My Date With CASIE (Part II)

I'm not really normally a two-part blogger.  If I have a lot to say, I just sort of put it all in one place and hope you don't get too tired of me halfway through and stop reading.

But this month has been a very, very busy one, and even though I wasn't yet ready to actually blog about the lesson I posted, I wanted to put it up online so anyone who was interested and possibly struggling might have a chance to watch a communicative method in practice.  I don't claim to be the best example, but I do claim to be an example, and when it comes to Latin, there are really too few examples of Latin lessons taught in the language itself.  As an awesome side-effect, another Latin teacher, the wonderful James Hosler, also braved the critiques of his fellows and posted a video of himself teaching using PQA (Personalized Question and Answer--a traditional and effective TPRS technique).

Long introduction.

Myself and John Wilson and Bubo.

I had a really unique opportunity this January.  At a regional conference, I met John Wilson, who organizes monthly Speakeasies for CASIE, the Center for the Advancement and Study of International Education.  We talked while I tried very hard to calm my nerves before a presentation (I am always nervous before a presentation) and thanks to that chance meeting, he booked me to teach Latin for one night at one of the Speakeasies.

I really love the concept behind the Speakeasies.  If you are interested in language and language-learning, you can sign up for a free ($1 donation optional) one-hour course in a variety of languages.  Every month, there is a Speakeasy featuring a different language.  They have ranged from Tagalog to Swahili to Polish, and each lesson is taught, with mine being a necessary exception, by a native speaker.  There is one rule for the lesson: it must be taught in the target language.

This rule was harder to follow than I initially grasped, because initially I figured, hey, I teach using spoken Latin all the time.  But though I have used TPRS since my second year teaching, I eventually realized that TPRS has, almost since I heard of it, had no problem with introducing vocabulary in English as long as that builds meaning.  And now I had to figure out how to teach words like quid ("what"), words I have always introduced by simply writing them on the board with their English translations, in context without English.

Quid?!

How do you do that?

I won't take you through the painful process of the many, many false starts I had when creating the lesson I had in mind.  My creative process always includes false starts--perhaps why I encourage my students to write first and figure it out later.  I also won't take you through my final decisions (they're all recorded in the video of my lesson that CASIE and John were kind enough to allow me to make).

Teaching Latin without English gave me a chance to really think about language, how my students process language, how hard it can be to just want a simple word-to-word correlation and have to settle for vague similarities between word meanings.  How do you teach the word "have" and not end up communicating something more like "want" or "love" or any other possible meaning that could correlate with holding something like you own it?  I didn't want the Speakeasy participants to leave feeling confused or unsure of exactly what the language had been communicating.  I easily admit to being scared that I would be a poor representative of the spoken Latin community and more than once the coward in me considered calling up the many wonderful Latin teachers I know and seeing if I could find a substitute.  I felt just as vulnerable as some students feel, when they have to leave English behind in my class, because it's our safety net.  If they don't get it, I can quickly explain in English, then move back to Latin.

I did draw my words.  Many, many pictures.

Perhaps this is a problem that is not too prevalent in languages with fluent speakers and immersion opportunities.  Latin speakers have had to create our own immersion opportunities, which we do, but I know my progress in the language is much slower and more laborious than I would prefer.  My lack of fluency can hinder my bravado sometimes.

Watching the video I made, I see my nerves coming out during my lesson.  My arms are swinging constantly (also a sign of me thinking on my feet) and there are many significantly long hesitations when I realize I'm not sure how to move forward at the moment.

I also see myself having fun.  Because it was fun.  Teaching is fun, and teaching in an environment full of willing and responsive students is close to unreal.  The energy at CASIE and the Speakeasy was so positive and receptive that it would have been difficult to fail.

I am really excited to continue to take part in the CASIE Speakeasies.  I am already enrolled in one for Gaelic and another for Bulgarian.

