53 minute read
Session 1: Small Talk
Objective
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By the end of class, you will be able to…
(NOTE: The example objectives and lesson are given in French; they can be used with any language. You can download materials in multiple languages from our Teachers Pay Teachers store (CI Liftoff), or use the examples to make your own materials.
Beginner: answer questions with one or more words - in French! - about the weather and date.
Intermediate: answer questions with sentences in French about the weather and date.
Advanced: answer questions with strings of sentences in French, to describe the weather today and the activities that people in class are doing.
Preliminary Notes on Norming the Class
On the first day of class, especially for classes for whom this is their first year with you, this part of class is going to take way, way longer than most any other day of the year. On the first day of class, you might have a lot going on. If so, you might only say TWO or THREE sentences during the Guided Oral Input.
Considering how often you will most likely be walking over to the rules and executing Plan A of the classroom management moves discussed in Chapter Four, and how long it will probably take to norm the class today, maybe even three sentences of actual Guided Oral Input is a stretch.
In the first days of class, and, in fact, all year, your goal is not only to give students a whole bunch of Guided Oral Input, but rather to provide just enough input time so that you can process the new language and information by proceeding to the other components of the Daily Instructional Framework that come after Guided Oral Input:
In the first few lessons, since you will be setting up the routines and procedures for the entire year, you will not be providing much actual content during the class discussions in Guided Oral Input.
It will be easiest for you if you actually think through the following lesson word by word, picturing yourself teaching it in your actual classroom space, and really get comfortable with the concept that you will only be imparting a couple of new sentences in this lesson.
This technique of mentally walking through a visualization of your future performance is often used by athletes, public speakers, and performers, to rehearse and prepare for a successful execution of the game plan or script.
Perhaps it will help to set your mind at ease, if doubts creep in as you are visualizing the lesson, and you begin to question if it is “worth it” to invest so much time in preparing for a lesson in which you “only” teach a couple of new concepts, to think about the very important information that you are imparting, through the structure of the lesson and the manner in which you deliver the instruction.
(1) You are speaking slowly and carefully, using pauses for processing time and so you can calmly walk to a visual aid and use it to clearly and unequivocally indicate the meaning of what you are saying. This demonstrates in a tangible way to students that, indeed, Rule #1 is, in fact, the prime objective. Understanding is key, and you will show students, through your calm, slow, uncluttered speech, that you will make it very possible for them to actually implement that rule each minute of class. You are setting students at ease, lowering their affective filter, and helping to create the optimal conditions for language acquisition.
(2) You are conducting class in an unhurried yet structured manner, not rushing to “cover” a significant amount of new information, but rather perfectly prepared to only impart a couple of new sentences in Guided Oral Input. With the manner and structure of class as your primary goals, you can free your thinking mind to be present to the class’s attention, and to any slight distractions that might arise during the lesson. With your conscious mind attuned to the goal of noticing the faintest whisper of a side conversation or the beginning indication that someone is about to start rooting around in their binder for their schedule when they should be listening and watching the lesson, you will be much more ready to interrupt your instruction and walk to the rules.
Since you will be communicating in the language a lot this year, your efforts in this area right now, at the very beginning, are a very important investment in the success of every lesson, all year, and, indeed, of this entire instructional approach. So this broader learning (that you will interrupt each and every little distraction) is much more important, especially in the first lessons, than any content or specific facts you will impart.
(3) You are demonstrating the daily framework to students, and actually completing it even though you might well actually be working with one or two sentences from the Guided Oral Input.
This is fine, and even desirable, because it allows you to take a very simple, very short amount of language from the Guided Oral Input and process it using the lesson framework that comes after Guided Oral Input (Scaffolded Oral Review, Shared Writing, Shared Reading, and Student Application and Assessment), which demonstrates to the class how the lessons will go each year.
For example, your Shared Writing might be only one sentence in these first few lessons. That’s fine, as long as students have the experience of doing some Shared Writing, no matter how short or simple, in the first few lessons, they will come to expect that it will happen every day.
The first few lessons are very important in establishing students’ expectations of “what’s normal” in your class and “how things are done” in Latin class this year.
Of course, your goal is to cover more information in your lessons than just one sentence. But without going slowly here at the beginning, and clearly and consistently demonstrating how the daily lessons go, you will, in all likelihood, not truly experience the power of the Stepping Stones daily lesson framework this year, because you will be constantly trying to establish the Daily Instructional Framework as the “standard operating procedure.”
Whatever you do in the first few lessons, and especially in the first lesson, will imprint on students’ minds in a special way, and become the standard operating procedure for “how we do class here.” So, please, when preparing and thinking through these first few lessons, give a good deal of thought to how you will feel delivering such small doses of new language and information in the Guided Oral Input part of the lessons, so that you do not second-guess yourself in class, wondering if you are “covering enough” or “teaching enough.”
It is an investment. You will live off the interest all year, and throughout all the years that you teach these students in the future.
You might very well find that you live off the interest for the rest of your teaching career, because you will forever after have a strong daily lesson structure, and you will find yourself implementing it with less and less planning, and with more and more confidence, until you, one day, in a year or two, look back on these first few lessons when you first established the Daily Instructional Framework as a real turning point in your development as a communicative language teacher.
That’s most assuredly the way I feel when I look back on the first lessons I taught with the instructional frameworks I learned from Lucy Calkins and the Teachers College Reading and Writing Project. At first, it felt clunky, like using someone else’s words and trying to be someone else.
