2020-2021 End of the Year Reflection

Every year is different... but this year was DIFFERENT. I know every state, district, and school did it differently, but my district made it in the news repeatedly, mostly, this year, for the decisions the board made regarding school this year and the pandemic. Just a quick list of some things we... experienced: 

1.  year starting off 100% in person
2. sudden change to 100% digital
3. change to 100% parent/student choice
4. school choice in how to handle transitions from in person to digital, etc. 
1. some schools gave deadlines for when students could change from one to the other
2. some schools said students could change whenever
5. concurrent teaching (teaching in person and online at the same time)
6. fire-y board meetings with intense comments from parents, students, and teachers
1. this included comments from parents whose kids no longer attended public school with us

This is an oversimplified list. So, this year has been different... to quote TikTok: This year was "built different". 

I'm not going to spend this post talking about everything I did this year, but I will list a few things I've talked about or have done that were unique to this year:

• implemented code switching stories
• implemented Latin Vocab TikTok
• explored ways to deliver CI in a concurrent environment using three word pictures
• updated and reconsidered how I do review and retakes
• explored ways to deliver CI in a digital environment using TPR
• implemented Black History Month in a concurrent environment
• reflected on teaching during the pandemic

One other thing I did this year, this semester in particular, was to conduct a classroom action research study on the effects of Comprehensible Input on output, particularly in disabled students/students with disabilities. I did this as my thesis for my Special Education degree from Saint Mary's University in Minnesota. For those interested, you can read the study here.

Needless to say, it's been a busy year for me. There are things I wish I had more time to do and there are things I wish I had explored more fully. But, it is May and next year is already gearing up to be an amazing and new adventure because... I am teaching an ESOL class in addition to Latin! It is going to be an exciting experience for sure.... But, back to this year. 

As always, I give my students a three question survey at the end (okay 4 question). The questions were:

1. What have we done that you've liked?
2. What have we done that has helped?
3. If you have magistra Patrick next year, what would you like more of?
4. Is there anything else you want me to know (doesn't have to be school related)?

As always, nothing is a valid response. Answers are still rolling in, but so far I've gotten some great feedback that I want to share. This will definitely shape what I plan to do next year. So... Student response are in bold and my thoughts are highlighted purple. Ways it is going to affect what I do next year are written in teal.

We like games. Honestly though, who doesn't? This year we heavily employed blookets and gimkits in class and as asynchronous assignments. We also adapted the word chunk game to allow digital play (should I do a post on this?). Kids like games... fair enough. Next year I want to employ more hands on games, games that involve physical movement. I miss them!

CS Stories are helpful. This we knew. We worked to get immediate feedback when we implemented these. However, it is great to hear on the end of year survey because it has been a bit since we've done a CS story and so the fact that it stuck out in students' minds means it really is a great thing. Next year I want to employ them more often. We experimented with different ways to use them and I cannot wait to try more. 

More hands on! Um... yes please! I miss this aspect of teaching in person. Universal Design for Learning (UDL) says we provide multiple forms of engagement, representation, and expression.... hands on things are the best for this! Things I am working on or have done in the past that I will continue with include: braille inclusion, use of Wikki sticks, student choice assignments. I also want to have a regular supply of play-doh, legos, and other physical things in my room. 

The teacher is always willing to help students, no matter what. Okay, ya, this touched my heart. It is my goal to always answer with compassion and... it's hard when you are teaching concurrently and are always exhausted. I greatly appreciate this comment. 

The way we do things. this is vague, but students remarked on how "non traditional" our classes are. One student specifically listed that we don't hand out vocabulary sheets for memorisation. 

As always there were the typical listings of likes and things that helped including: games, movie shorts, story listening, and dictations. These things, of course, will go nowhere :) 

I won't say I made lemonade out of lemons this year. (1) I hate lemonade; if I'm making anything out of lemons it's a lemon cake, and (2) I hate that saying. Buzzfeed recently used it to highlight 10 teachers and, while I appreciate the sentiment.... we all worked our butts off this year during a pandemic, during staff shortages (which are really living wage shortages), during substitute shortages, with lack of funds... and all the other things we regularly deal with... to say that we "made lemonade out of lemons" does not do accurately describe all we've had to deal with.... Rather, I did the best I could and I won't speak for anyone else on that matter. For me, the best I could meant answering with compassion, and listening to my students, all while trying to innovate and move my own professional skill forward. I have no regrets...

I learned a lot this year and I will definitely carry that forward... But I am SO ready for a new and better year. <3

Delivering CI in a pandemic: Three word pictures

 This is an activity that I learned from Keith Toda many years ago and one that I really enjoy doing, when I remember. The basic premise is that you give students three vocabulary words and they draw a picture that incorporates all three words. What I like to do that point is to share one or two of the images and discuss them in Latin. By the end of the period, I will show an image and ask students to tell me what they see. Generally speaking, students really enjoy this activity and like being silly and creative.

Knowing that I enjoy this activity, I am surprised how long it took me to give it a try in this new pandemic induced environment. I was a bit ahead in the Latin II plans as I had to rework everything due to technical difficulties in my classroom, and so on a whim I decided to figure out how to do this activity. 

I needed a digital whiteboard option and went with whiteboard.fi which my colleague John Foulk showed me. I must say that while it wasn't a perfect execution, it was one that I am going to add to my "digital toolbox" for the future. 

Image Description: whiteboard.fi from the
teacher's point of view. Toggle Teacher
whiteboard is on the top and student 
whiteboard previews are below. 

I started the period by letting students play a gimkit in one of the new forever modes to refamiliarise them with the vocabulary I'd be pulling from and then I opened an open class on whiteboard.fi. I invited students to the class using the link and the QR code that the site gives me and each student had, upon entering, a whiteboard complete with colours, typing tools, and image insertion capabilities. 

The sticky part for me came to sharing student images with each other. I was hoping I could simply share an image with them and then when I stopped, they'd still see their own. Rather, whiteboard.fi required me to push it out to their screens. 

Image description: Teacher whiteboard is shown via
whiteboard.fi. A menu is open and shows how to push
images out to students' whiteboards. 

The kids had a lot of fun with this and, while a few lamented how difficult it was to draw on their phones, most of them enjoyed this and I got some really great images from the students (shared below). One of the things I really liked, however, about this that I haven't really seen anywhere else so easily is the save option. Both the students and the teacher have the option to save images (the students save their own and the teacher can save any of them). This allows me to have the potential of an entire database of images I can use later in discussions! 

All of this was done on the free version of this site. I have not explored the paid version of this, but I did discover at least one aspect that was only available via the paid version which was image feedback. If you have an account and pay for it, you can give students real time feedback on their images privately. 

Ultimately I was happy with this tech tool and I will use it again... unless I find something better :) stay tuned!

