Read Dating - and other ideas from the Reading Toolbox

This post is a follow up to my post on my students' first real responses to untextbooking. In this post, I want to talk about an activity that was not a huge hit last year, Read Dating, and how it has become much more effective this year. I'm also going to link to and briefly discuss some other great reading activities that I use.

Read Dating

I did this activity last year with minimal success. My 4% students felt like we were moving to slowly while my barometer students felt like they were dragging the class down. At the end of the year this was the one activity that they wanted to change. I took their feedback and made some changes:

• I lengthened the amount of time with each partner
• On certain days we'll have an activity that accompanies the reading. So far we've done comic strips, summaries, and comprehension questions. 

The students have responded well to the changes, but I find that if I do this as a warm up or review, they are able to move more quickly and enjoy it more, even if I do it exactly as I had done last year. Here's the basic procedure:

1. Give students a reading that you've read before, gone over, etc.
2. Pair students up. I tend to do this sitting in chairs, but I've seen it done standing in rows or a circle. I tried this with one class and, while they enjoyed it, it was harder for me to move through and listen in. I will probably alternate between these two ways of doing it. 
3. Students are given a set amount of time. I have given up to 5 minutes, if the story is longer or newer, and as little as 2 minutes, if it is a short story, or one we've done over and over. 
4. Student A reads the first sentence in the target language. Student B translates.
5. Student B reads the next sentence. Student A translates. and so it continues.
6. At the end of the specified time, I call to them to "movete" or move. They rotate to a new partner. 
7. When they are with the new partner, they start as far back in the story as possible. If student A got through the 6th sentence, but his new partner only got through the 3rd, they start with the 3rd sentence. This ensures that everyone reads the story in its entirety. 
8. If they finish the story, they start over.  

After they do this reading, I'll often ask comprehension questions in Latin or we'll do a timed write. Here's another take on this activity from Keith Toda.

Cloze Reading

I used to hate these. I disliked them as a student because they were often done in English and the English wasn't what I had trouble remembering, it was the vocabulary in the target language. I often use these, however, as a teacher, to wrap up a story or review prior to a test. I don't do the cloze passage in English, but in Latin. 

A cloze activity for a Latin III class

I do cloze readings in all my classes, but they vary based on level. Levels I and II only have blanks based on vocabulary and this is often done in a presentation style. They'll write down the sentences and fill in the blanks and we'll discuss together. 

For my upper levels, however, since we are going over explicit grammar at this stage, I have started giving the cloze passages like the one to the left. All the blanks are based on key vocabulary, but some focus on the grammar we are learning/reviewing (in this case verbs). You can leave clues in (parentheses) to guide students towards the grammar points you've been working on. 

The students seem to find this activity useful, especially if we take time to discuss the blanks and, if fitting, the grammar involved. I want to specify, however, that I only use grammar blanks with my upper level students. They are ready for these kids of questions. Lower level students are often not ready and these kinds of blanks cause a lot of stress and do not increase acquisition. 

Read and Discuss/Read, Discuss, and Draw

This is often the activity I use for an initial reading. It can be done a variety of ways, but it essentially boils down to the following:

1. project the story, or give out copies
2. do a choral reading of each paragraph, or read popcorn style, or the teacher reads.
3. pause for vocabulary questions in the target language
4. circle new vocabulary
5. ask comprehension questions in the target language
6. Optional: ask students to draw a single picture for that part of the story

You can include choral translation if you wish, or you can keep it in the target language. I usually keep it in the target language, but will ask for a quick translation if I want to review a particularly difficult word or construction. At the end of this, we usually complete a timed write, but I may delay this if I feel like we need to go over it some more with another activity the next day. If you choose to ask your students to draw a picture, you can allow them to use those pictures to guide their timed write. 

Picture Timeline

This is an activity that I've been doing for a few years, but I don't know that I've ever written it up. I will do this after an initial reading of a text and use it to retell the story. I take a story we're reading and cut it into pieces. Students get in groups and draw a single picture for their part. Then, we put them on the board and discuss. I'll circle vocabulary, ask comprehension questions, etc. until I'm sure the entire class is clear on each picture. Then, I'll give the class one minute to send a representative up to the board and to direct him/her into reordering the pictures correctly. They can only speak Latin. This is a good warm up activity or closing activity after an initial reading. 

