My Top 5 of 2015

With the year coming to an end, as I have seen on other blogs, let me list for you my top 5 posts for 2015 (those posts which received the most page views):

1. Latin 1 - Week 1 Lesson Plan
2. Sentence Flyswatter
3. Read/Draw
4. Circling - The Art of Questioning
5. Latin is a Dead Language, Right?

Once again, I am overwhelmed by the fact that so many people are reading my blog. As I have said, there is nothing really special about me as a CI teacher. There are so many others out there who have such a deeper knoweldge of CI than I do and are implementing CI with better results than I am. I am humbled though that many of you feel like I have something to say on the matter.   

So now that my semester has ended and that I am officially on winter break, I am going to take a two-week hiatus from this blog. I hope that you all will take a much deserved break and enjoy you time away from the classroom. 

To quote Luke Henderson who expresses it so eloquently in Latin in a tweet from today:

Rough translation: Grades have been given to students; the classroom has been arranged/set up; the semester has finished/come to an end. Therefore, let me rejoice! (Something gets lost in the translation, as the English really does not give justice to his sentiments. It is expressed so much more eloquently in Latin than in English).

I look forward to posting again in January 2016. Gosh, am I really turning 46 in 2016?

Latin is a Dead Language, Right?

For the following post, the views expressed here are mine personally and may not reflect those of the Latin teaching community nor of the spoken Latin community. 

Anytime I tell someone that I am a Latin teacher, I feel like I am immediately going to have to be on the defensive based on the onslaught of comments which I will receive: "Wow, they still teach Latin? Isn't that a dead language?", "Why would anyone want to take Latin? No one speaks it any more," or "What use does Latin have in the world today? Students should take a language which is actually useful." My favorite comment is "Wow, you teach Latin? You must be REALLY smart." You get the idea.

Many of you may find it shocking that I am in complete agreement that Latin indeed is a dead language but not in the sense which most people mean. According to linguistics, a dead language is one which is still in existence but no longer serves the purpose as one's mother/native tongue. By that definition, then I have absolutely no qualms with calling Latin a dead language. That does not mean, however, that I think that Latin should not be taught on the basis of it being a dead language, because by that definition, I could probably venture to say that Yiddish is a rare mother tongue today. Does that mean that Yiddish should no longer be used or taught as a spoken language? That I should allow it to become extinct? Should my friend Evan Gardner, the founder of Where Are Your Keys?, desist in his attempts to save indigenous, Native American languages from extinction purely because they are no longer anyone's primary language for communication? 

I am going to go one step further with this: I am a firm believer that Latin should be taught as a modern, living language like any other (If you have read the About Me section, you know that I was once one of the BIGGEST opponents of any type of spoken Latin, but now I am a huge advocate of it). Although I do not oppose the teaching of classical texts/culture, I oppose us as Latinists solely isolating the language to the classical period, because in my opinion, it pigeonholes us. There is SO much Latin literature which exists outside of the classical period - in fact, classical literature comprises only 1% (at the most) of all surviving Latin literature through the ages! 

Here is a statement which may shock folks: Students actually wish to speak Latin. How do I know this? Because they are constantly asking me "How do I say X in Latin?" This shows me that students indeed wish to interpret their own world with the Latin language. What kind of message am I sending if I say to them, "Latin is not spoken," or "The Romans did not have X, so we cannot say that"? It simply perpuetates the myth that Latin is different and hammers another nail into its coffin. Latin as a spoken language did not stop with the fall of Rome - Latin was spoken throughout the ages and still is today! However, as schools unfortunately have been transformed from centers of learning into now factories and production centers, schools have shifted their goals from teaching students to become lifelong learners and citizens to becoming manufacturers of a future workforce for the global economy. Anything which is not deemed as preparing students for college or a career immediately out of high school is cast aside.

As you read those last two paragraphs, I bet a number of you just scoffed at the idea of Latin being taught as a modern language and find all of this misguided. Quite honestly, I expect that kind of response from Latin teachers, because nothing divides the Latin teaching community more than the idea of speaking Latin (which saddens me). But some of the biggest opposition which I get for wanting Latin taught as a spoken language is from modern language teachers, and quite honestly, a number of them are CI/TPRS teachers. 