Student Images:

Latin words given: umbra, ramum, and felix
Image description: a happy dog ghost
holds a branch in his mouth

 

Latin words given: villa, cena, and horribilis
image description: outside of a large country house 
a soda, a burger, and a slice of pizza plan to do
horrible things 

References:

Foulk, J. M. (2020). Spice up your Latin. Retrieved from: magisterfoulk.blogspot.com

Toda, K. (2020). Todally comprehensible Latin. Retrieved from: https://todallycomprehensiblelatin.blogspot.com/

whiteboard.fi (2021). Whiteboard.fi. Retrieved from: https://whiteboard.fi/

PBP Proudly Announces: Itinera Petri: magnum periculum

 

Teaching Digitally as an Adventure (Part 2)

Time for an update! I have done a lot of things since my last update--it's been two weeks. (See my first week entry here)

First, I continue to really enjoy the challenge. I won't pretend to be okay; no teacher is right now, in the midst of a deluge of anger, vitriol, and disregard. But I can find some sparks of happiness in my day-to-day purpose, and that is not a surprise. I am a teacher by calling, not by circumstance or necessity. It's my passion.

I love my students. I am getting the chance to get to know them and I am working on building relationships, even from a distance. I asked them to fill out a form today to just tell me "vents and brags," and while I haven't finished reading their responses, one of the best things has been finding out that all the work I'm putting into the digital lessons has been noticed. That wasn't the goal of vents and brags (a term I got from Bob Patrick), but it was so encouraging to read. 

Keith Toda often quotes Carol Gaab, "the brain craves novelty." I have done my best to keep that in mind as I plan my digital lessons this year and create activities that are engaging and feel different every day. I have worked to make every plan feel authentic to the space we're in, instead of trying to translate my in-person activities directly, though that doesn't mean I don't take inspiration from things I've done in my classes.

All that to say, here is what I've been doing in Latin IV!

Latin II is not my own lesson plan right now, so I don't feel comfortable sharing it. But you can mod these templates to work for you. Many things are made to work with Google Classroom because it is magical. Others work with Zoom. Hopefully you can see ways to adapt all!

At the bottom of the page are a quick couple of videos, including one to demonstrate how to modify these templates to fit your personal needs. I know that it's not perfectly intuitive and I want you to be able to use these successfully.

Introducing the Story: Engaging Background Vocabulary
It's been a while since these kids have had Latin in a classroom environment and we were mostly winging teaching online starting in March, so to make sure they are prepared to read anything, I can't assume they all know the vocabulary they were "taught" so it was important to me to make sure we did some things to find out what they did know and to reinforce it. Yes, that included Gimkit, an online resource that is always evolving. But I am not willing to use it exclusively. Here are the other things I did:

1. Vocabulary Know-it Board I filtered out the vocabulary that I knew was supposed to be new to
   
   students and set it aside. For literally every other word, including words like "in," I asked students to sort the vocabulary into piles of words "I know," "I really know," "I kind of know," and "I don't know." From there, I created a database of words they did not know and kind of knew and used that information to decide: 25 important words to review (they went into the Gimkit) and the 10 most important words to review (they are brought into focus by me on a repeated basis in context). This template is easy to modify for your own use; you can clear out any group of words and change the words to words you need your students to sort through. If you copy one of the rectangles and then press ctrl+v it will paste in this lovely diagonal design. I simply did that over and over while typing a new word each time. Then I would select the entire stack of ten and move them where I wanted. This board is best used in Google Class as a copy for each student.
2. Vocabulary Bricks I took the 25 important words I got from the Vocabulary Know-it Board and
   
   I created a game where students could compete to collect words. This was loosely inspired by the Vocabulary Highlighter Game but I needed a way to play in the current digital environment. So I created a game board with a goal space for two players and boxes for each word. Students choose a slide to pair up on, put their names as either Player 1 or Player 2, and listen for me to call out words in English. When I called out a word, students grabbed the Latin word and dragged it to their goal on the slide. We were on the Zoom meeting together, but we all looked at the slide instead while we played. (If you would like to add visual support, please watch the demonstration on how to easily do so on the video for Accidit Romae below.) This template is also easy to modify for your own use; simply change out my words for your own on one of the student slides, then copy that slide and paste it several times--enough for your class to be divided into teams of two. This game is best used shared with all students able to edit the same Google Slides. 
3. Vocabulary Puzzle This is one of the few times I literally took a game I play in class and put it
   
   in a digital format! It just works so effortlessly as a digital manipulative. This one I gave out to students and had them do on their own, although I encouraged them to give a friend a link to their own puzzle to help each other and then they could jump to the friend's puzzle to complete it too. The template I am giving you has the easy-to-edit format first, and then an example of how I stacked the pieces once I was done. To edit the puzzle, just double-click on the words and replace them with your own. Remember that students are trying to match the Latin with the English meaning. This puzzle can host 24 vocabulary words. Then turn the puzzle pieces different directions and stack them in a random order or lay them randomly around the board--however you would like to mix them up. You don't need two slides; I included the second slide so you can see what I did. This puzzle is best used in Google Class as a copy for each student.

Introducing the Story: New Vocabulary

Of course, there is new vocabulary as well. I employed some usual CI approaches that I thought might translate well as well as some brand new ideas.

1. Venatio Traditionally the school year for most of my classes starts with Circling with Balls. It's a
   
   quick get-to-know you routine that lets me find out more about my students and lets them find out more about each other while speaking Latin. However, this year we are in a different format, the flow of class is different, and getting students to answer questions in a digital class without feeling so much more on the spot and uncomfortable (trust me, I have attended many classes online, and I am not usually afraid to be the center of attention) is just harder. I don't want my class to be something my students dread. So this was one of those things that I stepped back from, thought about the purpose, and reconfigured. The purpose of Circling with Balls is to get to know my students and provide clear, comprehensible, repetitive Latin. So I decided I could do something similar with a scavenger hunt. I don't want it to be all period, but doing a simple class opening where I ask students to find one thing that fits thematically with the vocabulary we are studying, and then discussing what they show me, gives me the chance to get a similar feel that makes sense in our digital environment. On the first day, we did a super easy sentence that all kids would know: Find something you love. I got lots of pets, a couple of siblings, some sports balls and phones, and a lot of smiles. To modify this for yourself, simply write a sentence for each day that incorporates one word that you want to focus on, but make sure everything else is completely comprehensible. You can make a virtual slide if you want and let it be your background in Zoom, like I did, or you can write it on the board behind you, or on paper, etc., and then repeat it and make sure students know what they are searching for. Make it vague enough for more than one answer (the one I am showing here is: Find a thing you have too much of) so you can have interesting responses from the students. This is best used live in session when you can see all of your students.
2. Vocabulary Slides I have already made a post about this type of activity before. These are just the vocabulary slides I created to go with the beginning of this particular story. This is best used live in session with teacher leading and discussing in the target language.
3. Vocabulary Scenes Instead of OWATS, which can be easily collaborative (I am still always
   