Reader's Theatre

You can read my initial write up of this activity here, but I did want to update you guys' on my thoughts. This year, reader's theatre is going much more smoothly. Since we stopped relying on the textbook and we are using myths and histories and Classical and Medieval texts, along with student and teacher generated stories, rather than textbook stories, we have a lot more opportunities for reader's theatre and the kids really enjoy it. I will do reader's theatre as a follow up activity and we often do it as a final reading. I choose volunteer students who don't mind being silly and will commit to the roles. 

Parallel Universe

I started using this activity after reading Keith Toda's blog post on it. I first used it as a review for a class that had done poorly on a test. It was our final review before the class retook the test. The class average went from a 78% to a 97%. Since then, we've been using parallel universes as one of a few final ways of reading stories before tests. Sometimes, it is a quick review, as Keith suggests, and listen to students as an oral informal assessment. Other times, I will ask them to correct the mistakes and turn it in as a written formal assessment. With some of the upper classes, I've even expanded it to include a timed write afterwards, but I ask students to take one of the sentences from the parallel universe and rewrite the story based upon that single fact. Overall, students really enjoy this. Sometimes my changes make the story funny while other times the changes are so glaring that they don't make any sense. I try to vary the difficult of the change to see just how comfortable students are with the story. For example, using Mary Had a Little Lamb, you might make three levels of difficulty in changes. While the first includes major changes, that are easy to spot, the second changes a detail that students will likely remember, but is a smaller change, while the third may be even more difficult, or be a much smaller change. 

1. level 1 - Mary had a huge lamb, it's fleece was dark as the night.
2. level 2 - Mary had a little lamb, it's fleece was white as teeth. 
3. level 3 - Mary had a little lamb, it's tail was white as snow. 

I really would like my reading toolbox to be bigger, so I'd love to add to this list. If you have any activities that you do, let us know! 

The Untextbooked Classroom: A Glimpse

I have this problem that comes up as a teacher who frequents other teachers' blogs and twitter and Google+ to learn about new technologies and methodologies and research concerning education. I get all these great ideas sent to me from every angle. And I only sometimes know what to do with them.

It's one thing to have a great idea clearly lined out, explained, and detailed with step-by-step implementation--much like the diy blogs I follow--and entirely another to have a vague clue of something that would be better for my students but having no earthly clue how to make that happen in my own classroom. It's frustrating. I want my students to have the best possible chance at success, and for me to know of a technique that could improve their chances but be unable to enact that idea is bordering on torture at times. I have racked my brain repeatedly to decide how I could bring certain technologies into my classroom in a relevant way, I have struggled with big ideas like SBG and Flipped Classrooms and Student-Centered approaches (especially difficult in a foreign language class), I even cobbled together many of my CI approaches through trial and error when I first started teaching--with lots of tears and late nights and stress and failure--because I just couldn't find someone to help me see it step-by-step.

That's why Miriam and I work to make sure we don't just offer up ideas, but show you how we use them in our own classes. And why I'm writing this post. Untextbooking feels like a big idea to me, and while I've posted about it here and here, and Miriam has recently posted about it here, I am not sure either of us have given you everything you need to be successful in implementing it in your classes. So in this post I'm going to give you an idea of specifically what we're doing (of course we're working together), what one of my units looks like, and the technology I use (and how I use it) to keep my class and myself afloat while I do this.

If you feel like you can't, you don't have time, it's too much, etc., I encourage you to just try one unit, one piece of authentic text that you are excited about and think your students will enjoy. At worst, it doesn't work for you. At best, you'll discover the joy I did in sharing something you love with your students.

Preparing a Text

Choosing a text. This part is extremely important. When I decide what we're going to read in my classes, I look for two things: 1) Is it compelling? 2) Can I make it comprehensible?

Steven Krashen has recently done studies that prove something we all should already understand--in order for students to want to read something, it has to be compelling to them. They have to want to read it. I usually start choosing a text to consider because I'm excited by it. It was fun to read, the story was unusual or action-packed or dark (I have a dark sense of humor and my students often do also) or just plain weird. If I think my students would enjoy it too, I look at the text again, but this time from the standpoint of where my students are in terms of their current Latin skills.

