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! 

PBP Announces - Second Facebook live session!

At the beginning of this month (4 October 2016), Rachel and I hosted a Facebook live session on Comprehensible Input. While you can read the entire discussion on our Facebook page: Pomegranate Beginnings Publishing, here are some highlights:

Using OWATS to introduce vocabulary:

I may do this with Latin I next chapter! We have an ongoing storyline and it would be a great way for the students to create sentences for it. ~ Chris Buczek

How have you used One Word Images?

Focus on the things your class finds fun... Then you let them expand your pictures... maybe include something surprising. ~ Pomegranate Beginnings Publishing

I struggle with telling a story. 

 If you want to grow in skills for asking stories, I recommend writing a script that has a basic outline but leaves some blanks that students can fill in. The easiest is names and locations, but you can ask students if characters are happy or sad, if they want or doen't want something - the idea is to let them choose while limiting their choices to things you know they can handle. ~ Pomegranate Beginnings Publishing

What is your favourite CI activity that you'd like new ideas for?

 Michelle Gerard Ramahlo has students move around when they match pictures to sentences, giving an added element of fun! 

Discipulus Illustris (La Persona Especial) is making the rounds in various ways as well.

Upcoming Facebook Live Session!

When:  Tuesday 8 November 2016 8:00-8:30 PM

Where: The Pomegranate Beginnings Facebook page

What: The topic is student interest

Rationale: We've seen this topic on just about every discussion board or group recently and it is an essential part of Comprehensible Input. In this session, we'll be talking about student interest and how to use it within the confines you may have. 

See you soon! 

 

 

 

Mafia: Comprehensible, Compelling, and Fun!

In many ways this year has been amazing so far. I am still learning how to exist as a person without homework or a thesis hanging over my head, but one of the wonderful side-effects of realizing I have more time is that when my class needs my focus, I can actually take the time to offer it attention.

Mafia safety nets. The first student who died drew the rest of the deaths!

Another wonderful side-effect: when a student suggests playing Mafia in Latin, I can take the time to figure out how to do it! This is just a short post to offer materials for anyone who wants them.

Luckily, I was not on my own; Martina Bex (@MartinaBex), a magical font of ideas and inspiration, had already not only posted about using Mafia in her Spanish classroom, but had developed materials for the game, including safety net signs for students to help their output. The materials and her explanation are super helpful, and made it possible for me to narrate a game of Mafia in Latin--without having ever played it before.

We had a blast playing it, and I know Keith Toda (@silvius_toda) also successfully ran the game at Fall Forum, a state gathering of Latin teachers and students, even with students who had never spoken Latin or heard Latin spoken previously.

Without further ado, click here to get my adaptation (still a work in progress, see below). I recommend reading Martina's post about the game (linked above)--she makes the game and game play really clear.

Before I play next, I will brainstorm a bunch of different ways for the characters to die using limited Latin vocabulary. I had a hard time coming up with things off the top of my head; eventually I moved from "swords" and "spears" to "poisoned cake" and "rocks fall," but, really, I'd like to have creative and surprising options in front of me.

Coming Full Circle - Pliny 2016

When Rachel and I started this blog, we were beginning our journey into untextbooking. We've shared our successes and failures, our ideas and research. Now, we are beginning to come full circle. Both Rachel and I have successfully defended our Master's theses and we both used our original inspiration in untextbooking as part of that process: Pliny the Elder.

This year, our third full year of this process (four if you count the half year of work and half year of research), and we've come full circle. This year both of our classes are reading Pliny the Elder again. Both of our classes chose to read about fantastical creatures. Rachel and I are taking two different, if similar, approaches and we are reading different pieces, but we are both drawing on and improving upon what we did four years ago.

The next series of posts is going to detail some of the activities and unit building we've been working on. I plan to write, in this post, about how I am building my units and in subsequent posts about specific plans and ideas that I've been developing.

Nota Bene: this is a lengthy post. I have decided to break it up with colours and images of work I've done thus far. Please feel free to comment with questions if I am unclear at all!

The Overarching Goals

Since we use standards based grading and untextbooking, there isn't a specific vocabulary list or grammar list I want to reach. Rather, those come from the authors we are reading and high frequency lists that we rely on. We want our kids to be able to read literature in Latin, so we use high frequency lists to help inform our teaching. 