   looking for ways to help students find community in this setting), I decided to ask students to create Vocabulary Scenes using a Google Slide that I had set up for them. I put them into Zoom breakout rooms randomly so that it would assign them partners and a "room number," then asked them to find the slide marked with the same room number and work on it. They were to create a scene using the five words on the slide and vocabulary they knew from previous years of Latin. I spent the class period jumping from breakout room to breakout room answering questions and making sure students were safe and on task. After they were done, I took the scenes they created and added sentences and used these as simple introductions to class and reminders of the new vocabulary, three scenes at a time. To modify this for yourself, just figure out how many rooms you might need and change the focus words on the right of the student slides! This activity is best used shared with all students able to edit the same Google Slides. 
4. Sentence Frames So this idea is honestly one of my early ideas with manipulatives. I still think it
   
   was a good idea, but I made a big error when composing this: I focused so much on pushing some of the more challenging aspects of the upcoming reading that I made this activity incomprehensible--the opposite of CI. I still feel it has potential, which is why I am sharing it here. But it is one that I will be more careful about in the future. Generally I created sentences that students could either fill in or slide answers to, then illustrate in the open white spaces below. What I have linked is a finished version with a template slide included; I will include how to modify it in the video below, because it is more complex than the activities above. This activity is best used in Google Class as a copy for each student.

Reading the Story

When you finally get to the story, one of the important things to do is to make sure you have a chance to repeat the story many times without feeling repetitive. With that in mind, I combined several approaches, some simple CI approaches from the classroom that transfer fairly comfortably to a Zoom classroom setting, and some I definitely really had to change or create fresh for the digital class. A side note: I decided to keep this first story quite short while I gage the students' capabilities and ease them into our current setting.

1. Picture Story This is a link to the the story I told to my class using pictures. We are starting a
   
   
   series of stories about Andromeda, the Ethiopian princess rescued by Perseus, but told from her point of view. Circling (asking questions to emphasize and reinforce vocabulary) is clunky at best in this setting, so instead I did my best to elaborate using the picture as a jumping-off point. To make your own, this is more labor-intensive, in that you will need to create your own images and take pictures and insert them or draw images on an app and insert them. However, images are useful not only for clarifying a story but for creating discussion. This is best used live in session with teacher leading and discussing in the target language.
2. "Choral" Reading I need a better name for this. We did not read chorally. I was inspired by choral reading to create a space in class for me to find out who knew the story, who understood the story, and yet still make sure that I was clarifying the meaning. What I did, which worked very well, actually, was highlight a section, ask students to type the meaning in the chat (which I have programmed in Zoom to only send to me, so it is not public. This has been a wonderful feature because students who are sometimes afraid to speak up in class are much more comfortable in this setting), and then clarify the meaning after I got student input. It was slow, but that was also kind of nice for students who are slow processors, and it allowed those who are fast processors to get their answers in there asap and be proud they were able to write everything probably before everyone else. Then, afterward, I just opened the chat log (which I have Zoom set to save) and I had a grade ready to go! Prep is easy--a nice, large font version of your story! This is best used live in session with teacher leading and clarifying the meaning in English. 
3. Accidit Romae (and question template) Okay, so stay with me here. I was inspired by the Las
   
   Vegas game that Meredith White had shared last year among a pile of review games she enjoyed. The basis is simple: students, paired up, ante up bets on how likely they think they will be able to answer the next question. The question is posted with an A,B,C,D answer option and they pick one. The answer is revealed and whoever gets it right gets the pot. All of this is done with pretend money, obviously. However, I wanted to figure out how to do this digitally. So I created a board with two players and an A,B,C,D setup, made stacks of 10 denarii apiece so each side has a total of 50, and then I had to figure out how to show them questions. The answer became this: I need a master slide that I can edit live. I have a video below to show you what I mean, and how to run the game. It was very successful! If you teach another language, watch the modifying templates video to learn how to change this game to work with your own language. This game is best used shared with all students able to edit the same Google Slides. 
4. Andromeda Prima: Interpreting the Reading Finally, after reading the story twice and playing
   
   a game to make sure students understood the story overall, and a gimkit that I didn't link here because that is something that we have all been doing in our classes before this whole thing happened, it was time to do an activity that required a little bit deeper reading and asked students to use quotes from the story to support their opinions. This is a really easy activity to set up; if you read the instructions you can see that you can ask for whatever types of details you want students to find within the text. I do recommend showing students how to create comments; even after doing so, a surprising number still had trouble and placed their comments in interesting spots and almost received lower grades than they deserved when I couldn't find them at first. That said, it was a pleasure to read and grade. This activity is best used in Google Class as a copy for each student.

How Do I Do Make These Things Work for Me?

That is such a good question. I know I just threw a lot at you at once. Here are two videos to help.

Playing Accidit Romae

How To Modify Google Classroom Manipulative Templates

Hopefully this extremely long post has helped you get started on some fun ways to expand the activities in your digital classroom! I'll keep posting as I come up with more ideas!

Teaching Virtually: A TPR alternative

 This year I am teaching Latin I again. I am so excited, but we are starting, if briefly, online. Total Physical Response (TPR) is still part of our plans, but we need to be creative. A few realities:

1. We cannot, in any way, see 30+ videos all at once to ensure that students are hearing and understanding us. 
2. Some students may not have their video on (a point for another time). 
3. We are using web cams and it will be difficult to get them to film us doing actions. 
4. Gauging comprehension is going to be... interesting. To say the least. 

I am collaborating with two colleagues this year for Latin I: Bob Patrick and Liz Davidson and we've been meeting regularly to figure out what we will do. Yesterday we met to discuss the plans for next week and Bob came in with six words: canis, leo, serpens and currere, ire + ad, stare*. He said that his thought was that these six words would be easy to work with and do some TPR in some way. 

We discussed the idea of an asynchronous scavenger hunt where we'd give commands in Latin and students would use picture or video evidence to show them doing the actions. This excites us because it gets kids moving, involves their personal lives and choices in class, and requires movement, rather than sitting in front of a PC all day. 

But, the question remained. How do we establish meaning? How do we provide enough comprehensible and compelling input BEFORE the TPR? 

So, we added to the list. Those six words are our target words, or the words we are going to require. We came up with approximately nine more to be icing words... BUT... here's the kicker --> ALL the words came from our county vocabulary list! This means that even those these words are not targeted now, they will be later and, by then, the kids will already have acquired them at least somewhat! We added words like pulcher, laetus, iratus, medius, anxius, silva, and via+.

Bob had talked about these six words being perfect for an action story. So, we took a few minutes and wrote three different stories, each focusing on a specific animal. The word list we'd come up with were the only words we wanted to use and, while 1-2 more words were needed, they still fit. 

