof to me that when limiting vocabulary and targeting high frequency words, acquisition occurs more quickly and naturally.
5. So many different modalities are addressed in this activity!
6. The categories help students focus on which words will be used. I threw in an "anything" category (meaning it could be "any" vocabulary word) at the end, and although it made it more difficult, students still enjoyed it.

I will definitely add this activity to my arsenal (which means I will do it every 5-6 weeks in order to preserve the novelty). Thanks, Lauren, for yet another great activity!

Putting it Together

So after a year of blogging about teaching Latin using Comprehensible Input, how do I put it all together to teach a "unit"? To clarify, I do not teach "units" per se, but rather each week, I use a different story which focuses on my targeted vocabulary/structures.

The following is an example of a week's lesson plan which I did this semester, but by no means do I this same lesson plan every week, as I vary it up weekly with different activities in order to preserve the novelty. And by no means is this a definitive list. At the same time, however, I am very deliberate about how I scaffold the week's lesson. In the beginning of the week, it may seem like I am doing a lot of translating into English, but that is purely to establish meaning. By the end of the week, students are retelling the story completely in Latin, both orally and on paper; in order for this to happen, there has to be TONS of meaningful input and of interaction with the language first.

I try to do 3-4 different activites a day with the story. As Carol Gaab always says, "The brain CRAVES novelty." Rachel Ash puts it best: we want to get in repetitions without repetitive activities.

Preparing for the Week

1. Writing Version #1 and #2 of the story 

Day 1

1. I as the teacher act out/tell the story aloud in Latin, with plenty of pointing and pausing at the target vocabulary/structures which are written on the board. No circling, no PQAs so that I can establish listening flow.
2. Projecting the written story on the board, with me reading it aloud again and now doing circling and PQA's.

Day 2

1. Choral translation of the story
2. Stultus
3. Possible/Probable

Day 3

1. Social Emotional Learning partner translation
2. Cloze Sentence Activity
3. Parallel Universe

Day 4

1. Picture Story Retell (2 rounds)
2. 5-minute timed write of the story using the pictures

Day 5

1. On the board, I project a couple student-written endings to the story based on their timed writes from the day before. As a class, we read through them
2. Read Dating of embedded reading Version #2 of the story

Day 6

1. Consolidation activity, such as Word Chunk Game, Micrologue, Guess the Word, 

Like I said, this is just an example of one particular week, but I found that it was pretty successful. Hope this helps some of you!

Dance Party USA

Update (7/19/23): The official name for this activity is Musical Pairs. I still think Dance Party USA has a better ring to it.

I learned this reading strategy from Justin Slocum Bailey, a Latin teacher and fellow user of CI, at this past summer's Pedagogy Rusticatio. I do not know if "Dance Party USA" is the official name of this activity, but this is what I call it. It is a variation of Ping Pong/Volleyball Reading. It is a fun activity which gets students moving around to music and has a Musical Chairs kind of feel to it.

1. You will need two different colored index cards for the class, so that exactly half of the class will have one color and the other half will have the other. If there is an odd number of students in the class, you as the teacher will participate.
2. Give each student a copy of a reading. The reading should be a re-reading of a story which students have already read (like an embedded reading) or a VERY COMPREHENSIBLE sight passage which they can easily read.
3. Give each student one of the two colored index cards. Again, exactly half of the class needs to receive one color, and the other half needs to get the other color.
4. Now play music, and tell students to circulate around the room while the music plays. Students may dance around as they move around the room!
5. Stop the music after 25-30 seconds or so. Tell students now to pair up immediately with someone near them who is holding the other color index card. if there are an odd number of students, remember that you will be participating!
6. The pairs of students will do a ping pong/volleyball reading of the story with each other
7. After 90 seconds, start the music again, and tell students to stop reading and to circulate around the room.
8. Stop the music after 25-30 seconds (this will give students time to move around the room), and tell students to pair up immediately with a new person who is holding the other color index cards.
9. Continue doing this until students have read at least 1 1/2 times through the passage.