To say that I was “using someone else’s words” might well be the understatement of the millennium. I was literally teaching from Lucy’s books, reading right off the page as I taught. I was telling “personal stories” that I had cribbed from Maggie Beatty, my TCRWP trainer from Summer Institutes, and pretending that they were my own stories.
But after the awkwardness of those first lessons, I gradually put the books aside, and began to develop and tell my own stories, and find my own voice as a workshop teacher, until I can now plan and teach using the TCRWP frameworks and materials, on my own, without even a planbook to guide me.
Now we will turn to the lesson procedures.
Norming the Class
Having greeted the students in English, checked to make sure everyone is in the right room, introduced yourself, explained where to put their things, etc., explain to them briefly that in this class we will be communicating a good deal in the language and that this is the best way for them to learn!
Tell them that the first activity you will be doing is reading and then you will discuss the calendar and weather. Then get right to it in that first class, even if it is only a few minutes long. While all their other teachers lecture them on the first day, you will begin instructing them using the language as quickly as possible.
Tell the students that they simply need to sit back, understand the general messages in class, not every word, and that your job is to make sure they do not get lost.
Tell them that you will not call on them individually to speak in class until they are ready, later in the year, so all they need to do right now is sit back and listen. Remind the students that they will spend most of their time in class hearing the language and using it, and that you are about to begin a portion of the lesson in which everyone will work together to keep the class speaking in the language.
Tell the class that you will begin with a short Reading Workshop, and read a short text together about school schedules, and then you will have a discussion of the calendar in French. You can also share the objective with them (see the list provided for examples).
Reading Workshop
Find That Cognate
Italian Example
Project or distribute paper copies of a short text that has many cognates. You can download these texts from our Teachers Pay Teachers store (CI Liftoff) or create your own. When preparing your own text for the Find That Cognate strategy, it is best to think of a category of words that naturally contains a lot of cognates. For instance, these examples use the cognate-heavy categories of school subjects and sports.
German Example
The following Reading Workshop texts use the cognate-heavy topic of animals, with varying degrees of difficulty for various levels of classes. Of course, here in the very first lesson, you are strongly cautioned not to choose texts that are intimidating, even with your upper-level classes.
That’s why there is only one level of the “school subjects” texts which were designed to be used during the first days of school. They only have one level, because I wanted all classes to have a strong, confident start in Reading Workshop.
I strongly recommend that leveled texts, like the examples above, be used only after at least three days of super-easy, one-level-fits-all texts. And, if your upper-level students are intimidated by the Advanced text, or even the Intermediate text, you can simply drop down to the lower-level texts so that they can get strong and confident.
(You can always return to the more-challenging version of the text with your upper-level classes later, in a future Reading Workshop, and “stretch” them by revisiting the same topic and text layout, but the more challenging Intermediate or Advanced level text).
You might conduct class in this way, if you are using the cognate reading below, in French.
Please note that the lesson notes are written in English.
The words that are said in the class’s stronger shared language (English, for me and many teachers in the US) are written in this font.
You may notice that there is a lot of English in these first lessons. Again, it is an investment. You are setting up not only your classroom expectations, but also a framework, so you will not need to continually re-explain how class goes each day.
You will save a lot of time that is, for many teachers, spent in English, throughout the year, setting up new activities and instructional frameworks. You will not need to do that, because you will follow the same basic lesson framework almost every day.
Please do not balk at the amount of English you are investing in the setup here at the beginning of the year. It will come back to you, with plenty of interest!
Examples of Cognate Readings from our Free Year of Curriculum to accompany this book:
German Beginner Cognate Reading
German Intermediate Cognate Reading
German Advanced Cognate Reading
Once the students can see the projected text, or they have it on their desks, you can proceed.
Note that the convention in this book is for the demonstration lessons to use font to distinguish between what is suggested to say in the course language and the class's stronger shared language in the following way.
"The class's stronger shared language is in this font."
Now we will turn to the demonstration lesson.
“Let’s read this school schedule."
(Reminder: This font denotes part of the lesson delivered in the class's stronger shared language.)
"Your job is to notice (if the students have a paper copy, you might say “mark the text”) the cognates. Cognates are words that are the same in English and French. I will read to you in French, then you will tell me the cognates you noticed (you can say them in English).”
“We need a “French time” signal so we all know that it is time to transition to heavy-duty French listening.”
“What do you guys think would be a good signal? We need the signal to have a visual component - some kind of gesture that everyone can see - and also something that we can hear, like a phrase or a sound.”
(Take ideas, and perhaps vote.)
“That is a great signal. Shawn, nice job!”
(The student whose idea was the winning signal is generally the most willing to take the job, so you will use the “Positive Preemptive Peer Pressure strategy to encourage them to agree to the position, as described below.)
“Class, clap for Shawn!” (You beam at Shawn as if they are the most wonderful student in the history of school.). No, no, clap ENTHUSIASTICALLY! Shawn, do you want to be our Class Starter?”
(Usually, Shawn will say yes. If not, ask them whom they would like to nominate. Then have everyone clap for that person, to preemptively peer pressure them a bit. If that person does not want the job, you might have them nominate a third person, or you might just say that you will start class, but you will just give the teacher signal, and use some signal that you like, unless someone in class wants to change it.)
