Draw-Your-Own-Picture BINGO

This is a listening activity which I recently learned this summer from Donna Tatum-Johns at the Fluency Matters Conference in Denver. She demonstrated this as a post-reading activity after she had facilitated a Clip Chat (formerly known as "Movie Talk"), and I thought, "What a great communicative way to play BINGO!" It involves students drawing visual representations of vocabulary words from a reading in a 3x3 grid and then reading sentences with a missing word in the target language from a reading which you have been reviewing. Students then have to look at their BINGO grid to see if they have the missing word.

Pre-activity directions

1. Pick 18 words from the reading which students can illustrate. Preferably pick words which you have been targeting and words which are drawable, i.e., do not pick an abstract word like "dignity"
2. Put those words in pairs so that there are nine pairs of words. Try to pair them in similarities.
3. Write a script where you will read each pair as "____________ or ___________." If you want, create slides where you present each pair as " ____________ or _________." 
4. Pick 10-12 sentences from the reading which have one of the 18 words and leave it blank, and write out those sentences. You will be reading them.

Activity directions

1. On a whiteboard or piece of paper, have students draw a 3x3 grid.
2. Tell students that you will say aloud two vocabulary words in the target language. They are to choose one of them and to draw that word anywhere on their grid. If you wish to have a visual of the pair choices, project the slide.
3. Give students one minute at the most to draw. Do not allow too much time, because there are nine words which they will draw.
4. When students are done, tell them that you will now read a sentence from the story but there is a word missing. If they have the visual representation of the word, then they may cross out the picture (but not cross it out enough that it cannot be identified any longer). Say that sentence many times to get in meaningful exposure of that sentence.
5. Continue on with the next sentence until a student gets three in a row.
6. When a student gets three in a row, that student yells BINGO. Have student come up so that you can check their board. Continue to play until you have 5 winners (or how many you want. I allow winners to continue playing and win multiple times). This will allow for continued exposure to sentences from the reading.

Observations

1. Wow, what a great new way to play vocabulary BINGO!
2. I love this way of playing BINGO with a reading, because it addresses so many modalities and components of language:
1. listening comprehension - students having to listen to the sentence to determine what word is missing and to look on their board to find it.
2. vocabulary - students need to know what target language words each of their drawings represent
3. personalization of words - students are drawing their own representations of the vocabulary words
4. communicative nature - the missing words are coming from the original sentences from the reading
5. higher order thinking - students need to make the connection between knowing what target word is missing and if they have that visual representation on their grid
6. student choice - students choose which words of the pair that they want to illustrate, in addition to where they want to place those words on their grid
3. This activity does take quite awhile to facilitate, because students are taking time to illustrate their choice of words and there are 18 possible word choices (in addition to the randomness of where they place 9 of those words) so even though it is a 3x3 grid, it can take some time before someone has BINGO.

Thanks, Donna, for this great activity!

Strip/Rip BINGO

This is a quick listening activity which I found out by accident a few months ago, and I do not know why I had not heard about this earlier! Not too long ago, in response to a tweet of mine about the "Sex Game," someone replied the following: "Hopefully you're not referencing Strip BINGO in the same sentence lol!" I was completely unaware of Strip/Rip BINGO, so of course, the name alone caught my interest - I just HAD learn about this activity. Much like the Sex Game, Strip/Rip BINGO is a lot more innocent than the name entails. Here are Martina Bex's write up and directions.

Variations

1. Target language word - have students write down the target language words, and read the story aloud to the class in the target language. When you get to a specific Strip/Rip BINGO word, pause, and have class chorally give the English meaning. If a student has that word on an edge of the strip, then that student can also rip it off the strip.
2. English meaning - have students write down the English meaning, and read the story aloud in the target language. When students hear the target language word aloud, they can rip off the English meaning if it is an edge word on their strips.

Observations

1. This activity lasted about 5 minutes and was a quick way to review a story in a different way.
2. I did the English meaning variation and loved that this was a new and different way to do a listening activity combined with BINGO! It was a close-listening activity.
3. I loved that this required me to read the story around 1.5 times - students heard repetitions of the story but with a goal of being able to rip off their strips in order to get BINGO!
4. After a student got BINGO, I actually had students ask me to keep reading the story so that they could get BINGO too! Of course, I did not refuse - this does not happen often at all! I am not a fool to refuse getting in more repetitions of language at their request!!
5. Now that students are familiar with the game and know "how" to game it (i.e., pick words which appear early in the story to put on the edges), future variations are to read a sight story, to start in the middle or end of the story, or to not use a story with a lot of repetitive vocabulary.