The Authors

I decided that I wanted the main author to be Pliny the Elder, as we decided four years ago. But, I also realised that I wanted to include some stories and things that aren't included in Pliny's work. So I expanded the list to include some medieval authors.

The students chose the unit fantastical creatures last year when they voted, but I chose the monsters we were to read about. I will readily admit that I chose some of them because I've read the stories and fell in love with them. I chose the others based on what I knew student interest to be. To that end, we read/are reading about:

1. polypus Plinii - a giant octopus invades an Italian coastal town and terrorises its residents and dogs, and eats their food. (Author: Pliny the Elder)
   
2. unicornis ferus - the unicorn is a composite monster that is the exact opposite of what our contemporary mythology tells us; further, only a young maiden can tame him. (Authors: Pliny the Elder, Isidore de Seville)
3. vrykolacae - the excommunicated dead are possessed by demons and they wander the towns looking for specific people to kill; one story tells of a group of children who find one in an open tomb and proceed to use him as a trampoline until stopped by a priest. (Author: Leo Allatius)
4. basilisci serpentes - the fearsome basilisk wreaks havoc on plants, animals, and humans with its smell. They say looking at it can kill a man. (Authors: Pliny the Elder, J.K. Rowling)

It's all about perspective

In our standards, a lot of those for Latin II this year deal with students expressing themselves, their opinions, and backing them up with evidence and discussion. A few weeks ago I was speaking to a college professor (not a foreign language teacher) who said one of the biggest issues he sees is students who cannot work out problems on their own or express their own views or thoughts. They want to be given a list to memorise, a series of correct answers for a test, but that is not how many college classes work, nor is it how life works. What he said re-validated my purpose this year to get the kids more comfortable talking about and expressing themselves and their ideas. 

For this unit, we approach each story from three levels:

• What does the story tell us?
• What does science tell us?
• What does urban legend and contemporary mythology tell us?

These three perspectives not only serve to bring more student interest into the class (seeing Twilight Sparkle from My Little Pony on the screen certainly got a reaction), but also provide multiple perspectives from which a student may draw connection and information. Students were expected to discuss the stories from these perspectives, not only speaking about the culture and history of the Romans, but also understanding connections to contemporary times and their own personal interests. 

Building the Unit

To build this unit, I followed a pretty similar process for each story. I will detail the activities in other posts. To compare, here is Rachel's post on a unit she built four years ago using Pliny the Elder's work.

Step 1 - Identifying key vocabulary

I relied heavily on the authors for vocabulary, even the stories I was not familiar with. I read the original Latin and used frequency lists to determine what words were high frequency. I did keep some low frequency words in, but this was because they were essential to the story. To give you an idea, here is the vocabulary list for the polypus story:

ascendere - to climb                                                        videtur - it appears

adflatu - with his smell                                                   cognoscere - to recognise

inauditus - unheard of                                                     mare - sea

polypus - octopus (Pliny's word)                                    lacus - lake/container

The vocabulary differs from story to story, but I use a variety of methods and activities to build repetitions and confidence in the vocabulary. 

Step 2 - Edit/Adapt stories

My goal was to keep to the originals as much as possible, if not in form, in story line. So far, I've been able to do this 100% (which makes me exceedingly happy) and in doing so, I've realised a few things:

1. When we read excerpts or translations, we often miss the best parts. -- prior to this, I'd only read excerpts of Pliny for class or for research (although my research opened me up to some new parts of his work) and some only in translation. By going back to the Latin and really reading it closely, I was able to get great stories and descriptions and a great list of vocabulary
2. By relying on given knowledge, we may miss something interesting, vital, or cool. -- I readily admit that I did not know about all these stories originally. Some I learned in classes, some from individuals, and some from my own reading. What I discovered, however, is that if I relied only what I remembered, or a single passage I was familiar with, I missed whole portions of the story that were, often, more interesting than what had been shared with me originally. This is no one's fault (otherwise we'd be sharing pages and pages of stories for days and days), and yet I think it is important to find sources for this reason. 
3. By sticking to what may be called a "canon" or "accepted" or "approved" reading (depending on who you are, where you are, and what your program is like), we limit our knowledge and range of interest. --  Medieval literature is often overlooked in favour of Classical Roman writers (particularly those whose stories appear in textbooks or whose work is most often discussed in our wider circles), but I think this can be a mistake. I think we need to widen our horizons. I don't mean we should ignore those great authors (I have been made more certain that Caesar is awesome) but rather, we can combine and support them with other more contemporary or lesser known authors.
   
