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!

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?

There's More than One Way to Skin a Dictatio

"Dictatio" is one of the few words my students dread in my class. I'm going to admit that it's a nice break for me--requiring only voice and repetition and pretty much no creativity--and it sometimes finds its way into my plans simply because I need a day that does not require all of my energy. Dictationes fall within my Comprehensible Input toolbox because as long as I keep the vocabulary limited, the dictated sentences provide valuable repetition.

But students rarely enjoy it. Writing down a dictation is not a compelling activity.

I have tried to spice it up by making the dictatio its own story, or even a lead in to the main story I'm working toward but missing crucial information. That has its place, and it helps. But it does not keep students from moaning "eheu!" the next time they see "Dictatio" listed on the day's schedule.

This year I have only done a traditional dictatio twice so far, and I am working to slowly replace the practice completely for myself with equally low-stress but much more compelling versions of sentence listening and writing. There is something useful for acquisition in writing something down, and auditory repetition of understandable messages is universally good for acquisition. So I don't want to give up those strengths. I just want less "eheu" and more "euge" while students acquire Latin.

Keith Toda often cites Carol Gaab's statement, "The mind craves novelty." If I simply replace dictatio with just one activity and do it every other week or so, students will grow as bored of that activity as they are of dictatio. Instead, I've been gathering dictatio options.

With the new semester coming up, I thought I'd share the dictatio options I keep on hand. I hope to continue to add new twists and ideas to this list.

1. Dictatio. This is the basic format of a dictatio, though I have seen it with a few variations (one of which is here).
2. Running dictation. This is a paired form of dictatio, with a lot more activity and can be made into a race to add some drive. The short description is that students run to sentences posted around the room (or hall), memorize them, and repeat them to their partners, who then write them down. Find a full description here, here, and an extension here.
3. Scrambled eggs. This is kind of a variation on the running dictation above; instead of posting sentences around the room they are folded in plastic easter eggs along with some duds. Find a full description here. Miriam and I have changed the dud eggs into stuffed animal interaction eggs (commands are things like: get your favorite animal, give the best animal to your teacher, etc.) and that seems to remove student frustration with the duds.
4. Micrologue. This is an image-driven dictation activity in which you tell one student a story while other students write the story down, then review the story with the student, then let the students correct their writing, and finally ask the student who didn't write to retell the story to the class. You can find a description here, a demonstration here, and the micrologue I recently used with my students here.
5. QR codes, pictures, and sub day dictations. Miriam recently posted a collection of three variants of dictation she uses in her classes here. All of them are great, but I used the QR code dictation in my class (called a "monster hunt" and linked on Miriam's post) and my students adored it. It had a purpose: gathering clues to guess the monster. More on that in a moment. That said, I think even had there been no purpose, most students were completely compelled just by the delivery. I'm doing this again next semester...once. This is a treat that I want my students to continue to be excited about.
6. Pictura an Statua? This guest post by K.C. Kless has definitely been added to my rotation of dictatio substitutions and I can't wait to try it out. Students in teams either draw or pose to represent the sentences posted, allowing both movement and creative thought.
7. Write or Wait. K.C. posted this activity on his brand new blog and I'm adding it here because it's a perfect alternative approach to dictation. Quick description: students get a certain number of sentences that they must write ahead and a certain number that they can wait and write with the teacher. Read the post here, it's really good.

I am continually looking for ways to bring variety to my classes, and I am working to make sure that every thing we do is as compelling as possible. The key to language acquisition is for students to forget that they are learning a language--that requires compelling activities and texts, ideally with a purpose. My recent summary of my ACTFL takeaways describes the importance of purpose and task-driven language teaching to student language acquisition.

One way Miriam and I were able to bring purpose to our dictation type activities last quarter was to either 

• leave out key information and ask students to use the information provided to make educated guesses about the missing information OR
• offer the description in its entirety and ask students to use the information to made educated guesses about the monster described.

Bill VanPatten encourages teachers to think in terms of purpose and tasks; Miriam and I are working on shifting our vision and ideas that direction. Another change and big idea to bring to my classroom--another reason to keep improving and making my Latin classes as effective and inclusive as possible!

Coming Full Circle - Pliny and Dictations

In my last post, I detailed how I built my Pliny the Elder unit for this year and discussed some upcoming posts. For this second post, I want to talk about how dictations have evolved for me and how we are using them in this unit.

I am still a big fan of the dictatio in the way discussed here. It is a great Monday activity and a great activity for days when I need a brain break. It lets the high flyers take all the notes they want and ask those questions burning in their brains and lets those needing extra time move at a slower pace. It is also a great way to introduce key vocabulary.

I also love the dictatio currendo and its alternate version: scrambled eggs. They provide unique ways to still achieve much that the regular dictatio does, but provides an opportunity for movement. I used the scrambled eggs dictation for the octopus story.

Today I want to talk about a few variations of the dictatio that I've been working on in this Pliny unit. They each highlight different things and are used in different ways:

Monster Building Relay Race

This is a play off of Rachel's Relay Race using a dictation. I took sentences students had seen in a dictatio activity and had purposefully left off a vital clue. For this particular instance, students were reading (unknowingly) about the unicorn. They had already received the following information:

• head of a deer
• body of a horse
• tail of a boar
• feet of an elephant

What they were missing was the monster's single long horn. 

When I created the relay race cards, I included distracting sentences that had nothing to do with the monster in question. This tested student's ability to understand. After they had all the sentences (including the distractors) they were to put together the monster and show me the picture. The process was as follows:

1. Send a runner to get a sentence.
2. When the whole group understands the sentence, send a different runner to find the corresponding picture. 
3. When the whole group agrees that the sentence matches the picture, send a different  runner to check with magistra. 
4. Repeat this process until ALL sentences and pictures are matched.
5. Using these, build the monster based on the dictation, determining which one piece of new information also applies to the animal. 

Example:

This one is incorrect. The pieces do not fit the description and one is mislabeled.

This one is correct. All the pieces fit the description and they are correctly labeled.

QR Code Dictatio

This is a new activity that I adapted from Meredith White's QR activity (@PRHSspanish). I created QR codes for students that had a sentence with a clue regarding the monster on it and a sentence as to the location of the next clue. Students had to run from location to location looking for clues and writing them down. Then, they had to make an educated guess (without outside resources) as to what the monster was. I did not confirm or deny the accuracy of their guess, but I would send them back to try again if their guess did no make use of the clues.

After all students had discovered all the clues (and checked them with me), we went over each sentence. Since they had already worked on these in groups, there were few questions and going over it went quickly. Students took notes on the new words as well.

Examples:

Student work from Latin II - vrykolacae story

Here is a link to the clues Rachel gave her Latin III students for the "monster" Fama. 

Sub Day Dictationes

Unfortunately, I was out twice during dictatio days for this unit. What I ended up doing was a variation on sub day plans we've used in past years. This particular plan required:

1. Students to read sentences that contained new key words (identified at the top). 
2. Draw a picture of these sentences (since they detailed the physical description of the monster).
3. Write their own Latin sentence using the new word.

After students complete ALL the sentences, they were to take information they had already obtained using the QR code dictatio the previous day and this new information to make a new guess about the identity of the monster. No one guessed right (and I refuse to tell them if they were right). It kept the mystery and it required the students to use Latin to make connections and let me in on their thought process. I can see how good of use they make of clues and Latin descriptions.

Example:

Conclusions:

I love finding news ways of doing my favourite or most useful activities. Do you have any other ways to do a dictation? I still haven't written the final story's lesson plans, so I am all ears!