Verb/Person "Who Would Say This?" Listening Activity

Just recently, my colleague John Foulk put a twist on a listening activity which we have been using as an assessment. He took our existing "Who is This?" activity (where as the teacher you say aloud a short description of particular characters in the target language from a story, and students write down which character it is) and turned it into a "Who Would Say This?" In Latin 2, we have been reading an adapted version of the "Mercury-as-a-1-day-old-baby" myth and all of his "adventures," such as sneaking out of the house, finding and killing a turtle, creating/inventing a lyre from the turtle shell and guts, stealing Apollo's cows, etc. There were a number of characters in the story, so John created "I...." statements about the characters for students to hear and to write down who would say this.

Example: 

1. Ego in agro laborabam et vidit puerum ducentem boves (I was working in the field and saw a boy leading cows)
2. Ego feci lyram e corpore testudinis (I made a lyre from the body of a turtle)
3. Mercurius meas boves cepit (Mercury stole my cows)
4. Ego duxi quinquaginta boves retro ad mare (I led 50 cows backwards to the sea)
5. Meus filius vigilabat, sed ego dormiebam (My son was awake, but I was sleeping).
6. Ego super montes currebam (I was running over the mountains)

Observations

1. This was a great practice of having students hear the use of the 1st-person. Although the story was primarily written in the 3rd-person, students did not have any problems hearing the 1st person and recognizing which character would say the statement.
2. Students were very familiar with the story, so to hear sentences about characters now in the 1st person was not tricky.
3. This activity involved higher-order thinking as students had to determine who would say the statement.
4. This was a very easy activity to facilitate!
5. I suppose one could change this to 2nd person and implement it that way too.

Story Listening 2.0

This is a twist on regular Story Listening. For the record, I really do like Story Listening. I have experienced it myself as a student, and I know its power in delivering comprehensible input through primarily listening and using drawings to aid in delivering understandable messages. In addition, asking questions and circling do not get in the way of hearing a story being told. However, at the same time, I also know that when doing Story Listening, two issues arise: 

1. Because I am not asking any questions, I do not know if/how much of the story is actually being comprehended in the target language.
2. Students can tune out during a Story Listening, since there is nothing keeping them "accountable" for listening. Yes, students are listening which is active, but they can also be passively listening. - they are presently listening but not really taking it in, regardless of how compelling the story is.

My colleague John Foulk added the following to when he does Story Listening: having students draw along with you and copy what you are drawing as you tell and draw the story. I know that some of you may say that this defeats the purpose of story listening (since learners are not solely listening), but now having done Story Listening a few times this way, I really like it. Here is why:

1. It gives students something active to do while listening to the story and they have to pay attention.
2. It forces me to slow down in telling the story, since I need to give time for students to draw what I am drawing.
3. I can get in LOTS of repetitions of each sentence, because I am saying each sentence many times while I wait for students to finish drawing that sentence.
4. Even though students are copying what I am drawing, they are making a connection with what they are hearing because they themselves are drawing pictures.
5. Because students have their own artifact of the Story Listening, they can use it as a reference for later activities.

Here is an example of a Story Listening which I just recently did with my Latin 3's. We are starting to read Andrew Olympi's novella Perseus et Rex Malus, so I introduced the prologue with a Tier 1 embedded reading using Story Listening:

Latin

Olim erat piscator qui in insula parva habitabat. Quodam die, piscator rete in mare iecit ut capiat pisces. Cum piscator rete in navem traxisset, rete piscatoris erat vacuum. Subito, piscator aliquid in mari vidit. Piscator putavit rem esse navem. Non erat navis, sed erat arca. Quid erat in arca?

Story (English)
Once upon a time there was a fisherman, who was living on a small island. On a certain day, the fisherman threw a net into the sea in order to catch fish. When the fisherman dragged the next into the boat, the fisherman's net was empty. Suddenly, the fisherman saw something in the sea. The fisherman thought that it was a boat. It was not a boat, but it was a box. What was in the box?

Day 1
I told the story as a Story Listening activity and had students copy what I drew. Even though this was just a 7-sentence story, it took a period to complete. No circling/questioning took place. Students turned in their drawings when they were done. As the teacher, either take a picture of the drawing or draw your own copy of it.