My Date With CASIE (Part I)

This is the first of what will become two posts over a great program I was part of last Wednesday.  The reason I have split the post into two is simple.  This first post, a video of my entire lesson, is a lengthy engagement.  I don't want to ask more than that in this post.

CASIE's Speakeasy format is a lesson in a language taught in the target language.  This is my lesson, mostly inspired by my experience teaching in the TPRS and Communicative format.  Many teachers have asked me for examples of how I teach Latin via TPRS, and thanks to the generosity of CASIE and my participants, I now have a full-length beginning class to offer.

Analysis to follow in my second post.

A Very Short Open Letter to the President

Let me open by saying that I have read a lot of Stephen Krashen's work (but not nearly all of it!) and I find inspiration in his writings. I cite him in my presentations and I often refer to his work when putting together my own work. This is a letter that he has given open permission for educators to share, and I'd like to share it with you all. ~Miriam~

A very short open letter to President Obama
November 26, 2012

There is enormous frustration and dissatisfaction among professional educators about current educational policy. Many, especially those in the classroom and closest to the children, feel that current policy, one of closing public schools, encouraging privatization, and imposing more testing than has ever been seen on this planet, is ba

dly misguided and will lead to tragic consequences for our children, damage that will take decades to repair.

Professional educators feel that government is not paying attention to their expert opinions, and is paying far too much attention to non-experts. The voices of respected scholars are not being heard, and highly competent professional research done over the last few decades is being ignored.

The US Department of Education must stop demoralizing professional educators and free them to teach with passion.

Rather than submit another long open letter detailing these concerns, here is a simple suggestion. Please hold a private one-on-one meeting with Dr. Diane Ravitch for a serious conversation about education.

As you may know, Dr. Ravitch is a very highly respected and dedicated professional educator, a distinguished scholar, a very clear writer and speaker, and extremely knowledgeable about the major issues in education today. She does not represent any special interest group other than our teachers and our children.

We hope you will be willing, and eager, to meet with Dr. Ravitch, who has become the spokesperson for educators in America concerned about current policy.

Stephen Krashen
Professor Emeritus
University of Southern California

Kids These Days: Thoughts on Change and Teaching

I have mentioned before that I consider Google+ an important part of my PLN.  It is an honestly intellectual space for me where I get to converse with great teachers from all over the nation  (and sometimes outside the nation) about education, what education is, what it could be, what I would like it to be, and how it could get there.

Inspired by discussions I've taken part in on G+, I've spent a lot of time lately thinking about students. Even in the sacred space of Google+, among some of the most forward-thinking educators I have ever met, I sometimes see the words "kids have changed."

They are some of my least favorite words.  Mostly because they represent a generational "us vs. them" mentality, and partly because I don't agree with them.

My kids, my students, are much like I and my friends were when I was in high school.  They are at an age that is both dependent and independent.  They worry about how everyone else views them but don't want anyone to know they care about that.  They think about the future but their experience is limited so they spend most of their time thinking about themselves.  And that's okay because they are just now at an amazing point in their lives, a point of self-discovery, the precipice of adulthood and self-actualization, when they learn who they are and who they want to be.  Teenhood is a self-indulgent and exploratory time of life, and it has been that way since we stopped expecting people to begin work and raise families before they turn twenty.

Kids haven't changed.

The world has.

Just last week, I wanted to tell another teacher that I really like his Twitter icon.  I tweeted him the complement in Latin.  It's cool to get communicate with someone in my language of choice, but that's not why I chose to write him in Latin.  It also happens to be our common language--he's from Spain.

The world is getting smaller and technology--specifically the internet--is the reason.  It connects people regardless of national borders or distances between households.  It's all around us: smartphones, tablets, laptops--try going somewhere without seeing at least one of these electrical devices.

And it's pretty much omniscient.

I can't remember the last time I had a question I couldn't answer via Google.  Most likely my students can't remember a first time. 

