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Dr. Liam Printer - 'The Motivated Classroom' Educational Consultant, Author, Researcher
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Acquisition not learning: Two years of reading in a beginner's Spanish class

20/5/2022

3 Comments

 
My Year 9 class are now 4 weeks from the end of our second year together. The students are aged 12-13 and have had approximately 2 hours Spanish per week, minus all the school holidays of course. In those two years we have read 6 class novels and they've each read 10-20 other graded readers during their free voluntary reading time at the beginning of class. Since around 4 months into year 8 (their first year of Spanish), we have started almost every class with 5-10 minutes of silent reading. We don't have a textbook.

In the two years, we've never 'done' or 'practised' a verb table. We have looked at one, after a student asked about the endings. We've maybe done two worksheets total across the two years that had a focus on accuracy. They have had plenty of pop-up grammar explanations about the differences between "comió" and "ha comido" for example. We don't do lists of vocabulary or regular high-stakes testing. 

We have never done anything about the conditional tense; I've never (explicitly) taught them 'debería, sería' etc... but they are using it in their writing. Below are some of their most recent entries in their "Diario de Lectura". These entries are mostly done in class, with no dictionary or computer. Just free writing.
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Diario de Lectura entries are done regularly based on phrases they connect with from books we are reading. I never correct any mistakes in their 'diario de lectura'. I do correct 2-3 critical errors when they are doing a formative writing piece before a summative assessment, but this is separate. In the diario de lectura, they know they can write without fear of being wrong. They know it is a conversation in writing between me and them.

And the clincher... hand on heart, these students all speak more fluently and arguably with more accuracy than they write. I'll share recordings of our final round table discussions at the end of the school year.


Flooding students with compelling, interesting, and most importantly, comprehensible inputs that centre on narratives and stories from our lives, our identities, our passions, our fears and our cultures... works. It allows children to acquire language naturally; to learn about each other, about me and about the world.

Reading... lots of reading, works. The books allow us to regularly discuss big themes, important topics and social justice issues... and, it results in so much fantastic, impressive and fluent output.. both in writing and in speaking. Remember Grant Boulanger's mantra "The less you force them to speak, the more they want to speak".
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In Year 3 next year we will start to look more closely at grammatical accuracy, at writing and speaking for different audiences, in different tones. But not before. Remember, they need to build the system first; before they can start to look more deeply at the components of that system.

Trust the process, trust the research, trust your students. Acquisition doesn't happen overnight but keep giving the rich, comprehensible inputs and it will happen. Leer es poder!
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Returning to school after quarantine: Our first week back

17/5/2020

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We’ve now had our first week of post-quarantine classes, back in our real classrooms, with real, live people around… yes, they exist and are not just avatars or thumbnails. Does it feel different? Yes, absolutely it feels different but it has to. The world is different. Life is different. Schools have to adjust. The Swiss federal government decided that the country was ready for students up to the age of about 15 to go back to schools from May 11th but with restrictions: only half the class could be present each day in order to allow for more spacing inside the buildings. So we have students coming in every second day. This is the part that feels the strangest as we are all essentially back at work but the school itself feels very empty as we only have half the students in on any given day. From May 25th we will be back to full classes again with the exception of the older students, who will remain with online learning until June 8th.

It has been challenging to try to provide meaningful learning experiences for children when you have half of them on a screen on your whiteboard and the other half in front of you. I certainly felt more tired and less happy with my teaching this week but I had to remind myself that this is so new for all of us. We never trained or dreamt of having to do something like this. Now is not the time for high expectations on our own shoulders. We are all adjusting; we are all fumbling through this. I had to remind myself that the focus now, more than ever, needs to be on happiness, inclusion and relationships. Many of the students themselves were also quite nervous and shy to get involved in class as they suddenly felt a lot more in the spotlight with only a smattering of their friends around for support. It is now that they need our support more than ever.

Luckily, I work at a school with fantastic leadership who had left no stone unturned in the preparations for us being back on campus: classrooms are spaced out, there are floor markings around the teachers desk, hand sanitisers in every classroom, one way traffic for the cafeteria, staggered end times for younger students, masks are available for those who want them, as well as some excellent and funny instructional videos for students before they came back… using teddy bears to show what social distancing looks like. The students have been great and understand the need to change their social behaviours but… and it is a big but, they are children. As soon as they are out of class, they are of course getting within a metre of each other. This is unavoidable. Official guidance from the Swiss government is that children do not need to socially distance the way adults do but that wherever possible we should use best practice and judgement to avoid them being in groups. So that is what we are doing.