Day 2
I projected my Story Listening picture from the day before and then told the story again, pointing and pausing at particular parts of the picture as I retold it. Again, no questioning or circling happened. I then asked students to summarize the story in English so that I could confirm that they understood both the drawings and what I had said in Latin. I then handed back the drawings to students and had them answer some comprehension questions in Latin at the bottom/back of the page related to the story. They could use the drawings as a reference, but they had to write down their answer in Latin.

Observations

1. Although the questions relied heavily on the drawings, most students felt that their drawings were comprehensible enough to use to answer the questions.
2. Many students felt that they did not have to rely on the pictures because they had heard the story repeated so many times.
3. Those questions which students answered incorrectly told me that those were the sentences/vocabulary words which I needed to review more.
4. I used this Story Listening to preview the vocabulary words piscator, rete, and vacuum which are rather specific words. However, because these words appeared many times in the story and I kept repeating them while they were copying my drawings and in my retell, most students acquired the words. i suppose that I could have given them a list and told them to have these words memorized, but the repetition of these words in a meaningful context connected to an illustration which they themselves drew led to subconscious acquisition.
5. Doing a Tier 1 Story Listening of the prologue made it very easy for students to read the Tier 2 level reading.

Stand Up/Sit Down Brain Break

Here is a quick 5-minute activity/brain break which I learned from Alina Filipescu at NTPRS in 2015. It is a simple listening activity which involves movement (standing up/sitting down). This is an activity which I have used in the past with great success but had completely forgotten about in the past 3-4 years until this past week when I was preparing my presentation on Spoken Latin for the ACL Summer Institute.

The basis for the activity is very much patterned after "Never Have I Ever" but in a much more POSITIVE and STUDENT-APPROPRIATE fashion and is quite simple.

Directions

1. Make a list of statements (around 10-15) in the first person in the target language which could be true about your students. Examples: I am wearing sandals, I have a dog, I drank coffee this morning, etc.
2. Have all of your students seated.
3. Explain to students that this activity involves either standing up or sitting down.
4. Explain to them that you are going to read a statement. If that statement is true about them, then they are to stand up.
5. Read the first statement. Any student for whom the statement is true should stand up.
6. Now explain to students that you are going to read a statement. If that statement is true about them, they are to do the OPPOSITE activity of what they are doing now, i.e., if they are standing, they are to sit down; if they are sitting down, they are to stand up. BUT if the statement is false about them, they are not to do anything.
7. Read the next statement.
8. Continue to read the statements. Students will be standing up, sitting down, or not moving depending on the statements.

Observations

1. This is a great way to focus on a particular structure, such as "I have," "I am wearing," or "I like," since those tend to introduce personal statements. You can get in a lot of repetitions of these phrases since you will be saying them over and over again. As students become more familiar with these phrases, it becomes less necessary to focus on just one, and you can to mix them up in your statements.
2. It can be rather confusing in the beginning, so I usually will demonstrate it in English first so that students understand what action they are supposed to do.
3. Keep the statements simple. For some students, too much is going on in having to hear the statement, to understand it, to determine if it is true of them, and to respond with the correct action. 
4. It is a great brain break in the target language!

Latin examples of statements:

1. Habeo animal domesticum (I have a pet)
2. Habeo fratrem (I have a brother)
3. Habeo crines longos (I have long hair)
4. Habeo canem (I have a dog)
5. Habeo sororem (I have a sister)
6. Habeo duas aures (I have two ears)

1. mihi placet legere Harry Potter (I like to read Harry Potter)
2. mihi placet comedere Takis (I like to eat Takis)
3. mihi placet bibere caffeam (I like to drink coffee)
4. mihi placet dormire (I like to sleep)

Invisibles Listening Activity

I learned this activity from Miriam Patrick, and this is her take on Ben Slavic's Invisibles activity. This is something which I do as a warmup, and it is a really good listening comprehension activity.

Preparation

1. Create a document with categories, such as nouns, adjectives, verbs, places, etc. and fill those categories with learned target vocabulary. 4-6 words per category are good.

Example:

Directions - Day 1

1. Project “Invisibles Choices” on screen.
2. Tell students to pick 1-2 words from each category to create a picture. I suggest that students draw in pen (not marker), because pencil does not always show up well when scanned or when a picture is taken of it
3. Have students turn in pictures to you.