That is the difference between our worlds.  Right there.  When I didn't know something growing up, I had to either find a book or ask someone, usually an adult.  Teachers were often a source of any knowledge that I could not find easily on my own.  Today, my students pull out their phones when they don't know something.  They don't need an adult to play "fount of knowledge" because they have a real fount of knowledge few humans could compete with.  My students can find out much more about the Romans online than I can hold in my head. There is a constant flow of information online, ever-updated and upgraded, and it's amazingly accessible. 

I'm not necessary any more.  Teachers have become obsolete.

If I subscribe to a traditional theory of a teacher's place in education.  Which, fortunately, I do not.  There is no reason, in a society that is becoming increasingly technology-savvy and in a world where information is available at the touch of a button, to continue viewing teachers in such a limited way.  We should not be arbiters of information but guides, co-learners, helping our students and ourselves learn to utilize information now that it is so readily available.

There is a sort of artificiality to the way schools are run today.  My friend, Justin Schwamm, hit upon the same idea in yesterday's post on his blog:
"Both schools and textbooks function ‘as designed,’ but the design is obsolete, and so is the underlying paradigm (knowledge is scarce and must be transmitted from expert to novice)."

Knowledge is abundant.  So, when schools and administrative sources try to fit students into an obsolete and flawed paradigm, built on a system designed to filter the "good" students (students who sit still, take notes, study, and test well) from the "bad" (anyone who does not fit the previous description) and to train future  factory workers (bells, isolated work stations, absolute authority), they are going to chafe and rebel.  And many teachers, who honestly don't understand the source of the resistance, begin to blame "kids these days" and their "overabundance" of technology, instead of looking at the redundancy of a program that only offers a resource students already can get more easily, more quickly, and more concisely.  

So what do we do?

My opinion is that we need to rethink education.  Figure out what our goal is.  We claim that we want every child to succeed, then we measure success by a means that is definitely not adjusted to the needs of every child.  We claim that we want our children to want to learn, then shove them into static formations and practice a basic memorize-information-regurgitate-information formula that interests no one.  We claim we want to prepare kids for life in today's world, then feed them knowledge and refuse to train them to think for themselves and work cooperatively and creatively (easily necessary 21st century skills).

I myself want every child to succeed, and I want my kids to want to learn, and most of all I want them to become life-long learners who know how to seek out the knowledge they need and utilize it to create, to solve problems, and to organize.  I would love to see a system that cares more about teaching children to use their smartphones in a way that is constructive, instead of a system that tries (and fails) to discourage kids from using the tools that they have and that make sense to them.  I want a system that celebrates failure, as long as it's failure that leads to learning and future success.  I want a system that supports chance-taking and pushing yourself academically more than getting a good grade and taking tests well.

Unfortunately, even though I work for and with great people, and enjoy where I teach in most ways, there is just not that kind of flexibility where I work.  It's not my administrators' faults.  In order for kids to succeed and get a job, they have to go to college.  In order for them to go to college, they have to graduate.  In order for them to graduate, they have to succeed on a variety of tests.  If we don't teach to the test, our kids suffer the most in our current system, and I'm not willing to sacrifice them to make a point.

So, for now, I continue in my position of "fount of knowledge."  I hope someday to have a new title, "co-learner," reflecting a role that is cooperative instead of authoritative.  I hope someday all kids will feel valued and supported instead of filtered out of a system that was not built for them.  I hope then, at that point, no one will still be saying "kids these days" except to celebrate student achievements.

But right now, we can talk.  Most of my ideas were spawned or inspired by some really great conversations on Google+, where we encourage each other to seriously discuss education, from all angles.  Talking about these sorts of things helps us understand our own thoughts and our own opinions more clearly, or sometimes exposes us to possibilities we never really knew were there.  Join the discussion.  The more we talk, the better chance we have of being heard and making a better place.  Or at least helping someone think, whether they agree with us or not.

Change is coming.  We can fight it or we can accept it, change ourselves, and become better than we were.

