My Experiment with Sheltering Vocabulary

As I have stated many times here, this year I have been focusing on sheltering vocabulary with my Latin 1 classes. If you are not familiar with the concept (one can always use a refresher), Kristy Placido recently made a short video about the idea - in it, she addresses the four types of vocabulary words.

I really like how Kristy puts it, because I feel that many of us have a wrong idea about what "sheltering vocabulary" is. I feel that so many teachers think sheltering vocabulary at the lower levels is keeping vocabulary limited to a set limit for a unit/reading, but then move onto a new unit/reading where that previous high frequency vocabulary is not recycled and instead shelter a whole new limited set of vocabulary, which again is hardly reused in the following unit/reading. This is incredibly confusing for students, because they do not know what words they really should know, and it is frustrating for us teachers, because we feel like "students should still know these words, because we introduced them, but they do not." I have been SO guilty of this!

So last semester, I truly began to shelter vocabulary, trying to focusing on high frequency vocabulary and constantly recycling/providing lots of exposure. Here is the cumulative list of words/phrases which I targeted last semester. 

Let me say a few things:

• I had NO idea where I was going with this. I was embarking on this blindly. My goal was to introduce 5 new words a week, while constantly recycling previous targeted vocabulary. 
• I based my curriculum solely on clip chats. This allowed me to find animated shorts in which I could target these words.
• In the beginning weeks of the semester, my focus was on verbs. In order for sentences solely to focus on the Latin verb, the sentences usually had a name and the brand name of an object, such as Elmo wants Takis, Dora has a Playstation, Carlita is bringing a BigMac. This way students could focus solely on the Latin word which was the verb.
• On the one hand, I wanted to focus on Super 7/Sweet 16 words, but at the same time, I did see some necessity to cover words which are on the Dickinson Latin high frequency list. Let me say, I do not fully agree with many of the words on this list, since it comes from those words found in classical literature, which is Advanced High/Superior level readings - maybe 15% of my students will go onto AP Latin, so why am I subjugating the other 85% who are not?! Often I will look at the words listed and say, "That is a Cicero word" or "That is a Vergil word" but were they actually high frequency among the everyday Romans?
• I only introduced ONE Latin verb for movement - ad...petit (heads for) - anytime a character in a story went somewhere, I used that phrase. This was absolutely deliberate, since petit is a high frequency Latin word. While many Latin textbooks will introduce ambulat (is walking) and currit (is running) quite early, those are not high frequency words and instead are rather "decorative" to me - they explain in what manner one is going. I can introduce those later on for descriptive purposes. I'd rather have students burn memory bandwidth on acquiring other words for first semester.
• I sheltered vocabulary like crazy and recycled these words OVER AND OVER. In other words, I was absolutely deliberate that these words appeared as much as possible in clip chats and readings throughout the semester so that they eventually became sight words for them when reading due to the rampant exposure.

Observations

1. While my goal was to introduce 5 new words a week (so that there would be around 90 words at the end of the semester), I found that there were weeks where I needed to "circle the plane" some to revisit words and give students a chance to "plateau" in their learning. As a result, I did not reach my goal of 90 words by semester's end.
2. In addition, there were weeks where I wanted to focus on introducing a new grammatical structure such as 1st person singular. Here is where I was truly able to shelter vocabulary, not grammar.  
3. Because my Latin 1 students are emergent Latin readers, sheltering vocabulary and recycling these words in their readings greatly aided their reading development. In addition, I patterned my stories after emergent novellas which contain predictable sentence structures/patterns and focus on 1-2 ideas presented in a sentence. 
4. Where I saw the benefits of sheltering vocabulary was in student writing! Refer to my blog post on Novice Writing Proficiency Assessments with Pictures
5. I found that I could introduce a lot of new adjectives once students were familiar with "sum (I am)," because it seemed to flow naturally and I could incorporate it into dialogues.
6. In the beginning, 5 words a week worked well, but I can see making it 6-8 words as the semester progresses, but this requires paying closer attention to actively recycling those words.