Directions - Days 2 and 3

1. Take pictures of 3-4 pictures with your camera phone or scan them. and transfer pics to a ppt slide. 
2. Have students grab a whiteboard, marker, and rag.
3. Pick a picture and read description of picture in the target language.
4. Have students draw what they think they are hearing.
5. Ask students to show you their pictures. Pick a few to show the class and describe in Latin.
6. Project actual picture on screen. 
7. Begin again with a new picture.

Observations

1. Because there was choice in what words students could draw, there are lots of different combinations.
2. It is always fun to see students begin to realize that you are describing their pictures - a sense of pride comes over them!
3. It is a great warmup or brain break activity done over 2-3 days, and it is a very easy listening comprehension activity.

Storyjumper

Earlier this week, a number of Spanish teachers at my school shared with my department about Storyjumper, a digital storytelling web application. Essentially, Storyjumper allows for users to create digital storybooks with texts, illustrations, voice recordings, music, and sound effects. Below is a digital storybook which I created for a reading using Storyjumper. The story began as a dictatio of 8 sentences, but I was able to create a Tier 2 embedded reading of the story using Storyjumper:

Read this book made on StoryJumper

Observations

1. I like that having text, illustrations, and narration at the same time gives learners double, even triple input.
2. I like this SO MUCH better than screencasting a PowerPoint, because it has more of a storytelling feel to it, since it is a digital book.
3. It is a FREE web resource. However, if you wish to publish what you create, you can sell it on Storyjumper.
4. Being able to add music and sound effects does make your book more compelling and interesting to listen to.
5. I wish that StoryboardThat had a narration and sound function, since it already has a digital comic book feel to it.
6. Drawbacks
1. Compared to StoryboardThat, Storyjumper does have limitations with the amount of provided illustration choices and their capabilities. One can import pictures into Storyjumper. With StoryboardThat, there are a lot more illustration choices and what one can do with them (cropping, changing angles, poses, etc.)
2. Although Storyjumper does provide music and sound effect choices, they are limited.

Here is a video tutorial of Storyjumper:

Although Storyjumper does have its drawbacks, this is a web resource which I will be using more in the future.

Putting Latin in the Ears of your Students

Over the past few weeks, I have had some great conversations with Latin teachers both in person and online regarding using spoken Latin in their classrooms. These teachers considered themselves to be traditional teachers who had never experienced active Latin before or never had Latin come out of their mouths for the purpose of communication. For these teachers, to even consider using spoken Latin with their students was a scary experience and was something which they had opposed for years. Somehow, though, they decided to start reading sentences aloud from their textbooks to students and asking students comprehension questions in Latin about what they had just said. These teachers reactions? Wow, their students were able to respond in Latin and enjoyed it! As a result, these teachers have come to the conclusion that it is important to bring in some degree of active Latin to their classrooms, even if they are not experienced in speaking Latin, because having students hear Latin really helps in the acquisition process.

I can completely relate to this, because for the first twelve years of my teaching career I was vehemently opposed to the use of any type of active Latin. My primary defense was "What is the point in speaking Latin if our goal is for our students to read Cicero" (and I hear this defense A LOT). However, my opposition to active Latin was mainly because I had not learned Latin with a spoken element, had never spoken Latin before, and had never experienced Latin as a living language. In other words, my opposition was actually based on my own fears and inabilities, rather than on actual research. However, after attending my first Rusticatio in 2010, I realized that we traditional Latin teachers were leaving out such a HUGE component in the acquisition of Latin by not speaking the language.

But why speak Latin in the classroom? According to Nancy Llewellyn from her article "Why Speak Latin?":

All those of us who teach have known or have taught a few outstanding students who could read extremely well and yet do not speak. But for every one of these, how many others have we lost? How many talented kids have we seen quitting after only a few weeks, or getting bored after a year or two and moving on to something they can internalize and really make their own, such as Arabic, French or Spanish? What we call the traditional method can work tolerably well for the 50% of our class which is composed of visual learners (indeed, extremely well for the top 2% of these), but what about the rest? What about the auditory and kinesthetic learners, whose primary learning modes are so rarely and scantily addressed? 

