30 minute read
Session 5: Card/Slide 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: write one or more words in French to describe places that people in our class like, using sensory details (e.g. describing the weather - what you can see, hear, feel - hot, cold, sunny, rainy, etc.)
Intermediate: a write sentences in French to describe places that people in our class like, using sensory details (e.g. describing the weather - what you can see, hear, feel - hot, cold, sunny, rainy, etc.)
Advanced: write one or more words in French to describe places that people in our class like, using sensory details (e.g. describing the weather - what you can see, hear, feel - hot, cold, sunny, rainy, etc.) and compare them to places in the francophone world
Preparation
You will need to have students provide images of places they know, to discuss in the Card Talk or Slide Talk. If you have not already done this, you will need to ask students to upload an image to your shared Slide Talk or sketch on a card, if you are using the original Card Talk variation. Here is an example of Slide Talk from the materials in our Teachers Pay Teachers store (CI Liftoff).
Students will upload (for Slide Talk) or sketch on a card (for Card Talk) a place they like to go. You can leave this very general (simply “a place you like to go”) or ask for more specific information. In the example lesson, students to upload images of a place they like to go that you can walk to from our school. You could also ask them for places they like to go in summer, or places they would like to go, perhaps a place they would like to go to speak the course language, or places they like to study, or places they like to go to have fun.
Norming the Class
Continue to greet the students in English, review where to put their things, etc., remind them briefly that in this class we will be communicating a good deal in the language and they need to work together to focus and listen because that is the best way to help yourself and everyone else be successful in this class. Tell them that each day the first activity of class will be reading and that today you will read about information science, like computer programming and game design.
If you have not yet set up your Videographer, you might want to do that before you begin this lesson. See the HR Manual for more information on this job.
Hand out (or project/display) the Reading Workshop text. You might make your own, use the ones in our Teachers Pay Teachers store (CI Liftoff), or read a Shared Writing text from the first lesson(s) of the year. Then, share the lesson objective if you have not already done so, check in with your Class Starter (and perhaps Videographer), and have them give the signal (or give it yourself if no one has yet to volunteer for the job), and begin filming if you are starting that today, and then begin speaking in the language.
Reading Workshop
Find That Cognate and Pronunciation Practice
Project or distribute paper copies of a short text. The following Reading Workshop example texts use the cognate-heavy topic of computer-related terms, with varying degrees of difficulty for various levels of classes. You might use more challenging texts with your upper-level classes, if they have the reading skills to handle them.
Italian Beginner Cognate Reading
See the notes in Session One for more recommendations on choosing leveled texts.
Italian Intermediate Cognate Reading
Italian Advanced Cognate Reading
In the sample lesson, I use the French beginner reading below.
French Beginner Cognate Reading
Now we will move on to the lesson procedures: As always, the lesson notes are written in English. To indicate the words that are said in the course language (French, in this example), I will use this standard black text. The words that are said in the class’s stronger shared language. Once the students can see the projected text, or they have it on their desks, you can proceed: (English, for me and many teachers in the US) are written in this color.
Your job is to notice (if the students have a paper copy, you might say “mark the text”) the cognates, the 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).”
(If you have a Videographer, have them begin the video.)
(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.)
(Read the text aloud in the 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.)
(Repeat with another cognate, or move on to open-ended questions as explained below.)
(gesture)
(gesture)
(point to the word cognate in the readings or write it on the board with translation)?
(gesture)
(gesture)
(point)?
” (Students answer, probably in English.)
Take a few more cognates, either by asking what a word is in English or by taking what volunteers noticed. If there are not many volunteers, or if no one wants to speak up, you can just ask the questions yourself. Then move on to Pronunciation Practice.
(Read a sentence from the reading aloud in the course language, really emphasizing the pronunciation so students will stretch their speech articulation muscles when they repeat the sentence in the same fashion.)
(Read with the class, modeling very clear and almost overly-articulated pronunciation in the course language.)
(Read the same sentence aloud in the course language, really emphasizing the pronunciation, perhaps even more than the first time.)