My overwhelming feeling is appreciation and gratitude to be able to work at such a great school, that had us so well prepared for all this and to be back in my classroom, seeing my colleagues and my students faces again. My friends and fiancée are great of course, but I’ve really missed having people around who laugh at all my terrible jokes. Let’s be honest, none of us became teachers so that we could sit behind a computer all day on our own. Teaching is a people-centred vocation and I, for one, am delighted to see that all those wonderful people are the same as ever. There is no difference there.

The hardest part for me in all this is that so many of the fun things have been stripped out of our jobs: the spirit weeks, the year group events, the graduations, the theatre productions, the sports competitions, the field trips… That is the hard part. But if it’s like this for us, then imagine what it’s like for our students. We now have a duty to make our classes more engaging, more fun and more centred around our students’ own lives and personalities. They are coming to school and going to our classes… that is it. No socializing, no sports, no events. Now is the time to be brave, try out new approaches and do whatever we can to get our students smiling again. Ask them what they want to do, what they want to learn and how they feel their learning should be assessed. Start there. Can we reinvent our unit to satisfy the three basis needs of relatedness, autonomy and competence which are required for motivation to flourish?

Going back to school is different. And it will be different for some time. But the people are the same, great people who were there before all this. Put the ‘people’ at the centre of your planning. Lower the expectations on yourself, on your students and think about the people. If not now, when?
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Error correction and feedback: How much is too much?

6/10/2019

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As a language acquisition teacher, we are tasked with helping our students write (as well as speak) accurately. We all know that feeling when we take up a piece of work and we see those errors that we feel like we have repeated a million times in class already! I am sure we also remember that feeling when we were a student: getting back a piece of work that we felt like we had worked so hard on, but it is covered in the teacher’s red pen. So how should we go about error correction and feedback then? How many errors do we correct? How do we ensure the feedback is meaningful and used to push the student’s learning forward, rather than so deflating that it pushes them back?

In short, the language acquisition research argues that most students can actually acquire only 3-4 new words or phrases per 1 hour lesson. Yes, that is all. By acquire I mean, the word or phrase is engrained in long term memory and recall. The same is true with error correction and feedback in writing. If you correct every tiny little mistake and missed accent, the student will only remember the ‘sea of red ink’ and it will do very little to develop their acquisition. 

However, it is important not to forget the ‘outliers’; those students who, like us as their teachers, are linguists, grammatical nerds, who want to know every tiny error and why it is there. In my experience about 1 in every 20 students falls into this category. They are the ones who ‘ask’ about those sticky grammar points when you are mid-flow, sideways-laughing, at a funny part of a story. As you get to know them, you can and should correct all their errors but quietly explain to them that you are also a ‘grammar nerd’ and you knew they’d want to understand why the direct object pronoun is placed beside the indirect object pronoun. Then invite them to a ‘geek out’ at break time and go over it in detail. They will feel loved and fulfilled so now you can focus on the 99% who do not need or want that level of correction.

Ok so which errors should we correct?
​

In the pictures below is a student’s re-write of a story we were doing in class. This is a 13 year old student who has just started her second year of Spanish. The writing was done under exam conditions in class (ie. with no help from computers, dictionaries or teacher) in ten minutes. We had been co-creating the story together for about 5-6 lessons.
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As you can see, I choose not to correct all the errors. Instead, I focus on the errors that were vital to our story, or that were part of our ‘target structures’. For example “compró” (he/she bought) was an integral part of the story so I am correcting that. The difference between “quiero” (I want) and “quieres” (you want) has been a target structure in previous stories and at this stage, it is something I want students to be able to differentiate. However, in the first paragraph, I did not correct spelling errors like “una persona” or “difícil”. Why? Because they were not the focus of the story. From the research on intrinsic motivation, we know that students need to “feel” competent, that they can do it. If we correct every tiny error, the basic psychological need of ‘competence’ (from Self-Determination Theory) is dampened and the student feels like they ‘just can’t get it right no matter how hard they try’. I know it is challenging to let your red pen glide over an error which is glaring to you as the teacher but pick your battles! Does this error confuse the message? Was it a key focus in your lessons recently? If not, forget it. It will come later with more reading. 