Let me also say that just speaking Latin in class in and of itself does not lead to language acquisition. If done incorrectly, it can impede student learning and just leave learners frustrated. For spoken Latin to be effective, it needs to be comprehensible. This is achieved by:

• establishing meaning in L1. Write the Latin word with its definition in English on the board, and point and pause. Do not make the assumption that meaning is obvious through the use of gestures, pictures, etc. Gestures and picture can help create visual cues for learners, but establish meaning in L1 in order to ensure that everyone is on the same page. I can speak from personal experience where Latin speakers have tried to establish meaning of unknown words for me in L2, and all it did was result in frustration for me and not wanting to speak to that person. Just tell me the #%@$ meaning in L1 so that I can move on! I can only imagine what my own students would feel like if I were to do that to them.
• speaking slowly. Annabelle Allen, whom I absolutely ADORE and RESPECT, says, "If you (as the teacher) are not bored by how slowly you are speaking (to students), then you are not speaking slowly enough." I can tell you that my affective filter SKYROCKETS whenever I hear advanced Latin speakers speaking so fast that their Latin sounds like just one long word to me. Although you may be a fast processor when hearing the language, remember that most learners are not.
• remembering the level of your listeners. If we are being realistic, we will remember that although we may have Latin 3 students, they are actually only 3-year olds in the language. Do you personally speak to 3-year olds like Cicero?

So if you are new to speaking Latin and are a bit hesitant, here are some ways in which you can put some Latin in the ears of your students:

• Circling with sentences from a passage
• TPRS
• TPR
• Three-Ring Circus
• Dictatio
• Drawing Dictatio
• Freeze Frame
• Movie Talk
• Translation - read comprehensible sentences to students based on known vocabulary or from a familiar passage and ask students to write out a translation in English as they hear it.
• Who is This?
• Who is This? #2
• Story Listening
• Partner Crossword
• Word Chunk Game
• Optical Illusions
• On This Day
• Nugas
• Readers Theater
• Same Conversation - Movie Director
• Daily rituals (to be discussed in a further post)

Let me end with this: you do not have to be a master Latin speaker to use active Latin in your classroom; you just need to be better than your students. Yep, you are probably going to make mistakes, but that is okay. Most likely, your students will not catch the errors, and you can always correct yourself - I correct myself all the time. it is perfectly okay to have a script! If someone tells you that you must speak Latin perfectly (and that includes pronunciation) before you begin to do it in the classroom, then I will tell you that you will NEVER get around to speaking it, because you will never be at that level of perfection. I do not always speak perfect English, and English is my mother tongue!

Years ago, I told Rose Williams, a veteran Latin teacher in Texas, "I need to apologize to that first group of Latin students whom I taught, because I had no clue what I was doing." Her reassuring reply to me was, "But even though you were probably just a few pages ahead of your students in the textbook, they still loved you anyway." To those of you who are hesitant to speak Latin in your classroom because you do not think that you are good enough, let Rose's message be my message to you.

Story Listening

Today, I ventured into Story Listening with my Latin 2 classes. Story Listening is a pre-reading strategy devised by Beniko Mason, and the title is exactly what it is: students listening to a story being told while the teacher draws pictures as part of the storytelling. No circling takes place, and it is done in the same way as a parent telling children a story, i.e., parents tend not to interrupt a story with questions. I had dabbled before with Story Listening, but I had not added the picture component.

Today, in my Latin 2 classes, I did a Story Listening of the following story - the story of Vulcan and Mars. Below is the story with the pictures which I drew as I narrated the story aloud in Latin.

VULCANUS, PART 1

Iuppiter et Iuno duōs filiōs habebant. Primus filius erat Mars. Mars erat deus bellī. Iuno amabat suum filium Martem, quod Mars erat fortis et pulcher.

Secundus filius erat Vulcanus. Vulcanus erat deus ignis. Iuno non amabat suum secundum filium. Quamquam Vulcanus erat fortis, Iuno non putavit Vulcanum esse pulchrum.

Eheu! Quod Vulcanus erat fortis sed non pulcher, Iuno erat irata. Iuno Vulcanum non amabat, et noluit Vulcanum habitare in Monte Olympō. Iuno Vulcanum ad terram deicit. Vulcanus non iam erat in Monte Olympō sed in terrā. Vulcanus erat vulneratus in terrā.

Vulcanus erat tristis, quod mater Vulcanum non amabat. Vulcanus erat tristis, quod Iuno non putavit Vulcanum esse pulchrum. Vulcanus erat tristis, quod erat vulneratus. Vulcanus noluit habitare in terrā. Vulcanus voluit habitare in Monte Olympō.