(Read with the class, modeling very clear and almost overly-articulated pronunciation in the course language.)
Repeat with a couple of other sentences. After a few minutes, move into the Guided Oral Input, beginning with a brief calendar check-in and then moving on to discuss students’ cards or slides.
Guided Oral Input
Card Talk or Slide Talk (Locations)
Move to the calendar to transition to the Guided Oral Input. For the rest of the year, it is suggested that you continue a brief calendar check-in to transition to the Guided Oral Input, which (1) creates an opening/ transition routine and (2) continues to reinforce, daily, and in a meaningful context, important vocabulary such as the names of the months and days, weather, numbers, preferences, and activities.
Please note that you will NOT want to continually ask the same questions as modeled in these example sessions; you can begin to ask students who thinks it will be hot tomorrow, or if they think it will rain, or what they are doing on the weekend or who is going to the pep assembly on Thursday.
All you need to do, if you want to start branching out, is make sure that you speak slowly, scaffold the words you say one at the time, giving special care to scaffold any new words that arise during these more detailed and personal conversations, perhaps using gestures, writing, drawing, pictures, or realia. Then, make sure to pause, with your hands physically on the visual support, as you silently sweep the room with your eyes to check for comprehension, and that you stick to one or two new topics in any given lesson.
So, if you ask who thinks it will be sunny tomorrow, and “tomorrow” is a new word, then you would most likely want to continue in that vein, and ask who thinks it will rain tomorrow and who thinks it might snow tomorrow and who thinks it will be cold tomorrow (because your class has had a good deal of input with the words :hot,” “rainy,” etc, and therefore the only really super-new word in this series of questions is “tomorrow”), instead of going farther afield in the conversation and starting to address another topic that would necessitate further new vocabulary (e.g. shifting to a discussion of activities and plans, if those would be new terms for your class).
The idea is not to just go all over the place willy-nilly with the conversation, but also not to only stick with the vocabulary that students already know. One or two new terms per calendar check-in is usually sufficient to maintain interest by introducing new topics of conversation, and as you move through the term with a brief calendar check-in on a regular basis, you will find that you are able to gradually develop a “bank” of words
that are familiar and allow the calendar discussion to get more and more interesting, varied, and authentic (in the sense that students will be able to discuss topics of actual interest in their lives using this discussion format.)
Below, you will find an example of a very basic calendar check-in using many of the same terms we have used in the previous sessions.
(gesture and pause to sweep the class with your eyes to check for understanding)
(jot “27” somewhere, perhaps on the board)
(jot “23”)
(Some kids call out “27”)
(write 27 on the calendar).”
(point)
(point)
(Some kids call out “Monday” )
(point)
(point)
(point)
(point).
(Walk over to the window, or display the weather forecast, if you have no windows.)
(gesture)
(walk to the window and point)
(gesture)
(gesture)
(gesture)
(gesture)
(Students answer, in English or French, depending on ability/inclination, Hot!/Cold!)
(gesture)
(gesture)
(gesture)
(Students answer)
(write and spell)
Card Talk/Slide Talk
Then, you will move on to the students’ cards or slides.
You will most likely not get through everyone’s card or slide in the lesson(s) you have scheduled for Card/ Slide Talk, and that is fine, because it tends to get rather boring, unless you have a small group or they are exceptionally interested in each other (which is definitely the case for some special groups). However, you can return to the cards throughout the month and even later in the year.
Card Talk
For Card Talk, you will distribute to each student a piece of 8.5 x 11” card stock or plain paper. On this paper, have students write their names, or the name they want to be called in your class, in marker. Have them make a large, simple sketch of a location that they like (or a more specific location as described above).
As students work, it is a good idea to circulate and look for the first couple of cards that you will incorporate into the discussion, and also verify with students that you know what it is that they sketched, if there is any doubt in your mind what they intended to convey. When looking for the first cards to discuss, you are advised to look for students who appear to need extra attention to be included in the group, or students who have a
hard time focusing. Often, making these students “famous” for their cards can go a long way towards laying down positive relationships for the year.