Singing a Song for Memory's Sake

I think I need to start by apologizing.  I have let almost two months slip by without posting anything.  I am sorry.  Miriam and I started this blog because we hoped to share ideas and generate conversation about classroom practices.  That really cannot happen if I don't bother to post anything.

I have excuses; some of my excuses will likely actually become blog posts.

Generally, though, it's the beginning of the school year, when I spend most of my time trying to get my head on straight and my feet firmly planted.  I only started reading blogs regularly again about a week ago.

And now, a week later, a blog post.

One of my and my students' favorite activities so far this year has been a simple one that I have actually done before in class--without integrated technology.

I believe in using art to help students elicit better and truer connections between concepts, help them learn or memorize the many, many forms that Latin tends to ask out of them, and help them create their own relationship with the material we cover.  Sometimes I have them draw.  Last year I made them write a haiku (an activity I hope to develop more fully this year--I enjoyed the exercise and Latin, with its lack of emphasis on word order, is particularly well-suited to haiku).  And there is always music.

We sing in my class almost from day one.  A song for the present tense.  One for the noun forms.  I have songs on a CD I purchased, songs handed down to me by other Latin teachers, and even some that I have created myself.

All of that helps, and when students fill out surveys at the end of the year listing what worked and didn't work in my class, the songs are always listed as the most helpful aspect of class.  They are also often listed by some of those same students as the things that they disliked the most--but I can take the bad as long as I get the good.

About a month ago (sorry again!), my students were being asked to learn the forms of hic and ille, which are very irregular words.  I actually don't have a song in my pocket for those forms, so I couldn't offer them a quick recording they could put on repeat at home until they learned all the endings.  Instead, I chose to ask students to form small groups (this is Latin II, so they have all had my class before, we have a good rapport, and I don't need to either give them a seating chart or choose groups for them) and create songs that incorporated all of the different forms.  The rule was that the songs couldn't be too long and they had to be catchy.

Roaming around the room as students worked, I found some students singing various children's songs together while others were furiously thumbing through their music lists on their smart phones, playing bits of songs they thought might work as the rest of their groups listened and commented.  Each group had to repeatedly sing each form to test the forms with each new song.  Each group had to sing the forms several times to practice and get the song right.

Then came the recording.  This part of the activity needs some tweaking before I do it again, and it really just came to me as a whim when a student asked me "Will we be singing these for the whole class?"  She somehow managed to look both hopeful and worried, and I found my normal answer ("No"--because I don't like putting students on the spot when I don't have to--besides, even without incorporating a class performance, I was getting what I wanted out the activity: practice and repetition) somehow lacking.  Instead, before I knew it, the words "We'll be recording them" had slipped out and she left pleased.  I stood in place, wondering how I was going to pull it off.

Enter VoiceThread.  You have probably heard of it.  It's an online service that allows you to choose an image, set it up as a "voicethread" and then open it up for "comments," which can be recorded audio, typed, or drawn.  There are many ways to use this service, most of them much more creative than my simple public repository for student songs, and I promise a future blog post that highlights this free web tool.

The next day, when they were due to have their songs completed and ready to record, I showed my students how to make a voicethread and how to record their songs as a comment on an image of their choosing.  I logged them in to my own account, offered them a microphone, and let each group take a turn.  Most groups took a couple of tries to record their songs successfully (just think--more repetitions!).  I had the rest of the class working on a different activity while a group at a time recorded.

That evening, I quickly posted links to each voicethread on a blog I created solely for this kind of purpose, created a QR code (via Kaywa) that linked to the blog post, and posted the code outside my door.

The one thing I would do differently if I had it to do over (and I will--next year) is to have one voicethread for each class, or perhaps choose a different repository system altogether.  Not that VoiceThread isn't pretty, but it has its limits.  On a free account, for example, I can only create five of my own voicethreads (a problem when you have 10-12 groups recording).

My students really enjoyed this, took songwriting much more seriously when they realized they would be recording their songs, and got to repeat the forms of two difficult Latin words over and over, without it feeling rote.