So what about feedback? 

I like to use Geoff Petty’s ‘medals and missions’. It translates easily into Spanish and students immediately understand it. Pick 2-3 medals and 1-2 missions. Yes, you need ‘more’ medals than missions no matter how difficult this seems, you have to find them. However, and here is the kicker: in the ‘medals’ it is vital that you focus on the ‘process of language acquisition’ rather than the ‘quality’ itself. Praise the student with things like “I can clearly see you are reading at home” or “you are obviously listening intently in class”. That way, the student sees that they will be praised for going about the process in the correct way rather than just getting the answer right by whatever means. I only started doing this in the last year but I have seen huge differences once I reframed my feedback on the process and not product.

For the missions, I will usually give them a goal to improve the language like ‘use more description’ or ‘include connecting words to give your story more fluency’ rather than on the language itself. Sometimes, 1-2 short bullet points on a particular area of language is a good idea though. The students also use this ‘medals and missions’ way of giving feedback when doing peer assessment together in later tasks.

A further point that has really improved the way I give feedback is that I always try to read through the entire piece once before putting a single red mark on it. Yes, this is soooo difficult to do, it's like the red pen has a little red mind of its own at times! But if the piece is not too long, I try hard to do this. Then I ask myself: Ok, did I understand most of that? Were there lots of details from the story? Did it flow together? Has the student been listening to understand? It really focusses my mind on what is important and then allows me to pick out just 4-5 errors to concentrate on.

What happens next with the feedback?

For homework, students must write out their corrections. No ifs no buts. They write them always in the same place in their notebook so that all their corrections are together as they go through the year. We do this in a specific way:

  1. The student writes out the correct version of the sentence
  2. Next they use a different colour to underline or circle where the error used to be.

At the end they have a list of 4-5 sentences for each piece of written work that has a circle on the correct version, where they used to make mistakes. I always tell them this is the page to study or look over before any assessment. It is like having a teacher on your shoulder saying “psst.. remember, its quieres to say ‘you want’”. It means each student has a page of corrections that is specific and unique to them. I also encourage them to look over these corrections before they start their next written assignment. 

Let’s be honest, grading and marking is not why we got into this job. It’s never going to be ‘fun’ but at least with this method, it is time efficient and focussed on improvement. Most importantly, it maintains student motivation. It prevents them from feeling like a failure as they will never again receive a page of red pen that deflates and destroys all their hard work trying to get it right. Have a go and let me know what you think! Or if you have a better or more effective way of grading then please share… I’m all ears!
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Build relationships from the first day with the ‘class constitution’

16/8/2018

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Classroom management is a recurring theme for most teachers. In the ‘comprehensible input’ classroom it takes on even greater significance as you are looking for intent listening, total engagement and 100% understanding from your learners. You plan compelling, interesting stories and activities, and this breathes life and even more energy into your teenage students. It can sometimes result in a fear of things getting out of control or too noisy which can in turn impact their acquisition. The ‘Class Constitution’ is a way to get immediate buy-in from your students on Day 1. By co-creating it together as a team you are building strong and meaningful relationships through mutual respect from the very first time you meet them.

​The three core tenets of quality classroom management are: Clear expectations, Consistent routines and Strong relationships. The ‘Class Constitution’ hits all of these. It usually takes a full double period (for me that is 80 minutes) to do it properly. Dedicating a full class to this may seem like a lot but it is the best time investment you will spend all year and will save you hours and hours in the long run whilst also keeping you as that happy, enthusiastic and motivated teacher you want to be all year. 
PictureBuilding relationships results in more eager and engaged students
Step-by-step guide to your ‘Class Constitution’:
As students arrive on the first day, greet them at the door with care and respect, looking them in the eye. As they take their seats I tell them they are all no longer in school but in the ‘Embajada de Españoland’ (Embassy of Españoland). I bring them to the door and show them my 'border' (black tape on the ground and something we use a lot later on when talking about migration) and ask them to explain what they know about ‘borders’ and ‘embassies’ to me. For my total beginner students I tell them that normally in Españoland we only speak Spanish but just for today we will be doing everything in English. Yes, I know this is valuable time when they could be getting more input but in my experience, showing the students that this is important enough for a full double lesson sets us up for the year and allows me to have much more time giving them Comprehensible Input throughout the year as they are totally bought-into the process. With all other year groups/levels we do it in Spanish but I allow responses and group talk in English that I will translate for them.