What came out of this work were three very simple stories and from that a natural order (which we did not plan) to those stories. First, our students will read my story, the story of a canis who is in the road, but wants to be in the forest with the lion and the snak. Second, our students will read Liz's story, the story of the serpens who is sad that he cannot run, but whom the dog finds beautiful. Third, our students will read Bob's story, the story of the leo who is already friends with the dog, but is afraid of the snake. The dog connects the two and they all become friends. Again, we did not plan our stories to connect in such a way, but the did naturally and that felt wonderful. 

Lastly, we finished our meeting by deciding that we'd each create a series of activities for our stories. As individual teachers we can choose which activities we like for each story, but all our students will be reading the same story. We also decided on a comprehension check for Friday. 

This is not the only way to collab, but I was so inspired by what happened naturally that I thought I'd share. I've boiled it down to 5 simple steps which I've shared below. :) 

* canis - dog, leo - lion, serpens - snake and currere - to run, ire + ad - to go to, stare - to stand still

+ pulcher - beautiful, laetus - happy, iratus - angry, medius - middle, anxius - worried, silva - forest, and via - road

----------------------------------------

Announcement: Help during COVID!

Salvete! 

In an effort to help support each other during this time, Pomegranate Beginnings Publishing is offering PDFs of any and all of our published books, for FREE, to teachers for use with classes! 

We ask two things in return: (1) That you do not share the PDF with others (except your students), and (2) That when we go back to class and you need copies of our books, you purchase them. 

As of now there is no time limit on this offer, as we want to do our best to support everyone. So... If you'd like to contact us for a PDF copy of any of our books. Click the image below :)

In addition to this, we offer a reading library on our main site: www.steppingintoci.com

Standards Based Grading - I can take a grade for anything!

I thought I'd share quick ideas today on how to take standard grades without making formal activities or having loads of paperwork.

I try very hard to not take grading home. Firstly, I have 6 animals and they do not appreciate paperwork in the way I think my students would like. Secondly, I have a few chronic conditions that can make completing work difficult. So, I have to be careful with my time. I try to take grades whenever I can. This benefits everyone:

• grades get updated regularly.
• students who may not perform well all the time get may opportunities to reassess.
• students' grades reflects real levels of proficiency repeatedly through the year. 
• I get grades updated before the end of the school day and can go home a little lighter. 

So.... here are 10 ways you can quickly and easily input grades during class or informally:

1. During a running dictation (or scrambled eggs or QR code dictation), include some commands. Watch your students and, as they complete those commands, you can give a grade for what they do. This could cover listening, speaking, writing, comprehension. 
2. During a running dictation (etc.) listen for who is speaking in Latin, reading the sentences out loud. You can easily give them a grade for reading or speaking. 
3. Students who ask questions in the target language can receive a grade for interpersonal interactions, speaking, gesturing, etc. 
4. Students who use appropriate rejoinders in class can receive grades for interpersonal interactions, speaking, listening, comprehending, etc. 
5. Students who complete a brain break that is in the target language might receive a grade for listening and comprehending. 
6. Students who complete jobs in class using the target language can receive grades for interpersonal interactions, presentational interactions, speaking, listening, comprehending, etc.
7. Use group work and class discussion specifically to listen for your students who may not present well on paper and vice versa. Fill in grades as you can. 
8. Turn student work into a listening assessment. You can use student images or monsters created and use them to create descriptions in the target language. Students draw the image they hear and then you can project and discuss. This can be a listening, comprehending, TPR, discussion, etc grade.
9. If you have a great convo with a kid in the hall or outside of class in the target language, give them a grade for it! They've earned it!
10. A student who shows understanding non-verbally whether through action, picture, or writing should receive a grade for their ability to understand. It isn't output, but it is skill. Give them that grade as you can. Use that skill to build up their confidence! Applaud them!

Other Posts on SBG from PBP

1. RRR Update
2. Reflections on being a first year teacher again
3. SBG - Making it work
4. SBG - Mid Semester
5. The Fault in our Plans
6. Serpens

Monster Relay Race

Our ones are beginning to get body parts and numbers. I love teaching these things. It is like a free license for me to go crazy with my favourite stories! I love building monsters and playing with ideas like what is the "norm" and expected. Last year, as an example, I wrote stories from Orthrus and Cerberus' perspectives (these are available via our subscription on our website: steppingintoci.com ). They are a pair of brothers (and monsters) who protect various things and can be particularly violent.

So... of course I jumped at the chance to do something unique this time!

Enter.... The Monster Relay Race!

It's part running dictation, part Invisibles,  part relay race, and part dice game. I was hoping the kids would enjoy it and it turns out... they ran with it (pun intended). So... let's get down to the nitty gritty.

The Basics

1. Prep Time - ~10-15 minutes
2. Instructional/set up time - ~5 minutes
3. Activity Time - ~1/2 the class
4. Grading Time - As long as you'd like it to be. 
5. Supplies Needed:
1. vocab list that includes body parts and numbers
2. dice (I used 8 sided dice, but you can use any... the more side, the more varied the work you'll get)
3. coloured eggs (Try the dollar tree or 5 Below. Amazon has them too year round)
4. a container for your eggs
5. colouring supplies

Instructions

1. First, students will get into groups of four. They will need the paper with the instructions on it (attached below), and a die. 
2. Second, students choose jobs. The jobs I allowed were:
1. cursor - runs to get an egg
2. aleator - rolls the die
3. pictor - draws the image
4. scriptor - writes the sentences
3. Students race to collect five body parts (in order by coloured egg). 
4. Once they have a body part, they roll the die which tells them how many of that body part are needed in their sentences and picture. 
5. They construct the sentence and the scriptor writes it down.
6. The pictor draws that body part. 
7. When all five parts are collected, they work as a team to finish the image (background included) and colour it. First team to turn it in, and get it done according to instructions, wins. 

Options/Variants

When kids turned it in to me, I was very strict on what I would accept, given the rules. When I grade it, however, I will be not so strict, considering this was  a race. What I looked for was:

• 5 body parts with 5 numbers. 
• 5 separate sentences... in Latin.
• colour in the image.
• a back ground
• numbers written out in Latin and spelled correctly (they were written on the board for the students)

This drug out the game a little and allowed groups who process more slowly to catch up to the speedy groups. When I grade these, however, those specifications go out the window. What I'm looking for is:

• Does the image and body parts match the sentences in type and number?
• Can I understand what they wrote?

I've given some examples below. The captions help clarify these points. 

This is the winning group. They were not the first, second or third to try and turn it in, but they were the first to get all my points right!

This group made their sentences easy to read and super clear! Their image matches very well. 

This group originally wrote 1 sentence. While any other time this would be fine, for the rules of the game, it didn't work. They had to go back and work out what they did. What was really cool, however, is that they ended up varying some sentences and creating some great examples. 

Here is a copy of the paper I made!