As I said, I was doing this blindly. This was a work in progress and still is. However, I have a MUCH better idea of how sheltering vocabulary works and am looking forward to improving how I implement this. 

2026 CI/ADI Conferences

With it now being the new year, it is never too early to consider attending a CI/ADI conference in 2026, whether it be in-person or online. Here is a list of conferences for this year:

• Mitten CI (in-person) - April 17-18 in Saline, Michigan

• Comprehensible Iowa (in person) - June 12-13 in Des Moines, Iowa (I will be there!)
• Strasbourg ADI Institute (in-person - France) - June 27-July 5
• TCI Oregon (in-person) - June 29-July 1 in Bend, Oregon 

• CI Reboot (online) - dates yet to be released
• NTPRS (in-person) - July 13-16 in Port Orange, Florida
• CI Summit (in person) - July 15-17 in Cincinnati, Ohio (I will be there!)
• Agen Workshop (in-person - France) - July 20-25 in Agen, France
• Conference in the Clouds (online) - July 27-30

Did I miss any? Let me know in the comments. Hope that you will consider attending one or more!

Revisiting Dictations - Embedding Purposeful Communication

I am not a fan of dictations. I find them boring, and while I understand how they can aid in both the acquisition of language and the creation of orthographic mapping in students' minds, my students really do not like them. One student told me, "This is like taking notes!"

I am currently reading Common Ground: Second Language Acquisition Theory Goes to the Classroom by Maris Hawkins and Florencia Henshaw. In the first chapter, Hawkins and Henshaw discuss how to transform traditional activities into ones which reflect a communicative aspect; among these, they discuss a dictation. This can be found on pages 17-18 (according to my Kindle, so the pages may be different in a hard copy).

I tried out this modified dictation today in my Latin 1 classes, and I really like how it went. I did make some changes to how they present it in their book, but the spirit is still the same. I TAKE NO CREDIT FOR THE FOLLOWING - THIS IS ALL HAWKINS AND HENSHAW!

As is the example in the book, the focus of my dictation was on introducing the phrase "I like" (in Latin, mihi placet - literally "it pleases me").

1. I looked online to find the top six ranked activities which American teenagers like to do. I used Gemini AI to help find the ranked activities (so take with a grain of salt the accuracy), but according to a 2025 Pew Report as found by AI, the top six activities in order are:
1. watching digital content (Disney +, Hulu, Netflix, etc)
2. being on social media (Tik Tok, Instagram, Snapchat, Discord, etc)
3. listening to music
4. playing video games
5. sleeping
6. playing sports
2. I then scrambled the order and wrote them up as dictation sentences in Latin with the phrase "mihi placet....". There were a number of words and phrases for which I had to establish meaning in English and Latin: social media, video games, to watch digital content. 
3. From here, I treated this as a regular dictation activity.
4. Once the dictation activity was done, I then asked students to rank these activities from 1-6 according to THEIR preference.
5. Then I asked them to rank these activities according to how they thought AMERICAN TEENAGERS had answered.
6. I then projected a slide, revealing the Pew Report answers in Latin one at a time, starting with #6. 

Observations

1. While it still was a traditional dictation in a way, I loved the purposeful communication aspect of it at the end. Students were learning about themselves and their interests compared to how they "ranked" on a national poll.
2. I felt that having students rank their interests at the end according to their preferences and then predict what American teenagers said gave a sense of anticipation when I revealed the rankings - it felt like a game show! 
3. As a teacher, I definitely felt more engaged in the activity, since I knew where the dictation was heading. Most times, I end up zoning out... 
4. In Latin, much like Spanish, the phrase "I like" is usually followed by an infinitive. I had not yet introduced the infinitive form, but because I had sheltered vocabulary last semester, students already knew the verb forms for hear/listen to, play, and sleep. So while I still established meaning for the infinitive forms during the dictation, I was able to do lots of quick pop-up grammar during it by saying, "You already know that ludit means 'plays' - ludere means 'to play' - the -re is where I am getting the 'to __________." Using the phrase "I like" seems like a natural way to introduce the infinitive of known verbs.

