Guess the Word/Hot Seat

This is another fun vocabulary activity involving whiteboards - I learned this at my first Rusticatio in 2010:

1. Divide the class into 3 teams
2. Pick one student from each team to sit in front of the classroom with their backs to the classroom board - the three students are facing their teams. I usually ask for volunteers so that no one feels like he/she is "on the spot" without his/her permission.  The rest of the class has whiteboards.
3. On the classroom board, write a known vocabulary word
4. The class will then draw a pictorial representation of that word on their whiteboards but not show the 3 students. If a student does not know the meaning of the word, he/she can look at a neighbor's whiteboard. Students may not use letters, numbers or any symbol found on a computer keyboard.
5. On cue, have all of the students show the 3 students their pictures
6. The 3 students guess the Latin vocabulary word. First one who guesses the correct word gets a point for his/her team.
7. Variations: instead of pictures, have students write one-word synonyms or antonyms in Latin. Depending on ability, have students write definitions of the vocabulary word in Latin sentences.

Observations

1. This is a very low-stress, highly engaging and competitive activity. 
2. Because students are drawing their own interpretation of the vocabulary, it helps to personalize the acquisition process
3. In order for the students to guess the word, the picture needs to be comprehensible. Sometimes, the simpler the picture is drawn, the better.
4. Because the 3 students are looking at a variety of pictures to guess the word, they are receiving multiple comprehensible messages.
5. Pick vocabulary words which can be easily understood from a picture. Sometimes, "concept" words, e,g, dignitas, are difficult to draw.

Vocabulary Acquisition and Flashcards, Part 2

In my last post, I discussed how flashcards are not the best way for students to acquire vocabulary, but that instead vocabulary must be presented in a meaningful and contextual way with lots of repetitions in order for acquisition to take place.

The reality though was that a number of my students really wanted me to do flashcard review with them, saying, "Our teacher last year opened every day with vocabulary flashcards (Latin to English), and that really helped." So I found myself in a quandary: was I not giving my students enough repetitions of vocabulary in understandable messages, hence, they did not feel like they had acquired anything? or was I dealing with a bunch of visual 4%ers who wanted something which felt comfortable?

So I embarked on the following "flashcard" experiment. Whether or not this is a CI activity, I do not know, so I would love to hear some feedback.

I always begin a new chapter with a dictatio (NOTE - at my school, I teach with two other Latin teachers who do not use CI, and they stick to the book and how structures/vocabulary are presented and in what order. Basically, I am bound to follow that much since my school is BIG on uniformity of a pacing calendar, but how I teach those concepts is completely up to me). On the next day, as a "bellringer," I project a vocabulary "flashcard" powerpoint with sentences from the dictatio and a visual representation of the word - new vocabulary words are underlined. Because of the dictatio and having translated them the prior day in order to establish meaning, most students are familiar enough with the sentences and know what the word already means. I read the sentence in Latin, and now ask for the meaning of the individual word in English. I do this for 3 days or so. An example below:





I can also circle questions based on the sentence in order to get in some repetitions in a context and for students to interact with the new vocabulary.

Then for the next few days, I transition to something different. I still continue to use the same visual representation as on the earlier "flashcards" but now the sentence is gone and has been replaced by an "either...or" sentence involving vocabulary - it is actually a variation of circling; I now read aloud the new sentence in Latin and ask students which Latin word it is. I do this for the next 3-4 days. An example below:

 

For the last 3 days or so, now all I do is project the visual representation of the word without any text. It is the same picture which has been used every day, so it is very familiar for students. Now I ask students to give me the Latin word itself. By the end, there are now about 12-14 "flashcards". An example below.

 

Observations:
1) As this is only done as a "bellringer" class opener, it does not serve as my primary way for students to acquire new vocabulary. It takes up only about 3-4 minutes of classtime.
2) Students who asked for "flashcard review" of words are satisfied with this.
3) Associating the vocabulary with a visual really helped "cement" the word for my visual learners, as they saw now a picture in their minds, instead of a written word.
4) It served as another way to acquire vocabulary through repetitions in a somewhat meaningful way

So far, it seems to be working, but I would love some feedback on this.

