How to CI a Latin Textbook Chapter Reading

With the school year now beginning for many Latin teachers, here is a blog post about how to CI a textbook chapter for those teachers who are "bound" to the textbook or are wanting to incorporate CI in their curriculum but do not feel that they possess a strong enough foundation yet to leave behind the textbook.

Since most Latin textbooks are centered around readings, the first thing to do is to pick 1-2 readings from a chapter on which you will focus - do not feel the need to cover EVERY reading in a chapter (e.g., stage 14 of the Cambridge Latin Course has 9 readings!). The name of the game, though, is to sift through the reading(s) to determine with what vocabulary words students are unfamiliar PRIOR to the students reading it, and then to determine what vocabulary to PRETEACH, how you plan to introduce it, and what words will you leave as icing/glossed words. Then, you need to determine what kinds of post-reading activities which you want to do in order to consolidate this vocabulary.

Below are lessons plan examples of "how to CI" Stage 1 of the Cambridge Latin Course and Chapter 3 of Ecce Romani. 

Cambridge Latin Course - Stage 1 Model Sentence (due to copyright law, I am unable to post the actual reading from the story)

1. Words to immediately target before the reading:

• pater
• mater
• filius
• filia
• canis
• est
• scribit
• bibit
• laborat
• in culina
• in tablino

    Icing words/words for glossing:

• servus (possibly a cognate which students may recognize)
• in atrio
• in triclinio
• in horto
• dormit
• legit
• in via
• coquus

2. Preteach the following words using Picture Talk: pater, mater, filius, filia, canis, est, -ne, quis, quae

Picture talk script

3. Preteach the following words using a Movie Talk: in culina, in tablino

Movie Talk script

4. Preteach the following words doing 3-ring circus: scribit, bibit, laborat
5. Project the model sentences and pictures from the textbook for students to read. Gloss icing words.
6. Do a choral reading of the model sentences.
7. Play a game of Stultus with the model sentences.
8. Do a Ping Pong reading of the model sentences.
9. Play Pancho Cumacho with vocabulary from model sentences. 

Pancho Cumacho script

10. Word Chunk Game with model sentences. 

Ecce Romani - Chapter 3 reading "In the Garden" (due to copyright law, I am unable to post the actual reading from the story)

1. Words with which students are "familiar/may have acquired" due to prior use in previous chapters:

• est
• nomine
• in villa rustica/villis rusticis
• habitat
• alter
• et
• sunt 
• amici
• hodie
• quod
• laeti
• quoque
• in agris
• currunt
• sed

Words which are cognates:

• pictura
• Romanus
• servus
• Italia
• Brittanicus
• statua

Words to immediately target before the reading

• puer
• solus
• clamant
• rident
• subito
• laborant
• iratus
• molestus

Icing words/words for glossing

• qui
• in horto
• eadem
• multi
• in piscinam
• cadit
• abite, molesti
• gemit

2. Preteach the following vocabulary using a Movie Talk: Dragonboy

Dragonboy script

3. Preteach the following words doing 3-ring circus: clamat, ridet, laborat
4. Project Dragonboy reading for students to read. 

Dragonboy reading

6. Do a choral reading of the Dragonboy story.
7. Play a game of Stultus with the Dragonboy story
8. Social Emotional Learning reading with Dragonboy story.
9. Read/Draw of Dragonboy story

Read/Draw sentences
Read Draw cartoon grid

10. Using Read/Draw as a guide, do a 5-minute timed write of the Dragonboy story
11. NOW introduce Chapter 3 Ecce Romani reading. Gloss any icing words.

While some many wonder why it is necessary to do another story prior to introducing this chapter, our goal is to make the Chapter 3 reading as comprehensible as possible for students upon reading it for the first time, meaning that they know as many words as possible. Preteaching vocabulary will allow for this.

A Hybrid CI/Textbook Approach, Part 3

This is the final posting in a series based on my presentation "Detoxing from the Textbook."

My last two posts discussed both the issues with wanting to leave behind the textbook and the hows of doing a hybrid CI/textbook approach. This post will demonstrate my actual lesson plan in teaching greetings. NOTE - I do not teach greetings right away, so students have acquired already a bit of language and of structures prior to me teaching greetings.

As I established in my last post, perhaps your end goal for a chapter is for your students to be able to take part in a dialogue found in your textbook. Perhaps your dialogue on greetings looks like this:

A: Hello, what is your name?