“OK, we will read this text and talk about the words we see, and then we will talk about the calendar. I will talk in French and your only job is to listen and understand, and my job is to make it easy to understand French, by pointing and talking slowly and clearly. Shawn, let’s go!”
(Shawn gives the signal. You take a deep, calming breath and center yourself to lead the class through a simple, very comprehensible task.)
(Place your hand or pointer on the title of the text and begin reading in a slow yet fluid way, moving your hand or pointer through the text as you go. Resist the temptation to stop and establish meaning. The goal is for students to actually read through the text in its entirety with you, looking for cognates.)
(Reminder: This font denotes part of the lesson delivered in the class's stronger shared language.)
(Once you have read the entire text, point to or circle a very obvious cognate and ask for its meaning in the class’s stronger shared language.)
(Students answer. Then you write the English on the text, and spell it, saying the letters in the course language, as demonstrated below.)
(Note: This sounds like: “Oui, liste en anglais est list. ell-eeyy-ess-tayy (saying letters in French). Liste.”)
(Moving on to another cognate,)
(Asking a more open-ended question — you might skip this in beginner classes)
(gesture “look.”)
(gesture)
"means look"
"Show me
(gesture)
(Note: This sounds like: “Classe, regardez (gesture). ‘Regardez’ (gesture) means ‘look’. (gesture). Show me ‘regardez’ (gesture).”)
(Note on management of these gestures: You may need to “park” yourself here to make sure that everyone is showing you their comprehension by gesturing with you, even if their gestures are not very energetic or dramatic. You will simply repeat if needed, “Show me ‘regardez’” until the entire class is gesturing, even just a little bit.)
Today in these first moments of class it is of supreme importance that the entire class comply with your first request. When you use the gestures in your own speech, it is not important that the entire class also use the gesture, though some students just naturally will gesture along.
However, when you are introducing or reviewing the gestures, and you say, “Show me,” you will want to maintain the expectation that everyone gesture together, to focus their attention on associating the gesture, the sound, and the meaning.
You do not need to go into a long-winded explanation here, or plead to the class. In fact, the less said the better. You will exert a stronger “presence” as a leader in class if you simply repeat “Show me regardez” as you gesture, and give the class as a whole an expectant look as if to say, without speaking, “you all need to do this.”
If some students still do not comply, simply repeat again, “Show me ‘regardez.’” If, at this point, there are a few holdouts, you will probably want to do some “selective not noticing,” and make like you think everyone has complied. You can take mental note of those students, and plan to move a little closer to them next time you ask the class to gesture with you, to see if a little more proximity will nudge them into participating.
If that is not successful, you should still continue on and not get into a power struggle, and just plan to have a follow-up conversation with them in which you explain that they can just make the slightest of gestures to show their comprehension, but that you will be asking them to get their hands involved because it is good for their vocabulary.
(Moving on, speaking in the course language and getting back to the sentence that prompted the gesturing,)
(Note: Point to the word “Cognates” in the text, or write it on the board, and then point around on the text, to indicate nonverbally that you want the class to give you more English cognates.)
“Can you read any other words?”
(Getting back into the language, and repeating the same words that you just used in that little English aside,)
(Students answer, probably in English.)
Reading Workshop only lasts about 6 to 8 minutes on a normal day, and this is a very not-normal day, so you might very well only look for two or three cognates before moving on. Another note is that you do not need to worry about how to “tie” the content of the Reading Workshop into the rest of the lesson; the content of Reading Workshop is, mostly, not tied to the lesson. Rather, it is a “warm-up” time to spend working with comprehensible texts, to give students comprehensible input in written form as they read and in aural form as they listen to you read and discuss the text. So, after a few minutes, you will want to move into the Guided Oral Input, the calendar discussion.
Guided Oral Input
Small Talk (Calendar and Weather)
From the Year of Free Curriculum in our CI Liftoff TpT store
You will begin with a blank calendar, just a piece of chart paper with a blank grid on which you will create the current month, as pictured below, or perhaps with a digital calendar like the example above.
Example of a Chart Paper Calendar
Simply put away the Reading Workshop text and move to the calendar, so that you can transition to the Guided Oral Input without needing to speak in English.
(Gesture “look.”)
"means 'look.'"
(gesture)
Put your hand on the blank grid.
Write “Calendar” in the course language and spell it.
(gesture)
(put your hand on the grid.
When you speak about the calendar and weather, do so in a slow, animated voice, with lots of pointing and pausing. You will write the needed words into the blank calendar, such as “August” and “Monday” and the numeral that denotes the date, and perhaps the word “hot” and/or “sunny”.
You are not expected to teach certain words, just to communicate with them as the strategy’s title suggests (Small Talk). So, you do not need to write all the days of the week, or all the kinds of weather.
Just write the words you need for the specific lesson today. The focus is on communicating, not on teaching certain words.
The conversation might go something like this (with long pauses of two or more seconds between words in these early stages of them listening to you as you first speak the language):
(gesture and pause to sweep the class with your eyes to check for understanding)
(point and pause, look at the class)
Write August in the language, and spell it in the language.
(point to August)
Write “month” in the language, spelling it, and draw a line to August.
(Some kids call out the word “month”)
(point to month)
(point to August)
(jot “21” somewhere, perhaps on the board)
Jot "August 22."