   Without medieval and contemporary works, I would not have had half the story of the unicorn to share (how to defeat it). Nor would I have had any of the vrykolacae story, which is uniquely Greek and medieval. Nor would I have had something to compare Pliny's discussion of the basilisk to.
   
   Yes, this required me stepping out of my comfort zone. It required some time and research from me. However, I think it was worth it and I know my students' Latin, understanding of Roman culture, and ability to express themselves in English and Latin are better because of it. 

When I took the originals, I tried to keep the vocabulary as close as I could (bearing in mind frequency) and the structure, if I felt it was appropriate. What happened was a marriage of Classical, medieval/contemporary, and teacher written stories. 

In the image to the left, you'll see a portion of the unicorn story we read in class. I want to point a few things out that might make this process clearer. Throughout this story I married Pliny's own words with Isidore de Seville's and my own (which were heavily influenced by the two authors. Below is the text again, but with mine, Pliny's, and Isidore de Seville's colour coded. 

dixit in India animal ferissimum esse. unicornes erant feriores quam omnia animalia. reliquo corpore equo similis, capite cervo, pedibus elephanto, cauda apro, uno cornu nigro media capite erat. nemo negabat ferum unicornem esse. nemo unicornem vivum videbat.

vocabatur rhinoceron a Graecis; Latine significabat “cornu in nasu.” erat unicornis. unum cornu in medio* capite pedum quattuor habebat. cornu acutissimum erat. cum elephantos pugnaret, elephanti in terra ceciderunt. quam ferus erat unicornis. etiam homines unicornis necabat.

erat fabula; omnes cognoverunt qui naturas animalium scripserunt

My edits mostly include original vocabulary, but word order or grammar is changed to make it clearer to students. This passage does not shelter grammar, but rather vocabulary: sticking to words that students know/are learning and using grammar that is needed. 

* this was a typo in the image that has since been corrected. It read "media". #reasonswhyautocorrectisawful

Step 3: Develop your teaching strategy

I mean this to say - How will you capture students in the moment and find something for them to grab on to. We teach using Comprehensible Input, so I drew from those activities to build my lessons for my stories. The basic thought of how this works for my class is:

1. Keep it a secret! Don't give the monster's identity away until you absolutely have to!
2. Delay it! Fill the space with vocabulary reinforcement and CI activities to build suspense. 
3. Explain it! When you finally reveal, plan a day to discuss products, perspectives, and practices to students to help them see points of view and understand the stories better.*

* Credit to Robert Patrick for this work.

Bearing these in mind, I have a basic outline of activities that I do for each story:

1. A dictation of some kind (will be in next post).
2. Vocabulary Reinforcement through:
   * movie shorts
   * TPR
   * TPRS
   * One Word Images
   * etc.
3. Reading of the story and follow up activities (will be in future post)
   * Reading Option A
   * Read, Discuss, and Draw
   * Reader's Theatre
   * Reading Experts (also in future post)
   * Read Dating
   * Timed Writes
4. Products, Perspectives, and Practices Discussion (will be in future post) -- This combines the story, science, and legend. 
5. Assessment

Using these steps, I've built each lesson around our stories. I look forward to sharing them with you.

A Post for the Singleton Teacher -- An Invitation for All!

This guest post by Robert Patrick, Ph.D. addresses issues that are common to CI/TPRS beginners in general and singleton Latin teachers in specific. Dr. Patrick has been teaching for 27 years and has been using CI approaches for 15 years.

By now you may have been in school for 2-3 weeks or even 2 months.  If you are the singleton Latin teacher (that would be most Latin teachers) who has decided to take on CI/TPRS and/or an Untextbook approach in your program, you might be feeling everything from nagging fatigue to panic induced by extreme exhaustion.  How many more weeks until Thanksgiving break?

This business of how to go CI/TPRS and Untextbook while being a singleton teacher can be an almost instant crazy maker.  The common story of such teachers (there are many of us) includes wishing for the textbook, going back to the textbook, going back to grammar-translation, depression,  and leaving the profession.  And those are just the things I’ve experienced and heard about from those who are in contact with me.  

At this writing, I’ve heard from three teachers just this week from different parts of the country who fit this description in one way or another, and I’ve been averaging that number of contacts for several weeks now.  From my perspective, abandoning the profession, if you truly love teaching and feel “called” to teaching, is not the answer.  Abandoning CI/TPRS for grammar-translation is not the answer if you want all of your students to make progress and if you want your program to grow.  Continuing what you are doing is not the answer because the toll on you is destructive, and fatigued, exhausted, panic-stricken teachers don’t help themselves or their students. So, what to do?  