Step 1: What is a ‘safe’ learning environment?
In small groups of three or four, students firstly have some quiet thinking time and then they chat about what a 'safe classroom' means to them. On large sheets of paper, they start jotting down ideas. You can do this in whatever way works for you but I usually have one big A3 piece of paper on each table, for every group, and it is divided into three sections. Each group writes their ideas in one section of their paper with the heading “safe”.
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Step 2: Teacher led discussion
After 5 minutes (or less if you wish), I ask each group for some ideas or key words they wrote down. I jot these on the board, making sure to recognize any great words or concepts that come out. Obviously though, you, as the teacher, are a skilled practitioner and professional, so you keep probing for answers until they come up with what you really want to hear. Students will quickly realise that while silly or immature words are listened to but not accepted, the teacher gets very enthusiastic and excited about concepts like ‘respect, listening, we love mistakes’ etc.
PictureHaving fun as part of our constitution equals more engagement
​Step 3: What is a 'fun' learning environment?
The above two steps are now copied in the same way but changing the focus to ‘fun’. I usually have each group move to a different table so they can see the words and answers that other groups wrote down. They can add some words if they wish. In the discussion part for this question you will see the enormous impact of the tone you set and the way you looked in their eyes and smiled when they gave you a great word in the first discussion. You will start getting really great stuff here right from the outset. Again, use your skills to facilitate a discussion until those key concepts start to surface.
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Step 4: What does it mean to be 'linguist'?
The final section of their paper is about being a linguist. I introduced this last September and it worked wonders as a classroom management piece throughout the year. They follow the same procedure as before but you may need to explain what a ‘linguist’ is. I tell them that by being citizens of Españoland they are all now part of a very elite and special group, they are no longer mere students or learners but linguists. Just watch their faces light up as you call them ‘linguists’. When we get to the group discussion part, I explain that we as linguists, are different, we do not act like everyone else. What do we do that is different? After some probing, they will come out with things like “we respect other cultures, we listen to other languages, we read and inquire into cultural differences, we love speaking languages, we love listening to others talk in a different language” etc. This simple element of naming them for the whole year as linguists has a profound impact on behaviour, attitude and confidence. 

PictureRespect for the constitution allows for effective group activities
​Step 5: Pulling it all together
Once we have all our key ideas on the board under our three headings, I ask them what they notice. Someone will point out the word ‘respect’ has magically appeared in all three areas so this must be the centre and core of our constitution. We then circle and highlight other ‘big ideas’ or key concepts together. Finally, I ask them if it would be ok if I could represent them and pool all of this together into our very own constitution. I also ask them, “if we have an embassy based on these ideas do you think it will be a good year in Españoland?”, they inevitably will answer yes. I also explicitly point out and say that they did not walk in here and get handed a list of ‘my’ rules of the class. Instead, they wrote their own constitution, they came up with the key values and concepts of being a citizen of Españoland themselves.

Step 6: The next class
I start the next class by showing them their constitution… it is no surprise that all my classes have a constitution that is almost identical. I ask them if I have represented their ideas adequately and if they are happy that this be our ‘guiding document and principles’ for life in Españoland. There is also great cross-curricular learning here with Humanities; I often have the younger students speak to their humanities teacher about our constitution and allow them to show off that they know what it is and why it is important to countries and citizens to have one.