At NTPRS this summer, I thought, "If anyone will applaud the use of CI/TPRS to teach Latin, it will be at NTPRS." Considering that 45 Latin teachers were in attendance, I felt that we would be seen as a language of equal footing with the others. I could not have been more mistaken. Instead, for the first few days, we Latin teachers were viewed as a curiosity and novelty, with a kind of "How cute that these teachers want to use CI/TPRS to teach Latin" and "Why would you want to teach Latin with CI/TPRS? All you do is read poetry and philosophical works" attitude. But to be fair, for most modern language CI/TPRS teachers, the Latin teachers whom they know are probably perpetuating the traditional grammar-translation, Latin-is-different stereotype (Ginny Lindzey, thank you for pointing that out to me), so I am sure that we were a shock to the system at NTPRS. By the end of NTPRS, though, attitudes had definitely changed, thanks in part to Justin Slocum Bailey presenting Latin as a modern living language during the Cocktails and Coaching hour. Attendees began to view Latin as a viable language for CI/TPRS. In fact, as a result, TPRS Publishing will now be coming out with a Latin version of Brandon Brown Wants a Dog in spring 2016! 

But for now, the idea of Latin taught as a modern language remains a dream for me, because so many things would need to change (teacher training and knowledge, university Classics departments). Due to current trends in Latin education, therefore, I find myself relunctantly teaching Latin still with a end goal of students reading classical literature by the end of their 3rd year of the language. Slowly, however, things are changing. The number of spoken Latin events in the country are increasing, as many Latinists have grown weary and jaded with the idea that Latin is only a read language and wish to experience Latin as a living language. I have attended Rusticatio for the past six summers and am probably a solid Intermediate Mid/High Latin speaker (Advanced Low on good day). I have been through two separate 8-hour ACTFL OPI Famliarization workshops to see how these speaking proficiency levels can apply to Latin. I would love for there to be an ACTFL OPI in Latin eventually one day.

For those of you who believe that Latin should only be set in the classical period, consider Erasmus' treatise, Ciceronianus. NOTE - it was written in the 1500's, which shows that even then this debate/tension occurred, but even more, about what Erasmus writes eerily mirrors the debate among Latinists today about "modernizing" the language.

For more information about Latin as a living language, see below.

Web Resources

• Why Speak Latin? - An essay by Nancy Llewellyn on the importance of speaking Latin in order to learn the language
• Latin is Not Different - A paper by Robert Patrick about 

Video Resources
Nancy Llwellyn's interview on Living Latin

Luke Henderson's TedX talk on "This is Not Your Father's Latin Class"

Airplane Reading

This is another way to do a ping pong/volleyball style reading. I first saw Blaine Ray do this at NTPRS 2014 and then again saw this demonstrated by Alina Filipescu at NTPRS 2015. It is similar to Read Dating, in that students will be moving around to read with a new partner. It does take some time to set up the classroom for Airplane Reading.

Directions

1) Set up your classroom so that students are sitting next to someone as if in an airplane. If there is an odd amount of students, that is okay - that just means that you will take part in the activity!

2) In each pair of students, one will be X and one will be Y.

3) Give students a comprehensible reading, and have them do a regular ping pong/volleyball style reading.

4) After a set amount of time (usually two minutes), then Y students will move forward a seat to a new row (see below picture for example)

5) Like in ping pong/volleyball reading, with their new partners, students are to determine the earlier stopping point between the two of them, and at that point, they will start. Explain to students that repetition is good and will only benefit them.

6) After two minutes of reading with their new partner, Y students will move again.

7) Continue again for about 10 more minutes. If students finish the reading, they are start over again at the beginning.

Observations

1) Like Read Dating, this is another fun way to go through a reading. Carol Gaab always says, "The brain craves novelty."

2) The movement keeps the activity from getting stale. I always tell students "If you have to read with someone whom you do not like, don't worry - you are only working with that person for two minutes!"

3) To keep things novel, sometimes I will alternate between having X and Y students move. If you do this, then X students will move the other direction, because if they move like the Y students, they will read again with a former partner! The idea of movement is to allow students to read with a new partner each round.

4) You may want to practice having the Y students move a few times before you begin the activity so that they know ahead of time where to go, especially the one who has to move to the other side of the room.

5) I usually spend no more than 15 minutes (at the most) on a reading activity like this, because students will start to tire of reading.