It is best if you can find two or three students’ cards to talk about, beginning with one card and then rather quickly adding the second and perhaps the third into the conversation. The best way to find these cards is to look for two or three students who draw the same thing (e.g. a café) or closely-related things that are different (e.g. a café and a restaurant).
Although you will have the cards pre-selected in your mind, you begin by pretending that you just happened to select the first student’s card. You will want to act as if the fact on this card is the most special, fascinating information you have learned in years. Ask the class to look at the card, using the gesture for “look”.
Announce to the class that the student likes the activity or item on the card, using the gestures you have established for “like” or “love.” Note that in the example below, the teacher has asked students to sketch an activity they like; you will ask them for a location that they like, but the procedures are the same.
It is a good idea to quickly move on to polling the rest of the class to see who else likes that same location. You can build suspense and emotional engagement by good-naturedly asking the students whose cards you are discussing to look at the class as they have their hands raised, and coach them to react in mock astonishment, saying things like,
Even if the rest of the class did not draw anything having to do with the topic of the first three cards, they will most likely have an opinion on the topic of the cards. You can ask who likes, loves, does not like, and hates the location from the first two or three students’ cards. You might need to assign a gesture for these various feelings as you discuss.
You can ask follow-up questions of the original students or those who raise their hands, perhaps finding out the name of their favorite café, or their favorite food there or their favorite soccer team, or if anyone in the class is on their team.
Please be advised to clearly establish meaning whenever you question an individual student, especially at the beginning of the year. One easy and supportive way to do that is to almost-ask a question of the individual student, then stop yourself and ask the class in general, in English,
and then repeat the question to Kelvin once the class has verified the meaning of the question. This ensures that the individual student whom you are addressing is not embarrassed by not understanding the question. See the illustrations above for examples of this very valuable teaching move.
At any time that the first topic begins to feel “flat” it is advised to move on to another topic by selecting another card. If you do this with a light touch, no one will ever suspect that the discussion was beginning to grow stale. Simply replace the first students’ cards, perhaps have the class applaud for them, look around the room, and with as dramatic a flourish as you can muster, pick up another student’s “fascinating” card.
You will probably only have time in Guided Oral Input on this first day to talk about one or two students’ cards. You can return to this session in your next class, to talk about more students’ cards. In fact, Card/Slide Talk can easily last three or four class periods (or two block periods), especially in those good-natured classes that really enjoy talking about each other.
For more details on the Slide Talk variation, including graphics that show an example of what it might look like as you use the students’ images to discuss their favorite locations (or whatever topic you chose for them to submit), please see Session Eight.
Scaffold Oral Review
Finish My Sentence
Move to your Review Spot. You will introduce a new review strategy today: Finish My Sentence. This is a super-easy, no-prep Scaffolded Oral Review strategy that is also super-fun. You simply tell the class, in the stronger shared language,
The class will get a point if most of you are still talking in French after six seconds (or some other number of seconds you think is appropriate; upper-level students will be able to speak for longer)”
Then you proceed to retell information from the Guided Oral Input, ideally with a visual aid to help support their comprehension. But you do not say a whole sentence. You say the first part of a sentence in the course language, and then with an “expectant” gesture and vocal intonation, you invite students to call out, in the course language, possible endings to the statement, as you silently count on your fingers to show the seconds going by, and perhaps gesturing to them using the “say more” gesture (which you will also have
students use in the new Student Application and Assessment strategy explained in this session, the Question and Answer Game).
For example, you might say, in French, pointing to a slide you discussed,
and then gesture to the class to speak, and begin counting silently on your fingers.
Students might call out, “study” or “coffee” or “talking to friends”, or whatever phrases they remember from the input, or can produce on their own. You might have just a few kids call out, or you might have a bunch of people calling out a bunch of different phrases.
You then re-state the sentence again, with one or two of the phrases you heard students calling out added to the end. Then you continue on to more sentences, restating each one after you hear the suggested endings that your students call out.