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Final version of our Class Constitution 2017
​Throughout the year:
The constitution remains on our ‘embassy’ wall for the year. If there are any lapses in behavior or standards that we all expect from each other, I simply bring the student(s) in question to the constitution and point to the requisite section and smile. This usually does the trick but sometimes I might have to remind the entire class of our underlying constitutional values that they themselves designed and wrote. These lapses in standards are actually incredibly rare. In general, co-creating the shared ideals together results in a respectful classroom where everyone feels safe, where we have fun, where we act like the linguists we are and where we thrive upon our favourite mistakes as unique learning opportunities. I always remind students that “as linguists, we are special, we are unique, we listen intently to understand and therefore learn”. Simply changing the discourse and calling them linguists possesses some magical power to keep everyone engaged, enthused and eager to represent themselves as the linguist they are.
Planning to motivate not to laminate:
As my regular blog followers will already know, the thesis for my Doctor of Education studies is focused on strategies that motivate both the teacher and student in the language classroom. Specifically, I am looking at Ryan and Deci’s (2000) Self-Determination Theory relating to intrinsic motivation. It posits that when activities meet the three basic psychological needs of autonomy, relatedness and competence, this results in intrinsic motivation; where we engage in something out of pure joy and interest rather than external forces acting upon us. This forms the backbone of all my classroom planning as, in my opinion, motivated students who like the class and want to be there, who want to listen and learn, make for great language learners. The ‘Class Constitution’ meets all of the three psychological needs of Self-Determination Theory:
  • Autonomy: Students are co-creating this constitution themselves with the teacher; they have control, choice and ownership over what to suggest and what is ultimately included.
  • Relatedness: Through building the ‘Class Constitution’ together in groups and then with me as the teacher, they are fostering strong bonds and relationships both to each other, to the teacher and to 'Españoland' itself.
  • Competence: When the teacher acknowledges the students' ideas and then accepts their concepts as important enough to go into the constitution, the students feel ‘able’ for what is being asked, they feel competent.
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"Why is everyone getting an 'A'? This can't be right..."

25/3/2018

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This was the general gist of a recent sit down I had with a school administrator when my grade distribution for the first semester looked very different from most other teachers. In my current school we use the International Baccalaureate (IB) grading levels, going from 7 as the highest grade to 1 at the lowest end. The administration noticed that my 'graph', as well as a few other teachers, looked quite different from 'the norm'. The vast majority of my 75-80 students were achieving a 6 or 7 with only a small number in the middle with a 3, 4 or 5 and no-one underneath that. To be fair to my school, the administration was not 'giving out' to me but rather they wanted to check in and understand why this was the case and find out whether my students were being adequately challenged. 
PictureReading and acquiring in the deskless class
I had never really looked or thought about my 'graphical distribution' of grades before. If the students achieve what is set out against the IB grading criteria, they then merit the high grades right?... but his question about 'are they all being adequately challenged' did make me stop and think. I went back and looked through some of the assessments I had set (presentations, story retells, writing out a story, reading comprehensions etc) and for each level I really do think these are challenging assignments. The "problem" (if that's what we can call it) is that the students are almost all really highly motivated, are engaged for 95-100% of the class time, only speak and listen to Spanish during every minute of every class and are all in a comprehensible input environment where we always seek 100% comprehension from each and every student before moving on.

I don't think it is 'me' in particular, but rather the comprehensible input methods I teach, which they have grown to love and cherish: storytelling, acting out parts of the book, movietalks, special person interviews etc. Is it so bad or so wrong that they are acquiring so much language so quickly that they are almost all acing every assessment they get? Is it not our goal to try and have highly motivated students as we know that will lead to achievement of their potential? Is it really my job to now go and set harder tests and evaluations so they don't all do so well, thus putting a lower number on some kids heads and demotivating them after all we have done to get this far together? I really hope not.

PictureUp and moving = increased engagement
However, it does beg the question about maintaining sufficient challenge for each and every student. Of course, like in any class in the world, some students are faster processors than others, some need more repetitions of the structures and some don't. But I firmly believe in the Comprehensible Input mantra of 100% comprehension from all. Does this mean some students are bored? They never look bored. They never say they are bored in any feedback surveys. Quite the contrary in fact. So what is the problem if we are all learning, and learning so fast? What is the problem if they are all acquiring so much language that they ace all the assessments?

​There is a cultural aspect to this too let's not forget. An 80% test score in an American school can mean a very different achievement level to an 80% score in a French or British school. The research is quite clear though, putting numbers on students heads, particularly low ones, demotivates much more than it motivates to improve. So why do we keep doing it? Why not just do away with grades altogether and just have comment only feedback for the first few years of secondary school (say up to age 15 or something). Is that really so radical? 