(Some kids call out “21” in a mixture of French and English, which one depending mostly on how much of a risk-taking nature these particular students have)
(write 21 on the calendar)
(point, but don’t write)
(point)
(point)
(point)
Write and spell in your course language.
(point)
(point)
(Some kids call out “Thursday” in a mixture of French and English, which one depending mostly on how much of a risk-taking nature these particular students have)
(point)
(point)
(point)
(point)
You have arrived at a good time, having established with perfect clarity to all the students in the classroom what the date today is in the TL, to take a nice deep breath and to smile approvingly at your students.
In those moments, much information is conveyed, that:
(1) the class will be conducted in the target language,
(2) the mood of the class will be positive,
(3) the students will not need to “think” as much as “feel” the language in order to get what is going on, and
(4) the students will therefore be able to understand without effort and that you will make it easy through your slow speech and visual support.
Scaffolded Oral Review
Quick Quiz
This review strategy is simplicity itself, and I use it frequently. This is, by far, the Scaffolded Oral Review strategy that I use the most, and you could probably use this strategy in 75% of your lessons, without it ever getting too stale. Why can you just re-use a strategy like this over and over without it becoming painful?
Because the content of the lesson changes each day. And because, as the year goes on, and you work through this book, you will learn ways to deepen the questions you ask. And, perhaps most importantly of all, because you will adopt the attitude that you are completely justified in this sound pedagogical practice.
You will remind yourself that your own mental health and professional development come first this year, and simplicity is your new standard operating procedure. You will reflect on how you are completely in the right to provide ever-changing content within a strong, pedagogically-sound “I do, we do, you do,” Gradual Release of Responsibility lesson framework.
You will tell yourself that yes, the brain does crave novelty, but that, no, the brain does not crave chaos, and that what we are really striving to provide is novelty within safety, and that a consistent, predictable, comfortable structure provides safety.
You simply move to your Review Spot and ask a series of questions about what was just discussed.
HOLD UP, TINA!
Where is my "Review Spot"??
Excellent question. Your Review Spot is the place where you will go each day to physically signal to the students that you are moving on from Guided Oral Input to the next part of the lesson.
My Review Spot
Students do not need to know the official names for the lesson parts. They just need to know that there is a point in class where new information is wrapped up, and it is time to review and then transition into Shared Writing. They really don’t need all the fancy teacher terminology; they just need to live the experience, and they will quickly just “get” how class flows. And then everyone can just relax and get down the road of the year with a nice, easy structure and a sense of safety and predictability in the challenging world we live in.
The best Review Spot I have found is right by the artists’ easel. Even though you will not have used the artists yet (you will hire and train them later in this book), and thus you really have no reason to be in that particular spot today, you can just get into the habit of standing over there, so that you will have established that as your Review Spot when you do start using the artists’ work, as shown in this photo.
It is far simpler, and thus strongly recommended, especially in the first lessons, to have the class just chorally respond to your questions. Later you will ask students to write the answers, but I recommend keeping it simple today.
Generally I ask between six and ten questions, or even more. But on the first day, you might ask only two or three, or even just one.
In these first lessons, you are advised to stick to literal review questions and not branch out into asking other questions, but we will add on ways to ask more personalized questions in later sessions. I want these first lessons to feel easy to the students, so I ask ONLY soft-pitch, quick wins, and never any “gotcha” questions.
At the beginning of the term, and throughout the course, especially with beginners,I suggest that you stick to simple “either-or” or “yes-no” questions, and then provide two choices, one of which is correct and the other incorrect. For example, if the class discussed a picture of a colonial mansion in Mexico, you might ask, “Was the house big or small?” Or you might ask, “Yes or no, was the house small? Was it small, or was it not small?”
In addition to saying the correct answer as one of the either-or choices, I recommend that you literally give students the answer as you ask the question, and also provide plenty of “hints” in the form of extra-linguistic information such as vocal inflection, gestures, pointing to visuals, and facial expressions.
I have been known to wink, say “a-hem,” tap on or even noisily slap the board where the answer can be seen, or wave a visual aid around, as I ask these “soft-pitch” questions, just to help students see the right answer, so they can have a successful experience interacting in the language.
It is sound pedagogical practice to “give away the answer” because the purpose of the Scaffolded Oral Review is not really to test students’ memories and see if they remember the facts that were discussed during Guided Oral Input, but rather to provide repetitions of the language used in class up till that point, and show students how well they are doing at understanding the language, with your expert support and scaffolding, of course.
That’s why this part of the lesson is called Scaffolded Oral Review. Because you are NOT really “quizzing” or “assessing” the students; you are simply reviewing the information from Guided Oral Input together, re-using and re-focusing on the scaffolding that you just used the first time you presented the information.
Today, for Scaffolded Oral Review you will ask one or more either-or questions about the calendar. First, you will set up the expectation that students will listen to you repeat the question before they answer. This is an important expectation, because it basically doubles the amount of input that students will interact with during a Quick Quiz, and during a time when they are extra-primed to pay close attention, to boot - a quiz. Thus, you are very strongly urged to use the suggested procedure outlined below, to set up and reinforce that practice.
“OK, time for a review quiz. I will ask you the question TWO TIMES in French. The first time, LISTEN. Do NOT talk. Just listen. The second time, answer.”
(hold up one finger)
(The class calls out, “August!”)
(The class calls out, “August 21!”)
