Draw-Your-Own-Picture BINGO

This is a listening activity which I recently learned this summer from Donna Tatum-Johns at the Fluency Matters Conference in Denver. She demonstrated this as a post-reading activity after she had facilitated a Clip Chat (formerly known as "Movie Talk"), and I thought, "What a great communicative way to play BINGO!" It involves students drawing visual representations of vocabulary words from a reading in a 3x3 grid and then reading sentences with a missing word in the target language from a reading which you have been reviewing. Students then have to look at their BINGO grid to see if they have the missing word.

Pre-activity directions

1. Pick 18 words from the reading which students can illustrate. Preferably pick words which you have been targeting and words which are drawable, i.e., do not pick an abstract word like "dignity"
2. Put those words in pairs so that there are nine pairs of words. Try to pair them in similarities.
3. Write a script where you will read each pair as "____________ or ___________." If you want, create slides where you present each pair as " ____________ or _________." 
4. Pick 10-12 sentences from the reading which have one of the 18 words and leave it blank, and write out those sentences. You will be reading them.

Activity directions

1. On a whiteboard or piece of paper, have students draw a 3x3 grid.
2. Tell students that you will say aloud two vocabulary words in the target language. They are to choose one of them and to draw that word anywhere on their grid. If you wish to have a visual of the pair choices, project the slide.
3. Give students one minute at the most to draw. Do not allow too much time, because there are nine words which they will draw.
4. When students are done, tell them that you will now read a sentence from the story but there is a word missing. If they have the visual representation of the word, then they may cross out the picture (but not cross it out enough that it cannot be identified any longer). Say that sentence many times to get in meaningful exposure of that sentence.
5. Continue on with the next sentence until a student gets three in a row.
6. When a student gets three in a row, that student yells BINGO. Have student come up so that you can check their board. Continue to play until you have 5 winners (or how many you want. I allow winners to continue playing and win multiple times). This will allow for continued exposure to sentences from the reading.

Observations

1. Wow, what a great new way to play vocabulary BINGO!
2. I love this way of playing BINGO with a reading, because it addresses so many modalities and components of language:
1. listening comprehension - students having to listen to the sentence to determine what word is missing and to look on their board to find it.
2. vocabulary - students need to know what target language words each of their drawings represent
3. personalization of words - students are drawing their own representations of the vocabulary words
4. communicative nature - the missing words are coming from the original sentences from the reading
5. higher order thinking - students need to make the connection between knowing what target word is missing and if they have that visual representation on their grid
6. student choice - students choose which words of the pair that they want to illustrate, in addition to where they want to place those words on their grid
3. This activity does take quite awhile to facilitate, because students are taking time to illustrate their choice of words and there are 18 possible word choices (in addition to the randomness of where they place 9 of those words) so even though it is a 3x3 grid, it can take some time before someone has BINGO.

Thanks, Donna, for this great activity!

My Professional Learning Goal for the Year - Being Purposefully Communicative

I have been teaching students for over two weeks already, and I feel like I am back in the swing of things, i.e., I have accepted that my summer break is over and that this is my life now for the next ten months (haha). I am back to lesson planning, and honestly, I am very excited about my professional learning goal for this school year: being purposefully communicative.

I have written a few posts on this blog about purposeful communication, but I feel like this past summer, I had the chance to interact with this concept continuously and have gained a whole new and expanded perspective on the topic. Purposeful communication is based on Bill Van Patten's definition of communication (if you have ever heard him talk on this topic, this is the definition which he always gives). In this book, While We're On the Topic: BVP on Language, Acquisition, and Classroom Practice he writes: 

"Communication is the interpretation, expression, and/or negotiation of meaning for a purpose, in a given context." 

Based on that definition, Van Patten continues that our purpose should be that we wish to discover and learn information about each other, ourselves, and the world around us through communication, text, and input. In addition, in his book Van Patten adds that another purpose of communication is to entertain: "When we tell a joke or write a story...our purpose is to entertain in some way."

This summer at Comprehensible Iowa, I gave a presentation on this topic called "Communicating Purposefully," where I demonstrated many ways in which we can be purposefully communicative in our classroom activities. However, earlier in April, a Coaching Summit was held prior to Mitten CI, where the coaching/skills lab model was overhauled to reflect an emphasis on this topic. This summer at Acquisition Academy, Fluency Matters Conference, and CI Summit where I served as a coach/trainer, this new model was implemented in the each of the coaching/skills lab. As a result of facilitating and interacting with this new model in the coaching/skills labs, my understanding of purposeful communication was greatly deepened and expanded.

As language teachers, our goals should be to deliver and to engage in purposeful communication with our students. We need to be incredibly mindful though that purposeful communication does not necessarily equate to full immersion, because while I can create a full immersive environment in the target language, if it is not understandable, no matter how purposeful our intentions are, that communication is a waste of time and just noise to students. And in addition while I can be 100% comprehensible to students in the target language, I could be completely missing the mark if that communication is not purposeful in nature. Van Patten states, "Language use without purpose is not communication."

So based on the above definition of purposeful communication, here are ways in which I plan to address its various components in Latin (both spoken and in readings). In many ways, I was already implementing many of these, but they were random and never intentional in purpose. This will be my guide and lens in lesson planning for this school year:

• to learn about each other and ourselves: 

1. Personalized Questions and Answers (PQAs) 
2. polling students in the target language
3. connecting with students and their interests through questioning in the target language
4. completion of communicative tasks 
5. SEL partner reading (although this activity is not really done in the target language, it can still lead to learning about each other).

• to learn about the world around us: 

1. teaching cultural topics and other content in understandable target language through readings and presentations
2. purposefully embedding cultural topics and facts into circling.