As other language teachers around the world, I really would love to hear your comments on this. How do you maintain motivation whilst still having sufficient challenge for the high achievers? Do your comprehensible input methods also result in a 'skewed grade distribution' and if so... does that not just mean that what we are doing is actually working?

And most importantly, should we not be celebrating the 'skewed' graph rather than trying to reset it?
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Turning Movietalk into Movieaction

21/1/2018

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PicturePutting the action in Movieaction
'Movietalk' is a popular method for language teachers to increase the amount of 'comprehensible input' in their classrooms through interesting little videos with lots of repetitions of new structures or vocabulary. Martina Bex gives a great overview of the method here. I too like to use it as a way to allow my students to hear multiple repetitions of language structures I want them to acquire, or ones I feel like they have not yet mastered. 

My only issue with Movietalk was that until recently I felt like it was hard to 'circle' (asking the class and having them repeat the target structures) without it coming across as tedious or boring. For example, one of my favourite videos to use in December is this Justino 2015 advertisement for the 'Lotería de Navidad' in Spain. If I wanted students to acquire 'estaba trabajando', lets say, then I would pause the video a lot and keep asking questions about where and how he was working but half the time I felt like the students were looking at me like "Yes, we know he works in a factory, we have said this like 20 times and​ we have just seen it in the video... why do you keep asking us?"

​Know that feeling anyone?

PictureVideo retell with images
So now, what I try to do is make the video I am using much more interactive and more like a 'Movieaction' than a 'Movietalk'. I still do all the same steps as a normal Movietalk with lots of pauses and checks for understanding but I will also have a student become the character in the video and get him or her up in front of the class asking questions about what we have just seen in the video. This seems to hold their attention much better and it doesn't seem as 'repetitive' if I am asking this person about all the things we have just seen.

Remember, the key is to try to keep what we do 'compelling' wherever possible so I also use this character to bring in other characters from our recent story. I start with something like "pero clase, Justino tiene un secreto" and then it will turn out that Justino (our character in the video) "estaba trabajando" with 'Lady Gaga' or whoever else from our recent story. Not only does this little twist to the video seem to have them hanging on every word waiting for what happens next it also gives you the chance to do some 'formative assessment' and see if those structures you did 2 months ago are still there. Can they remember the old story? Can they use those structures we worked on 2 months ago? If they struggle then we go back over it all again. It really is amazing to see how linking to previous stories re-energizes the whole class again. 

PictureOut of their seats swapping new words
The final piece to the 'Moveaction' jigsaw is like so many of the other comprehensible input teaching approaches... slow down, take your time and get them out of their seats. I will have students use their whiteboards to write down new vocabulary from the video, then get up and swap them around or they will write 3 key parts of the video (using the target structures) with their partner, or draw a key scene from the video. The important part is putting the 'action' in 'Movieaction', having them get up, swap phrases, tell each other etc.

When you do these and you walk around and see just how many students have chosen to write or draw your new 'secret detail' with links back to your old story, it is remarkable. These random, silly, stupid, arbitrary little links and details are in fact, the keys to success and the ones they remember and want to talk about no matter how funny or interesting the actual video is. 

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Spanish tapas story and pinchos cook-off

13/4/2017

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Learning about Spanish food, tapas, traditions and all of the other amazing culinary aspects of Spanish life is part of most standard Spanish courses around the world, so how can we, as teachers, bring it to life for the students?

​Well to begin with, we need a TPRS story of course! In our 'Foods and Culinary Traditions' unit I first started with a story about a man who wanted to eat 27 different tapas so he could become the 'Best Tapas eater in the World'. We circled the verb 'pedir' in various forms in the past as this can be a tough one, whilst also bringing in lots of new food and drink vocabulary.

Start with a story

​Well to begin with, we need a TPRS story of course! In our 'Foods and Culinary Traditions' unit I first started with a story about a man who wanted to eat 27 different tapas so he could become the 'Best Tapas eater in the World'. We circled the verb 'pedir' in various forms in the past as this can be a tough one, whilst also bringing in lots of new food and drink vocabulary.

​After the storytelling aspect students then spent a class coming up with a role play where 6 different people or groups had to use 'pedir'... for example, most groups chose a restaurant scene and had things like "Yo pedí gambas"... "No hermano! Tu pediste churros, mis padres pidieron gambas!"... "Qué ridículo!" etc. The students really loved this part and it was a lot of fun.

