Embedded Reading, part 2

This is part 2 of a series on Embedded Reading.


An earlier post ended with a dilemma regarding Embedded Reading. During the 6th week of 1st semester, in one of my Latin III classes, we had just finished reading version #1 of a story from the textbook and now I was ready for the class to read version #2 of that embedded reading, a slightly more difficult version but still readable and comprehensible. When I told the class this, one of my students yelled out, "Again? It really was not that interesting the first time we read it!'

And he was 100% correct. Though the reading was comprehensible and understandable, one incredibly necessary factor had been left out: the story itself was not compelling, i.e. the plot was not interesting enough to keep students' attention. Noted CI/TPRS writer and presenter Carol Gaab says, "COMPELLING input is just as important as COMPREHENSIBLE input." So I found myself in a dilemma: I wanted students to read in a scaffolded manner, but what to do since, even though the stories were now easier to read, students found the stories themselves boring? 

Meanwhile, at the same time, I found that students really liked the short stories which I had written as dictationes (I will admit, I have a weird sense of humor. And since in a dictatio, I am trying to force rather random vocabulary words in a story for the purpose of previewing those words in a context, the story itself seems rather random yet compelling). A number of students truly began to ask for the "back story" and wanted me to "fill in the gaps" about some of the characters and plot, and quite honestly, I had never thought of doing anything further with the plots in dictationes. Plus, with a dictatio, I was bound by keeoing the plot to 8-9 sentences - what if I were to expand the dictatio into a form of embedded reading?

So there began my own experiment with embedded readings - what if the dictatio itself served as version #1 of the story, and version #2 expanded upon the dictatio, with the actual sentences of the dictatio embedded in it, and the final version had version #2 embedded in it? if this were the case, then the compelling factor would have to be the new parts of the plot which students hopefully were anticipating?

Meanwhile, unbeknownst to me, what I was wanting to do was actually part of what Embedded Readings are! New details are added in subsequent versions, because 

1. students are ready to read longer versions after reading shorter versions and 
2. the new information is what keeps the various versions compelling. 

Even though I had come to this conclusion on my own, I felt so much better when I learned this and that I was not going "rogue" by doing this experiment. So Laurie Clarcq and Michelle Whaley (co-developers of this strategy), embedded readings have been verified by an outside independent source!

Essentially, there are two different types of Embedded Reading: 

From the Top Down - this is taking a longer, more complex reading and "whittling" it down to a base version, which is easier to read (grammatically, number of sentences, superfluous details are left out), and then building from that base version to a more complex version and so on until students are ready to read the original unadapted version.

From the Bottom Up - this is creating a base story of a few sentences or so and then building upon that version by adding more details and language structures and so on until students come to the final version of the story.

My first attempts at embedded readings were From the Top Down, and my students did not seem to enjoy those because of the lack of compelling plot. What I began to do instead were From the Bottom Up, which allowed for me to control the structures and to create a compelling plot.

Here is an excerpt of a From the Bottom Up embedded reading which I created:

Version #1

olim Abby pessimum morbum habebat, sed non remedium habebat. Abby nunc maximos oculos et maximas aures habebat. Merlena erat crudelis puella et semper Abbyem deridebat. 

Version #2

olim Abby pessimum morbum habebat sed non remedium habebat. Abby non pecuniam habebat. Abby nunc maximos oculos et maximas aures habebat. Abby temptavit celare suos maximos oculos et maximas aures. Merlena, quae erat crudelis puella, semper Abbyem deridebat. Merlena Abbyem derisit, dicens, “tuae aures sunt maximae, sicut aures elephanti! tui oculi sunt maximae."

Version #3

olim Abby pessimum habebat, sed non remedium habebat. Abby non multam pecuniam habebat, quod autoraedam emerat. propter pessimum morbum, Abby nunc maximos oculos et maximas aures habebat. propter maximas aures, Abby temptavit gerere petasum, sed aures erant maximi. propter maximos oculos, Abby temptavit gerere perspicilla, sed oculi erant maximi. propter maximas aures et oculos, Abby discedere domum noluit. Merlena, quae erat crudelis puella, semper Abbyem deridebat. Merlena Abbyem deridere solebat, dicens, “tuae aures sunt maximae, sicut aures elephanti, sicut Dumbo! tui oculi sunt maximi, sicut plena luna! nemo te amat!"

