2025 CI/ADI Conferences

Yes, I know that it is January, but it is never too early to begin considering attending a CI/ADI Conference or training whether it be in person or online.

• Mitten CI (in-person) - April 4-5 in Saline, Michigan
• Comprehensible Iowa (in person) - June 13-14 in Des Moines, Iowa (I will be there!)
• CI Reboot (online) - July 7-10, 2025
• Conference in the Clouds (online) - July 14-17
• CI Summit (in person) - July 21-23 in Norman, Oklahoma (I will be there!)
• Agen Workshop (in-person - France) - July 21-26
• TCI Maine (in person) - October 16-17, 2025 in Lewiston, Maine

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

Purposeful Communication through Pets

I have been back in school for a 1.5 weeks now (even throw in a snow day here in Atlanta!). Since it is the beginning of a new semester, with my Latin 1 students, I want to focus this semester on readings involving animals. I also really wanted to get back into being purposefully communicative with them (I feel like I began to slack off last semester). 

Remember that in purposeful communication, our goals are to learn about ourselves, each other, and the world around us. These goals are what guided this multi-day activity.

Anne Marie Chase (Senora Chase) has a great lesson about Picture Talks/PQAs involving students and their pets, along with a Google Slide in different languages which you can download. I implemented this and then extended it into purposeful communication.

Day 1

• Assignment - students filled out the Latin Google Slide as an assignment on Google Classroom. Each student was assigned just one slide to fill out, instead of a class slide which everyone filled out.

Days 2, 3, and 4

• I picked slides to project and did a few Picture Talks with students about their pet(s). The slide has all of the language/established meaning there on it. I only spent out 10 minutes/day on this.
• A way to extend the activity and to bring up past knowledge is to ask students about earlier slides from days past: "Who has a cat named Mr. Whiskers?" "Who wants a small lion?" etc.

Day 4 

• This is something which I learned from Bill Van Patten and then saw demonstrated again at this past ACTFL. After the last round of Picture Talks on Day 4, I then projected the following slide (CFA is the Latin abbreviation for the United States of America - Civitates Foederatae Americae):

• Using the chart, I began asking in Latin: "In America, what animals do most Americans have? In America, what animals do fewest Americans have?" From there, I began asking individual students in Latin, "Do you have a fish? Do you have a reptile?” to see if their pet reflected the chart.
• I then asked students to raise their hands when asked in Latin “Who has a dog?” “Who has a cat?” Draw attention that the class most likely reflects America in respect to pets: “Most students also have a dog. Fewest students have a bird or reptile." This took about 10 minutes.

Observations

1. Students actually want to talk about their pets, so a personalized Picture Talk is a great way for students to learn about each other.
2. It is a very easy, comprehensible activity to do with level 1 students.
3. If possible, consider creating a slide of your own and talking about your pet(s) you have or want. I do not have a pet but I am 100% a dog guy! Let students learn about you!
4. Extending this communication to learning about the world around them and then comparing it to students' own lives is not that difficult and is rather a natural extension.

Give this a try - thanks, Anne Marie!

Spanish Confidence Readers by Adam Giedd

(This blog post is a continuation of a series on literacy in the language classroom)

Last semester, in my search for comprehensible novellas for my department, I came across Adam Giedd's Spanish Confidence Readers. For these readers, he describes, 

For someone learning a new language, reading their first book in that language is a huge milestone — one that inspires immense confidence. That confidence is like rocket fuel propelling towards fluency...Traditionally, students had to wait months until they could independently read most “level 1” graded readers for language learners. Confidence Readers change that. Now, learners can start reading on day one.

Since I am novice-low level reader of Spanish, I immediately thought, "I need to check these out myself!"

I bought all five and immediately started reading them. Wow, these are SO good! As soon as I finished one, I began reading the next one. What I loved about these readers:

• TONS of repetition of high frequency words.
• Short sentences, with each primarily focusing on one main idea.
• Lots of usage of cognates which allows for readers to focus then on the meaning of the high frequency Spanish vocabulary.
• The text is not written as paragraphs but individual sentences, with only maybe 3-4 sentences at most per page.
• Even though the readers are not very long, the plots are VERY compelling. This indeed proves that one can actually create a very interesting, entertaining story with a limited total word count.
• Lots of humor interjected in the plots - I can tell that these were written with middle school students in mind!
• Predictable, repetitive sentence structures - as a novice reader, I am realizing just how important that is for beginner readers.
• Every page has color illustrations - that definitely leads to the compelling nature of the readers. While allowing for double input, it also makes the readers feel like true books.

But most importantly: I cannot tell you how incredibly successful and confident I felt in reading them as a novice-low level reader of Spanish! The length of each reader was exactly what I needed in terms of input. I think too often we rush into novellas for our novice-low readers and thus overwhelm them with too much input which they cannot handle due to length or not level-appropriate (and then we blame students when the blame actually should be on us as teachers!). As a result, we have to wait months until they are ready. These readers definitely do inspire confidence in reading! These Spanish readers are great material for FVR, since they are incredibly easy to read and do not take long. Check them out!

I wish we had these in Latin and that more Latin novella authors would create readers like these Confidence Readers!