Observations

1. You will need LOTS of room for this activity - a big open space is best. This is difficult to do with desks in the way. I have used the cafeteria area and hallway for this activity. 
2. This activity gets loud due to the music. Warn the teachers around you that you will be doing this.
3. This is a great way to get students to interact with each other. Like in Read Dating, if a student does not "prefer" his/her partner, he/she only has to spend 90 seconds with that person before moving on.
4. Even though it is just ping pong/volleyball reading, the fact that students are moving around the room to music gives it a very different feel for them. As Carol Gaab says, "The brain CRAVES novelty."

Scrambled Eggs

This is a great activity which I just learned from Lauren Watson, a French teacher in my district. She is a fellow user of CI and has been using it for years in her classroom, long before I ever had even heard of CI. Along with Bob Patrick and me, Lauren co-facilitates our districtwide CI inservices.

Scrambled Eggs is a much like a running dictation but with a twist. For this activity, you wil need plastic Easter eggs. Here are her directions, as she explained it to me:

1. Write a 10 sentence story with words which students have acquired; then scramble the sentences so that the story is out of order. 
2. Number each sentence, cut the story into 10 sentence strips and put one strip into a plastic Easter egg. 
3. Put the eggs into a basket in the center of the room.
4. Students worked in partners (partner A and partner B)
5. Partner B has a sheet of paper numbered 1-10 (because there are 10 sentences).
6. Partner A is responsible for going to the basket and bringing an egg back to Partner B.  They are NOT ALLOWED to open the egg until they are at their seats!  
7. Partner A opens the egg, gives Partner B the sentence number and reads the sentence slowly.  Partner B writes down what he/she hears.
8. After 5 sentences, they switch roles.
9. When finished, show them the correct sentences, and they make corrections.
10. At the end, they have to unscramble the story so that it makes sense.  
11. As a bonus, I added 2 extra eggs with "Brain Breaks" in them.  Every time they got an egg with a Brain Break, they had to do what the paper inside said.  EX:  Touche le singe! (Touch the monkey!- I have a stuffed monkey hanging in my classroom) or a list of TPR commands for them to do.  Just silly, but they liked it.  

Okay, back to me now. Yesterday, we had the GA Graduation Writing Test, so I had a number of students out so this was a nice extension activity to do in class. Scrambled Eggs is a high energy activity, because there will be students constantly running back and forth to put back eggs and to retrieve new ones. 

As I have 34 students in a few of my Latin I classes, I added the following to the activity:

1. In addition to the 10 sentences and 2 brain breaks, I added 2 more brain break strips and 2 strips which had "XXXXXXs", meaning that students had gotten a "dead" egg without a sentence so they would have to go back to get a new egg
2. I added the task of translating the sentence into English after writing down the sentence in Latin. This was just to add another task to the activity in order to make it last longer.

Observations

1. Because you are solely working with words which students have acquired and as the sentences are comprehensible, the actual reading, listening, writing and translating is not difficult at all for students.
2. The activity does take prep time but during the activity, you the teacher are simply faciilitating.
3. It is a different way to do a dictation. In having students read to each other, they are hearing the language spoken by someone other than you the teacher.
4. It is a different way to do a running dictation, especially since students are just running to the center of the room as opposed to across a gym or hallway.
5. Because students switch off every 5th sentence, they each get a turn having to read the Latin aloud and to write it down as a dictation
6. To quote Lauren, "it is a chaotic activity but a good kind of chaos."
7. It was fun watching students get an egg, go back to their partners and open it, only to find that they already had that sentence so they had to go put it back and then grab a new egg (which hopefully had a new sentence) 

Thanks, Lauren, for a great activity

Social Emotional Learning (SEL)

One of our goals as CI teachers is to establish community in our classes; if students feel like they are a part of the class, their affective filters will lower, and as a result, they will be more apt to participate and to be more engaged in what is going on in the class. We try to do this through telling stories, doing PQAs, personalizing stories - anything which will get the message across to students "I see you, and I value you."

In many ways, those activities are just teacher-to-student. What about student-to-student? How can we make students feel comfortable with each other so that they will even want to participate in front of their peers?