Vocabulary Acquistion and Flashcards, part 1

(The following is taken from a presentation which I gave at the 2012 American Classical League Summer Institute, as well as the 2013 Northeastern Council on the Teaching of Foreign Language conference. This is part 1 of a series of postings on vocabulary and flashcards)

When we were learning Latin, we all probably made flashcards of some kind in order to learn vocabulary. We wrote the Latin on one side with all of its parts (nominative, genitive and gender for nouns, while all four principal parts for verbs), and on the other side, we wrote the English meaning. We drilled ourselves faithfully with these flashcards, looking at the Latin in order to produce the English. And for the most part, they worked for us.

Or did they?

In and of themselves, there is nothing wrong with flashcards, because they do work depending on the task, but there are a number of reasons why they do not always benefit students.

1. Flashcards only work for a certain type of learner - the visual kinesthetic learner. Yet many Latn teachers require all of their students to create flashcards and to turn them in as a grade. Why do we insist that students do this when it only benefits a small percentage of students?
2. Flashcards only present words as isolated forms. We know that language does not operate as individual words set in isolation.
3. Flashcards only offer temporary memorization, not long term internalization. This is why many times, students will immediately forget vocabulary following a quiz, even though they "studied" using flashcards. I call this the "cram and flush" syndrome - they "cram" for a quiz, and they "flush" it from their minds as soon as the quiz is over.

According to Krashen's Second Language Acquisition (SLA) theory, flashcards illustrate the difference between learning and acquiring.

• Learning refers to the processes by which people actively and strenuously BUT temporarily internalize information. This is what is called conscious learning.
• Acquiring refers to the relatively effortless, subconsious and permanent internalization of new information. This is what is called subconscious learning.

In her book When Kids Can't Read, What Teachers Can Do, Kylene Beers writes of an experiement demonstrating subconscious learning done with some particular low-performing middle school Language Arts classes. Weekly, students took vocabulary quizzes over a list of 20 words which the teacher gave to them to learn on their own at the beginning of the week (does this sound familiar? I feel like instead of Language Arts, insert the word Latin). The results were atrocious, and even those student who did perform well immediately forgot the words. So the experiment was as follows:

1. Two weeks before the quiz, the teachers themselves were to learn the 20 vocabulary words
2. A week before the quiz, the teachers themselves were to incorporate and to use these 20 words in their everday instruction as a way to preview the words for students in a context.
3. The week of the quiz, the teachers were to give the list of 20 words to students, who by now should be familiar with the words

On paper, this sounded like a great exercise, as one would expect students' scores to rise due to the constant exposure to the vocabulary. But the problem in this experiment actually was not with the students but with the teachers. The issues were:

1. 20 words a week was too much for the teachers to handle. They could not keep track of the words. In other words, if the teachers could not do it, then how did they expect students to do it?
2. The 20 words themselves were too difficult and random for teachers to preview for students in a natural way.

So the teachers decided to cut the list in half to 10 words and to choose words which could easily be used naturally in their instruction. When the teachers made those changes to the experiment, they saw the scores on students' vocabulary quizzes rise, and even better, retention of these words improved as these words began to appear in students' writings and in their everyday conversation.

So what were the conclusions from this experiment? In order to acquire and to internalize vocabulary:

1. It must be limited
2. It must be meaningful
3. It must be contextual and not isolated
4. It must be constantly repeated in a meaningful and contextual way

Does this not sound very familiar to the ears of CI users? How interesting that this aspect of Krashen's SLA theory was independently verified by a middle school Language Arts class!

My next posting will be part 2 in the series and will deal with how I myself have been experimenting though with "flashcards" in a CI kind of way this school year.