Report from the field: My Daily Routine

Recently, I posted about Monday tips and tricks and included John Piazza's weekly schedule. Last week, John Foulk, my colleague and friend, posted about finding support for the CI classroom.

I want to further that discussion a bit and talk about my daily schedule. I am going to skip my history with it... although, if you are interested in it you can check out our subscription service and our recent summer reflection series where I discuss in length.

My Schedule

My schedule this year is a little different in that last year and the previous year (when I started this), I had one prep. This year, as I am in charge of Latin IV (and we have 2 classes of Latin IV), I am also teaching one class of Latin II and two classes of Latin I. This has created a need (for me) for regular routine. My IVs were already used to the way I do things by now, but the IIs and Is have never had me before and so this was brand new to them (in the way that I do it). 

Daily Breakdown - ALL CLASSES

There are a few things that I do with all my classes. Variations (or lack thereof) are highlighted in orange.

Telephone Ritual

I give credit to Robert Patrick for this routine. I used to do it as needed, but now it is the first thing we do every day. In Latin, we go through where our phones should be and where they shouldn't be. Of course, this looks a little different by level:

Latin IV

These students know this by now and this serves merely as a reminder. We go through this quickly. 

Latin II

These students are used to it, but still need regular reminders. We go through it together, saying the words at the same time. 

Latin I

For these students, what I am asking is new. We go through each one and we do hand signals to show that we are ready for class. 

Date

I do the date in Latin in every class, no matter what. It is done the same way in every class, but in my lower levels I sometimes break in English to make sure we understand or to ask follow up questions. I do not do the old Roman calendar. I see its benefits, but find it more useful to my students today that they use our calendar for the date. 

I don't vary this. We do it the same way every time because I want my students to feel this routine so that when I'm not here or when we do timed writes, they can do it on their own with little thought. 

Weather

We do the weather every day in my class. Last year I did not vary how we did it, but took advantage of the.... interesting weather we had: an eclipse, a hurricane, ice, snow, etc. But, this year... things have been relatively... stagnant, with the exception of rain, so I've gotten creative. Here are some variations I've done with a brief follow up on each. 

1. with pictures - I started this way in August for my ones, who had never done this before. This was a way to provide some circling and give them visual input. My upper level also benefited from this. Each day I added a new picture. The first day was just the sun. The second day was the sun and clouds. The third day added hot and cold. The fourth day added wind, and so on. This led into a few days of slides with just the questions, no pictures on them. 
2. with seasons - we are smack in the middle of changing seasons. In one month, fall officially begins (yay sweater and chili season). Most of my students are tired of the heat and the humidity and are hoping for some relief. This provided an opportunity to put up the seasons and discuss them and their differences. Day 1 included the change from summer to fall. Day 2 included all four seasons and a discussion of who liked what. Day 3 (tomorrow for me) will include all four seasons and the typical weather one finds in each season. 
3. with the world - This may be one of my favourite ways to do weather right now. Here in Georgia, we are getting two types of weather: hot and sunny... and hot and humid... It gets boring. So, I picked some other kinds of weather (tornadoes, hurricanes, snow, monsoon, flood, lightning, etc.) and we talk about where in the world those things are happening. We've talked about Hurricane Lane, snow in the mountains in South America and Europe, lightning in Germany and Italy, and dust storms in Arizona. 

Daily Breakdown - Some classes Some Days

There are a few other things I do, but they don't happen every day or in every class. I've highlighted class specifics in blue and day specifics in green. Variations appear in orange. 

Nuntium - News

I only do the news in Latin II and IV. Originally, I had only intended to do it in Latin IV, but recently I accidentally showed the IIs the slide and they got really excited.... so now we do the news in Latin II as well. We do a news item on Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays. I choose news items that I hear on my way in on the radio or that I have heard about recently. This year alone we've talked about Hurricane Lane, a robbery of a lemonade stand in North Carolina, the fire in California, and Senator John McCain's death. Typically I will  I do it a bit differently in these classes:

1. Latin IV - This is done entirely in Latin. I usually try to include the grammar topics we are covering as well to provide an in context example. We will discuss as needed and sometimes we get into a debate or discussion about a variety of things. 
2. Latin II - This is done part in Latin and part in English. Mostly my goal is to get them understanding things in Latin about our current world. 

Grammar Topics

This is only in my Latin IV class. They are ready to receive a bit of explicit grammar instruction, so on Tuesdays and Thursdays, we spend about 5-10 minutes discussing a topic. Last year, students covered all the declensions of nouns and all 7 cases. We also discussed sentence structure and poetry. This year, we've covered: ablative absolutes, fear clauses, ablative of time when, accusative of duration of time, ablative of description, subjunctive uses. However I should state that all of these things are not new. We've been using them in class as needed since day 1 of Latin I. In their first week of Latin I students saw an indirect statement. In Latin II we used the ablative repeatedly (including ablative absolutes) and worked with the supine. It is a common misconception that teachers who use CI do not use/teach grammar. We use grammar every day and our students see (often considered) complex grammar structures before their traditional class counterparts, however we don't explicitly talk about it until the students are ready. 

Free Voluntary Reading

I promise I am working on a post about how I do this. In fact, it should come out some time in October! But... in the meanwhile. I do free voluntary reading across the board, however it starts at different times of the year. Once we start it, we do it every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. I've broken down how I do it (or plan to do it) below by level. 

1. Latin IV - These students have been doing this now for 3 years. They started reading this year in the first week. Right now (August 2018), they read on Mondays for 10 minutes, Wednesday for 12+ minutes, and on Fridays we hold a class "book club". We talk about what we are reading, what we like, and other things like this. 
2. Latin II - these students are in their first year of FVR with me. They started reading last week. Right now (August 2018), they read on Mondays for 5 minutes, Wednesdays for 5+ minutes, and on Fridays we hold a class "book club" (see above.)
3. Latin I - These students have not started FVR. They are still acquiring basics and I won't start FVR until probably January of next year (2019). When we start, we'll read on Mondays for 5 minutes, Wednesdays for 5+ minutes, and on Fridays we'll hold "book club" (see above). 

I posted a few weeks ago on the FVR project my IVS did. You can read it here. Be on the lookout in October for my post of posts on FVR!

Reflection

I am loving my daily routine right now. It keeps me accountable to (a) start class on time and (b) get us into the swing of Latin. Right now, my IVs are comfortable with 90%+ time in Latin. My IIs just experienced their first few days of 80%+ in Latin, and my ones are averaging about 50%+ in Latin right now. I credit this, in part, to my daily routine. It gets us speaking Latin right off the bat and sets clear expectations for class. If I don't have all the pieces ready, the kids know and they ask about it. 

This is something I will definitely continue doing and I am excited by some of the unique things my colleagues are coming up with! I'm hoping he'll post on it, but Keith has us doing things with "quot videtis" (how many do you see) and visual illusions as well as "quid hoc die accidit" what happened on this day. 