Comprehensible Input is Always Active Latin, but Active Latin Is Not Always Comprehensible Input

I know that my title sounds like a geometry maxim, e.g., a square is always a rhombus, but a rhombus is not always a square. The point of this post is not to offend anyone but is more of an effort to define terms. 

When Latin teachers hear the terms Active Latin and Comprehensible Input, I think that most assume that they are one in the same. The truth is that they are and yet, they are not. Both do involve the use of oral Latin in the classroom for the purpose of language acquisition, but Comprehensible Input is a specific and deliberate form of Active Latin. 

To me, the use of Active Latin means facilitating Latin as a spoken language in the classroom for the purpose of communication and of teaching. Under that umbrella definition, Comprehensible Input definitely fits that description. There are, however, many Latinists out there who think that because they are using active Latin in the classroom, then they must be implementing Comprehensible Input too. The truth is yes, but also no. 

The difference, however, between the two is that I equate active Latin many times with full immersion and forced production of the language. That is not to say that teachers are not achieving success with this approach. The issue is that in many instances full immersion can turn into submersion, which results in frustration for the learner and in a "survival of the fittest" classroom mentality. I myself have experienced this type of submersion at numerous spoken Latin events, and yes, I can attest that frustration and a doubt of one's abilities are the results. In his Comprehensible Input theory, Krashen states that when one's affective filter/stress level rises, learning ceases (for those of you familiar with "Where Are Your Keys?", think "full").   

In Comprehensible Input, full immersion can be implemented, provided that it is 100% comprehensible for learners. This can be achieved through using known vocabulary, limiting vocabulary (but not grammar), establishing meaning of unknown vocabulary and structures (yes, though the use of English!), and bathing learners' minds with understandable input (comprehensible input + 1 is the goal). In other words, Comprehensible Input is deliberate. Output and production of the language are never forced but are viewed as natural results and overflow of input.     

For those Latin teachers with little to no experience in speaking Latin, the use of CI/TPRS allows for the use of Active Latin through the delivery of understandable messages in Latin without having to be a fluent speaker. Even though I have attended Rusticationes for the past six summers, I would probably say that I am an Intermediate Mid/High speaker of Latin.  (maybe even an Advanced Low on a very good day), and I am happy with that.

So for those of you who do use oral Latin in your classroom, would you say that you are implementing Active Latin or Comprehensible Input? What benefits do you see in either approach?

The Power of Online Professional Learning Communities/Networks (PLC/PLN)

As the 2015 ACTFL Convention is going on at the moment and as I am not attending this year, I am definitely finding myself longing to be there. I have been to the past two ACTFL Conventions, and I can definitely say that attending one is worth it. Aside from the great presentations and outstanding professional development, what I love most about the ACTFL Convention is that I always realize there that I am a part of something so much bigger than just my department at school - I am indeed a world language teacher and am proud of that.

Luckily, however, due to Twitter, I am able to follow this year's happenings at ACTFL, and I am so grateful, because I am able to follow many of the presentations from afar. Apparently, my blog and I have already gotten a shout out at a presentation!

As much as I hate educationese buzzwords like Professional Learning Communities (PLC) and Professional Learning Networks (PLN), these groups have been such a lifeline for me, especially for my development of CI/TPRS implementation in the classroom. As CI/TPRS world language teachers, many times we are isolated from any type of physical face-to-face community, so having an online community is vitally important both for our professional growth and communal needs.

I cannot tell you how many conferences i have attended where I have finally gotten the chance to meet folks in person whom I only know online through PLC/PLNs. It is always fun to see what these people look like in person - apparently, online in my posts to listservs and in my blog, I come across as a tall white man with a beard. I hope that folks are not disappointed to see instead a 5'5, Asian man with a partial goatee and slight southern accent...

Here are some different types of online PLC/PLNs in which I take part, along with some suggestions:

Blogs
Since you are reading this blog, you are already part of this professional learning community! Blogs have played such an important part in my professional CI/TPRS development. If you look at the sidebar, I have a list of blogs which I follow. These are all wonderful, and I have used many ideas from them in my classroom. More than anything though, these blogs have encouraged me to keep pursuing implementing CI/TPRS when at times I feel like I have hit a brick wall.