I would love to do more purposefully communicative dictations in the future - what are some suggestions which you all have?

Thank you, Maris Hawkins and Florencia Henshaw!

Who Would Say This? - 1st singular practice

As I have posted earlier, I am teaching Latin 1 this year. Although I did teach this level last year, that was after a 7-year hiatus (since I primarily taught Latin 2 and 3 then), and I was still trying to get back into teaching truly novice learners, i.e., I felt really rusty in what to do and in what order. Plus, in that time, I had grown a great deal as CI/ADI teacher, in addition to learning much about what are realistic expectations of language proficiency at various levels a' la ACTFL (and I had it wrong!)

One of the major changes which I have been implementing in Latin 1 is truly sheltering vocabulary by focusing on high-frequency words and basing my curriculum solely on clip chats (formerly known as "movie talks") - doing a curriculum centered around clip chats has been my dream, and I am loving it!! As a result of this, I slowly began to introduce first person singular forms in the clip chats as part of the dialogue but not target it per se. 

I did Take Me Home as a clip chat with the goal of introducing sum (I am) and volo (I want) as isolated vocabulary words and not in a full conjugation chart (with the goal of these words eventually becoming sight words for students through repeated exposure and interaction), so as a post-reading activity, I then did a variation of the "Which Character Would Say This?". Essentially I just turned much of the narration into 1st person statements and typed out a series of statements onto a document where students wrote which character would say that. Note the target words from the clip chat to establish meaning for those students who need it.

Observations

1. This is very low level in terms of reading and writing, since it is just copying. However, this does possess a higher level of depth of knowledge since students are having to analyze the statement in terms of who would say this.
2. I used this post-reading activity to reinforce pop-up grammar timeouts and horizontal conjugations, but by no means did I expect students to acquire/master 1st person singular forms because of this. Nor was the goal of acquiring this structure even on the radar! While I can expose students to this structure and learners can interact with this, I cannot force nor speed up the acquisition process - students will acquire it when they acquire it on their own timeline.
3. Note the establishment of meaning at the top as an aid. If the term differentiation is a buzzword in your school, this is a great way to demonstrate it - establishing meaning serves as a support for all students who may need it (or not) during a lesson.

Top 5 of 2025

It is nearing the end of the year, and as always, I wish to thank all of you who read my blog and walk away having learned something or feel encouraged or even challenged. At the ACTFL Convention in New Orleans a few weeks ago, it was so nice to meet many of you in person - I definitely appreciate the kinds words which you passed along to me.

I was taking a look over what I have posted this year, and I see that there were two topics about which I seemed to address often: proficiency-based grading vs. performance-based grading, and literacy/the science of reading. These two subjects continue to intrigue me and what they look like in a CI/ADI classroom. I hope to learn more about these topics in 2026, so possibly expect more blog posts about them next year. I have been learning much about the science of reading and how to apply that to a CI/ADI curriculum - I am excited to share much of that with you all in 2026!

So as is tradition, I list here the top 5 viewed blog posts of 2025: 

1. The Necessity of Background Language Knowledge for Reading in the CI/ADI Classroom 
2. Translation Rubric 
3. Novellas - Balancing Comprehensibility and Compelling 
4. Left/Right PQAs - Purposeful Communication 
5. Spanish Confidence Readers by Adam Giedd 

I began this blog in December 2013, and 463 posts later (and over 1,450,000 page views - wow!!!), I am amazed that I still have not run out of things about which to write. I hope that your school year ends well, and I look forward to 2026!

Horizontal Declensions

Recently, a fellow Latin teacher, having read about horizontal conjugations here on my blog, asked me what I thought about horizontal declensions. FYI - Latin is an inflected language, so much like German and Russian, we have to deal with case endings on nouns which communicate the function of the word in the sentence. Hence, inflected languages can be tricky for learners since when they encounter a word, two things are going on in their minds: they must interpret the meaning and then its grammatical function. Therefore, Latin grammar encompasses both verb conjugations and noun/adjective declensions.

