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."

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.

Read Dating

This CI reading strategy, which I got from friend and colleague Bob Patrick, is a variation of Ping Pong/Volleyball Reading  - my Rusticatio friend Justin Slocum Bailey calls it "Read Dating," and you will see why! This is a great reading activity, because it gets students moving around.

1. Organize student desks in pairs facing each other in a circular fashion around the room. You as the teacher are in the center. If there is an odd number of students, still line up desks this way.
2. The outer circle of students is labeled "A", while the inner circle folks are labeled "B". If there is an odd number of students, there will be one student who does not have a partner. Do not worry - it will all work out.
3. Every student has his/her own copy of the reading. The reading should be either a re-reading of something already read, an embedded reading or something which students can easily read at sight due to familiarity with vocabulary and language structures.
4. Like in ping pong/volleyball reading, "A" students read the first sentence aloud in Latin to their partner sitting across from them, and then immediately, "B" students translate the sentence into English
5. If "B" student needs help, then "A" student can help out. If neither student knows, then they ask you.
6. Once "B" student finishes translating, then he/she reads the next sentence in Latin aloud to his/her partner, and "A" student translates into English.
7. Partners alternate back and forth for 2 minutes. If there is an odd number of students, one student will not participate in this activity for the round. Tell him/her to read the story quietly.
8. At the end of 2 minutes, tell "A" students rotate one seat to the right. If you have a bell, ring it to signify that time is up - this make it really feel like speed dating!
9. If there is an odd number of students, now there will be a new student who does not have a partner.
10. Now that there is a new pair, the 2 students determine where they left off in the story, and they start up at the earlier of the two sentences. Yes, there is going to be repetition for one of the readers, but that is a good thing.
11. After 2 minutes, tell "B" students rotate to the right, and start up again.
12.  When students finish the story, they go back to the beginning and read/translate it again.
13. The length of time for the activity depends on the length of the passage. You want students to go through a story at least 1 1/2- 2 times.

Observations

1. As the teacher, I love this activity, because I am doing nothing but facilitating! Occasionally, I will be called upon to help with a sentence.
2. Students are helping each other out if there is something which they do not understand
3. It is a great way to to get students to move around and to interact with each other. If a student does not "prefer" his/her partner, he/she only has to spend two minutes with that person!
4. If you want to mix things up some, tell students to move 3-4 seats instead of just 1.

Stultus

This is a great post choral reading idea which I got from James Hosler, a fellow CI Latin teacher in Ohio. It is really simple but goes a long way!

Following a choral reading of a story:

1. Give the laser pointer to a dependable student (one who understands Latin word order well) and ask that student to point to the words of the story which you just read through together.
2. Now YOU the teacher will translate the sentence aloud into English, as the class listens and watches.
3. The difference is that you will deliberately make some mistakes (either vocabulary or form) when translating aloud
4. When students hear you make a mistake, they will yell Stultus or Stulta, depending on your gender (or maybe some kinder word).
5. You as the teacher will make the necessary correction and then move on.

Observations

1. Students really get into this. When I first tried this out, I was not sure how they would respond but gosh, they loved yelling "stultus" at me.
2. Because students had the opportunity to call me stupid in Latin, they really paid attention to the story and to my translation
3. This was a great way to do some pop-up grammar when I made a mistake
4. This was another way to get students to read through the story in a different way
5. This was a great way to use the words stultus/callidus in a context, because if I get a sentence correct, I say, "Ha, ego non sum stultus, sed callidus!" or when students correct me, I say, "Babae, vos estis callidissimi!" 

Choral Reading

When reading through a story together as a class, one technique to use is group choral reading/translation. This will require:

• projecting the story onto a screen
• a laser pointer

When you think that the class is familiar enough with the vocabulary and language structures of a particular story, project that story onto a screen. As the teacher, read the first Latin sentence aloud to the class, using the laser pointer to point to each word as you read it left to right. THEN have the students as a group chorally translate that sentence into English, while you, using the laser pointer, point to the Latin words IN AN ENGLISH WORD ORDER. After that, move onto the next sentence, repeating the process.

Now some of you may be objecting, "Hey, I thought the idea was to get away from translating Latin into English. This does not seem very CI." And quite honestly, I had some reservations about it too in the beginning. The difference, however, is that this activity is not our primary goal: All we are trying to do is establish meaning. This is why according to Bloom's Taxonomy, translation is a low-level skill.  Translating itself is not my end goal activity, but rather it is a step towards a post-reading activity in the language. NOTE - though translating may require higher level skills in order to establish meaning, the end result is still the original product just in a different language; no new product has been created in the target language, which is the sign of critical thinking.

Observations

1. Doing a translation into English helps establish meaning. Yes, I want students to be able to work with Latin in Latin, but it can become very easy for students to answer Latin comprehension questions about a story without needing to understand what is being communicated if they are savvy enough, e.g., a quis question usually is answered by the subject, a quid agit question is answered by the verb, etc. 
2. In doing a choral translation, no one is put on the spot. Therefore, students' affective filters are low.
3. Following the laser pointer in both Latin and in English helps students to see the structure of the Latin language but yet how we must construe it in English in order to establish meaning.
4. Translating chorally is a way for students to help each other out. If a student does not know a word or form, they hear others saying it.
5. Choral translations are a great time to do pop-up grammar/grammar timeouts, since everyone is focused on the screen.
6. Translating a story together aloud from a screen is so much better than having students read it from a book in front of them. In a choral translation, I am able to see students' eyes and to hear their voices. If I do not hear enough students translating aloud together, then I will call them on it.