Then I decide whether I can make something comprehensible to my students, which is another thing definitely required for them to read and enjoy something--very few students are okay with struggling through a text whether or not the story is compelling. I look at vocabulary and grammar, though my larger focus is vocabulary. Most grammar can be eased into through proper preparation, which I'll talk about in the next section, but vocabulary has to be known. If I have to define every word, then it's not reading, and there's no flow (Keith Toda talks about the importance of flow on his blog here). So I look for pieces that I can teach with no more than 10 added vocabulary words and grammar constructions (which I often teach as "vocabulary" with a particular phrasing that we learn to substitute other words within--a traditional TPRS approach). I think deeply about where my students currently are in their Latin learning, and I consider whether they can handle the text either in its current form (almost never for lower level students) with some vocabulary instruction, or whether I can, by creating a couple of embedded stories (dicussed here within my first untextbooking post), make it completely approachable and comprehensible to my students. If I can't, I have to discard the idea. I recently did that with a great text by Pliny the Younger about a Roman heroine valued for her bravery and Roman values. It was hard to discard the text, because it is so rare to see a woman celebrated in Roman writing for anything other than her beauty. But the vocabulary was too varied for me to be able to bring my students to it in 10 vocabulary words and two embedded versions.

Preparing the text. I first look at a text and underline the things that my students might/should struggle with: unknown vocabulary words, foreign and non-intuitive grammar structures, particularly difficult word order. Out of those, I choose the items I'm going to teach. I have actually put together a vocabulary list based on things my students will be expected to know by the end of the year and the 50 most important verbs that a group of Latin teachers I highly esteem compiled (I may do a post later on about choosing words to teach--I almost segued into it here). As much as possible, I stick close to that list. If I choose words outside that list, it is because they are high-frequency words and I think my students will need them later on. I choose grammar constructions as vocabulary too, but generally I only like to choose one at a time, so the rest are left to the next steps.

After I've chosen what vocabulary (and grammar) I'll be teaching, I look at what is left over. I gloss any remaining vocabulary--in the text because looking down can disrupt flow--and consider the best course of action for the grammar constructions. Certain constructions are best treated as vocabulary and so are glossed. Many can be untangled for students by embedding them.

My last step in preparing a text is to embed it. This means writing lead-in forms of the story. This is where I might arrange words in a simpler word order for students to comprehend (sometimes that's all that's needed) or take grammar and reword it into something familiar that students will understand easily. This year, I'm going to be trying something new that Keith Toda has suggested--I'm going to leave some of the information out of my embedded version. That way there's still a reason to read the original text. There's still a surprise left. It's still compelling. Keith ran into some of the same issues I did when doing embedded versions. Yes, the kids get it, but by the second (or third) time reading the same story, they often aren't interested any more.

After I've done all of this--compiled vocabulary and grammar structures for teaching and embedded the text--I use different methods to create as many repetitions as I can without it getting too boring or repetitive (which I'll cover in the next section).

What a Unit Looks Like

Okay, to be honest, I'm fortunate. I share my Latin program with two fabulous teachers (the beauteous Caroline Miklosovic and the ubiquitous Bob Patrick) and I only have one prep. If you teach a more frequented language, that's not shocking, but all of my pre-Georgia teaching experience was as a singleton Latin teacher with at least four preps at any time.

All of that to explain that I am only teaching Latin I this year. Last year I only taught Latin II. I am working with the teachers in my building and Miriam to develop a textbookless approach (at least a preliminary one), and I only have to work on one level at a time. That does allow me a chance to really focus in on one group and decide what is best for them at any given moment without having to balance another group in my head. If it makes you feel better, I am teaching extended day with an extra class, so I'm not simply at leisure, but that chance to focus my energy and creativity is really helpful.

My units are generally broken down into three phases: 1) introducing the vocabulary and grammar, 2) readings, 3) repeated interaction with readings. Depending on the level of embedding, 2 and 3 may be repeated for a given unit.

I have a few go-to activities for each phase, which I'll list with links below, so that my class doesn't get repetitive. Especially when rereading a story, there needs to be variety in the kids' routine.

Introducing vocabulary and grammar.
1. Dictation. I have described dictations before, but here is a write-up by Keith that I think nicely describes how he breaks down creating and using dictations in his class. The great thing about a "dictatio" is it is intensive and repetitions are naturally embedded in the process.

2. Micrologue. I like doing this as an alternative to a dictation. Students write less, and the images make it at least a little less monotonous. Here is a quick description of the process.

3. TPRS, especially asking a story. I do this a lot, and I like to do it in conjunction with either a dictatio or a micrologue as a means of reinforcing the vocabulary that was introduced in those.

4. PQA. This can be an easier way to practice vocabulary than TPRS, since it can simply relate to real life for students. I especially like it for topics like family, since students like talking about their own families or to make families up (I tell students that if it's said in Latin, it's true for our class, whether or not a student says he has eight mothers or five spouses).