'Pinchos' making cook-off competition

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​The last day of term was arguably the best though... we had a 'Pinchos Competition'. Pinchos or Pintxos (In Basque) are smaller portions than tapas, and traditionally can be eaten in 2-3 mouthfuls. After a presentation and discussion on the the pinchos tradition, students had to invent their own pinchos and enter them in our 'Españoland Annual Pinchos Extravaganza'! I supplied the bread and the sticks and the students had to bring 3-4 ingredients to make the pinchos. They had 20 minutes to complete them and they also had to write a little sign explaining the ingredients and why they chose them. They were encouraged to link it to their own culture somehow. 

​We had some incredible creations and students then voted for their two favourites after tasting them and reading the signs. I also treated it a little like 'masterchef' and went around speaking to them and asking questions as they made their creations. They loved the idea of making something very cultural themselves and they were really immersed in the Spanish idea of sharing little mouthfuls of food together as a group. 

It was even more 'authentic' thanks to another Spanish teacher and mother of one of the students in the school, coming in and giving us a demonstration of her own pincho using Spanish tortilla de patatas. Definitely something I am going to do again next year and of course I also had the benefit of tasting all the wonderful pinchos on show!
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Student-centered ways to review a TPRS novel

16/5/2016

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The TPRS novels have completely revolutionized my teaching. In the past 3 years I have used a wide variety of these readers with diverse student groups, levels and ages. While of course, the actual story line, plot and themes appeal differently to each individual student depending on their own personal interests, the idea of reading a whole novel entirely in Spanish and actually understanding what is going on, is hugely motivational across the board. 
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My students are all very familiar with my mantra "Leer es poder" (reading is 'power' or​ reading is 'being able', a play on words and sounds), so much so that when I say "Leer es..." the whole class will shout "PODER" back at me.

Personally I believe that part of our role as language teachers is to instill a love for reading. Teaching skills as well as content is widely recognised as part of our profession and reading is a skill. A skill that moves our students so far forward with their language learning, and with the TPRS books making this skill 'compelling', it motivates students to keep turning pages and keep acquiring more language.

In terms of reviewing a novel, I am not a big fan of the standard content testing so I have tried a few activities like 'the yellow brick road' and 'freeze frame' from Martina Bex among others. This time round I decided to make it more student-centered hopefully meaning higher engagement and less work for me! Win win!
Student-Centered Novel Reviewing:
  1. First each student was given a chapter (some chapters were assigned to more than 1 student). They had to find a phrase or quotation (maximum 8 words) that summed up the key information in this chapter.
  2. Next they wrote this in big letters on yellow card paper after I had approved it.
  3. I collected these all in; shuffled them and then gave a set of cards to each table of 4-5 students.
  4. Their next job was to try to find the chapter number and page for each phrase in their groups.
  5. Once they had this they had to put them in order. The first group finished was the winner.
  6. Next we used these for The Yellow Brick Activity where students in pairs used these phrases to talk about what was happening at that moment in the book.
  7. The final piece of the jigsaw was The Freeze Frame activity. We did various takes on this using the cards the students had created. In some scenes they had to act out the scene previous to what was on their card and finish frozen on their phrase, while in others they just acted that sentence.
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Freeze frame superstars
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Students working to find the phrases
The students really enjoyed all aspects of this and I am very happy that they know this novel inside out now. I prefer to always have the students do the work wherever possible and these fit nicely into that approach. One possible nice extension activity would be to ask the students to make up a completely new scene in a totally different context with the phrase they have on their card. Give them some time to prepare it and either act it out or record it.
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Creating the yellow brick road cards
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Props in use for freeze frame time
As always I would welcome your comments and shares. Please let me know if you have done anything different as I am always keen to learn and try new ideas.
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An official observation's view of the TPRS classroom