What are some ways you incorporate songs--especially songwriting--into your own classes?

The Power of Study Guides and Data

There are few questions I despise more than "Will we get a study guide?" It isn't that I won't or that I hate study guides, but sometimes I feel like kids only ask that so that they don't have to listen during class. Having been a student for the better portion of my 25 years of life and having been a teacher during this age of testing and data overload, I feel as though I've been on both sides of the fence. Last and this year, I started something new with my testing practices and I'd like to share the successes, and failures, with you.

My testing has evolved over my short time in teaching from giving straight up paper tests to online testing. I started with paper testing and paper study guides, then moved to paper study guides and online tests, and this year I am doing online tests and online study guides. I hope to provide some tools and reasoning that you can take back to your classroom and school and give you a heads up about struggles you may face if you decide to go digital.

Paper Tests
 
This seems to be everyone's starting place and is a comfortable place. Even in my second year of giving online tests, I still feel more comfortable with a paper test. Maybe because it is physical and it isn't just pointing and clicking. One of the reasons I feel like I like paper tests is that it requires more than pointing and clicking, it seems like there would be less room for mistake, but many times students will mark incompletely, mark two, or just skip a question. I can't go back while grading at home and ask "which one did you mean" or, "You skipped #5, what answer would you have marked". I also think the argument, "well they didn't bother to double check, so why should I ask them" is invalid, especially if we are only grading on student knowledge. I ultimately abandoned paper tests for the most part due to the things listed below. I will sometimes still give a paper test to a student, especially if they have computer anxiety, consistently do not test well despite proving good study habits, or if they are retaking at test for me.

Positives of paper tests

• I automatically have to take time to grade each and may catch mistakes not seen before.
• Easy to hand back for review or grading
• Easy to put pictures, charts, etc. with little formatting problems
• Good for students who take extra time to think, require an aural test, feel rushed at a computer, or who like to doodle while testing (yes, I was one of those)

Negatives of paper tests

• cannot get immediate feedback and data must be hand entered
• Lots of extra work for teachers whether grading, looking at demographics, or collecting other data
• not good for students with general test anxieties, students who are intimidated by writing, or who cannot write well
• Easy for students to make a mistake by skipping, double answering, etc.
• Students must wait days/weeks to get a grade back and, if they did poorly, cannot immediately work on areas needing improvement.

Online Tests
 
These can be daunting, especially since some state tests require it and it is now the "hip" thing to do. Those of us who don't feel technologically savvy can feel overwhelmed with all the options and sometimes this is more complicated than it should be. I'd love to hear what programs or websites you use. Personally, I like Quia. Quia makes it really easy to create a variety of complex or simple quizzes and breaks down scores in a number of ways. Online testing makes data collection easy as most of the websites and programs I've seen break down data for you. When students take a test I have access to the class average, the middle grade, the highest, and the lowest grades. I also have access to specific question data, as in how many students got it wrong or right. Many people are nervous about online testing in regards to student mistakes and anxiety. I have not seen any massive difference in anxiety levels in students. Many who panic on paper tests were calm at the online test. I did find that if a student was extremely accustomed to a paper test, it took two to three tests for them to become comfortable with an online test. Once this happened, however, it was second nature to them. Many online tests can be set up so that a student is notified if they don't answer a question. They can also choose to skip a question if they don't know it and don't want to try. With this method I give an online test originally and, if the student retests, I give a paper test. This eliminates any mistakes on the computer and also gives a second medium to compare to.

Positives of Online Tests

• Seems to help eliminate some anxiety, especially over time.
• Students get immediate feedback and can, depending on what you choose, see the correct answers or just see what they got wrong. Students can go back and review without waiting for a teacher
• Data is easily organised and, with some sites and programs, downloadable. Data is clear and easy to read and analise.
•  Teachers can control how students take the test from how many questions they see to whether or not they can right click. This can helps with anxiety and security.
• Without the hassle of extra printing or copy and pasting, teachers can create multiple versions of the same test or use a test bank.