5. Movietalk. Miriam has already written a post about this, and it is a really effective way of engaging students in something with the ability to teach a lot of vocabulary. It generally takes me a class and a half to complete all of the steps.

6. Fill in the blank. This is something that is especially helpful if what you are teaching is a grammatical construction. Write part of a sentence on the board (recently we worked on comparatives, so the sentence was "nemo est _____ior quam _____" or in English "no one is ____er than ____") and let students play with filling in the blanks. I usually give a time limit, then let them compare answers, choose their best, and we share them with the class. I write their shared answers on the board and we review them as a class. In the process, students are getting repetition after repetition of the structure.

Readings
This is usually the most consistently structured activity in my classroom. I ask the class to read a text (or embedded reading) silently first, and depending on the class, I give a time limit or ask them to look up when they are finished. Then they work through the text with a partner. Lastly, we do a choral reading, so that everyone in the class is completely sure what the text says. That's how we approach every reading before we move on to activities, and it's simply because I want to make sure students both have a chance to internalize reading flow and be certain that their understanding is correct. I finish everything out with an intensive question and answer session over the story (most commonly referred to as "circling").

Interaction with Readings
I have a few go-to activities with readings to choose from, few of which are my own creation. It is really helpful to follow Keith Toda's blog to find activities, because he tends to do great weekly overviews of things he does in his own classes and there is a lot of variety. It is the most helpful blog I've found for overviews and step-by-step instructions.

For my most recent set of text, after the reading, we did parallel universe, picture review (where literally I draw a bunch of stick figure illustrations of the reading and we circle them--it's also a good way to review vocabulary), sentence matching (I give them a copy of the pictures from the picture review--I like to pair these activities--and the sentences that go with each picture and students have to match and write down the correct sentences with the correct picture), and the word chunk game (which I call "trash ball").

I will be working on a post later this month or during next month that will be completely devoted to the different activities I use to repeat readings without becoming monotonous.

Assessment
At the end of any unit, there needs to be a means of telling whether students have learned what I want them to learn. I wrote about my retake policy concerning assessment, and Miriam wrote about hers as well. Miriam suggested and I agreed that this year we keep our units and assessments short, since we are required in our district to devote 45% of students' grades to summative assessments. So my assessments are short, ten question quizzes, and students are quizzed almost every week. The questions are written in Latin and are over the final version of the text we are reading. There is no multiple choice, just open-ended questions that they are expected to answer in Latin. I just want a quick glimpse into whether or not they are navigating the language.

Technology to Keep it Simple

Google docs and drive. There are four of us working together locally to help each other untextbook. We are using Google drive (which used to be docs) to share everything mutually. For example, as I make Latin I materials, I create everything in shared folders that all of us can access. Whenever any one of our group needs something for Latin I, he or she can access it there. What makes this better than simply emailing a document or entering it into dropbox is that I sometimes make mistakes, and if I need to edit a document, I can do so in the drive. Once I've edited a document in the drive, everyone only sees the edited version. This does mean that if you want to create a shared folder with someone, and allow that person to edit (you can control that setting), it needs to be someone you trust not to alter your work so much you're no longer sure you created it.

The other wonderful thing about creating on Google Drive is the ability to share my work with my students. Whenever we read a text, I hand it out on physical paper. However, if a student misses a day or if the student loses the handout or wants to read over the text at home, it can be available to him online. There is a small process to make sure it's visible even to those who don't use Google, but it's only one extra step. Under the "File" menu, choose "Publish to the Web" and then choose to publish the work to the web. That's it. After that, set the sharing to "Public on the Web" or "Anyone with a Link" and put the link somewhere your students can access it. Even more wonderful, since it's a Google drive document, if you make a correction at any point, it automatically updates for anyone viewing the document--including your students.

Lastly, I never have to take my school laptop home. I can update Google drive documents wherever I have access to the internet. Last Tuesday, while I was waiting for my son to take the stage at his chorus performance, I quickly created an activity I needed the next day in class. The best part is that I created the activity on my phone. Then I got home and did some quick edits, because my phone typing is not the best. But the moral here is that I can work on the stuff anywhere and it's right where I need it.

Miriam wrote a tutorial on Google Drive a while back that takes you through some of the opportunities it provides with graphics to help.

Padlet. Padlet is one of the easiest tools I have found for quickly posting information for my students. Once you have a padlet set up, you literally just double-click anywhere to post information, links, files, etc. This is my Latin I padlet. You can see that I have a running list of readings for my students that I can add to at any point. I can drag the boxes around, resize them, or just delete them if they are no longer relevant to my class. I have even created padlets with public editing options for my students to turn in web-based work and to view each others' work. It is a very helpful tool.