As i began to think about the question of doing a horizontal declension, I know that for many Latin teachers, here are the bigger questions: how can we Latin teachers teach declension endings in a non-grammar-translation way? Is there a CI/ADI way in which we can get students to acquire declension endings according to a traditional textbook timeline (such as "by week 3 of Latin 1, students will have acquired the nominative singular and accusative singular cases for the first three declensions")?

Let me first say this: there is absolutely NO fast track to getting all students to acquire declension endings or any grammatical construction by a certain deadline. We must remember the following:

1. Language acquisition is not linear in nature.
2. Language acquisition does not follow a prescribed timeline, nor does everyone acquire language at the same rate.
3. Language acquisition follows a prescribed order of what is acquired. One cannot alter that order, BUT we should not think that we should be teaching language in that order until students master it. This assumes that language acquisition is linear and that all students will be on the same timeline of acquisition.
4. Language acquisition is subconscious and implicit, hence NO DEGREE OF EXPLICIT instruction can alter that (this includes memorizing grammar charts).

So I began to look online for anything on horizontal declensions - I did not find anything. I even asked Eric Richards (a CI/ADI German teacher who deals with an inflected language) what he thought of the idea and if he did anything like this. My big concern was that teachers were wanting to take sentences like "the king sees the queen" and want to change the perspective so that the king and queen switch places ("the queen sees the king"). To me, that is a lot of Latin grammar for novice level students to wield at the same time (especially after 3 weeks of Latin 1!) - this may be better suited for upper level students. 

However, as I continued to think this through, I realized that a horizontal declension can have its place though if it is focused. Maybe just change one noun grammatically in a passage so that it is much tighter in focus (but not right away though in the opening weeks of Latin 1)? 

Observations

1. Doing a horizontal declension should be used as a supplement for a continuation of exposing students to case endings in a communicative context.
2. Were my students able to complete this correctly? The answer is yes. Do they truly understand case endings and understand the nominative and accusative cases now? Probably not. But after months of doing pop-up grammar about "the letter m ending indicating direct object," this at least gave students a chance to interact with declension endings in a communicative context and to reinforce the idea.
3. I just tried this out in my Latin 1 classes, and this is the last week of the semester before the final exam. In the future, I would like to see how this goes maybe after the first two months and after much exposure to Latin sentence patterns and pop-up grammar explanations about the accusative case.
4. If you notice in the explanation, I did not refer to the case names but rather to the grammatical functions. This is not to say that I do not think that the case names are important, but I am finding that students do not know grammar terms to begin with.
5. Now that I have introduced the idea of horizontal declension, I can see now doing this as a bellringer.

So I will continue to play around with this idea and to try it out - this is definitely still a work in progress. I am curious what you think of it. If there is information about out there about doing horizontal declensions, I would love to hear about it.

Some More CI/ADI Bellringers

(This post is a continuation of a previous post on bellringers)

Let me share some more bellringer ideas which I have been implementing in my classes. At my district's pre-planning World Language in-service this past summer, I gave a presentation on "CI/ADI Bellringers" as part of a choice session (this was the same presentation which I gave at CI Iowa in June), and it was so well-received that my district coordinator has asked me to present it again TWICE at an upcoming summer district in-service. In addition, at ACTFL a few weeks ago, a number of people came up to me, telling me that they were now using many of my bellringer ideas. Apparently, this particular topic is of interest to many!

A recap about bellringers:

• The primacy/recency effect suggests that the first several minutes of class and the final several minutes of class have the greatest effect on learning.
• As a result, the goal of a bellringer should be solely to activate prior knowledge. Nothing new should be introduced in a bellringer, outside of writing down new targeted vocabulary words.
• We should strive to "communicatify" them in a World Language classroom, i.e., do not focus on verb conjugating, declining nouns, noun/adjective agreement.
• We can achieve this by focusing on meaning and putting them in a context.
• Therefore, bellringers need to be 100% comprehensible.

Here are some examples which I hope you can use:

Hope you find these helpful!