You might, for additional review, cycle back through all the newly-finished sentences each time you make a new sentence with the class. This builds in a lot of repetition and gives the kids the satisfaction of hearing their ideas put into the instruction that day in class.
Generally I say between three and five sentence starters, or even more. But on the first days, you might say only three or four, or even just one or two, depending on your class schedule.
After moving to the Review Spot, you will say:
(hold up one finger)
(The class speaks in French saying endings like, “popular, the school cafeteria not popular” or “popular, Dazhia likes café cafeteria NOT popular,” or other statements according to their ability.)
(Tally the class points, perhaps writing on the board.) “Question Two. At the café, we like to…” (The class speaks in French saying various endings as you count the seconds.)
Repeat, if time permits.
Shared Writing
Write and Discuss
The actual contents of Write and Discuss will, of course, depend upon your class’s discussion from the lesson. You will follow the same procedure as in the previous sessions. If time permits, you might do a little Write and Discuss move called Writing More Than Originally Existed. See Session One for an example.
You will most likely only write three or four sentences for Shared Writing. That is OK; you are building the foundation in these first lessons. You will probably notice that, because most of the lesson components have been repeated several times in the first sessions of the year, you are already seeing less need to explain/give directions in English. Your Shared Writing might sound something like this today:
Write:
The Café Say:
(gesture)
Students: VERY POPULAR!
Say:
(writing and spelling in French)
Write:
Dazhia likes Say:
Class: Yes! The café!
Say:
(writing and spelling)
Reading/Recycling:
Say:
Students: Fourteen!
Say:
Write:
Reading/Recycling:
Write:
Say:
Class: Yes!
Write:
Say:
Class: Yes! Write: to talk to our friends, too.
Reading/Recycling:
Time permitting, you might write more or less.
Shared Reading
The “Go-To” Daily Strategies
During Shared Reading, you will work with the text that your class just created together. You will continue to use the three “Go-To” strategies (or, for block classes, perhaps four strategies, if time permits).
Today, Shared Reading might sound something like this:
Read in the Language
(reading with expression, and pointing to the words)
Choral Translation
(class reads: the…café…is…very…popular…Dazhia…likes…the…café…fourteen…people…like…)
(seeing a “teachable moment”, circle the ending on the verb “like”)
(Note that you DID NOT explain the WHOLE concept of the various persons of the verb conjugations in French. This is POP-UP grammar, which should be fast. There will be many more opportunities to teach all about French conjugations in other examples and lessons.
(class reads: fourteen…people…like…the…café…we?…they?…like…)
(sensing confusion, you circle “on”)
(class reads: fourteen…people…like…the…café…we…like…studying…at…café?…)
(sensing confusion, you circle “au”)
(write “at the” in English).
(Write “à + le = au”.)
(continue in this fashion.)
Grammar Discussion
(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)
(the class responds: café!)
(the class responds: No!)
(raised hands, or none)
(raised hands, or none)
(counting)
Continue in this fashion, time permitting.
Student Application & Assessment
Written Quick Quiz
In this variation on the Quick Quiz, you will ask students to write their answers to the review questions instead of giving whole-class oral responses as they have in the first lessons.
I allow my first-year, and often even my second-year students, to write their answers in any way that demonstrates comprehension of the material. So, I tell them that they can write one word in French, or a phrase or sentence in French, and their points on the quiz would be the same no matter what. With upperlevel classes, you can ask them to respond in sentences or paragraphs, if they are ready for that challenge. It often helps, for all levels, to have the Shared Writing text still visible so that students can refer back to it, to get words, phrases, etc. to use in their answers. This is not cheating; it is built into the strategy. If students are referring back to the Shared Writing text, comprehending what they read there, and using the words to formulate their own responses, they are actually just processing the written input again, and using it in a new way for a new purpose. This is comprehension-based, communicative language teaching at its best. We want to structure class in such a way as to encourage, require, and reward students’ interaction with the input, and this is simply a way to do that, and also to get a written work sample that is easy to grade and can give you data for your gradebook.
