Sight Reading Comprehension Assessment

Often I have struggled with how to give a true reading comprehension assessment, asking myself, "Should it be over a known, familiar passage? Should it be a seen passage? How many questions should it be? How long should the passage be? What exactly am I assessing in reading comprehension - what are the skills I am wanting to see in students when they read?" 

I have been a coach for Martina Bex and Elicia Cardenas' Acquisition Boot Camp (ABC), and the final week of lessons addresses assessments and various ways to evaluate presentational, interpretive, and interpersonal modes. One of the assessments discussed is reading comprehension, and I absolutely love how they present it, because it addressed all of my concerns.

Essentially, you give students a sight passage in the target language to read, but this passage uses known, targeted vocabulary/cognates with some unknown words glossed. Students will answer questions about the passage IN ENGLISH in 5 categories: 

• Main Idea - What happens? What is the author telling us?
• Details - Find three details which support the main idea.
• Translation - Translate the following sentences into English
• Inferences - Based on the context of X sentence, what do you think that this unknown word means? Since X word is a cognate, what do you think that it means? 
• Drawing Conclusions - Why do you think that X person does (Y thing) - support with details from the story.

Recently, I gave my Latin 2 classes a sight reading comprehension assessment based on the above. We are currently reading Emma Vanderpool's novella Incitatus, so I wrote up a passage which incorporated the targeted vocabulary and lots of similar sentences (if not identical) to the Incitatus chapter which we had just finished.

I only did three of the categories (main idea, details, drawing conclusions) for the assessment, but I like how Martina and Elicia have set up the categories.

Observations

1. I was unsure how my Latin 2's would do on this, considering that this group of Latin 2's has been more like "Latin 1.5" in this post-hybrid educational setting (and there is nothing wrong with that, considering how things were last year!). As a result, I feel like I have been taking things much slower and really sheltering vocabulary (and not grammar) with them. However, based on student scores, outside of a few outliers, most students scored above 90. And for ​those who scored below a 70, it shows me that they need more work with the language. 
2. Why do reading comprehension assessments in English and not in the target language? I think Martina Bex says it best here. Years ago, I used to assess reading comprehension in the target language, but after reading Martina's post, I immediately switched to English. 
3. Why do a sight passage instead of an already-seen, familiar passage? A sight passage using known targeted vocabulary and some glossed words will let me know what students are understanding this semester based on something which they are reading for the first time using the language which we have been targeting thus far; therefore, it is VERY important that the passage is understandable and comprehensible for students. If I were to use an already-seen, familiar passage, then I am not truly assessing their reading skills - it ends up being a memory recall of what we have discussed and gone over in class, even if I were to include the text on the assessment. In other words, for many students it would not require them to even look at the passage at all, because they already know the answers. That is not the purpose of a reading comprehension assessment.
4. I think formatives are good for already-seen, known passages, but I definitely like this format for summatives.
5. I love the Inferences and Drawing Conclusions sections, because those are great ways to ask higher-order thinking questions based on a reading.

Movie Talk - FishWitch

This is a movie talk which I just created this week. My colleague Liz Davidson is writing up an adaptation of The Golden Ass for our Latin 3's to read this semester, so I decided to preview some of the vocabulary using this movie talk. This is now one of my new favorite movie talks, because I really like both the story and the animation (it is very old school Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer kind of feel). The words which I previewed were witch, to be afraid of (we were introducing the deponent verb vereri), curiosity, limbs (of a body), and to endure.

Movie Talk script - English

Movie Talk script - Latin

Observations

1. Students REALLY liked this movie talk. It is a very good and thoughtful story. It is a bit on the long side (10 minutes - most movie shorts which I use are about 5-6 minutes) so I only covered the first 6-7 minutes, because by that point, I had covered what I needed in that time. Plus, I wanted to be able to finish the movie talk in one period.
2. This movie short really lent itself to some good PQAs (personalized questions and answers) which seemed natural to the movie talk. As the teacher, I really got into the PQAs with students on this one and had fun!
3. Students LOVED the merman - he is absolutely hilarious and clueless in an endearing way.
4. The animation really lends itself to the feel of this animated short - the stop-animation is such a nice change from the 2D/3D animation.

Taking Care of Yourself

When I hear education experts speak of how we as teachers need to be mindful of trauma and anxiety which students have experienced over these past two years, so often I want to shout out, "Hey, let's not forget about us teachers! We have had to live through this pandemic too! We have experienced trauma too, so do not diminish our experiences!" Honestly I do feel that I have some degree of PTSD still from the sudden, unexpected switch to digital back in March 2020 and then teaching hybrid last year. During that time, I think that I just plowed through it all and never truly gave myself time to react emotionally to the situation while at the same time having to adjust (and still adjusting) to maneuvering through this pandemic and its constantly changing unknown.