TO BE CONTINUED

Observations

1. Because this was my first real foray into Story Listening, I am glad that I had a very basic story with tons of repetitions and lots of vocabulary with which students were familiar. That made it much easier for me to tell.
2. This is a very LOW-prep activity for you as the teacher. All that is required for you is the story and a place to draw pictures.
3. I was surprised at how engaged students were when I told the story. Granted it was a rather comprehensible story to understand when heard aloud, but the fact that I was drawing pictures as I narrated it kept the story compelling.
4. The pictures added another layer of comprehensible input. Essentially, students were receiving double input: hearing the Latin aloud and seeing the pictorial representation of the story as I drew it.
5. I suppose one could draw the pictures ahead of time, but drawing the pictures while telling the story aloud forced me to go slow and to repeat a lot by referring to the pictures. I think that students appreciated this.
6. Because students are just listening to a story and you as the teacher are not asking questions, it can be tricky to see if students are fully comprehending what you are saying. Halfway through the story listening, I did a comprehension check by asking students to tell me in English what was going on in the story. I could have circled or asked comprehension questions in Latin, but since this was the first experience which students had with this story, I wanted to confirm that they understood it.
7. Because this is a pre-reading strategy (I suppose it could be used as a post-reading strategy), it is important that students are familiar with the vocabulary words in the story either as having already acquired them or as icing words written on the board.
8. The whole story listening took about 10-15 minutes.
9. This is definitely something which I going to do more often in the future!

To see how it works, see below for a Story Listening Demo by Beniko Mason

Also, check out this post on the Fluency Matters blog about Story Listening - New or Time-Tested. This is a very good write-up by Carol Gaab. 

Screencasting PowerPoints for Input

Screencasts are a great use of instructional technology in the classroom, because they allow for users to record a digital narration of what is on their computer screens. Screencasts can be used in so many different ways: teachers can implement them as part of a flipped classroom or as tutorials, students can create screencast presentations for a digital audience instead of the traditional face-to-face classroom, lessons can be recorded and posted online. Like podcasts, screencasts allow for an audience to view the material wherever it wants, whenever it wants and as many times as it wants. Because of this, when used properly, screencasts rate high on the SAMR model of technology usage.

Screencasts can be used in a CI classroom to deliver input, as well as a way for students to deliver output in a presentational mode. Last semester, I had students create 30-second screencasts in Latin of a picture using their phones (I will post about that some time), which I found to be quite successful, considering it was my first time doing something like that with them. Although the end product was quite basic and rudimentary, I see that there is much which can be done with screencasts.

Just recently, my colleague Bob Patrick showed me how PowerPoint has a screencast function. One can record either a slide presentation or individual slides with narration. Why I like this is because before when I wanted to screencast a slide presentation, I would have to app-smash a PowerPoint/Google Slides with Screencastify or Screencast-O-Matic. Now, everything can be done with one program. I was completely unaware that PowerPoint even had this function.

Here are directions about how to screencast using PowerPoint.

My Latin 2 classes are beginning a unit on the hero Perseus, so I introduced the first part of the story with a very basic dictatio.

Perseus, Prima Pars Dictatio

1) Perseus in insulā cum matre habitavit.

2) Rex volēbat facere matrem Perseī coniugem, sed Perseus regem odit.

3) Rex Perseum odit, et volēbat occidere Perseum.

4) Rex Perseō dixit, “Fer mihi caput Medusae!”

5) Medusa erat monstrum, cuius obtutus mutavit hominēs in saxum.

Immediately following the dictatio, I projected the screencast of my PowerPoint, which had the dictatio sentences. I added 4-5 more sentences to the story using known vocabulary to expand the story.

I had students view/listen to it twice and then asked comprehension questions in English to establish meaning.

An extension of this screencast would be to show this video again and to pause it to ask questions in Latin or to create an EdPuzzle with this video.

Observations

1. Because students had just completed a dictatio which incorporated those sentences, the screencast was very comprehensible for them. Students were already familiar with the plot and many of the new words.
2. Adding new sentences in the screencast with known vocabulary/structures to the already-familiar dictatio sentences gave an embedded reading feel to the video.
3. Because students were able to read along with the text as it was narrated aloud, it gave them double input.
4. Although this is a basic PowerPoint, this gives me a foundation for what can be done for future screencasts with animations and illustrations.
5. Apparently, my voice sounds much lower on this video. My students were surprised to hear what I sounded like.
6. My students want me to post this on YouTube. Outside of those who read this blog, however, I do not need the world to comment on what it finds wrong with this screencast (pronunciation issues, voice inflection choices, etc).