11/1/2016

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PictureStudents retelling our latest story
Being new to a school generally means that there is going to be some kind of performance appraisal and observations within the first few months and this school, I'm glad to say, is no different. It can, of course, be an intimidating experience both for the teacher being observed and, at times, the observer. What I like about the initial performance appraisal at my current school, ISL, is that it is all led by the teacher themselves. Every member of faculty had to complete quite a long self evaluation appraisal form on various aspects of our professional lives. From this we were asked to pick some focus points that we would like to work on and this would be used in our observations. Next was a meeting with the allocated member of the leadership team to discuss these professional goals, refine them further and let the observer know what you would like them to look for in your professional practice. ​Once specific goals had been set out, the observer did a series of unannounced drop-ins with a variety of my classes to see my teaching in action in short stints with various age groups. Finally there was an announced full class observation. ​

PictureReading our novel in the deskless classroom
Now, as far as I am aware I am the only "TPRS" teacher in my school and I've actually already led a short language department meeting on its benefits after attending Grant Boulanger's workshop in Leysin American School in 2015. However, I am pretty certain most of my colleagues are indeed "CI" teachers as I know they deliver interactive, energetic lessons with lots of comprehensible input (I've already observed some of them in action!). Nonetheless, I was a little more than apprehensive about my first official observation in a new school taking place in my now deskless classroom with a crazy story about 'Kim-Jung Il' receiving a package from his scary auntie who was looking for someone to open it on planet Mars!!

PictureWhiteboard storyboard story retell
In the end I thought "what the heck, this TPRS stuff was good enough for them to hire me so it better be good enough now that I am actually here!" - as part of my hiring process I had to teach a lesson and, 'surprise, surprise', I did a TPRS mini story (which they obviously must have liked!)! As the lesson and story developed I could see that the observation was going well as the observer himself was laughing away, repeating the story, copying the gestures and clearly learning a little Spanish. 

​So why am I sharing this? Because TPRS works!! For everyone! All ages, genders, personalities and levels. As you can see from the Assistant Principal's comments below (that he has given me permission to post), it is clear that after coming by my class a few times, Mr. Anderson is also sold on the benefits of TPRS. If you are worried what your school or colleagues might think, or if you are simply toying with trying that first story but keep find reasons not do it, then stop. Just go for it. You will laugh, the students will laugh and they will learn. A lot. They will learn so much in one class and will be dying to come back to your class the next day. Now if that sounds like a good day at work then ask yourself again "what am I waiting for?".


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Review your novel with the 'Yellow Brick Road'!

28/4/2015

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Doing a book or novel in class is something my classes seem to enjoy a lot but it can be a challenge keeping it interesting and figuring out ways to evaluate their learning. I came across Carrie Toth's excellent website somewheretoshare.com last month and she has some wonderful ideas to do with novels.

I decided to use a version of her "Yellow Brick Road" one to recap and revise over the key points in the book once we had finished. The idea is you have 1-2 key 'triggers' of chunks of words from each chapter and these are used to jog the students memory to aid their discussion. The only difference I had was that I actually got the students to make the yellow 'bricks' and they chose the statements themselves.

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I gave each pair of students a chapter (or some important chapters had 3 people working on it) and they had to find a key phrase that would jog our memories as to what happened at that point in the book. The only rule was it could be no more than 5 words. This part seemed to work really well, each student could be seen actively re-reading the chapter to try and pick the most appropriate word chunk for their poster.

Once everyone was finished a few students laid out all the yellow 'bricks' for our road out in the corridor. They did this in order as I felt like otherwise the chunks of words may not make sense to them. Students spoke in groups at each step using the prompt on the floor to help them. After about 60-90 seconds I would stop the music and they'd move on to the next card. To change things up sometimes I'd ask them to move 2 or 3 steps forward. I also mixed up the groups and pairs after about 4 steps so they weren't always talking to the same person.

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I think the students really liked it and it worked really well as a student centred review activity. They were receiving lots of comprehensible input from their classmates and it certainly helped them to review and revise for the end of book evaluation. High five and thumbs up to the yellow brink road... I'll be using it again!


I'd love to know your comments and how you evaluate and review books/novels you have done in class! Leave me your comments below or follow me @liamprinter on twitter!

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    Dr. Liam Printer:
    Host of The Motivated Classroom podcast, keynote speaker, presenter, lecturer, language teacher, teacher trainer, educational consultant, published author and basketball coach. 14 years teaching experience in a variety of educational settings. Currently I am the Teaching & Learning Research Lead and Approaches to Learning Coordinator at the International School of Lausanne in Switzerland where I also teach language acquisition.

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