So as you begin 2022 and a new semester of teaching and continue to adjust to this weird time in education, here are some pieces of advice for you (and for me) which I have learned during this time:

1. Have a realistic view of your job and performance. One of the biggest revelations which has come to surface for me during this pandemic is that teaching is what I do but it is not who I am. So often our view of ourselves is based on what we do as teachers. Much of this change in my perspective is probably because I am now in my 50's and have taught for over 20 years; however, these past few years have really given me a completely different view on the profession. Now do not get me wrong: I still very much enjoy teaching and learning to become a better Latin teacher, BUT I also am not going to let this take over my life like it once did. This has meant cutting back on how much time I devote outside of the classroom to lesson preparation, the number of conferences I attend or present at, and how much personal time I devote to taking part in professional development and even reading others' blogs. I feel like as recent as 10 years ago, all of those things were my life - that what all I did. Granted those things did give me a great deal of pleasure, but now I am very much enjoying NOT doing them as much. Whatever you are doing in the classroom is your best at this time. I am also so enjoying now being an adequate teacher (NOTE - I am an overachiever, so my idea of "adequate" is probably what most consider to be "very good"). It is incredibly liberating.
2. Do something daily for yourself completely unrelated to your job and education. I work out six days a week. While I have always enjoyed working out, even more now I need to do it for my own mental health. I need to put aside time for myself in doing something that I really enjoy that has NOTHING to do with teaching. During the lockdown, I went to Starbucks drive-thru every day at 3:00pm. Outside of the occasional trip to to the store, that was my one time I left the house during that time. That daily routine gave me something to look forward each day during the lockdown.
3. Enjoy your interests. I love Star Wars - I consider myself one of its original fans, because I was seven years old when Star Wars - A New Hope came out, and I saw it seven times in the movie theater during the summer of 1977. I was the perfect age for all of the Star Wars toys and action figures that come out afterwards (yes, I still have them). However, I was not a huge fan of the prequel trilogy and absolutely hated what they did to the sequel trilogy - the last three movies pretty much killed what I had loved about the franchise. However, thanks to The Mandalorian, I fell in love again with Star Wars. During the lockdown and subsequent months afterwards while limiting my contact with others, I binge-watched the two animated series The Clone Wars and Star Wars: Rebels on Disney Plus. Last summer, I faithfully watched The Bad Batch every Friday morning when a new episode was released, and now the Book of Boba Fett just started! Disney Plus has so many new Star Wars series coming out in 2022, so I am going to devote my Wednesdays when I come home from working out to watching whatever Star Wars series episode has come out that day. So while you may not like Star Wars at all, find what it is that you do like and geek out over it like I do with Star Wars!

Find out who you are outside of the classroom, and enjoy yourself!

Top 5 of 2021

As this semester and 2021 are coming to an end, I am going to take my annual winter hiatus from blogging, but I want to leave you with my yearly Top 5 List of Most Viewed blog posts from this year. Considering how we were still in a hybrid teaching environment for the first half of 2021, it is interesting to note how many in the top 5 are technology-based. As always, I am incredibly thankful for those of you who regularly read this blog and feel that I have something of value to say. See you in 2022!

Top 5 Most Viewed Blog posts of 2021

1. Read, Draw, and Discuss
2. Dragonboy - Movie Talk
3. Using Blooket
4. False Sentences Using Google Forms
5. Giving Grace to Myself and to Others

Using Litotical/Opposite Structures

In my district, we are bound to cover specific vocabulary words for each level of Latin. This districtwide list is based on word frequency found in Latin literature and are specific for levels. While these lists do give us guidance and a map for our district-mandated "pretests/post-tests," I have never been a fan of the lists, because I feel like they squash being able to shelter vocabulary, not grammar. Essentially I end up having to do the opposite. Basically, the list dictates what I must cover; therefore, I end up manipulating readings and passages to include these vocabulary words. Luckily, this post-hybrid year there is a reprieve from these district-level pretests/post-tests for students, so I feel like I can truly focus on sheltering vocabulary, not grammar. At the same time, however, I do have a "responsibility" (to attempt) to cover the vocabulary on this list. 

Last year during hybrid teaching, my Latin 3 colleague/team member John Foulk began to use litotical/opposite structures to introduce new specific vocabulary words which were necessary to target due to this list. Litotes - denying the opposite or saying the negative for emphasis - is a poetic device with which Latin teachers (especially AP Latin teachers) are very familiar! Examples in English:

• Person #1: Are you cold?
• Person #2: Well, I'm not warm!

• Person #1: Do you like your gift?
• Person #2: I am not entirely ungrateful...

We had to introduce the word pauci (meaning "few") but also in a hybrid-teaching environment (may that learning situation be forever cast into Tartarus!) so not an easy task! In my opinion, pauci is just a weird word. As a result, John began to target the phrase non pauci sed multi ('not a few but many"), since students were already familiar with the word multi. John used this phrase over and over again in our readings, and soon the phrase non pauci sed multi became a joke among students due to the sheer amount of repetitions. The phrase even started to appear in student writings, which means that they had acquired it and were now using it on their own.

After this, we began to think that he was onto something and that litotical/opposite structures should be taught/implemented very early in language classes, especially in the lower levels. I know of some teachers who do teach vocabulary in pairs - the target word with its antonym. I used to think that this was overkill and too much vocabulary for students to grasp, but now that I see how students associate vocabulary, it makes sense to me. 