Here’s what I have to offer that may give you a better way for yourself and your students.  Each of these principal ideas/practices may well be parts of things that you mix and match to create what will work for you.  They may also give you ideas for something else that works that I have not considered.  Then, please share!  

1. Collaboration.  The "easiest" thing for you to do is to find another Latin teacher (or four) who have flexibility in their programs (to use CI/TPRS and to Untextbook) and begin sharing files.  If there are 4 of you, each becomes responsible for writing lesson plans, activities and assessments for just ONE level of Latin.  Do this in google docs and share with each other.  Then, while you are each teaching 4 or 5 levels of Latin each day, you are only preparing materials for one and EACH is receiving those same kinds of materials from the others.  This may require a few phone or google hangout sessions to work it out, and it’s a little heavy on the set up, but once you set up this kind of collaboration, you will never go back to “going it alone.”  You will wonder why in the digital world you never did this before.  What will you lose if you do this?  You will lose an hour or two of prep time every day.  You will lose awake hours and replace them for sleep hours.  And there’s this.  You will have to give up some ego control that may be attached to the martyr that you have naturally become as a singleton teacher.  I mean this, and it’s worth taking seriously.  We get some mileage out of the sympathy some people pay us when they see how hard we work, and we attach a certain amount of pride to be “the only Latin teacher.”  Let it go.  Find some willing collaborators.  I promise you, you will be much more proud of what you can do together than what you think you are doing alone.

2. Work Smarter.  Not to imply that you work dumb, but working smarter for singleton teachers in particular is not intuitive for most of us and goes against what most of us think we should be doing.  Quick examples of working smarter:

A. Teach the same content at every level that you teach but appropriate to their development and proficiency levels.  Think of an Ovidian story from the Metamorphoses.  You can teach that same story at every level with everything from short cartoon “like” snippets for elementary or lower middle school and LOTS of drawing (which students do, not you) all the way to the original or near original version with Latin 4/5 students.  You create variations of simplicity and complexity in between.  That way, you really are only prepping one content, but in multiple levels.  Combine this approach with collaboration and each of you is prepping a different Ovidian story for multiple units across all the levels you teach.  And, while doing this, use the same activities each day.  If you are asking a story, ask it in all levels.  If you are doing a movie talk, do it in all levels.  If you are doing a dictatio, do it in all levels--but in all of these, at the level that is appropriate for their proficiency.

B. Never grade anything by yourself. (Okay, almost never). Get a classroom set of red pens and have students always grade their own work with your pens while you pace around the room discussing answers and corrections.  This is NOT students grading their neighbor's paper.  They grade their own paper.  Of course you are going to go over them, very quickly, but this works, cheating is almost non-existent.  They get immediate feedback which we all know is essential, and what would take you hours takes a few minutes.  I've been doing it for years now, and I NEVER take papers home. (Okay, almost never, but that’s far different from you who are taking papers home every day).

C. Have a collection of "breather" activities that you can do anytime you are feeling overwhelmed.  Like Publius Publicanus (aka Pancho Comancho), or Dictatio, or Same Story or Pictionary.  A "breather" activity requires very little of the teacher but continues to supply some time of CI to students. You can look up these activities in this blog, in the Latin Best Practices CI Resources blog, in Keith Toda’s blog, or in almost any CI blog around.  

3. Compromise.  Despite the suggestions above, maybe you have just taken on too much, too quickly.  You may need to go back to the textbook.  You can do CI/TPRS with a textbook.  I did it for years.  I never dared leave the textbook until I had some collaborators in place, and I began working smarter with the ideas above while using a textbook.  Many who are being successful with CI/TPRS are easing themselves into it by going Untextbook with their Level 1 while they continue to teach with the textbook in upper levels.  The point of compromise takes me back to some original issues:  do you love teaching?  Do you want all of your students to make progress and grow your program?  If your answers really are “yes” then you must do whatever you have to do to take care of yourself.  CI/TPRS is completely centered in your ability to deliver understandable messages in Latin.  If you are worn out, exhausted and depressed, you will not be able to do that well, if at all.  So, decide what changes you are going to make for your good and then the good of your students.  