Drawing Dictation

This is a great listening comprehension activity, which I learned this summer from Linda Li in her Fluency Fast Mandarin class. It is very much like a regular dictation, but the difference though is that instead of having students write down the target language sentences as you say them, they draw them! I would recommend that you do this as a post-reading activity, instead of as a pre-reading activity.

Directions

1. Take 6 sentences from a story which you have been going over in class. These sentences need to be "drawable."
2. If needed, write any target vocabulary on the board with their English meaning.
3. On a sheet of paper, tell students to draw a 2x3 grid which should fill the entire paper.
4. Have students number each box from 1-6.
5. Tell students “I will say a sentence, and your job is to draw a visual representation of that sentence. You will have 2-3 minutes to draw.” 
6. Begin reading the first sentence slowly. It will be necessary to repeat the sentence many times. 
7. Continue with the other sentences. Remind students that words are on the board if they need them.
8. At the end, repeat the sentences and tell students to check their drawings to ensure that they have drawn everything needed.

Alternate version - ask students to draw their visual representations with their NON-DOMINANT hand. This will take a lot more time for students to complete and will cause them to focus more on what they are drawing (which means you saying more repetitions of the sentence).

Observations

1. The sentences need to be very comprehensible, because students are drawing what they hear. If the sentences are too long or are incomprehensible, students will become frustrated.
2. Students were much more engaged with this type of dictation instead of a regular one, since it involved them having to draw a visual representation of what they heard, as opposed to just writing down words. 
3. Because students had to draw what they heard, it was necessary for me to repeat the sentences many times, which meant LOTS of great repetitions. 
4. Students did not complain about doing this type of dictation, because it did not "feel" like a regular dictation.  
5. Because students were already familiar with the story and vocabulary, it was not a difficult activity for them to do.
6. This is another great post-reading activity for going over a story and to get in more repetitions.

Example (taken from a Movie Talk called MonsterBox)

1. Ecce puella et duo monstra: parvum monstrum et mediocre monstrum! (Behold a girl and two monsters: a small monster and a medium monster)
2. Faber facit casam parvo monstro (The craftsman makes a house for the small monster)
3. Puella est laeta, quod monstro placet casa (The girl is happy, because the monster likes the house)
4. Ecce puella et tria monstra: parvum monstrum, mediocre monstrum, et magnum monstrum. (Behold the girl and three monster: a small monster, a medium monster, and a big monster).
5. Faber facit casam mediocri monstro (The craftsman makes a house for the medium monster).
6. Faber non facit casam magno monstro, quod magnum monstrum est molestum (The craftsman does not make a house for the big monster, because the big monster is annoying).

Quomodo Dicitur Podcast Review

This past year has been quite busy for me, as I have been working full-time and taking coursework to complete my Ed.S degree in Instructional Technology from Kennesaw State University. I feel like all I have been doing for the past 15 months is either working or completing coursework in a never-ending cycle or both! Even though it is summer right now and technically, I am on vacation, my two grad school courses are 18-week classes crammed into 6 weeks, so I am busy every day studying and working on assignments due to their break-neck pace.

As a result, especially these past 10-months, I have not devoted any time to developing my own language learning. My friend Justin Slocum Bailey, founder of Indwelling Language, in his blog posting "Why All Language Teachers Should be Language Learners," adroitly explains the importance of language teachers continuing their pursuit of language learning. As much as I wholeheartedly agree with this, over the past 10 months, I have had no time. Earlier this year, I took part in the #LatinReadingChallenge but only lasted 3 weeks, as my schedule became overwhelming. This will be my first summer in 5 years where I will not be attending Rusticatio, a weeklong spoken Latin immersion "camp." I hate it when life gets in the way of what I want to do. 