Observations

1. The addition of new bits of the plot and personalizing the story by making students the characters for each version definitely made it more compelling for students to read.
2. Because the original versions were embedded in the final version, the final version was much easier to read, and students read it at a much faster pace. Even though the story appeared to be longer, the length of the story due to its apparent "ease" did not deter students.
3. Even though my stories were embedded, I need to do a MUCH better job at limiting the amount of vocabulary in the stories. Although the reading is embedded, in many ways, it is still an intensive reading (too much vocabulary and language structures) instead of an extensive reading (limited vocabulary and language structures with much repetition)
4. The embedding allowed for more meaningful repetitions of the language

So how does one create a From the Bottom Up embedded reading? As Laurie Clarcq and Michelle Whaley presented last week in their workshop:

1. Pick 3 language structures/vocabulary words on which you want to focus.
2. Write a short story of 3-4 sentences involving them - that will serve as your base story
3. Now WITHIN your base story, add 3-4 more sentences with new details. Do not just add the new details to the very end, because then students will not read the beginning, and the purpose is for students to re-read the story in order to get in more repetitions of the language. Try to repeat those language structures. Also, change the wording some of your first sentence so that students think it is a new version/story.
4. Now with the new version, add 3-4 more sentences with new details. You can start combining sentences/varying up the already existing sentences with new structures, as students are already familiar with the vocabulary, but again try to repeat those 3 language structures in the new details.
5. Continue until you feel the version which you have is complete. In my opinion, four versions are enough.

So give embedded readings a try - they actually do work! So what are some ways to get students to read them? I'll save that for future posts.

Sheltering Vocabulary

In 1960, Bennett Cerf, the co-founder of Random House Publishing Company, bet Theodore Geisel that he could not write a children's book using only 50 different words. Geisel undertook this task and under the pseudonym Dr. Seuss, he wrote the book Green Eggs and Ham. And yes, only 50 unique words are used in the entire book.

Theodore Geisel's Green Eggs and Ham is a perfect example of the TPRS mantra "Shelter/Limit Vocabulary, not Grammar," and it is this mantra which really rubs a lot of teachers the wrong way. "What? Shelter/limit vocabulary? A language does not consist of a few words and nor does it exist in a vacuum! The more words which a student knows, the better he/she will be able to communicate or to read!" And yes, there is some degree of truth in that: we do indeed want our student to be able to communicate and to read. The issue at hand though is that we overload our students with WAY TOO MUCH vocabulary all at once, while forcing them to learn language structures at the same time. The result: they end up knowing neither well. 

If you were to ask your students of any level of Latin which vocabulary words they knew best, most likely they would respond with words from the beginning weeks of Latin 1 - for my students, even if they were AP students, those words would be the CLC stage 1 words: pater, mater, servus, filius, canis, tablinum, atrium, culina, hortus, via, triclinium, est, scribit, bibit, sedet, laborat, dormit, etc. And though shocking at first since these students are three years removed from Latin 1 and have "learned" so many more words since then, at the same time, it is not surprising. Why? Because those limited words are repeated over and over in their readings in the opening weeks in various configurations, therefore, students really have no choice but to internalize/acquire them. After that, though, the curriculum becomes a mad dash of overloading them with a massive amount of new low-frequency vocabulary words while introducing new language structures. To quote my friend Evan Gardner, founder of Where Are Your Keys?, as a result, students end up "burning unnecessary memory bandwidth."    

Now focusing on a limited amount of vocabulary does not mean that no new vocabulary is ever introduced but rather, that the amount is controlled and that the choice of words is deliberate. This allows for continued repetitions and when that word is introduced in a new language structure, students can solely focus on the form - and if the context is comprehensible, it may not even be necessary for students to focus on the form, since the word just "translates itself" due to context. 

Just because the book picks various words for their "vocabulary list" does not mean that students must learn those particular words. On the average, CLC has around 35 words in its stage vocabulary lists - WAY too much, and in my opinion, around half of those words are not important. Though they may help a particular story, big picture, they are not used enough later on to merit having students know them.

So how does one limit vocabulary?

1. Focus on high-frequency vocabulary first. I will leave you to define "high-frequency," because to every Latin teacher, that will mean something different. For some it will mean the most commonly used words in classical literature, while for others, it will mean words which are most frequently used in a particular textbook series or in a story, and yet for others, it will mean those words which are most commonly used in any language itself (words such as be, want, have, give, take, go, etc).
2. Don't focus on cognates too much. Again, students can "burn unnecessary memory bandwidth" in learning cognates. Now if like French, the word is a faux amis (false friend) and not a cognate but looks like one, then definitely focus on the word.
3. Once you determine the words on which you will focus, then these will be your foundation for TPR, TPRS, etc. 
4. Once students have acquired these words, then these particular words will become the ones which you will use to introduce new language structures. Again, this way students will only have to focus on the form, not the meaning of the word AND the new structure.

Even though vocabulary has been limited, it is still possible to create engaging and compelling stories with a few words. Look at Green Eggs and Ham!

Writing in Latin, part 3 - Student-Created Comprehensible Readers

This is part 3 in a continuing series on getting students to write in the target language.

So after students have done a timed write, what can you as the teacher do with their writings? I got this idea from Kristin Duncan's TPRSTeacher blog, which she in turn had gleaned from Judith Dubois's blog Ms. D's Funny Little Classroom.

The idea is to take some of the writings and simply to edit them for the class to read the next day, and by "edit," I mean "to correct any grammar errors in the the writing." You as the teacher type up the writings but do not change anything which has been written other than the forms for grammatical purposes or for comprehension. 