B: Hello, my name is Rhonda. What is your name? 

A: My name is Marsha. How are you?

 B: I am fine. How are you?
A: My stomach hurts.

Traditional methods would start first with the dialogue and then have students go around the room asking each other their names and asking how each other are. Nothing wrong with that, other than it gets incredibly boring very quickly! In addition, you are forcing students to produce language which has no meaning to them way too soon. Instead, why not use a story which has many of these phrases embedded in them as part of the storyline? 

Ian sees a girl. The girl is beautiful. Ian loves the beautiful girl. Ian greets the beautiful girl. “O girl, hello. My name is Ian. What is your name?” The beautiful girl greets Ian, “Hello, Ian. My name is Go Away!” Ian is sad and cries.

Ian sees another girl. The girl is beautiful. Ian loves the beautiful girl. Ian greets the beautiful girl, “O girl, hello, my name is Ian.  What is your name?” The beautiful girl greets Ian, “Hello, Ian, my is You are Annoying.” Ian is sad and cries.

Lesson Plan (over a span of 4-5 days)

1. Tell the story aloud and you as the teacher act it out. Write any unknown words write on the board to establish meaning, and point and pause. No circling - simply establish listening flow.
2. Tell the story again either with actors or pictures. Circle and implement PQAs.
3. Project the story on the board and conduct a choral reading to establish meaning as a class.
4. Play a game of Stultus using the projected story on the board.
5. Give students a copy of the reading and have students in pairs do a ping-pong reading or Social Emotional Learning reading of the story
6. Play a game of Sentence Flyswatter
7. Do a Higher Order Thinking activity with the story (possible/probable, who would say X, is this necessary to know, etc)
8. Do a partner picture story retell of the story
9. Do a timed write of the story.
10. Students FINALLY see the goal dialogue
11. Play Same Conversation with the dialogue 
12. Play a game of Nugas with the dialogue

Some of you may be thinking, "Wow, that seems like a lot of work PRIOR to students seeing the dialogue." Yes, it is. My point, though, is that I want students to have already acquired the vocabulary/structures and the sounds of the language before they actually see the actual dialogue. By the time students get to the dialogue, they already know it but do not realize it!

A Hybrid CI/Textbook Approach, Part 2

This is part 2 in a series based on my presentation "Detoxing from the Textbook".

My last post discussed that although textbooks are a resource for the classroom, they are not designed with CI in mind. Many of you are in stituations where you do not want to leave behind the textbook, cannot leave behind the textbook for various reasons, or do not feel comfortable enough with CI/TPRS to "untextbook." For the record, those are all indeed valid reasons. This, however, does not mean that you still cannot apply CI/TPRS strategies to the textbook, but it does require planning. 

1) When trying to do a hybrid/CI approach with a textbook, there are a few questions to consider:

• What MUST I absolutely cover? What are considered non-negotiables? Look through your textbook and see what topics, language structures, vocabulary, etc are covered. Of those, what MUST be covered and for what reasons? Things which can determine coverage in a textbook:
• state/district standards
• standardized exams and assessments (school, district, state-level)
• Student Learning Objectives (SLOs)
• instructional team 
• If there are topics which must be covered, can I cover them on MY own timeline? Is it truly necessary for me to be on the same page as other teachers? If I can ensure that all of these topics are taught by the time of the "_________" (final exam/SLO, etc.), does it matter that I will do it according to MY own personal pacing calendar?

2) Take a look at a chapter, and ask yourself "What is my end goal?" Depending on your goals, it could be a number of things:

• students will be able to read a particular story/reading
• students will be able to take part in a specific textbook dialogue
• students will be able to demonstrate specific skills/language structures
• students will be able to demonstrate proficiency on a common standardized chapter/final exam assessment

NOTE - Simply "knowing" a list of vocabulary is NOT an end goal, but rather an acquisition of, an internalization of, and a working knowledge of vocabulary should be the goal.

3) Now ask yourself, "What must I do to prepare students to get to that end?"