You might ask more than two questions, if time permits, but even if you only have time to ask two (or even one) question in this very first lesson, you are reinforcing the language used in Guided Oral Input and also demonstrating to the class that each day there will be a time in the lesson to review.
While you will use a variety of strategies for Scaffolded Oral Review this year, today you are demonstrating with the most often-used strategy of a quick call-and-response whole-class Quick Quiz.
Shared Writing
Write and Discuss
Write and Discuss with a Document Camera
Write and Discuss is a simple, yet incredibly powerful, literacy-building practice. Later in the year, we will begin working with Anchor Charts to help you model traits of strong writing during Shared Writing, but while you get comfortable with Write and Discuss, you will simply pull out the document camera or project from your computer, or perhaps write on the board or on a piece of chart paper.
Whatever format you choose, you will review the information from Guided Oral Input and write or type out some sentences to describe the date, the weather, and the facts that emerged during Guided Oral Input.
You will compose, with the input of the class, a summary of what you just presented and discussed in the Guided Oral Input and reviewed during the Scaffolded Oral Review. These preceding lesson components provided mostly aural (or listening) input.
Reviewing Colors by Voting on the Pen to Use
Now, Shared Writing will provide written input in the course language, as well as continued aural input, as you discuss. You guide the students to co-create a text, using a series of questions. By asking questions and filling in the class’s answers, you re-create the day’s experience together in writing.
As you write, from time to time, it is suggested to read to the students from the beginning, to recycle and repeat and reinforce the previously-written language.
For example:
Write:
Say:
Students (most likely speaking in the course language):
Say:
(writing and spelling in French)
F-R-E-N-C-H class.
Write:
Say:
Students (most likely speaking in the course language):
Say:
(writing and spelling)
Reading/Recycling:
Write:
Say:
Students (most likely speaking in the course language):
Say:
(writing and spelling)
Reading/Recycling:
From a first-year class after three weeks of instruction
If time permits, you might do a little Write and Discuss move called Writing More Than Originally Existed.
This is when you - time permitting, and remembering that there are still two more lesson components - Shared Reading and Student Application and Assessment - add on additional sentences, making up the details with your students and adding them to the text. For example:
Say:
(gesture)
(walk to the window and point)
(gesture)
(gesture)
(gesture)
(gesture)
(gesture)
Students (in English or French, depending on students’ ability/inclination):
Say:
(gesture)
Students:
(Walk back to your writing setup)
Write:
Say:
(gesture)
(gesture "very hot" by spreading your hands wide and intensifying the already-established gesture for "hot." The intensifier "very" is generally very comprehensible in this scaffolded context, but if you pause, sweep the room for a comprehension check, and see confusion, you might pause, teach a gesture for "very" as demonstrated previously in the lesson, or write/translate, or use other tools to support comprehension.)
Students:
Write: V-E-R-Y hot.
Reading/Recycling:
Today, you will most likely only write one or two sentences for Shared Writing. That is OK; you are building the foundation today. Tomorrow, you will already see the “payoff” for your work today, because when you get to the Shared Writing part of class, your students will act like, “Oh yeah, this is no big deal; this is what we do in this class after we talk about something.”
You will soon begin to appreciate Shared Writing for its calming effect, and also for its power to drive big literacy gains. This will be especially apparent when you begin using Anchor Charts, later in the year, as explained later in this book.
Shared Reading
The “Go-To” Daily Strategies
During Shared Reading, you will work with the text that your class just created together. The three “Go-To” strategies are, taken together, a daily powerful instructional sequence that combines language acquisition and conscious learning about language.
Reading these texts is a powerful practice for language acquisition. Since you wrote them with your class, helping them to create a text that is more complex than what they could have produced on their own, these texts are a perfect example of what Dr. Krashen calls i + 1, or “input plus one,” which means input that is just one step higher than what a learner can produce, and containing just a little more language than they can comprehend, just a few elements that stretch them beyond their current level of acquisition.
These little class-created texts are the perfect vehicle for this i + 1. They are the most perfectly-aligned level of text that could possibly exist for your specific class on this particular day.
You will move on to a brief Reading Workshop in which you will use these three “go-to” strategies.
Read in the Language
Choral Translation
Grammar Discussion
(Block Option) Reading from the Back of the Room
Block teachers might find that they also have time to introduce this fourth “go-to” strategy, or you can always insert any other reading strategy that has been successful for your students in the past. The strategies used in Shared Reading are generally more active for students, asking them to interact with the text and sometimes to work in partnerships or independently to process the reading. Therefore, in block classes, it makes sense to spend more time working with shared reading, because the activities are sort of an energy-release valve, allowing students to move into a more active phase of the day’s lesson, after the more listening-focused parts of the lesson.
Let’s look at each of these strategies in detail.
Read in the Language
This strategy is simplicity itself, but it is so valuable that I will recommend that you do it it every single day before moving on to any of the other reading strategies. You simply read the entire text back to the class in L2, exactly as it is written, with no pauses or asides, just allowing students to hear what they wrote, as a whole text. During Shared Writing, students do not hear the entire text as a piece, because of the discussion. So, reading the piece back to them, without interruptions, is an important first step into shared reading.
Read fluidly, with expression and intonation appropriate to the piece. I like to place my hand or a pointer, such as my pen, at the beginning of each line of text that I read, to help students track. An even more supportive way to move through the text is to place a sheet of blank paper over it, uncovering the text line by line as you read each one.