• to entertain/create with language in fun, engaging ways: 

1. TPRS/StoryAsking
2. One Word Image
3. the use of rejoinders in class.

Now not every activity which I will implement in class is going to incorporate purposeful communication primarily due to the nature of the activity, but I can strive to "communicatify" existing activities:

• GimKit/Blooket - when using these for vocabulary review, instead of showing isolated words, put those words in their original context from a reading.
• Grudgeball/Word Chunk Game/Trashketball - before a student shoots a basket, ask class in the target language for their opinion if they think that the student will make the basket; teach students to use rejoinders as cheers during the game,
• BINGO - instead of playing the traditional vocabulary BINGO, facilitate a game of Quick Grid BINGO.
• Sex Game - instead of the traditional Sex Game, instead play Sex Game 2.0.

I am actually looking forward to lesson planning now that I have this goal in mind! What are some ways in which you plan to be deliver purposeful communication in your classroom?

PQA - Is This a Good or Bad Pizza Topping?

I am now in my 2nd week of school with students. Things are definitely moving along, and like it or not, I am back in work mode. With my Latin 2 students, we have been doing review with PQA-based story about a character who plays baseball well, but there is another character who is better than he is and is the best baseball player (this is based on a demo which I have seen Eric Richards conduct in German several times - really good stuff!). These readings have been used to preview a cultural lesson on the sport vitilla (a sport similar to baseball played primarily in the Dominican Republic). I saw Skip Crosby present this lesson in a middle school Spanish language lab class at CI Summit this year, and I thought, "This is a great cultural topic. I do not want to only teach about the ancient world using Latin - I want to teach about modern culture in other parts of the world too in the Latin language!" (What is vitilla? How is it similar to/differ from baseball? Is there a correlation between vitilla and the fact that the Dominican Republic has the 2nd highest national representation among MLB players?).

Anyhow, my colleague John Foulk, as we were reviewing the words good, bad, better than, and best in Latin 2 as part of the baseball reading, created a PQA bellringer using these words regarding various pizza toppings. Since I am also teaching Latin 1, today I decided to try it out for the words good and bad as a bellringer. Here is the Latin 1 bellringer slide which I projected and the directions:

Observations

1. What a great PQA! Everyone has an opinion about pizza toppings!
2. After students finished writing down their responses for this bellringer, I asked them to raise their hand to answer "estne X bonus in pitta?" and then counted aloud in Latin how many agreed. This is how I expose students to numbers - I count in a context, instead of having them memorize how to count from 1-10 in the target language. I learned this from Haiyun Le.
3. After writing down the number of people who said X is a good topping, I recast it by saying in Latin, "(Number) aestimant (corn) esse bonum in pitta!"
4. I suppose that I could have listed the Latin words for the food items and not the English, but primarily, this was the 2nd week of Latin 1 - no need to overwhelm them with food words and secondly, those food words are NOT high frequency! My focus was on the high frequency, necessary words bonus and malus.
5. I liked that students wanted to say if they thought a pizza topping was bad! I could ask a student, "Aestimasne (you think) X is malus in pitta?" Again, lots of opinions stated!
6. I can see using this idea for ice cream toppings (believe me, do a internet search and you will find many odd toppings), soft drinks (Pepsi vs. Coke, Dr. Pepper vs. Mr. Pibb), things you can put on hamburgers, etc. 
7. This is definitely an example of purposeful communication, because students are learning about each other, and the target language is solely serving as the means for that communication.

Thanks, John, for this great idea!

My Summer is Over

Tomorrow is the first day of school with students. My summer vacation is officially over - I will return back to the real world of teaching after a two month hiatus. I am certain that tomorrow morning before school begins, I will be an emotional and nervous mess on the inside. But 27 years of teaching has taught me that once the school bell rings for first period and I take attendance for the first time, my internal teacher "switch" will flip on, and I will be fine and back in teacher mode.

However, although I had this summer off, I had many opportunities both to train others and to learn at numerous CI/ADI Conferences: CI Iowa, Acquisition Academy in Denver, Fluency Matters Conference, and CI Summit. Yes, it was actually a very full summer, but when I take a step back and reflect on it all - wow, I learned SO much! For three of the conferences, I was serving as either a language teacher or as a coach/trainer; when one is serving in those capacities, one cannot help but relearn and gain a much deeper sense of CI/ADI, since one is teaching others about it. Throughout this summer, I was surrounded by so many CI/ADI folks over whom I still fanboy and hold up with such reverence; I know well enough that I must pay attention whenever I see them present and interact with them, because I am always going to glean some new piece of CI/ADI wisdom from them. I am now taking so much of what I learned this summer and am now turning them in my first few weeks of lesson plans.

Shout outs to:

• Eric Richards - For this opening week, I am Latinizing your PQA lessons on playing sports that I observed you do both in Iowa this summer and last year at CI Summit, because they are that good!
• Skip Crosby - I always have the pleasure of observing you teach a Spanish language lab to middle school students at CI Summit. I am planning on teaching about the Dominican Republic sport vitilla like you did but in Latin! It is a natural springboard from Eric's PQAs about sports (plus the Olympics are starting its second week now, so it is timely) - who says that Latin must be stuck to teaching only cultural topics from ancient Rome?!!).
• Eric Herman - I am still faithfully reading your Research Bites book (I know that it is called Research Talks, but I like the phonetics of Research Bites lol). I am now on Week 8 and reading one quote a day - much like Goldilocks, that is exactly the right size for me!

Thank you to all who played a role in my summer - my CI cup has now been refilled!