Do you have a daily routine? What is it like?

Not Your Mama's Tasks: Recipes for Communicative Tasks in the CI Classroom

I haven't written about using Tasks in my classroom since I wrote the White Elephant Task post two January's ago. That's not because that's the last time I used a task in my classes--just the contrary--it's just that things got away from me--and I had trouble articulating in a useful way what I've been doing in my classes since then.

I've talked before about my concern over sharing big ideas with you and then not leaving you with any good way to use them in your classes. That's mostly because of my own frustrations with similar experiences. I've had that fear with Tasks. How can I share this idea, which is a big one, and not leave you with a half-baked concept and no real notion of how to use it in your own classes?

But I'm going to dive in! Because I think Tasks are game-changing.

So here goes.

What is a Task?

I'm going to start with a definition. Miriam teases me on our CI podcast (which we share with Bob Patrick) about being predictable, because I believe whole-heartedly that no real intelligent conversation can move forward without clear definitions (it's my debate background).

A Task, for our purposes, is a linguistic activity that has a purpose outside of learning language.

Some non-linguistic purposes could include:

• find these clues to an animal we're going to read about, then use them to create a drawing of what you think the animal might look like.
• read a passage for support and then choose sides and form arguments for a debate.
• survey student opinions on a topic and create a class overview (this is the prototype Task that is generally offered as an example by Bill VanPatten and others he recommends as resources).
• take a Buzzfeed quiz to find out what ___ you are (could be: Hogwarts House, animal, color, dessert, etc.) or to find out if you are more country or city, etc.
• create a character, read stories for clues to prepare you to fight the next enemy, and role-play through a scenario. 
• choose your own adventure stories.
• follow instructions to create something.

Any of these things are tasks.

The point of a Task is to get students using language to accomplish things and effectively immerse themselves, and so forget the fact that they are using the target language while they strive to successfully complete the task.

This leads to another necessity of a task that may not be an explicit part of the definition of a task but falls naturally within the scope of a task: a task must be comprehensible and compelling. 

For a student to forget he or she is using the target language, the language must be comprehensible enough that the student does not interrupt linguistic flow. It also must be compelling enough that students are invested in the activity and care about the purpose they have been given; if they are only completing the activity because they are getting it done for a grade, then they start thinking about the language and not in the language. 

For more on tasks and to follow our own journey of discovery on Tasks, you can listen to our book study on Tasks and Communicating in Language Classrooms or you can listen to back episodes of Tea with BVP for various discussions of Tasks and what they are (here is Episode 24 on the Nature of Tasks to get you started!).

The Types of Tasks
Miriam and I are by no means experts on tasks, but I think we have refined our own use of tasks into a few types or categories of tasks that we generally go to. I have also provided a sample of each task type.

Survey Tasks
These are the first types of tasks that Miriam and I started with when we formally began experimenting with Tasks™.

1. Checklist surveys are a convenient means of pure input. This makes them especially fitting for a Latin I or 2 class. We can fit them to either our own vocabulary or thematic needs (what pleases you, what scares you) and still the students' purpose for taking the survey is informational. We follow the checklists with group tallies and whole-class tallies of the information, which allows for heavily-supported student discussion in the target language.
2. Buzzfeed quizzes are another way to survey students--and they are naturally engaging. Students somehow find esoteric things like what "Skittle flavor are you" fascinating, and while I don't create quizzes on these topics, to paraphrase Field of Dreams, offer to classify them, and they will come. I did create a "Are you more City or Country?" quiz to go with their City Mouse and Country Mouse unit and Miriam has written a quiz that helped students find out "What Animal are You?" Students automatically want to share their results, so this automatically engenders discussion, but I know that both Miriam and I like to make sure that there is directed discussion at the end of the quizzes.

Effort vs Yield: This task takes some work to create and maybe generates 30-40 minutes of input, depending on how long you can extend the discussion. The Buzzfeed style quizzes are actually harder because you have to create a result system. So I think these tasks, while the "prototasks," maybe fittingly for the prototasks, are the highest effort for the lowest yield.

Example Survey Task: Are You Country or City? Written in Buzzfeed style, but followed with survey style steps, so you get the best of both worlds.

Instruction Tasks
I have chosen to divide this category into two types, traditional and scavenger hunts.

1. Traditional instruction tasks. To be honest, this idea itself is not new. Giving kids instructions in a target language and having them follow those instructions is as old as teaching language; keeping the instructions comprehensible and compelling so they can forget they are learning a language is the trick here (maybe--I don't want to invent wheels). I was privileged to do an entire unit of instructional tasks (among other things) when I taught a Roman food unit last semester to my fours, and it was an amazing mix of live moment-to-moment TL instruction and handing over recipes with some wandering guidance from me. This can be done at lower levels as well. We are teaching Minerva and Arachne to the Latin I students and I have been considering a very simple instructional task where I help them create a cardboard shuttle and loom and weave a bit of yard using a technique I learned from Miriam years ago!
2. Scavenger Hunts and QR Code Hunts. These are tasks that ask students to follow clues to find something--in the case of my Harrius Potter unit, students had a scavenger hunt to find their Hogwarts school supplies (with some false leads if they did not follow the list in their acceptance letters). QR Code Hunts are similar, except students find QR codes with a Latin sentence to write down and a clue to the next code. The sentences usually add up to a story or are clues to a creature or a mystery needing solving. Miriam and I have presented over QR Code Hunts several times and posted over them here and here.

Effort vs Yield: I'll start with QR Code Hunts. Medium effort, though it can be more the first time you make them, but the yield is high. Students stay engaged, stay focused on the purpose of the clues, not language, and, as a bonus, it's a low effort day for you, so if you need a down day, I recommend it. Traditional instruction tasks are also medium effort and high yield, but you will be just as engaged as the kids the entire time, so high energy for them and you.

Example Instruction Task: Caseus Recipe. This is a recipe I used to lead the class as a whole through making cheese. The posted instructions are simple and allowed me to expand as needed aloud. 

Games
There is no easy way to discuss this without touching on my obsessiveness with games, so I had to divide this into two categories. I'm starting with the less strenuous party games, however.