You do not want to read too fast, so that students lose the ability to track the words you are reading in the projected text, but you do want to read fluidly, with expression and phrasing. It sometimes feels a bit magical to students, to hear their writing read back to them as if it were an important piece of literature. It is very honoring to their learning process.
In languages such as Japanese where there are no spaces between the words, it is recommended that you draw circles around each separate word, including particles, as you read to the class. This might mean that you read more slowly and deliberately. That is fine; you might choose to read the text again to them, with the circles in it, in a more fluid fashion, after they can see the words as separate entities with circles around them.
Choral Translation with Grammar Discussion
This powerful shared reading strategy has also become a daily practice for me, since I first learned it from Ben Slavic. In fact, many days all we have time to do with the text we wrote is Read in the Language and then Choral Translation and Grammar Discussion, and that is a perfectly satisfying and educationally-sound lesson.
After reading the text in the language, go back through the piece and have students translate it word by word, chorally saying the meaning of each word in the text in their stronger shared language. Having students translate word by word, and even coming up with ways to say a possible meaning for words that really have no equivalent meaning in English, can reveal much about their linguistic knowledge.
It is recommended that you not translate aloud along with the class, but rather point to each word silently, as the class translates chorally, so you can listen for their hesitations, confusions, and inaccuracies.
Then, you can teach into those moments, circling the “problem word”, very briefly explaining the grammar to them, and writing a bit on the text to show the meaning or the language phenomenon that caused the breakdown in ability to match words between the languages.
Circling the Class’s Noticings and Teaching Into Them
This practice meets the ACTFL standard of Comparisons, which includes the learning target of comparing linguistic systems, “Learners use the language to investigate, explain, and reflect on the nature of language through comparisons of the language studied and their own.”
I like to use a colored pen (Flair pens are my ideal pen for this) to point to the words one by one as the class translates.
The first few times I set up the activity, I say to the students, “You are going to read together in English. I will point to the words and your job is to read them in the exact order I am pointing to, and to stay with the class and my pointer, not going too fast, or too slow, or too loud, or too quiet. The English might be in a weird order, but that is just how languages work. It’s why I get paid the ‘medium-size’ bucks; you need a teacher to help you figure out what order to put the French in. OK, let’s start here. 3-2-1-go!”
A note on classroom management: sometimes I pretend that I can tell that not everyone is reading. Usually, I cannot really tell that, but I pretend from time to time, especially the first few times we do this. By pretending, I convey to the students that I really mean business and that everyone should participate, reading together.
I just say, after they read a few words, in a pleasant yet no-nonsense voice, “Not everyone is reading together. Let’s go back and start over.” This is slightly frustrating for kids, and so they generally begin to exhibit better participation, because they do not want to have to start over. If students read too fast, I make them go back and re-read, staying together.
By having students reveal their understanding of the various words in French, even those which might not have a direct English translation, I can teach into the places where they do not yet understand how French compares with English. For example, in French, there are most often two parts to the written negation of a verb. To say, “I am not”, which in English requires three words, you would write four words in French, “Je ne suis pas.”
Thus, students who do not yet know that there are two words in French to express what is generally expressed in one English word will tend to translate the french sentence “Je ne suis pas française” (I am not French) as “I not am…” and then get a bit confused or hesitant when they need to say something for the word “pas” since they can, by reading the next word, see that “French” would be the next word in English. So they will naturally hesitate there, if they have not yet learned or figured out that “pas” also means “not” in French.
In this situation, you would want to simply say, “In French, ne and also pas both work together to say what in English is one word — not.” Then, you will simply circle the words ne and pas, ideally using a different color pen or marker, and write “not” above them, or put a slash through them to indicate negation, like a “No Smoking” sign.
Many grammar points naturally come up in context.
Then, once this short little explanation is done, and now that students have a visual representation of the words’ meaning, you will want them to take another pass at the translation, to solidify their learning and increase the chances that they will retain this linguistic information as they interpret its meaning once more in a meaningful, comprehensible context.
Simply say, “OK, let’s start over here,” putting your pointer under the first word in the sentence, or maybe in the first word of the phrase, if the sentence is very long, and starting them over with their English translation, so that they get a “running start” on the word(s) you translated, in a meaningful context.
You must do this backing up to the beginning of the sentence or phrase every time, beginning with the very first one on the very first day, with good cheer and an attitude of “You will like this,” so that students just think, “This is what we do when we read,” and it seems normal, so they will not grumble about having to re-read.
It is not recommended to parse each and every word in the text, or to give in to the temptation to teach them every cool language feature we as teachers and confirmed Grammar Nerds find interesting, as student motivation in the activity will tend to wane, and they will likely become overloaded with new linguistic facts. However, when they hesitate or display confusion, it is a good time to stop and explain the language in this fashion.
You do not want to talk about every single cool language feature because you do not want to nerd out too strongly with all the fascinating-to-you grammar hocus-pocus, because not every kid in class is likely to share your passion for French verb conjugations.
However, we all know that there are junior Grammar Nerds in ever class, and if you have been teaching in a communicative way for very long at all, you have probably found yourself in conflict with a few of these budding linguists from time to time because they really want to learn all the grammar.