If this article raises questions for you, don’t hesitate to ask.  There is a growing community of CI/TPRS Latin teachers and teachers of other languages.  Our experiences are very common and similar to yours.  Making curiosity one of your leading traits will help and relieve you.  Ask questions.  Ask for help.  Ask to use other people’s materials.  Ask for collaborators.  And when you need to, ask for a day off!

----

An Invitation -- Pomegranate Beginnings will be hosting a Q and A session on Facebook live next week. Tuesday evening (4 October 2016), from 8:00-8:30 pm, we’ll be live on Facebook to answer questions about CI, Untextbooking, and collaboration! Join us and join the discussion.

Round Table Discussion: an every time of year activity

The round table discussion is one I've been doing for years and one I love. I openly admit it isn't my own activity. My first year teaching, I was looking for new ideas and I came across the Scottish government's website on education. It has since been revamped (and finding this original reference was hard), but included in it were videos from a Latin classroom. Here is the original video I watched 5 years ago. She called it a clipboard quiz, but, with the number of students in my classroom, I changed the name to a round table discussion. While I don't do this (or any of the activities found here really) exactly the way they do it, I love looking for options.

The Set Up

I like my students to be in small groups for this; the deeper/high level the question is, the more students I allow in a group. I don't like more than 4 in a group for this, however. 

I then write as many questions as there will be groups (of course smaller classes won't see all the questions). I will say more about these below.

I prefer my questions to be related to the upcoming test or the story we've been reading. I also allow students to use their notes or stories for this activity, especially if the questions are more open ended or of a higher level thinking. 

The Questions

Having played this game (of sorts) more than a few times, I've started to notice which questions work and which don't. This year, in looking back at K-5 strategies, I've started to adjust the kinds of questions that I write. Below are some of the types of questions I've used or have thought about using: ones that I know work, ones that sometimes work, and ones that don't. 

• Quid Significat (what does it mean) questions: These work rarely, but they do work. They work for words that have multiple meanings that students know. I have used this for words like petere, umbra, and other words whose meaning depends on context. 
• Culture Questions with open answers: These are great if they are open. Questions about products, perspectives, and practices are great. Questions about the hero's journey are also good. 
• Culture Questions with single answers: These don't work since they have one answer. What ends up happening is groups who get this question quickly check the right answer and then check out of class. Questions like these involve dates, names, or single vocabulary words involving culture. 
• Comprehension Questions: These are the kind I have usually used and I quickly learned that some don't work. Like with the culture questions, comprehension questions with single answers don't work. Rather, focus on higher level questions or questions where a list is involved. Students won't have time to list everything out, and then they have to read each other's responses. 
• Words we know Questions: These are great. You can have a single question where they must like a word or two and what it means, or you can do it by categories (write one word we know that has to do with.... houses/school/war/etc.)

The Process

Round 1

Students receive their resources and the question. They are given a set amount of time to answer the question. 

Round 2 - the end

Students rotate papers and receive a new question. They have a set amount of time to review the previous and write their own answers/thoughts. 

Reviewing Other Answers

When students review each others answers, they need to mark one of two things:

1. ✔ - This signifies that students agree with the answer; that is is correct or plausible.
2. X - This signifies that students do not agree with the answer; that it is incorrect or not possible.

Changes to the Game

In the past, I've done this for a final exam review and have allowed students to take pictures of answers or I posted answers online. This year, for at least this round, I have changed it up. Instead of giving definitive answers, I've typed up each class's answers and agreements in a document and posted it online. I've left it open to comment for students to take a look at and comment what they want. I also included some notes to point to answers that may not be correct.

Thoughts and Reflection

I have grown to really like this activity. I can use it as a formative assessment, pull assessment questions from it, or use it to inform study guides and notes.

Students like this activity. It is collaborative and low pressure, even with the time limit, since they get to see others' answers and evaluate them. Students also know I tend to pull questions from it for our assessments, so it allows for transparency.

I really like using this activity when we have questions whose answers require reflection and evidence. It sparks great discussions! 

Going Back to Basics - Teaching with Novellas

A lot of us, whether teachers of Latin, French, German, Spanish, Chinese, etc., are working with novellas this year. Some are published, and some are still in beta testing (if you will). As we venture into this new territory, my colleagues and I have often mused on, asked, discussed, and angered over this idea of "how to teach with a novella"? Rachel and I have shared some ideas already (linked below), but this year, I considered some new ideas. I'd like to share them with you in this post. Some are still in research, others are already being implemented and edited, and others are things that we have already tried and plan to continue.

