Wooly Week 2024 – Trick of the trade

If you’re curious to see what this activity looks like in a class of mixed novice high and intermediate low students looks like, here you go.  I could edit mistakes out, but it’s better to show them all, both from the students, and my own.  What a great activity this turned out to be. Some notes:

-I’m trying to give my novice high students every opportunity to level up.

-I’m not doing this exactly as described in the instructions.  Instead I was trying to go with the flow. 

-On the board I have several words they don’t know, but may be used in a context that’s new, so I choose to support them with language to inspire confidence and boost those lower kids.

-this is definitely their first time seeing conditional in any meaningful way.

– I love the way they’re bringing in prior knowledge.

Pre-load and create interest

Knowing that I have a difficult reading coming up to go along with a movie talk, I know I need to do a few things: 1) get kids interested in the subject. 2) make them comfortable with at least some of the new vocab and structures 3) go slow, and 4) get them guessing what will happen and let them have some ownership of an already fixed in place story.

So I spent 11 minutes on the title slide and two sentences of the story. But a whole heck of a lot more was accomplished! Have a look. This is my lowest class, first period, and we’re pretty tired. It took me a bit for my coffee to kick in as well. But I think it’s good to see that you don’t have to bring a ton of energy to do good CI.

Coach your kids up!

This is a Spanish 2 honors class, and we have skipped ahead to Somos 2 as our main curriculum. I know for a fact that this particular text is above their capability, and need to bring them along slowly. I also know that my own goal is to make them Intermediate level writers and speakers by the end of the year. So what am I doing at the beginning of this video? First, I have highly modified the text down to short manageable chunks, using the embedded reading technique pioneered by Michelle Whaley and Laurie Clarq. Second, they have all the words they need displayed. 3rd – I am not even attempting to get into the story immediately because I am trying to teach them the intermediate skills of circumlocution and allowing them to scan both the text and the glossary. This is a tough, long process, and it’s awkward at first. This is also a VERY low class. For most of them this is their only honors class. They are taking it specifically because they love CI and want a CI teacher. So here’s what you might notice:

0:00 – I am starting right off the bat with our call-and-response attention getter for the week, introduced about 10 minutes beforehand.

0:18 – I am still using gestures learned in Spanish 1 – but not all these kids had me for Spanish 1.

0:30 – Letting them scan the test for answers – effectively forcing pre-reading

0:50 – reviewing directions – I try to always think about frequently used words that are hard to get into good context.

1:35 – coaching students to deal with the frustration of being limited in Spanish.

2:50 – I still haven’t gotten what I’m looking for – I want strings of sentences. Something like “A zerba is an animal. It is black and white. It has 4 feet. It’s similar to a horse”. I know most can’t quite get there, but I am repeating, waiting, and calling on more people to allow everyone space to think, and give them opportunities to grow.

4:47 – I praise a student for using circumlocution, explain what that means, and why it’s important

6:00 – asking for more information about zebras, a student responds with a word from the displayed glossary. I use this as my cue to start pre-teaching words.

6:50 – I actually get into the story

Let me know in a comment please if you see anything interesting, you pick up a skill from me that you will implement, or if you have any ideas for me to improve!

Partner volleyball reading

So, there are a million variations on volleyball reading, but here’s how I do it. In the video, we’re using a text we did a couple weeks ago, so this is only for demo purposes. My students were kind enough to help me video for you.

1) I read the test sentence by sentence and students chorally translate. While doing so, they are strongly encouraged to write the Spanish translation of any word they’re not 100% certain of. This creates a text that they should completely understand.

2) we volleyball as a whole class once. That let’s me check that number 1 has been achieved. In this video, we only did a paragraph to give you an example for your benefit. You should do the whole text.

3) count how many students are in the class. This helps review numbers. Take half the students and they are the outside circle.

4) the rest of the students will pick their starting partner. Every couple minutes or so I’ll call switch and the inner circle rotates one position clockwise. They compare where they are in the text with their new partner and begin again with whoever was closest to the top. If they finish the text, they immediately start again.

5) rotate partners when you feel they’re getting complacent, or someone is paired up with a troublesome partner, or every couple minutes. End the activity when you need to, or when you’re sure they have it ROBUSTLY.

Eventually, I teach them the words inner, outer, left, right, and phrases like one time, two times. Then we may rotate twice to the left, three times to the right. It keeps things spicy.