Hey, I totally get it. I love grammar too. For these students, it is especially recommended that you make a daily practice of explaining some of the language that trips the class up in general, and also perhaps a couple of “can’t miss” viewpoints on the Scenic Tour of the French Language. You will also want to invite them, and the rest of your students, to discuss features of the language that they noticed in the reading, after you have concluded the choral translation.
Class Grammar Discussion
After the translation, ask, “Did anyone notice anything about French that they could teach the class?” For me, this wording is important, because of the authority it confers upon the students, and I use it almost every time I do this, which is to say almost every day, because I really prioritize this invitation to share our noticings about the language.
The reason that I make such a point of conducting these short class discussions of the language on a daily basis is because it has benefits for the whole class and for me, as their teacher. For the grammar crowd, it provides an opportunity to do the analytical contrastive linguistic work that they crave.
It gives them the chance to be publicly acknowledged for their ability to draw inferences and comparisons from the data presented in the reading.
I make a big deal about their noticings, saying things like, “Wow, you are really thinking like a linguist! That’s a scientist who studies how language works!” or “That is such a cool thing to notice! Way to use your noggin! Why do you think the language does that?” If someone asks a question, I first turn it back to their peers, to see if anyone in class has anything to offer by way of an answer. I generally say something like, “Hey, good question! Does anyone have an idea of why that might be?”
These remarks have been carefully crafted over the years I have worked with students, to decenter teacher authority over the “Rules of the Language” and invite more students into the Grammar Fan Club. Our brains are meaning-making machines, and we are programmed to notice and analyze patterns. It should be noted that I am referring here to our conscious minds, our prefrontal cortices, the thinking part of our brains.
Language acquisition is not a conscious process, and so this activity, as well as choral translation, are not designed for language acquisition, but rather to give students’ conscious minds, their higher-order thinking, a little workout in the middle of a whole bunch of language acquisition during most of the rest of the period. Your Grammar Superstars will really appreciate the daily exercise for their frontal lobes.
This daily practice of inviting the class to engage in a short grammar discussion helps students like this to calm down during Guided Oral Input and Scaffolded Oral Review, knowing that there is always an opportunity for them to ask questions and do this language work, with the class’s shared text. Plus, who knows, but you may be raising up a new generation of linguists or college language teachers, who will understand both the conscious grammar and also how they got their start in French by getting tons and tons of communicative input in the language.
Your little Junior Linguistics Society of America members are not the only students who benefit from this practice of short, frequent grammar discussions. For the kids who would not naturally think grammar study was all that interesting, there are also benefits to this regular grammar discussion. In fact, the benefits for them might well be greater than those derived by the grammar lovers.
When these students have regular opportunities to see their peers pointing out what they noticed about the language, they have a chance to revise their own self-concept as language students. Imagine that you are a not-so-enthralled student of the linguistic arts, and you are sitting there reading along, and then the teacher ask the class to point out things they noticed, or share questions that they have, and you realize you they, too, had already noticed that thing the language does, or you realize that you would have given the same explanation of what is going on in the reading as one of the nerdier folks in class.
You might well, in that case, have a little private moment of, “Oh, I noticed that too,” and thus a growing sense that you, too, can analyze the language system for patterns from which you can derive inferences. In fact, you might very well develop more confidence about yourself as a language learner, from just sitting around and quietly noticing that you are quite capable of noticing how language works.
When your students continue on to other teachers, or want to know more about how language works, these experiences might well give them confidence that it is completely possible for them to analyze the structure of the language. At the very least, they can sit back and listen to what is interesting to their peers, and see that normal, everyday kids can actually deduce linguistic principles from the language.
This experience might even, over time, open the door, just a crack, for them to peek into the Grammar Club, and may even, eventually, change their concept of themselves, into a person who notices patterns in linguistic data, just the same as everyone else. I believe that these short, simple, daily forays into kid-centered language work can really help these students to be more successful in any required grammar study, if and when they encounter it in their language careers.
This is an excellent example of the ACTFL Core Practice of “teaching grammar as a concept, in context.” By just lightly touching on grammar each day during Shared Reading, we can make a regular practice of introducing students to some conscious language study that is in alignment with the ACTFL recommendations for our teaching.
BLOCK OPTION (time permitting): Reading from the Back of the Room
This strategy, which I also learned from Ben Slavic, is one of my very favorites, and it is especially rewarding to do this when adults are visiting your class. It is most impressive to see a class having a rather deep, flowing class discussion in another language. However, blowing the minds of folks who stop into your class is certainly not the only reason to do Reading from the Back of the Room.
This strategy is also very satisfying for you as the teacher, as you see your students’ ability to turn away from the class text and use the language that was introduced that day, perhaps even My Reading from the Back of the Room Spot language that they heard for the first time that day, in an authentic class discussion of the ideas in the text.
After finishing up your grammar discussion in the class’s stronger shared language, this strategy also gets the class right back into the flow of the course language. You simply walk to a comfortable spot in the back of the room and begin asking questions.
I have a big teacher desk back there and I like to sit on it, take a load off, and conduct the discussion from a comfy spot.
If you always head to the same spot each time you do this strategy, students will soon become accustomed to turning around and participating in a discussion in the course language, and you can therefore minimize the English you need to use as you transition to this activity. You might have students stand up and walk to the opposite side of the room, and remain standing during this activity.
This is a nice way to help them focus at this point in class, and moving to a new spot is said to help refresh the brain and aid in memory formation. At the very least, a change of location and moving to a standing position helps to “reset” students’ attention so that they can better attend to the discussion.