Links to Previous Posts

• CI Curriculum, Untextbooking, Student Choice, and Teacher Planning (written by Bob Patrick)
• Pluto: fabula amoris - The Good, The Bad, The Update (written by Miriam Patrick)
• Art Dating (written by Miriam Patrick)
• Report from the Classroom: Same Conversation (written by Miriam Patrick)
• The Glorious Moment - They Are Hooked! (written by Miriam Patrick)
• Some Bumps on the Road to Teaching a Novella (written by Rachel Ash)

In Study

Rachel and I have spent quite a bit of time trying to brainstorm and share ideas on teaching a novella. After teaching both adapted and original stories, we've already gathered a few ready to go activities, but we wanted more, especially when it came to initial readings of chapters. To this end, I went to my mother, Lydia Patrick, who has been an elementary teacher for as long as I can remember. She's taught a variety of grades and now works in technology in the classroom. I asked for her help because I realised:

1. Elementary teachers have been teaching with novellas for years! 
2. Elementary teachers, even though they are working with (often) students' first language, they are still teaching the very basics of reading and discussion. 

She directed me to some resources for elementary teachers and I pulled it all. I am still sifting through this and other resources from Foreign Language teachers, but here are the ideas I've taken so far.* I'd love to hear what you all are doing with these, if you are already working on these, and what you've discovered! 

• Reading Experts
• Reading Workshops (sometimes called Kindergarten Day from what I can see so far)
• Novella Studies (taken from a FL teacher, similar to a Reading workshop)
• Reading and Writing Workshop (a website dedicated to these types of activities)
• Using K-5 strategies to develop higher level discussion skills (looking for clues, asking deep questions, personal reflection, etc.)
• Reader's Theatre
• Round Table Discussion

* I will update this post with links to the discussions on these ideas as I have them. 

In Practice

Since I am going to post on many of these ideas, this is a place for introduction and reflection. Please comment with any questions and I will try to answer them in the comments or in the post on that topic!

Reading Experts and Workshops

This is the first activity I've borrowed from the elementary level and am working to put into work in the high school FL classroom. The main idea is that students become an expert in a certain category or field of the story. There are many you could try but I focused on these areas: character development, storyline, translation, vocabulary. Each group had a certain activity. On day 2, the kids were put in groups so that each group had 1-2 of each expert and they were to work on a variety of activities. I am posting on this in detail, so here were some observations I made:

• I am still working out the idea of a reading workshop. I really like this idea, but self admittedly, I am not sold on the way it has been implemented thus far in FL classrooms. This is not a reflection of the teachers, but rather my own understanding of the practice. 
• The Reading Experts activity wen well, but it had some kinks. Students were eager to work and said they greatly appreciated this two day activity, but they often moved quickly and missed essential steps. 
• Students responded well to this and, while as a whole the seemed to find it precarious, they sought me out to say individually how much they liked it (peer pressure?)

Reader's Theatre

I am not great at this. I want to love it.... I was a theatre major in high school and my kids are always commenting on my voices, accents, and "acting skills". And yet... I don't love this activity. There have been new ways of doing it and allowing students to have some freedom with this, so I've been trying my hand at those. In an upcoming post I will discuss these. Here are some thoughts I have now, as I work out these kinks:

• repetitions are nice, but... without some kind of differentiation, they become boring.
• lengthy scenes become boring fast!
• variations tried: freeze frame, silent scenes, video recording, same conversation
• previous write up: Reader's Theatre

Round Table Discussion

This is the activity I tried today. I have been doing this activity for years, but I have begun playing with it and messing with it. Mostly I have become aware of what questions work and what questions don't. Working with the K-5 strategies has helped me even more. A few basics on this activity since it is often used in different ways.

• I create questions in the target language and English about a reading.
• I put students in groups. They get around 3-5 minutes to answer the question.
• Students pass the questions to a new group.
• Students get 3-5 minutes to agree/disagree with previous answer(s) and add a new one. 

In Closing

I am really trying to make novella reading useful to my students. I have seen a great many discussions on the use of novellas, Free Voluntary Reading, and Comprehensible Input. I have seen a great many discussions on the use (and place) of history, grammar, and culture in a classroom. From this comes my own inner discussion and debate. I'd love to share these thoughts, but also hear from others. :)