Four Word Vocabulary Picture

I've always said that students love any activity involving whiteboards and dry-erase markers. Here is a fun vocabulary activity:

1. Write four known random vocabulary words on the board.
2. Students have one minute to draw a picture on their whiteboards which incorporates/depicts all of the words (not four separate pictures, but one)
3. Tell students if they do not know a word, then they should focus on what words they do know.
4. When the minute is up, students show their whiteboards to each other, pointing out each word in Latin.
5. Ask students to show their whiteboards to you, while you walk around and check them.
6. Pick 2-3 boards to show the class, and using a document camera, project student pictures onto the screen
7. Describe these pictures in Latin to the class, using the vocabulary words
8. You can also circle questions about words in the picture
9. Added variation - if you have time, draw a picture yourself beforehand involving the four words and show your version to students.
10. If you are able, try now to Ask a Story from one of the pictures projected. Ask the student who did the drawing for details. He/she will usually be able to come up with a great story since it is his/her picture.

Obervations

1. Drawing a visual depiction of the vocabulary word gives students another way to acquire vocabulary.
2. Since students are drawing the vocabulary words themselves, it personalizes the acquisition process
3. Even though everyone is drawing a picture using the same four words, I am always surprised by how many different interpretations there are. Students are too and enjoy seeing each other's pictures. 
4. I will usually do 2-3 rounds of this activity in a period, lasting a total of 15 minutes (if I do not do an Ask a Story from one of the pictures)

Readers Theater

This is an activity which sounds exactly like it is: students acting out a reading. I have always wanted to do this with my students, but I have been a bit apprehensive, because there are so many variables and unknowns, e.g., what if my students do not want to act it out, what if it bombs. In her blog, my friend Miriam Patrick wrote about her same misgivings about doing Readers Theater with her classes but saw some good things come out of it.

In November, at ACTFL, I had wanted to attend Carol Gaab's presentation on Readers Theater, but it was right after the main general assembly and by the time I finally found where her presentation was, the room was overflowing. Last semester, I attended a TPRS workshop led by Karen Rowan, and as the workshop was held at a school during actual school hours, we registrants got the chance to see her demonstrate it with an actual Spanish class. And she did a WONDERFUL job with Readers Theater with a group of students whom she had just met, and these students had never done this before. Bolstered by what I saw, this past week, I decided to give it a try with two of my Latin 2 classes.

Here are a few things which I knew going in:

1. The reading needs to be comprehensible
2. The reading needs to be compelling
3. There needs to be ACTION in the reading. Yes, there can be dialogue, but as students will be acting this out, ACTION is what will get students' attention and keep them engaged
4. Props, props, props!!

So I wrote up the following short story about two students in my class, using stage 22 vocabulary and language structures:

Gianni in Starbucks cum barbara (barbaric) puella sedebat, bibentes caffeam et ridentes. Gianni clamavit, “mea cor (heart) est plenum amoris!” subito Henry intravit; barbara puella et Henry erant hostes (enemies). ingressus (having entered) Starbucks, Henry barbarm puellam conspexit. barbara puella erat irata, deiciens Henryem in pavimento (floor). Gianni erat iratus, deiciens barbaram puellam in pavimento (floor). subito mater barbarae puellae intravit; Gianni et mater erant hostes (enemies). ingressa (having entered) Starbucks, mater clamavit, “mea cor est plena irae!”

Here is how I did Readers Theater for the story:

1. Like I do with any reading, before I handed students the actual text, I read the story aloud to the class, as I myself acted it out. The job of the class purely was to listen and to watch me. Any word which they did not know (shown by the words in parentheses), I had writen on the board with English meanings and pointed to them during the story.
2. I then handed out the story for the class to read silently, as I read it again. This time, I asked if there were any words which they did not know, and then I gave them the meaning.
3. We did a bit of basic comprehension questions. I did not want to tire students of the story just yet by doing too much circling.
4. I then told the class that we would be doing Readers Theater and to tell me who they thought in the class would be good actors. This way, the burden was on the class and not on me. We needed four actors. The class was VERY willing to volunteer each other. If a student did not want to act it out, then he/she did not have to.
5. My props were 2 desks, 2 coffee mugs; a beard and helmet for the barbara puella; a plastic sword and beret for the mater
6. Once I established who was playing what character, I simply had the actors listen to the story and act it out as I read it aloud slowly in Latin.
7. If I did not feel like the actors were "emoting" enough, I would call "cut" and give them new stage directions in English for "motivation," i.e., the point was for the play to become incredibly melodramatic so that the audience would be engaged. An example was anytime anyone entered, they had to open a pretend door, walk through it and then slam it (complete with the person saying "SLAM"). 
8. Following 10-15 minutes of Readers Theater, I did some comprehension questions in Latin, asking "qui erant in Starbucks? quid agebant? quis intravit?" and then I had the class do a timed write of the story.

Observations of Readers Theater

1. One of my classes absolutely loved it and could not get enough of it. The other class, although they "enjoyed" it, did not seem as engaged, and I actually had a difficult time finding willing participants. This does not mean that it was not a success with that particular class; I just feel like that class was more self-conscious and introverted.
2. Calling "cut" and asking for students to act out a sentence again lent itself for a natural repetition of the Latin sentence.
3. In both of the classes, if the students were not pleased with the acting which they were watching, they themselves actually called out "cut" and gave suggestions for what the actor should do.
4. The props were wonderful and really got the actors engaged.
5. The visual acting out of the story gave students another level of comprehensibility, as they were able to associate what they heard with a visual representation.
6. Students were definitely engaged in the activity, as they were watching their peers act out an "over-the-top" story.
7. It is amazing how 10-15 minutes of Readers Theater can go a LONG way in student language acquisition.

I am definitely doing Readers Theater again!!

Freeze Frame

This is a great listening comprehension activity which I learned a few years ago at an ACL Summer Institute. It will require whiteboards - in my experience, I have found that students love any activity involving white boards. It is very similar to a dictatio but instead of students writing down the sentences, they will draw it.

1. You, the teacher, draw a picture beforehand (using known vocabulary words and language structures) and then write a description of the picture in Latin. The more random the picture, the better!
2. Explain to students that you are going to read a description to them, and their task is to draw a picture of what you read to them
3. Inform students that you will read the description four times.
4. Read the description slowly first without them drawing anything. Get them to formulate a picture in their own minds first.
5. Then read the description three times slowly. By the third reading, students will almost be done with their picture, but inform students that during the fourth reading, they should confirm that their drawing is correct.
6. After the fourth reading, ask students to show their picture to two other classmates and to describe the picture in Latin
7. Ask students to hold up their drawing for you. Walk around the class, commenting on students’ drawings
8. Using an overhead projector, project your picture for students to see. If the picture has been digitally scanned, project the picture onto a screen using a computer projector.
9. Ask comprehension questions in Latin about the picture 
10. If you have a document camera, then take a few students' whiteboards and project their picture onto the screen. This is actually very fun, as students get to see each other's work.

An example of a Freeze Frame picture and description:

est nox, et luna est in caelo. multi nubes sunt in caelo. tempestas quoque est in caelo. cantantes umbrae quoque sunt in caelo. interea, tres puellae sunt in silva. prima puella pecuniam in manibus tenet. avis in capite primae puellae stat. secunda puella a tertia puella trahitur.  

 

Dictatio

When I first heard about using dictationes in the target language with students, I had my immediate doubts purely because of what the activity was: it was a dictation exercise. What benefit could students gain from hearing me read sentences aloud in Latin and from writing them down word for word? To me, it sounded incredibly boring and not very interactive or engaging for students.