After students have become familiar with the routine of standing up and crossing the room to find a spot to stand in, you can change this procedure up. You can say, in the course language, more specific directions to add another layer of variety to the transition.
You might say things such as: Take 9 steps. Take 17 baby steps. Take three giant steps. High five six people on your way across the room. Say “Bonjour” to four people on your way across the room.
The first few times you read from the back of the room, I recommend saying something like this to the class in English as you walk to your comfy spot and get settled in for this very enjoyable strategy: “OK we are going to discuss what we wrote.
(Maybe if you want to establish the walking routine, you might also say something like, “Stand up, walk to the opposite side of the room, and turn to look at me back here.”) If you need to look back at the text, you can. It is right there. But if you can look back here and answer the questions, you will feel really smart and know that you are learning a lot of French.”
Then, you can begin the questions in the course language.
You do not need to pre-plan the questions, and in fact the discussion really feels more authentic, interesting, and free if you just follow the class’s energy. The reason this strategy is called Reading from the Back of the Room is because you are reading the text, which you can see behind the students as it is still projected or displayed where you just finished working with it.
As you scan the text, you can just take your questions from the information that you and the class just wrote. It’s an easy, no-prep activity that is really quite satisfying, because it generally makes everyone feel pride in their ability to have a rather high-level discussion in the language.
"Giving away" the answer using the same gesture I used in the lesson
Here on the first day of class, you will want to give “soft-pitch" easy wins — either-or questions about the text, with lots of visual scaffolding, so that you are basically giving them the answer. You might, especially in upper-level classes, find that, even on the first day, you can move into less-structured questions, such as asking for details of the text like where, what, etc.
Today, Shared Reading might sound something like this:
“Now I will read to you in French and then we will read in English together.”
(reading with expression, and pointing to the words)
“Now we will read together. Your job is to read with the class, not faster not slower, not louder, not softer, just say each word as I highlight it. It might be in a strange order when we say the English, but that’s how language works; you can’t always translate every single word. Say the words as I point. 3-2-1, go!”
Class reads:
"the story…of….the…class….of...?"
(sensing confusion, you circle “de”)
“This word means ‘of,’ so in French we say ‘the class OF French.”
(write “of” in English)
Let’s back up to here and go again.
Class reads:
"The story…of….the…class….of…French…the month is august…the date…??"
(sensing confusion, you circle “d’aujourd’hui”)
“This word means ‘of today’ which is a really long complicated word in French, huh?”
(write “of today” in English)
"Let’s back up to here and go again."
Class reads:
"The date…of today…is…the 22…of…?"
(sensing confusion, you circle “22”)
“It sounds like you are noticing that in French, we say the twenty-two, but in English we say the “twenty-second. ”
(write “22nd” in English)
"Let’s back up to here and go again."
Class reads:
"The date…of today…is…the 22nd…of…August..."
(you circle “aujourd’hui”)
Class reads:
"Today…is…very hot."
Say:
“Did anyone notice anything about the French language, how it is spelled, or put together, that they can teach the class?”
Lead a brief class discussion and circle any students’ noticings on the text, ideally using a second color, and perhaps writing the students’ name/initials by their contribution.
To continue to Reading from the Back of the Room:
(You have walked to the back of the room and settled into a comfy spot where you can relax a little after all this bopping around. If you train your body to SIT during this time, you will build in a ready-made daily rest period for your body whenever you use this strategy. I use it in about 75% of my class sessions, so I really appreciate having a nice routine of relaxing a little during Reading From the Back of the Room.)
“We are going to discuss what we wrote. If you need to look back at the text, you can. It is right there. But if you can look back here and answer the questions, you will feel really smart and know that you are learning a lot of French.”
(the class responds: French!)
(the class responds: August!)
(the class responds: August 22!)
Student Application and Assessment
Quick Quiz
The end-of-class Quick Quiz is almost identical to the Student Application and Assessment. The only real difference is that you will move to your “Quiz Spot” instead of your “Review Spot.”
My own Quiz Spot is in the back of the room, by the door, so that I have a good vantage point to observe and connect with students as they prepare to leave class.
Just like in the Student Application and Assessment, I want students to listen to the question twice, because that gives processing time as well as more repetitions of the language.. So, again, I do a lot of “shhhing” as I ask the question the first time, to remind them not to call out the answer.
Lots of the same scaffolding that I used in class. Here I am using a gesture to scaffold the word “said.” “Shh” in between words as I ask the question the first time
Further, the Quick Quiz, especially on this first day, is not a “gotcha.” So, if needed, you can still use gestures, facial expressions, or even walk to the board or Shared Writing text, to point out visuals that might make the questions more comprehensible.
You want students to leave class today, and every day, with a feeling of pride and wonder that they were able to conduct almost an entire class period in the language, and you want them convinced that you are a magical unicorn who makes it easy for them to understand a whole ‘nother language!
Your Student Application and Assessment today might go something like this:
“OK, time for a final check to see what you learned. I will ask you the question TWO TIMES in French. The first time, LISTEN. Do NOT talk. Just listen. The second time, answer.”
(hold up one finger)
The class calls out, most likely speaking in the course language:
(two fingers)
The class calls out:
At the end of the period, you might want to debrief with students, congratulating them on what went well, and setting goals or perhaps telling them that tomorrow they will be able to understand and say even more.