Let me also say that by nature, I am not a touchy-feely emotions kind of guy. While I am incredibly social and gregarious, I am also not one who naturally dwells on feelings. I am your typical guy - if you were to ask me how I am feeling, I would probably respond either "Tired" or "Hungry".

When I was at NTPRS this summer, in my group's 5-hour session of learning Japanese with Betsy Paskvan, one of the activities was to do a paired translation of a story in Japanese. This was the first day of the conference, and quite honestly, I only knew one other person in the room (because we had shared an airport shuttle coming over). While we could have done a ping pong/volleyball translation activity, instead Betsy asked us questions in English such as "Between you and your partner, who has the longest hair? That person will read aloud the next two sentences in Japanese, and the other person will translate into English." Other questions included "Who has traveled to the most countries?" "Who has the darkest eyes?" "Who traveled the furthest to get to Chicago?" etc. It actually was a lot of fun, because I got to share and to learn information from others in my group that probably would not have come up in a conversation, and it certainly kept things from getting boring and repetitive.

What we did with Betsy was an example of Social Emotional Learning (thanks to Bess Hayles and her blog - Bess was in my group at NTPRS - for pointing out what we were doing and that Betsy was being intentional in doing this). Social Emotional Learning is the idea that students learn/acquire better and more quickly when they are emotionally engaged with each other in a low pressure atmosphere. Examples can be group projects, team-building exercises and even partner activities. Social Emotional Learning helps develop trust within the community of students. If students want to be in your class because of others there, then they will more likely to be engaged in your class.

Examples of CI-based SEL activities:
1) Circling with Balls
2) Word Chunk game
3) Running Dictation
4) Betsy's take on partner translation activity
5) PQAs

This year, I am teaching three Latin 1 classes and 2 AP classes. For the most part, my classes are pretty social: the AP classes know each other from having taken Latin together over the past few years, and two of my Latin 1 classes seem to enjoy each other and cannot get enough of each other and of me. THEN...I have another Latin 1 class which is very quiet. By no means is this a bad, disruptive class, but rather the opposite, I do not know if these students are just naturally quiet and are primarily introverts or if it is that they are not comfortable with each other enough to participate vocally or if it is the time of the day or if they are reacting to me or if it is a combination of all of the above. For these past three opening weeks of school, this is the class which has baffled me the most in using CI, because they seem so non-responsive. Doing Circling with Balls is almost painful to do with them! Quite honestly, they are the class which I dread teaching sometimes, because I cannot read them emotionally.

So three days ago, in doing a partner translation activity with my Latin 1 classes, instead of doing a ping pong/volleyball reading, I decided to do a SEL activity much like Betsy did with my group at NTPRS. During the activity, I asked five different questions in English - "Between you and your partner, ___________? That person will read the next 3 sentences in Latin, and your partner will translate into English.":

1. who has the latest lunch period?
2. whose locker is furthest away from my classroom?
3. who ate dinner the latest last night?
4. who has the longest hair?  
5. who has the most siblings?

As I expected, the two social Latin 1 classes really enjoyed it, but what I did not expect was that this particular quiet Latin 1 class started to open up some! After each of the partners had completed their sentence translations, I asked the class to tell me some of the responses which they got from their partners. I was surprised both by how many students volunteered to tell what their partner had said and by how much the class actually wanted to hear what others had said. It was almost as if the actual partner translation was incidental, and the activity was more about community building than reading (and in some ways it was, because the class was actually re-reading something which they had chorally translated the day before). 

The next day, however, that class reverted back to its normal quiet self, but for 20 minutes the day before, I saw glimmers of community begin to develop among those group of students. This semester, I will continue to do more SEL activities with that class and to chip away slowly at whatever is impeding them from feeling comfortable with each other. 

Post Scriptum: Yesterday, because it was a Friday, I played the Word Chunk game with my Latin 1 students. As expected, my two social Latin 1 classes absolutely latched onto this activity, but I also had a HUGE gnawing feeling in my stomach that the other Latin 1 class would not "enjoy" it as much as the others. Wow, to my amazement, that class really got into it! Hopefully, I can continue to ride this wave of community which has started in that class.