Negatives of Online Tests

• Can require some technological knowledge and can be complicated to use the first time
• require the use of a computer lab or laptops
• when typing, student noise is louder
• students may require scratch paper if you allow it. 
• Because grading is automatic, sometimes teachers may not catch their own mistakes. That being said, the automatic collection of data can help fix this and easily point out "bad questions".
• If the internet/network goes down, so does the test.

Paper Vs. Online Study Guides

Having done a variety of these, I thought it would just be best to compare these side by side, simply. Additionally, most of my information about the usefulness of these comes directly from student input. Below I am comparing a traditional Q&A/fill in the blank paper study guide and a reloadable online study guide. I have colour coded it to make it easy to read Blue for student input and Red for teacher input.

Topic	Paper Study Guide	Online Study Guide
Ease of Access	great to have physical copy, easy to leave behind; hard for absent students to get a copy	can’t usually print; easy to find; absent students are included; students can access, if available, throughout the chapter for practice, students can re access for review
Usefulness	students forget work from class, cannot re-do answers, straight memorisation	students must re-do work at home, can play multiple times, can take time to look at wrong AND right answers
relation to test	if put in same format, students might memorise exactly; often difficult to prepare for with; can be misleading (students just look over it and assume they are ready)	often not in same format, students can receive questions from a bank (forces them to have to play multiple times)
“fun” factor	students are easily bored, can only do once, may be intractive in class, but not at home	students can play many times and ways, a variety of activities, very interactive

I am more and more convinced that a traditional paper study guide does not serve students the best way possible. While it is definitely helpful to go over this material in class as a review, students often do not remember how they got the correct answer at home. By providing games and study guides that students repeatedly do, they start to figure things out on their own... and studying becomes less of a daunting task that they put off until the last minute.

So.... what does my data look like? Students' grades, for the most part, increased one letter grades when we switched to online testing with paper study guides, but this was inconsistent at best. The class average remained in the C range. It really depended on a variety of factors that weren't consistent enough to make an argument for it. This year, we switched to online study guides and various techniques including timed writes, embedded stories, TPRS, etc. Most student grades are high Bs and low As with quite a few high As. There still were some students who made Cs and Ds and Fs, but there were much fewer. When I polled students about this combination and our class practices (see future post on weekly schedules), this was the overwhelming response:

1. Students are more motivated to study because it is fun and they see a purpose behind it
2. Classroom techniques this year have really helped them understand and make connections (particularly with the technique called embedded stories)
3. I should give them more time and more opportunities to read after I tell a story.
4. Students enjoy being able to play a game over and over and never get all the same questions.
5. Students like being able to see the right answers, but still be able to play again and try again before the test, whereas with paper study guides they wrote the answer down and that was it.

Online testing may not work for everyone. I still use paper tests and I will continue to use paper tests for a number of reasons. My goal is to reach as many students as possible in as many helpful ways as possible and I think we've hit on something important in regards to comprehensible input, technology, and by using games in the classroom. I know I am looking forward to more results from my students. I also know that I will continually re assess my methods and update them as necessary.

They Won't All Be Classics Majors -- IRL enjoyment of reading

A discussion was recently held on an online forum quoting a recent post from Stephen Krashen:

Indoctrination into the classic literary canon supersedes all other aims for the readers in our classrooms. Teachers can always point to a few students who love these classics, but I argue that they are a minority or that few become future readers as a result. Why would they? Every student that moves through our classes is not destined to become an English literature major and we cannot gear our teaching as if they were. (Donalyn Miller, The Book Whisperer, p. 124)

The question was raised: What if we taught Latin so that every student could make progress and enjoy reading? I'd like to address that today.