• Shelter vocabulary but not grammar - One of the most practical tools which i have come across for this is Carrie Toth's Vocabulary Chuck-it Bucket. Sort through your textbook's chapter vocabulary and ask yourself:
• What words are necessary? Are there words which are absolutely necessary for my end goal?
• What words are high frequency? Teach these early! It will actually save you time in the long run, plus you can get LOTS of mileage from these words.
• What words can be put on hold for a bit?
• What words can I chuck out? Regardess of your textbook, I am certain that there are words on a textbook's vocabulary list which make you scratch your head and say "Who the heck thought that this was an important word to know (due to low frequency)?" I usually throw these words out, and if they appear in a reading, I will gloss it for students.

Preload/preteach vocabulary/language structures prior to the actual textbook reading/dialogue. This will allow for whatever your end goal is to be 100% comprehensible by the time your students get to it. Preloading/preteaching vocabulary/language structures can be achieved through TPR, TPRS, and many other CI strateges. 

Noted CI/TPRS presenter Karen Rowan passed along to me another great tool for backwards design. Take a look at your desired end goal dialogue/reading and based on the vocabulary/structures in that dialogue/reading, fill out the grid. This is a wonderful tool, because it really helps map out visually what needs to be done to prepare students for my end goal.

You may be thinking, "This is great, but what does this look like in the classroom?" Stay tuned for my next post!

POST SCRIPTUM: Quite ironically, this week on his live hour-long online "radio" show "Tea with BVP," second language acquisitionist Bill Van Patten discussed textbooks and if they were a "friend or foe" for language acquistion. It was a great lively discussion, but unfortunately, the episode was not recorded, so it is not in the Tea wth BVP episode archive (I am bummed, because I was only able to listen to the first half of the episode). If you are not currently listening to his show, you can listen live on Thursday afternoons starting at 3:00pm EST (http://mixlr.com/teawithbvp/) or you can listen to past episodes in the archive (https://soundcloud.com/teawithbvp).

A Hybrid CI/Textbook Approach, Part 1

The following is the first in a series based on my presentation "Detoxing from the Textbook".

When one starts to embrace CI/TPRS, immediately one begins to think about casting aside the textbook. That was my first inclination when I began to implement TPRS in 2007, and for the first six weeks, I was moving along pretty strongly...and then I suddenly realized that I had no idea where I was going. I had no map, and I did not possess a strong enough foundation of CI/TPRS to head out on my own. As a result, I ended up going back to the textbook and felt like a CI/TPRS failure.

So is the textbook in and of itself bad? It is a resource indeed BUT..

• Textbooks are not written with Comprehensible Input language acquisition in mind. If they were, textbooks would focus on higher frequency vocabulary and unsheltered grammar; and they would scaffold like crazy with tons of repetitions. Instead, we find the opposite in textbooks: intensive vocabulary with limited grammar. 
• Textbooks assume that language learning is linear in nature. Most textbooks assume that students will master a language structure in a chapter. The reality is that language acquisition does not occur in a linear fashion but rather in a spiral: one goes up the spiral a bit when being introduced a new target structure/vocabulary and then one goes back down, and then one goes up again a little higher, and then spirals back down again. It is actually in the goings up and down of that spiral where acquisition of previous structures/vocabulary occurs through repetition. And for the record, I am quoting ACTFL language in that description.

So then why do we cling to the textbook?

• It is what we know. For many of us, we have "perfected" lesson plans for the textbook after having used it for years. We have worksheets/packets set up for each chapter, and we know how to teach each concept. We ourselves most likely learned from a textbook, so we "understand" how it works.
• It provides us a map (albeit faulty) of where to go with structures, topics, vocabulary, etc. Even though we are language teachers, creating a "map" on our own is difficult.
• It is safe and easy. The textbook has everything lined up for us teachers, in terms of vocabulary lists, workbook exercises, classroom work, online resources, etc. All we have to do is to follow the teacher's manual. 
• It saves prep time. Many language teachers have 2-3 preps (even more!), so using the textbook is a godsend, since it saves preparation time for teachers.
• We are “required” to use it. Even if one wanted to leave behind the textbook, in many districts, teachers must use the textbook.
• We are bound by a pacing calendar or Instructional team. Depending on one's district, there may be a policy requiring that all students be on the same page at the same time.
• We do not have enough of a foundation of CI/TPRS to leave the textbook behind. This was exactly the situation in which I was in 2007.

The question to ask yourself then is "Is the textbook what is best for your students? or is it what is best for you as the teacher?" 

So if you need/want to use the textbook (for various reasons), is there a way you can implement a CI/TPRS approach with it? The answer is YES, That will be my next posting...