Some may say, "Students should not be writing if they are going to be making tons of errors." I suppose that one could argue that, but the purpose of this is to create some more COMPREHENSIBLE readings for students. Because these have been written by students, most likely they do not include any random vocabulary which have not been acquired yet, i.e. the writings are written by students for students at a student-level. And remember: my role in this is purely as editor. The writer Oscar Wilde supposedly, when he was sending off a manuscript to his publishers, penned a note to them, saying "I’ll leave you to tidy up the woulds and shoulds, wills and shalls, thats and whichs, etc.”

The following is an example of a timed write which I had my Latin 3 students do. The text in bold is a story which I had written: first, I read it aloud to them and acted it out - any new words or forms (such as the future participle) were written on the board and whenever I came to that word, I pointed to it on the board to establish meaning; second, the class received a paper copy of the story and we read through it together, with a choral translation of it and me asking comprehension questions in Latin about the story; third, students did a 25-minute Read and Draw of the story; fourth, finally students did a 10-minute timed write of the story, using their Read/Draw pictures - when they finished, they were to continue writing what they thought happened next. I then edited their "what happened next?" part and as a class, the next day, we read through them together. What follows are five student-written, teacher-edited conclusions of the story.

Jenny erat in culina, cantans et coquens libum, quod erat dies natalis Susanis. Jenny erat positura saccharum in libo, cum subito, Cindy culinam ingressa est. Cindy donum et venenum in mensa posuit. subito Cindy displosit, et Jenny obstupefacta est. putans venenum esse saccharum, Jenny venenum in libo posuit. libum ad Susanem a Jenny portatum est. Susan gaudio affecta est et erat consumptura libum. tum quid accidit?

1) cum Susan libum gustavisset, lacrimavit. Jenny rogavit, “quid accidit?” Susan dixit, “libum est pulchrum!” Jenny gaudio affecta est et gustavit libum. subito, Jenny displosit. Susan obsupefacta est, et consumpsit libum.

 2) Cindy intravit culinam. cucurrit ad Susanem et rapuit libum. tum Cindy deiecit libum in terra. Susan erat irata quod voluit consumere libum. “libum habet venenum!” Cindy clamavit. “Jenny voluit necare te!” loctua haec verba, Cindy petivit Jennyem. Jenny cucurrit e culina. “ego sum non homo quem tu intellexisti me esse!”

3) Cerberus culinam ingressus est, et Cindy in culina apparuit. Cindy clamat, “minime, libum venenum habet!” Jenny et Susan obstupefacti sunt. “estne venenum in libo?” dixit Susan. “ita vero,” respondit Cindy. Jenny tristitia affecta est, quod Susan erat consumptura libum, et libum habet venenum. Cerberus Jennyo appropinquavit, et prope eam sedit. Jenny gaudio affecta est. Susan risit (et dixit), “ego sum laeta, quod ego non sum mortua. Cindy, tu es amica. Jenny, tu es amica.”

4) Susan libum consumpsit et erat exanimata. Jenny obstupefacta est, et erat lacrimatura. tum Cindy decidit a caelo, et servavit Susanem. Susan affecta est gratitiā, et dixit, “maximas gratias ago, quod tu es meus heros!” Cindy explicavit quid accidisset. Susan et Jenny in animo volverunt cur Cindy portavisset donum cum veneno ad diem natalem. Cindy narravit rem. Cindy voluit necare porcum scelestum, sed obstructa erat a scelesto arbore. Cindy per silvam ambulavit…

5) subito Susan a Jenny pulsata est. irata, Susan Jennyem rogavit, “cur tu me pulsavisti? ego numquam te pulso!” Jenny Susanae dixit, “O Susan, re vera, tu est optima amica.” sed Jenny Susanem iterum pulsavit, et Susan humi decidit, mortua. nunc Susan (awoke) et putans esse fabulam mirabilem, libum laeta consumpsit. sed quod libum erat malum libum, Susan iterum humi decidit, mortua. Cindy apparuit, cacchinans!

Observations
1) Because everyone in the class took part in the timed write, it is a common experience for the class. The class knows what happened prior to the student-written endings, so they are eager to see what others wrote.

2) Because these writings are student-written, they are incredibly comprehensible to read. I do not even do an English translation of it when we read through them - we read them together in Latin as Latin - I don't ask any comprehension questions but simply read the stories aloud in Latin. What I love most is hearing students laugh as they read along with me, because it shows me that they are truly interacting with the language in the language.

3) Students actually get mad at me when I do not pick their writings for the class to read. I explain to them, "I pick 5-6 writings at random. Yours will be picked eventually."

4) In my editor role, I am able to see what kinds of grammatical errors which students are making; this shows me what I need to review or where I need to slow down to help acquisition.

5) I am absolutely floored at what students come up with when it comes to creating their own endings - they are so creative!