You might want to assure your students that, even though they are writing in the language, you are only interested in their having the correct information, not in their spelling or grammar. This takes off the pressure and makes writing in French seem like just a fun challenge. Also, it aligns to the ACTFL performance
indicators and proficiency guidelines, because an Intermediate Low and Intermediate Mid writer will still have major patterns of errors, which might make their speech and writing difficult to comprehend from time to time.
We grade these in class, to make my job easier and also to provide more repetitions of the questions and answers. If your school allows it, I recommend having students switch papers. If your school does not allow peer assessment, for privacy reasons, then you can have students grade their own work. If you feel that cheating would be a problem, you can have students put away the writing implement they used to take the quiz, and use a colored pen or marker to grade themselves. The procedure I recommend for grading the quizzes in class is explained below.
Here is a possible way that the Quick Quiz might go at the end of the lesson example.
Walk to your Quiz Spot. Please note that, even for a written quiz, it is highly recommended that you 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.
Continue in this manner, perhaps asking three to five total questions, making sure to leave about five minutes at the end of class to grade them.
Grading the quizzes in class provides immediate feedback and validation to students on their listening comprehension, and also more repetitions of the language used in the quiz. I simply ask the questions again, and the class calls out the answer and marks their paper or their partner’s paper correct or incorrect. After we grade our papers, I ask the students to write 4/5 or 5/5 or 6/7 or 7/7 or whatever their partner scored, at the top of the paper, to help facilitate my grading using Shawna’s Grading Trick, discussed later in this session.
I really like to ask my class, before they hand the papers back to their partner, to raise their hand if their partner scored 7/7 or 6/6 or 100%. When almost all of the hands go up, I praise the class profusely, saying what smart students they obviously are. Of course, they are simply succeeding at a task that I have engineered for their success. But, it is very motivational to celebrate our success in this way. Asking students to “brag” on their partner’s paper, and not on their own once they have it back, is a way to let the “too cool for school” crowd celebrate academic success too. Many students would hesitate or even choose not to raise their hand when “bragging” on their own work, for cultural reasons or because that’s just not part of how they
see themselves as a learner. But most kids like to celebrate others’ success, so usually the partners’ hands shoot up proudly to brag on their partner’s work, as if they had something to do with this amazing achievement by simply grading it!
Having students raise their hands also sends a message to anyone who is not making 100s on their formative listening quizzes because they were not listening attentively to the 12 to 16 minutes of Guided Oral Input: everyone else can do it. Seeing the class’s general level of success can spur such students to listen more carefully in the future, because they see that, for most of their peers, that led to stellar grades on the review quiz.
These review quizzes are, in fact, so easy to “ace” and so highly-engineered for student success that they are an excellent diagnostic tool for formative instructional decisions on your part. If a student or a small group of students consistently score low on the first two or three quizzes, and the class as a whole is consistently scoring high, you can rearrange the class’s seating to bring them closer to you so that you can more easily monitor the reasons for their low comprehension scores.
I recommend that you move the entire class around when making seating changes, even if it only with the intention of bring one single student closer to the areas that you use for Guided Oral Input instruction and your “Review Spot” where you conduct the daily oral review. If you move a single student, especially one who already feels inadequate because they are getting low scores on formative assessments, it sends a harmful message to that student and can make them feel ashamed in front of the entire class.
If the entire class is consistently scoring lower than 100%, which, for me means less than 85% or so of the students, then you want to think about what you are doing as the teacher that could be improved. Perhaps the class is consistently distracted during the Guided Oral Input, in which case you will want to review the chapter on classroom management, and the recommendations on going SLOW.
If your students struggle with this written Quick Quiz, you might examine the comprehensibility of your speech during Guided Oral Input. You might adjust by perhaps reducing your speed, or reducing the amount of information you are attempting to convey during the input, or adding more visual scaffolding, or recycling more frequently through previously-established information, or asking more frequent whole-class questions to check for understanding during the input. You might use more gestures and teach them more explicitly, saying,
(gesture as you say X)
(gesture as you say X)
(gesture)
(gesture).
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.