Level 1 storyasking

This is only the second day of story asking. Last class we did Somos Flex unit 1 story, “Jaron o Justin.” Today we tackled “Karen es una Robot”. People were asking for a demo so here you go. My camera stand drops for a while, but it will at least show how I use TPR gestures, adding in an additional character for contrast, and teach kids what output I expect from them.

Organizing and planning for maximum laziness.

I’ve had teachers come to my classroom who were very impressed with the way I lay out my classes and keep myself on track. Some folks online had asked to see this as well. I don’t think it’s anything special, but as a very unorganized dude this does keep me from having to plan more than once and I rarely forget to do something I’ve planned, and I never fumble for where anything is in the middle of class, even with multiple preps. If it helps you, let me know!

Click the link for my video explanation.

First time Mafia

People have always been intrigued when I say that I can teach literally any verb structure or vocab set using Mafia. That it’s my class’ favorite thing to do, and we can make a game last for a 75 minute class. By year 2, some kids will argue for minutes at a time in the TL. I posted videos here years ago but lost them in a job move. So here’s another. This is the very first time this class has ever played, so you can see me break down the rules and do one round. This is a level 2 class, but I wouldn’t do much different for level 1 other than remove a few option choices. As they get stronger in the game, the story of who/what/where/when gets more involved. It’s the first time they’ve seen the verb lleva, but you’ll notice how they adapt quickly.

Rejoinders as class culture

It’s been years since I blogged. Life and this job has beaten me nearly to death. But I have had amazing luck and have landed at a school that supports me and gives me space and time to create, teach, and reflect. I hope to be able to give back to this CI community that has helped me throughout the years.

A day ago I posted about how I was trying to create a positive class culture, where students not only listened to each other, but reacted appropriately to the situation. I started using the phrase “just because I’m not talking TO you, doesn’t mean I’m not talking FOR you.” Explaining that every time I talk to anyone, it’s an opportunity for them to acquire the language without being forced to be the center of attention. People wanted to know what it looked like and how I use rejoinders. I use them in TONS of ways. Just tons. But here are legit examples of this instance to foster culture. Both of these videos are unscripted and uncoached. Students were simply told I was going to record a video while I taught.

This was the 3rd time I met with my Spanish 1 class. They had never been taught ¿”Cómo estás?” By me, but several had prior knowledge and some responses. We’ve been using rejoinders since day 1. You can tell they’re still a bit reluctant but I just keep coaching.

For Spanish 2, you can see they’re more confident speakers and enthusiastic. They know some language so it’s really more about getting them to interact and find rejoinders they like to commiserate/empathize/poke fun. I’d like to think you’ll notice the intentional way I invite them to make a little fun at my expense and also subtly let them know I value their empathy. This is what I mean by building culture!

Let me know your ideas to add more value to our classrooms! I hope this helps in some small way.

Advanced mafia part 2

If there are any reader to my blog left, Howdy folks!  It’s been a minute.  My district blocked access to this site for a while, and I was way too lazy to do it from home.  The format was also really not working well.  I have dozens of things I could share, and hours of classroom video for anyone interested, but I was given a request last week to demonstrate how to get your kids  processing higher level language using the game Mafia.  See previous videos here and here.

Now, if you don’t already know how to play mafia, get your little hiney over to The Comprehensible Classroom and learn.  This post isn’t so much for you.

Now,  let me preface this video by saying:  I made a crap-ton of errors in the beginning.  I was doing it all on the fly and turns out I was very very sick when I began.  You’ll notice I literally couldn’t remember the same thing over and over and over.  But hey, it’s good for us to see that nobody is ever perfect.  But you will see some cool stuff.

1. How I am transitioning them to use more advanced structures.
2. How I wait and encourage them to speak.
3. A very fast processor who speaks faster than I ever do in class.
4. A kid get ticked off and how I deal with it.

Enjoy.  Honestly you could probably skip to the 10 minute mark when they really take off, but it’s up to you.  Here is the link to the video with it’s terrible volume.

what starting a class can look like

Here you will see my opening procedure, a quick practice of a previous story from look, I can Talk, students doing jobs, volleyball reading, TPR, and beginning the class’ first MovieTalk.  What to know:

This class had Spanish 1 by a teacher who doesn’t communicate with her students.  I get them knowing some words, but no idea how to put them together.  So in reality I’m teaching Spanish 1/2.  This is the 14th day of school.

 

Click here for the video:

Click here for the video