So many topics naturally lend themselves to litotical/opposite structures:

• family members - "not this family member but this one"
• emotions - "not this emotion but this one"
• reactions - "not doing this but this instead"
• size/amount - "not this size/many but this size/many"
• animals - "not this animal but this one"
• occupations - not this job but this one"

Litotical/opposite structures allow for natural repetitions of vocabulary, and students do remember them! As part of language proficiency, you are also teaching students a language pattern which they can manipulate as output as novice learners.

Acquisition Boot Camp (ABC)

While I may be preaching to the choir in this blog post, if you have heard about such topics as Comprehensible Input (CI), Acquisition Driven Instruction (ADI), and language proficiency vs. language performance but do not possess a working knowledge about them, please consider enrolling in the next round of Acquisition Boot Camp (ABC). Beginning in January 2022, this month-long self-directed online course is offered by The Comprehensible Classroom and is led by Martina Bex and Elicia Cardenas.

This past summer I had the opportunity to serve as one of the coaches for this course, and I absolutely loved the format and the lessons. Now the course does take a level of commitment. There are daily video lessons which need to be viewed and daily reflections/discussion board posts on those lessons. The videos are definitely viewable and easy to digest - most range from 5-10 minutes depending on the topic - and a new video is released on each weekday. There is a lot of material covered in these 4 weeks, but wow, even as a coach, I learned much too! Also in the course are three live/synchronous sessions, once a week for the first three weeks, where you will get the opportunity to take part as a student in an hourlong language learning experience led by an experienced CI teacher, and one live/synchronous session in the last week where the coaches each share a CI-based/ADI-based unit plan example.

Allow me an excursus to address this course as an Instructional Technologist. I possess a graduate degree in Instructional Technology, and I can say without a doubt that ABC aligns so much with IT distance learning theory! This course allows for learner autonomy (participants can view and complete work whenever they want, wherever they want within a timeline) so students are not bound by a prescribed physical location or time. Most importantly, participants have access to timely feedback to their discussion posts from instructor and coaches - this is a KEY point in distance learning, and unfortunately most distance-learning courses fail in this important aspect due to logistics and resources. 

Be aware though - this course may challenge your pedagogical beliefs regarding language acquisition, grading policies, classroom setup, etc., You may walk away, saying that this course is garbage and that you completely disagree with everything in it as you take part in the discussions and watch the videos. That is perfectly OKAY - what we do want is that you are open to learning more about CI/ADI and that you are willing to start incorporating what you are able to in your classroom.

So if you are curious about CI, ADI, and proficiency-based classrooms and really wish to learn more about these topics in an academic setting, I highly suggest that you look into this course. 

Acquisition Boot Camp (January 2022 session) information/web page

Picture A/Picture B Listening Assessment

Who says that assessments must be long?!! Here is a very low-key, very quick listening comprehension assessment which I learned this past summer from Martina Bex and Elicia Cardenas while working as a coach for their Acquisition Boot Camp (ABC), and it is very simple for you as the teacher to administer. Simply, you either project two pictures onto a screen or put them on a piece of paper - these pictures are labeled A and B. You read a target sentence aloud, and you ask students to determine if the sentence is describing picture A or picture B. As a teacher, however, it requires a bit of prep work.

Pre-Assessment

1. Taking a story which you have been going over in class, select 7-10 sentences. If it is from a movie talk, you could use screen shots.
2. Illustrate those sentences. 
3. Scan them (or use a web app drawing tool) or illustrate them onto the assessment paper.
4. Place the scanned pictures in pairs onto Google Slides for projection or onto a document. 
5. Label one picture "A" and the other picture "B"
6. For each pair, determine which sentence you read will read in order to match up with the correct picture.

Assessment

1. Explain to students that you are going to read aloud a sentence from the story, and their job is to determine if the sentence being read is Picture A or Picture B. I project the pictures on Google Slides and have students on a sheet of paper number 1-10ish, and they simply answer A or B.
2. Read the sentence a couple times slowly and then move onto the next set of pictures.

Observations

1. Oh my gosh, why did I not learn about this assessment earlier?? It is so easy and quick to administer (although it takes some type to prepare it) - it took less then five minutes to administer. Students simply had to write down either A or B on their paper. If the pictures are on a sheet of paper for them, they simply have to mark the picture being described.
2. I used this as a formative assessment and not as a summative assessment. 
3. These were incredibly easy to grade too, because I was simply looking for either the letters A or B as the answer.
4. Students liked this assessment, because it was fast and easy for them to complete.
5. When picking pairs of pictures, select pairs which require a close listening and inspection of the pictures. In the example above, each of the pictures involved the phrase "duo comites (two comrades)" so students had to listen carefully to the rest of the sentence to determine what distinguished the two pictures. In other words, I could not have one picture have two people in them and the other picture being of a dog, because when students heard the phrase "duo comites," immediately they would know which picture it was and would not listen to the rest of the sentence. 
6. The picture being described needs to be OBVIOUS for students.