1. Party Games. I am going to start this section by saying you can bring simple games into your class and they can be really worth it. Think of party games that are conversationally focused and create a strong lexicon for support. I recently created a version of "Never Have I Ever" (also known as "Ten Fingers") to accompany my unit on the House of Atreus to review events we have read and to preview potential upcoming events. It generated a lot of TL discussion, with the purpose of finding out more about other students or getting them out of the game, as well as a lot of laughter, and was something I wrote fairly quickly in the exhausted haze of the Sunday after I got home from State Convention.
2. Gamer Games. [Surgeon General's Warning: I love games and identify as a gamer. So I am willing to sacrifice health and sanity to bring gaming into my classroom. So if that is definitely not you, feel free to skip this portion, or read it, shaking your head and tsking at me, like my husband does (and he is a gamer too).] Some gaming influences Miriam and I have brought into our classes are: 1) choose your adventures, which require intense planning, because that's a much more involved story to write. Miriam started these last year--it feels longer--and I have started playing with them this year. 2) Breakout rooms, again requiring intense planning! I did my first one in October based in Harrius Potter, after discovering Breakout.edu at a presentation at AWLA last year. Miriam just completed hers over Roman medicine. They are SO cool! But they require weeks of planning. 3) Miriam and I have also done a strategy/Risk-esque game when teaching students about Hannibal in Latin II. Miriam's version took my beginning of an idea and developed it into a much better system that helped students use the target language more than mine did. 4) These last two years I have had role-play games in Latin III and IV, one in which students played major historical figures from Caesar's Civil War and, this year, a more traditional D&D style game in which students created heroes, fought monsters, and saved the world (I will be doing a write up about that one in about a month). These games give students a purpose outside language--kill an enemy, make a deal with Caesar, outmaneuver Hannibal--and that purpose is so much more engaging than anything else I could create that it's worth the exhaustion and, yes, sometimes tears, in my opinion.

Effort vs Yield: Traditional games have low effort for medium to high yield. They only take a small adjustment to prepare, students know how to play them, and they are easy to personalize to your needs. Gamer games are high to intense effort for high yield. The yield length can very between short-lived (choose-your-own adventure and Breakout rooms) and extended (role-play games).

Example Party Game: Never Have I Ever. This has an extensive lexical guide so students aren't left trying to produce Latin they may not be ready to produce (instead it's actually Comprehensible Input disguised as output!), but it does leave room for students to produce if they're ready. One of my favorite spontaneous moments was by a student who used his unique vision against his group: "Numquam umquam colores vidi." ("Never have I ever seen colors.")

Debate and Analysis Tasks

These are the headier tasks and I am having a harder time describing them. They are Miriam's strength more than mine--she is fantastic at building these. One example from her Jason and Medea unit is when she built a task that had us divide students (by their choice) into teams to argue as either Jason or Medea's divorce attorneys. Students reread through the novella to gather evidence, as well as using some additional evidence: a visual, a letter, a legal document. Their purpose was to gather evidence and build a case, then argue it. Miriam has also had students analyze dreams, and, recently, in their medical unit, they have had to look at symptoms and assign Roman cures. This is a task type I am hoping to personally improve in--I'm just not there yet. My analysis activities often end up linguistically-focused as well as thematic, automatically making them not tasks.

Effort vs Yield: Debate and Analysis tasks can take high effort to prepare but they also offer high yield; not only do they provide rich opportunity for input, but the depth of discussion is significant, and students find themselves thinking in the language at a level that they simply do not when they are not guided to do so. These tasks take students to that depth without the fear of drowning, so they are more willing to engage and forget about the fact that this heavier discussion is not happening in their first language.

Example Analysis Task: Dream Analysis. Students roll up a dream and then proceed to analyze it using a dream guide. Students then discussed their analyses and what their dreams meant to them and about them. This was part of a larger unit on games and fortune telling. All of their reading in this task is for the purpose of understanding the imagery they have been given in their dreams.

So what now?
Hopefully you try your hand at any of these types of tasks, or you come up with your own, completely other kind of task. The thing about tasks is, as long as you have students interacting with language in a way that is comprehensible, compelling, and caring (which is a given, if you've created something like this for them), and for a purpose outside of language learning, then the sky's the limit. That's really all there is to it. And if you make some, please share them in the comments below! I'd love to see what you write and learn from you.

That said, if you want even more examples and resources, plus six presentations organized around various topics over tasks that Miriam and I found important to help focus this discussion (including two 45 min long live sessions), and to hear the word "purpose" more times than you can count, we did a webinar over the topic on steppingintoci.com as part of our paid subscription. We are now past the time of live feedback for your tasks as you write them, but the videos and all written materials remain available.

How I Use Frequency Lists

This post is in partnership with our latest podcast (will post before 9:00 pm TONIGHT) which you can check out over at steppingintoci.com. In our podcast, we were discussing Bob Patrick's idea of Collective Memory which we all use in a variety of ways at our school. What came from this is the ultimate question of how we choose vocabulary to focus on and why.

I will do my best to link to all my resources as well as others that I know of at the bottom of the post. If you can think of others (for any language), link to them below!

What kind of frequency list do you have? What kind of frequency list should I have?

There are a lot of frequency lists out there. They all serve different purposes and have different origins. So, the tempting answer is, "ALL OF THEM!" Of course, this isn't practical and I certainly do not look into each frequency list when I create or adapt material. Rather, I look into some favourites depending on my purpose and what I'm creating. That being said, there are many types of frequency lists and we should know about them:

1. Teacher Created - This can be any kind of frequency list that teachers have had a hand in creating. Latin has the 50 Most Important Verbs and many languages have "super seven" or "fab five" sets of verbs that are fairly common.
2. District/Locally Created - This may be a list of words that you must look at when teaching/preparing a lesson. They may be agreed upon at a variety of levels. 
3. Literature Based - This is the vast majority of frequency lists. They are based in frequency of words in certain types of literature. Here are a few types within the Latin language
1. Classical Literature - There are a good number of lists like this. They often take their frequency numbers from a given number of authors within the Classical Canon. 
2. Medieval Literature - There are some lists like this that, unlike the previous, focus on literature solely from the Medieval period. 
3. Mixed Literature - There are a growing number of lists that use authors from both the Classical and Medieval period. These are the lists I prefer. 
4. Author Based - These lists are ones based solely on a singular author. They tend to take into account an author's entire body of work (if available) to create frequency lists. 
5. Novella Based - Often these lists make use of other frequency lists and are more a vocabulary list than a frequency list. However, slowly, we are beginning to see requests for and examples of frequency lists within novellas. They are based solely on a single book and its uses of various words. 

So... Which ones do you use and when?

Ultimately it boils down to what I am doing/creating, but I do have a few tried and true frequency lists that I really like:

• Essential Latin Vocabulary by Mark A. E. Williams - I use this one for almost every project. I like the way it is divided up by frequency, alphabet, and in categories. It did have a learning curve to using it, but once I got that down, it was very easy to use. I often pair this up with Lewis and Short's dictionary. I like the combination because I can check both the frequency and uses of a word to ensure it is the right word that I'd like. I also use it when working with authors. I can check the frequency of the words they use to determine if I need to adapt a piece of writing. 
• 50 Most Important Verbs - This was created with much discussion by a group of Latin teachers. It is a really good list of words that most often come up within classroom discussions. It is not based on frequency of text/literature, but what we find kids most often wanted to use in our rooms and what we needed to communicate with them. I like this list when I am beginning with a new group of kids or when we are discussing things we've done, like to do, etc. 
• Dickinson's Core Vocabulary - This list is quite long, and I have not explored all its uses, but I do like to use it when I'm looking for a particularly frequent word from Classical Literature. 