Listservs

• Latin Best Practices - this is a Yahoo group dedicated to breaking away from the traditional practices found in grammar-translation Latin classes. Begun by fellow CI/TPRS Latin colleagues Bob Patrick and John Piazza, this list has over 1,300 members. I was a member of this listserv LONG before I actually began to implement CI/TPRS in my Latin classroom. 
• MoreTPRS - this is the primary listserv for CI/TPRS users. I used a member of this group, but as there are over 7,000 members, it became too much for me to read all of the postings coming in, so I unsubscribed. That does not mean that this group does not have value - based on the number of postings, it just was not for me.  
• Ben Slavic's Blog Community - this is a pay site, but it is full of ideas and resources, as well of supportive teachers. 

Social Media
I am not one who utilizes social media. My life is Facebook free and am more than okay with that. I rarely text, and I have no idea how Instagram or Snapchat works and personally have no desire to learn, since I never use the camera on my phone anyway.Truthfully, I thought that "taking selfies" was a reference to drug usage. 

• Twitter - I do use Twitter though for professional purposes, and I absolutely love it! I love being able to "follow" CI/TPRS folks and to learn from them in this manner. As i said earlier, I have been reading the many Twitter posts from this ACTFL convention; following #ACTFL15 has given me the next best thing to being there. You can follow me @silvius_toda on Twitter - Silvius is my Latin name! My name Keith means "from the woods" in Welsh, so I picked the Latin equivalent.
• IFLT/NTPRS/CI Teaching Facebook group - I suppose if I had a Facebook page, then I would be a member of this group. 

So I challenge you to increase your PLC/PLN beyond what you currently have and to check out many of these resources. Also, feel free to suggest any blogs or online resources which you have found helpful so that i can add them to my list!

Why I Blog

As I approach the two-year anniversary of my very first posting on this blog, I find it only fitting to reflect on the question, "Why do you blog?" Quite honestly, I find it very difficult to come up with an answer. I have always equated blogs with those people who write letters to the editor or call into radio newstalk shows - those folks who always have something to say and want to make sure that you know that they do.

So to answer the question "Why do you blog?", based on my views of blogs, my first response is "I do not know - it is not like I have a whole lot to say." (Apparently, I do, because I have written almost 100 posts).

Maybe a better question is "Why are people reading my CI/TPRS blog?" Again, my answer is "I do not know" for the following reasons:

• "I'm not really an expert on Comprehensible Input, but I do play one on TV." There are certainly others out there who REALLY know and understand Comprehensible Input theory so much better than I do. I do understand Comprehensible Input and second language acquisition...but to a degree. I am not one who enjoys spending time reading scholarly articles on the topic. To be honest, I absolutely hate anything to do with research, whether it is reading it or conducting it myself (believe me, the Ed.S degree which I am currently pursuing is ALL about research. I have such high respect for statisticians now). I am not putting on false humility at all when I say this, but whenever I read postings on this blog, I am always impressed, thinking, "Wow, this guy really knows what he is talking about," and then I have to stop myself and say, "Whoa, I wrote this." Honestly, I am convinced that little elves come in after I write up a post, and they change it to make it sound like I know what I am saying. I know myself, and these posts do not sound like me at all.
• There are other Latin teachers out there who are implementing CI/TPRS so much better than I am. There are other Latin teachers who are conducting their CI Latin classrooms in the Latin language - they are delivering understandable messages close to 90% of the time in the target language. I am lucky if I do 50% on a good day. They are the ones who should be blogging, not I; I should be the one learning from them.

But at the same time, I realize that I do have something to say and apparently, it connects with many people. 

• Many teachers have grown weary of language methodology/textbooks and are wanting something different
• Many Latin teachers have become jaded with traditional approaches and the mad rush to get students to translate classical literature.
• Many teachers are wanting to try out CI/TPRS but do not know how

As a result of this, I will continue to blog the best way I know how.

This week, I passed the 60,000 mark for blog page views after just two years. I am truly humbed by that. When i first started this blog two years ago, I was expecting maybe 100-200 page views/month; I am now averaging over 2,000 page views/month, and a lot of those who read my blog are not Latin teachers! 

I will continue to hone my craft by reading blogs and attending CI/TPRS conferences. I have attended NTPRS for the past two summers, and in the summer of 2016, I plan to attend my first IFLT, since it will be in Chattanooga (only 2 hours from Atlanta).

So to you faithful followers of this blog, I will strive to chronicle my journey into CI. I hope that you will continue to sojourn with me.

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!