I, however, decided to give it a try and am now convinced of its benefits. This is now how I begin a new chapter. Here is how to do a dictatio:

1. Look at your upcoming chapter and choose the vocabulary/language structures which you want to introduce. I have found that students can begin to acquire as many as 8-9 new vocabulary words in a dictatio (whereas in a TPRS story, I usually only focus on 3-4 new words).
2. Compose around 10-12 sentences in Latin using these new words/structures. I tend to make the dictatio a story in order to make it somewhat compelling for students and so that the sentences do not seem disjointed on their own. I have colleagues who will use the model sentences in CLC as a dictatio. The key part is that the sentences need to be comprehensible for students. Repeat new words/structures as many times as you can in a dictatio; get in the reps!
3. Write the sentences on an overhead or on a word document, as you will be projecting them for students to see in order to correct any spelling mistakes after they write them down.
4. When it comes to a dictatio, I tell students to get out a clean sheet of paper and that we will be doing one; by this point, they know the drill.
5. I tell them the following (a variation of the directions found on LatinBestPracticesCIR.com, and like Bob Patrick's says in those directions, I say it to them as if it is the first time that they are doing it):

• this is a listening, comprehension and writing exercise
• their job is write down the Latin sentence which I am saying as best as they can
• I will repeat the sentence three times slowly. By the end of the 2nd repetition, they should have it written down completely so that during the 3rd time, they are just verifying what they have written.
• after the 3rd time, I will project the sentence on the screen, and their job is to make any types of spelling corrections. If they need to make a correction, they are to cross off the word and to rewrite it either above or below the word. If the sentence is written correctly, they are to write “optime” next to the sentence.
• following this, if there are words/forms which they do not know, they are to raise their hand and ask. I will give them the English meaning.
• after this, I will proceed to the next sentence.
• this is a quiz grade so if they do what I say (i.e., write down the sentence as I say it, make any corrections to it, write the word optime if the sentence is correct), then this is an easy 100%

    6.  After we complete the entire dictatio, I collect them and then I project the sentences again

         on the board, and we do a group choral translation of the dictatio in order to establish

         meaning.

    7.  I do take a look at the dictationes afterwards but since they are self-corrected, I do not have

         to do anything other than verify that students either corrected their sentences or wrote the

         word optime and then enter their grade in my gradebook.
 

Observations

• In some ways, a dictatio can seem like a very passive activity, but wow, due to the listening, writing and comprehension aspects of it, students truly do internalize these new words/forms very quickly
• If you never have had students write in the target language before, this is a non-threatening way to get them started, since they are not composing
• It is not the most engaging activity for students and as a teacher it can be rather boring just reading sentences aloud, but the benefits outweigh the lack of engagement factor
• Afterwards when I look over the dictationes, it helps me see what kinds of spelling errors students are making, how much of that was my fault due to the way I was reading it, and what kinds of things do I need to address better, e.g., did I make it clear that a particular word was one word and not two when I said it, what particular Latin pronunciation sounds are difficult for students to correlate in writing, e.g, long e vs. short e.
• Due to the vast number of repetitions, students really do catch onto the way Latin sounds subconsciously and are able to mimic those pronunciations on their own in later activities
• Remember that the sentences need to be comprehensible. I would never read sentences from Caesar's De Bello Gallico or Vergil's Aeneid to my AP students as a dictatio, because I do not think that student would understand what they were writing down.

An example of a dictatio (stage 17 CLC)

New Words to be introduced

1) benignus

2) insulam

3) diu

4) pervenit

5) maximus

6) multitudo

7) exanimatus

 

1) Joseph est benignus iuvenis, et ad insulam navigat

2) Joseph ad insulam navigat, quod vult invenire benignam uxorem.

3) Joseph diu navigat, et tamen insulam pervenit.

4) postquam Joseph insulam pervenit, vidit maximum templum.

5) in maximo templo est multitudo feminarum pro ara.

6) Joseph templum pervenit, et clamat, “O feminae, quis vult esse mea uxor?!”

7) feminae non respondent diu, et tamen una femina Josephem pulsat.

8) Joseph est exanimatus diu, et in ara excitat.

9) feminae Josephem in ara sacrificant; feminae in hac insula non sunt benignae.