This past Monday, a new Latin podcast series called Quomodo Dicitur emerged on the scene. Hosted by Jason Slanga, Justin Slocum Bailey, and Gus Grissom, the podcast is completely in Latin - yes, spoken Latin! Yesterday, I finally took a break from my studies to take a listen, and wow, I could not get enough of it! This podcast appealed to me both as a language learner and instructional technologist on so many levels:

1. The messages delivered in the podcast were comprehensible to me. Even though my spoken Latin listening skills are rusty, I was surprised by how much I understood! Yes, there were parts which I did not understand fully due to the speaker talking too quickly or the use of vocabulary/language structure with which I was not familiar, but I got the gist of what was being said. 
2. The messages delivered in the podcast were compelling to me. The topic of the podcast was simply the hosts explaining their names (both American and Latin) and how they got them. For me, because I personally know Jason, Justin, and Gus, that was very compelling topic to hear. The podcast lasted for 13 1/2 minutes, and quite honestly, it did not seem that long, because I was engaged in the topic. Now I know why Gus goes by "Gus" and not Daryl, his given name (something about which I had always wondered), and I discovered that out only by hearing it in Latin!
3. Because it is a podcast, I can listen to it whenever I want and as many times as I want in as many ways as I want wherever I want. Even though my schedule is incredibly busy, it is an easy resource to implement. I can listen to it in my car as I drive, or at the gym, or at my computer as I work. As I am already familiar with the content in the podcast now, I can listen to it again multiple times to receive repetitions of understandable language and input. I can listen to just sections of it for narrow listening purposes. For those sections where I found the speaker talking too quickly, I can slow it down in order to hear it at a comprehensible pace (although the 1/2 speed makes me feel like I am in some weird Bizarro, time warp world where everything goes really slowly). 

Podcasts are wonderful tools to implement in the classroom. They can allow students who are absent to catch up on missed work/presentations. Students can listen to podcasts as extension activities for those who are interested. As part of a flipped classroom, podcasts can allow all students to learn at their own pace. While quick-processing students may only need to hear something once, other students are able to “rewind” what they did not understand the first time or to listen as many times as they wish. In this way, podcasts allow for individualized and differentiated learning.

My spoken Latin ability is nowhere at the level displayed in the podcast. After attending six Rusticationes, I am still an Intermediate Mid/High speaker, so I am not at the level where I can speak comfortably in paragraphs recounting an event or telling a personal story. This podcast, however, will allow to me to gain much spoken Latin input to improve my spoken language ability, and that is all I want right now: INPUT. My speaking ability will improve with time as a result of an overflow of comprehensible input. Believe me, there are VERY FEW comprehensible resources out there for Latin, so I am glad to see Latinists finally seeing the need for this and rising to the occasion.

So for those of you who think that Latin is a "dead" language, I challenge you to take a listen to this first episode of Quomodo Dicitur. You will discover that Latin is actually a vibrant, living communicative language! Maximas gratias vobis, mi Iason, Iuste, et Auguste!

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.

Nugas!

This is a fun listening comprehension, partner activity to do with students as either a post-reading activity or as a review of known material. I learned this as a language lab activity, but it is not necessary to use one. 

For this, you will need sentences from a reading which you have been reviewing or sentences with which you know that students are very familiar - in other words, the sentences need to 100% comprehensible for students to hear aloud! 

Nugas (which is Latin for "nonsense") is a very short guided dialogue/listening activity between two students, where

1. one student is designated as Student A, and the other is Student B.
2. each student has a sheet of paper which has numbered sentences, which are specific for that student, i.e., neither student sees each other's sentences
3. student A will read aloud his/her first sentence to Student B 
4. student B will read aloud his/her sentence which is a response to student A  
5. students A and B will determine whether the dialogue made sense. 
6. If it does, then students will say “Recte!” If not, then students will yell “Nugas!” 
7. Students will continue with next set of sentences. 

Examples:

1) Recte examples

Partner A: ubi est Marcus?

Partner B: puto Marcum esse in Foro.

Partner B: quomodo te habes, Marce?
Partner A: bene me habeo.

2) Nugas example

Partner B: cur Metella in via festinat?

Partner A: mihi placet consumere crustula.

Partner A: Salve, Diana!
Partner B: quod ego sum iratus.

Unfortunately, on your end as the teacher, it takes quite a bit of prep, because you need to come up with a series of  2-sentence dialogues (both recte and nugas) and then to transfer those to both Partner A and Partner B handouts separately. For example, partner A's handout would look like this:

1) Partner A: ubi est Marcus?
    Parnter B: _____________

2) Partner B: _____________
    Partner A: bene me habeo.

Observations

1. This is a great partner, listening activity, but the key point is that the sentences must be 100% comprehensible and not too long.
2. My students LOVE yelling "nugas" when the two sentences do not make sense.
3. This is a fun way to get in practice of "memorized, life skills" sentences (greetings, salutations, textbook dialogues).
4. If you are using a story, this is a way to ask questions about a story and to get in repetitions of the story in a different way.