Okay, well, how do you use them, especially together?

When I use a frequency list it is to: adapt a piece of literature, write a novella, or create a vocabulary list for a unit. Here is a quick rundown of how I might use these resources in each of the instances. 

Adaptation of Literature

1. Read the literature as is, with a translation next to it (make your own). 
2. Make notes on the words your students already know. 
3. With the remaining words, check frequency and categorise them: words to target, icing words, words to change
1. Words to target become your vocabulary words. They are high frequency and/or key to understanding the unit as a whole. 
2. Icing words are words that are key to the literature, but have little/no use outside of it for your students. They are fine to acquire, but not required. 
3. Words to change are words that are not high frequency and have an alternative word that is high frequency. You will want to check the dictionary for these changes to ensure your new words mean the same thing (i.e. is the word used in the same way? is it used with similar words?) 

Writing a Novella

1. In this instance, I'll start with the 50 MIV. I usually start here because I know it is a list that many teachers reference and many students will already know/be learning. 
2. If I need a verb/word not on the list, I will usually go to the vocabulary lists my students already have. 
3. When considering other words, my first stop is the Essential Latin Vocabulary to check for frequency and see other words that might work and then I go to Lewis and Short to look at its uses and other synonyms. 

Preparing a Unit for Students

This process is a little more free for me. When it comes to conversation, we'll use what words we need and want. I am not too picky about frequency, unless...

• I know what literature is coming up. 
• I know already that a word is high frequency.

Either way, I almost always, if I'm not sure, check the dictionary for uses of the word to help make sure I'm using it correctly. 

List of resources

1. 50 Most Important Verbs
2. Essential Latin Vocabulary
3. Dickinson's Frequency List
4. Dickinson's Vergil Frequency List
5. Super Seven (listed in many languages)

What other frequency lists do you know about? Share them below or on social media with the hashtag #steppingintoci

Brain Dump Round Up - Miriam's list of activities

This morning I came to work knowing, in great detail, the things I wanted to work with, but at a complete blank of how to do it. The normal things I tend towards would not meet the purpose of what I wanted. So, after having a much needed cup of coffee, I started on a search on my favourite blogs to find an activity I could use. What I found were a few new activities and one that I am using today. Additionally, Rachel and I were speaking about some alternatives to the things we use for review/brain break vocabulary activities. I thought I'd take this information and round it all up for you all. So, without further ado, here is my list of favourite and newly discovered activities broken up into categories (and in no particular order). I want to honour what has been said, so I will only present 1-2 sentences where needed to clarify my thoughts or provide review.

Activities with Readings

1. Fan N Pick discussed by Martina Bex - I found this activity this morning and I cannot wait to give it a try! 
2. Story Tower discussed by Martina Bex - Also found this morning, this is the activity I ultimately decided to use. Look at my twitter for some pics later today! 
3. Story Wars discussed by Miriam Patrick, original from Diane Neubauer - I love this activity to spice up a reading! 
4. Picture Relay Races discussed by Rachel Ash 
5. Seek and Find discussed by Rachel Ash - I love the variations on this! 

Activities with Vocabulary

1. Draw, Discuss, and Read discussed by Miriam Patrick
2. In my hat described by Miriam Patrick - We haven't discussed this original activity as it is. There is a variation on this, the white elephant activity, which is linked below. 
3. White Elephant described by Rachel Ash and Justin Slocum Bailey
4. TPR in the First ten discussed by Miriam Patrick with resources from Latin Best Practices
5. One Sentences Stories discussed by Miriam Patrick and Two Sentence Horror Stories discussed by Rachel - both of these ideas were snagged from other places. My idea came from ideas for English/Literature classes and Rachel's idea came from a Reddit thread. 
6. One Word Picture discussed by Keith Toda
7. Movie Talks/Movie Shorts discussed by Miriam Patrick (secondary post)

Activities with Personalisation (PQA and untargeted types)

1. Discipulus Illustris (student interviews)  discussed by Miriam Patrick with links to Bryce Hedstrom's original ideas and other follow up posts. 
2. Free Voluntary Reading discussed by Miriam Patrick (expect an update post later this year)
3. Roll A Write discussed by Miriam Patrick

This list is by no means exhaustive and I am always searching for new ideas. Share them in the comments below! 

Dictation Follow Up - Quick Lesson Ideas

Rachel and I have posted quite a bit on dictations, and there are an almost infinite amount of ways to do them. My personal favourites are the QR code dictation and, believe it or not, a traditional dictation. I've always wondered about what to do as follow up for a dictation. Do you simply do it, collect it, and call it a day? What might some quick follow ups be to a dictation? Here are some ideas that I adapted from follow up reading activities to be quick checks for Dictations:

Student marks the image
being described

1. Partner Read - Typically, one might do this with a story and images that the teacher used to help tell the story. One partner reads each dictation sentence while the other partner points to the image being described. They then switch roles. This is a quick exercise that takes just a few minutes. 
2. Seek and Find A - Again, this is a follow up to a reading, and one can do any number of things with it. For our dictation, we did two activities. First, students cut out images that another student had drawn the previous day (they hadn't seen these particular images), then they matched each sentence to its image. 
3. Seek and Find B - The second thing we did, after everyone had put the images in order, was to scramble the images up and while I read the sentences out of order, each partner found the picture and held it up for me to see. It was an easy and quick formative assessment 



Latin II students put
sentences in order.

4. Story Listening - Another thing you might consider is doing a quick story listening session with the dictation. While you tell the story, you draw images on the board and label them. You can then save the image (I have a smart board, or you an take a picture of your work) and use it later for another story session, a timed write, or an assessment. 

Each of these activities was quite quick. The longest is story listening and that took 10-20 minutes, depending on what you wanted to do. Today, my Latin II classes did all four of these. 

How we did it today:

Set Up - What we did yesterday

1. Students completed a scrambled egg dictation with numbered sentences so they could know the order
2. Students drew images with each sentence

Follow Up - What we did today

1. I chose one student's drawings that were fairly simple and clear and scanned it into my

   

   A student clarifies which image he
   has chosen by matching it to
   a dictation sentence

   computer. I removed any signs of which picture was which. 
2. Students were put into pairs and given a set of these images. They cut each one out.
3. Seek and Find A
4. Partner Read
5. Seek and Find B
6. BRAIN BREAK
7. Story Listening

Final Thoughts:

This lesson was quick paced and met the needs of students. I could quickly see who knew what and who needed support. Students found it fun and engaging and most participated fully. All in all, I think it was a good way to review a dictation in new and quick ways. I did put a brain break into the lesson. I felt it was important for students to have this break and reset before doing the longer activity. 

What ways do you follow up with a dictation?