Google Calendar. I keep my Google calendar open on my computer at school and my home computer and it even takes up a full page on my phone. Just like Google Drive, whenever I update the computer, it updates everywhere. I have my Latin Google calendar embedded on my website so my students know what I have planned and can reference it on any given day. I also share that calendar with my fellow untextbooking colleagues who can use it to help themselves plan. And I have it for easy reference whenever I need to look back to find out what we did a month ago in class.

If I make a class plan, and something unforetold, such as a pop pep rally, interrupts my plan, I can drag my plan from one day to the next. There is no need to delete or to start over. And when I make the change, all of my calendars reflect it. In addition, currently we are assigned duty stations for nine weeks at a time. I can click on the first Thursday duty, type "Morning Duty every Thursday for 9 weeks" and it will literally fill in nine Thursdays for me with the title "Morning Duty." Google Calendar makes my life and my teaching life much, much easier.

(We have not written a Google Calendar tutorial yet, but either I or Miriam will someday in the near future, I am sure.)

That is really it. Those three tools are enough to make my life without a text book as simple if not simpler than it was when I had a book to tell me what to teach.

So What Now?

Hopefully you will feel comfortable creating at least one unit. I think bringing an authentic language reading experience into your classroom is worth it, whether or not you decide to ditch the textbook.

I can say that my students have responded positively to the lack of textbook. My students who left the textbook in the middle of the year last year were glad for the change, enjoyed the authentic materials more than the textbook (compelling is so important!), and at least one now intends to teach Latin without a textbook when she finishes college. This year, I have students who generally are much more secure in their personal vocabularies and able to read with ease; they get excited about the material (at the moment, we are covering basic mythology; I am basing my cultural teachings on the National Latin Exam curriculum); they are not afraid to take on new texts as I present them.

After this year, after I have a chance to sort and compile what I did, I hope to make my materials available to everyone who wants them (I just need time to make sure everything is correct and that I like all of it and that it had the effect I wanted it to have). And as I add more, I will publish those on the internet as well. Hopefully others will do the same and we'll have a richer network of materials than any one company could have provided us.

Untextbooking - students' first review

Last year, Rachel and I began an experiment to untextbook with our Latin II students. We used Classical texts to build a curriculum and supplemented it with videos, dictations, and other Comprehensible Input activities.

This year, we are untextbooking with all of our classes. We are keeping in line with local, state, and national standards and are using materials created by teacher all across the county to help determine common words students will need to know.

I am finding myself drawn to a few staple activities, which I'd listed below and linked to (where I can). Ones that don't have links will be the things I make my next few posts about. Here's a link to a sample lesson plan from Latin III who are reading Ovid's Metamorphoses Book III, the story of Narcissus and Echo

* Dictationes
* Pixar Shorts
* Embedded Readings
* Reader's Theatre
* Read Dating
* Total Physical Response (I'll be posting on this in a vocabulary activities post)
* Teaching Proficiency Through Reading and Storytelling 

This last week, I gave my Latin II students an opportunity to give me my first set of feedback in this process. Today, I'd briefly like to relay those results to you.

The most overwhelming response with 60% of students discussing this was that untextbooking has allowed us to read stories that they can relate to, that are interesting, and that actually help them remember vocabulary in context. They said that it has been helpful to, rather than reading 4-6 stories in 2-3 weeks, take 2 weeks (more like 7 school days) on one story, read it multiple times, in multiple embedded forms, and use many activities with it. We have combined our stories with certain cultural or mythological things that students need to know or be able to discuss to prepare them for national exams and higher level thinking skills.

The second largest response with 17% of students discussing was in regards to the games we've been playing. I have severely cut back on the number of games we play and decided to only focus on a few "go to" games:

* Ball is Life (I will be making a post about this)
* VINCO (Vocabulary Bingo)

There are a few others I play with the upper level students in regards to grammar, but this is essentially it. I don't give out bonus points because with test retakes, I don't see a need. Instead I give out stickers and street cred. These games ask students to demonstrate their ability on vocabulary words, phrases, and sentences we've learned.

Since I only asked two classes, the feedback was somewhat limited, but the overall response was that this was a better way to learn Latin. We aren't confined to the book or to its contents. We can still learn the same ideas, but we can do it in our own way and in our own time. With district assessments moving further and further away from what any one textbook teaches, I count this as a success.