I always loved reading growing up. I still do. I read every chance I get: in bed at night, during commercials, and (much to the annoyance of my husband and daughter sometimes) while waiting for food in restaurants. I love books. My daughter, on the other hand, is not so eager sometimes. She's learning how to read more difficult books as she gets older and she is talented at it, but sometimes quickly loses interest or just refuses to try at all. As Latin teachers, we often have very similar experiences with Latin students. Sometimes it is because they've been told how difficult Latin "is" and lack faith in themselves. Sometimes it is because they are struggling and the communication link between us has failed or been dropped. Sometimes it is because (and this is often the case) they feel like they are doing something that they have no interest in or don't see the point in.

I firmly believe that if we address these three points, we can have students enjoy reading and communicating in Latin. Today, I'd like to provide you with some techniques to help inspire reading for enjoyment, enrich the reading and curriculum you use, and provide some real life experiences as to what this kind of instruction can do for you and your students. 

Techniques

•  John Piazza suggests that rarely are textbooks set up to help students enjoy reading. He suggests two ways to combat this and help foster a love for and proficiency in reading
• Create stories with students and have this be the basis for in class reading. You can do this using Teaching Proficiency Through Reading and Story-telling and by Asking a Story. (I've included a link to Rachel Ash's write up of her SCOLT/FLAG presentation on this). This method involves students and gives them a way to show interest. If they are interested, they will come back.
• Create embedded stories based on textbook readings. When using this method, it is important that students are able to understand at least 90% of the material and that there are no more than 5 glosses per page. This method sets students up for success in reading. When they succeed, they will read more.
• One thing I'm doing this year, with the help of John Piazza's notes above and guidance from Bob Patrick, is to use embedded stories. I'm trying to reach my upper level students by using embedded versions of news broadcasts from the Nuntii Latini website (Nuntii Latini is a Finnish radio station that broadcasts the news in Latin every week). Here is our process:
• We listen to the original broadcast and read along the original transcript twice
• I retell the story using an embedded version (simplified vocabulary)
• I circle with comprehension questions and answer student questions
• We finish with a five minute timed write. Students write everything they can remember.

Experiences

• This is the first year that I've had a fourth year in a separate class. One of my goals, especially for those students who chose the AP route, was to expose them to more reading and literature, but do so in an enjoyable manner.We spent three weeks on poetry and are now beginning a proverbs unit. Even though this is assigned reading, I only did topics that could be related to current events or something they can discuss and relate to. While not a perfect example of compelling input, I did have one student say the other day, "Wow, I really like this. Can we do more?" I think this is something we strive for. Students to take an assignment and own it. In my proverbs unit, I am asking them to own it even more and asking them to relate personal experiences to the reading. Granted it is short, but meaningful.
• A colleague of mine and guest blogger, Keith Toda, writes about a story he introduced to his students the previous year. The story was not finished yet and so he only introduced a piece of it. This year, with a 2 month summer break in between, students approached him to ask for the next bit. I cannot think of anything more exciting than to have students asking for more reading! 

Keith points out an interesting thing. What we Latin teachers need more of are adapted works in Latin. Things that kids know or are hearing about in other places that we can give them in Latin. The problem is with some of the ones out there, is that the Latin is too difficult for even third and fourth year students. What we need are adapted texts that we can offer to Latin I, II, III, and IV students for enjoyable reading. John Piazza also suggests that while many texts that are in Latin need to be modified, students will accept more and difficult input if they are really enjoying it.

I would like to finish with this: last week we took our daughter to the bookstore. Over the summer she was able to see me reading for pleasure and talk about reading. She asked if she could start reading chapter books. Now, a week later, she puts herself to bed every night with her book and she is so proud, she often takes it everywhere with her (and models my bad habit of reading everywhere). I believe this can apply directly to the Latin classroom. If we as teachers show passion and enjoyment for reading in Latin, then we have the tools to inspire students to enjoy reading as well. Students are often afraid of reading because they don't think they can do it. If we teach our classes so that everyone can make progress and enjoy reading, then we open the door to compelling input and can give students the tools they need to enjoy reading.