37 minute read

Instructional Session 30

Objective: By the end of class, you will be able to… Beginner: say sentences in French to give information in French about the Grand Est region of France, using contentspecific vocabulary Intermediate: say a series of connected sentences in French to give information in French about the Grand Est region of France, using content-specific vocabulary, and using transition words to say more Advanced: say well-organized paragraphs in French to give information in French about the Grand Est region of France, using content-specific vocabulary, and using transition words to say more

Preparation:

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The Guided Oral Input strategy you will be using today is a Mind Map. This strategy is used to process the information from the Expert Group Pages. You will first process the class’s shared Expert Group Pages on the first subtopic (the Grand Est region, in the example lesson), and then, when students are finished working with their Expert Group to read, highlight, and sketch/copy (as modeled in Session 29), they will complete a group Mind Map to record and reinforce their learning on their group’s subtopic (Normandy, Corsica, or Nouvelle-Aquitaine, in the example materials).

The class mind map is like a Vulcan mind-meld of everyone in class, except you do not have to have Vulcan Powers. You will us the information based on what we have all just learned.

You might want to make the mind map ahead of time, or you could talk your class through the process while making it on an overhead, on chart paper, or on the board, as students replicate the Mind Map on their own paper. You could also just have students watch as you create and fill in the Mind Map, as you lead the class discussion.

The subtopic that you learned and read about as a class will go in the middle of the Mind Map. Draw a shape in the middle - whatever shape and color you assigned to the subtopic when you set up the Process Grid, and then draw lines off the central topic and draw the shapes that you chose for each of the Shape and Concept Categories on “sticks” or lines radiating out from the subtopic. Each one of the categories correspond to one of the paragraphs in the Expert Group Pages you read as a class.

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Because you have just finished the reading, and your students have their marked-up texts with them for reference, and you have taken them through the tightly-planned and very scaffolded Process Grid Process to arrive at this point, you and your students will most likely be quite pleasantly surprised at how much information they are able to contribute in the course language as you fill in the Mind Map. You are heading into the “release” phase of the Process Grid Process, when students will be doing much more self-directed learning. You have planted the seeds and thoroughly fertilized and watered them, and now you will begin to reap the harvest. It’s magical to witness!

Now, on to the lesson procedures:

Continue to greet the students in English, review expectations, etc. Distribute or project the Reading Workshop text. You might make your own Reading Workshop text, use the ones in our Teachers Pay Teachers store, such as the example below, or work with a Shared Writing text from a previous lesson. Then, share the lesson objective if you have not already done so, check in with your Class Starter and Videographer, and any other student workers with whom you need to touch base, and begin the lesson.

In Other Words

Please refer back to Session 28 for a detailed explanation and sample lesson using this strategy. You might want to add an additional phrase to your anchor chart that students can use to restate content-specific vocabulary. It’s also completely OK if you don’t, and you just recycle the term(s) that you have already added to the chart.

After a few minutes, move into the Guided Oral Input, with a short calendar check-in and then begin the class Mind Map.

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Quick Calendar Check-In

Move to the calendar for a brief calendar check-in to transition to the Guided Oral Input. Examples of calendar check-in are found in the previous instructional sessions, and there is no example here. Refer to Sessions 1-8 for more details on Small Talk (calendar and weather).

See the graphic lesson procedures for the Mind Map below.

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After about 12 to 15 minutes of Guided Oral Input, regardless of how much of the Mind Map you have filled in, you will move on to Scaffolded Oral Review.

Review Our Charts

Move to your Review Spot. This Scaffolded Oral Review strategy is explained in detail in Session 21.

Review as many facts from your previous chart as time permits, perhaps using word cards as explained in Session 27. This is an excellent way to “warm students up” to begin the Sentence Patterning Chart for Shared Writing, as explained below.

Sentence Patterning Chart

Today, you will learn about one of the most engaging, fun Shared Writing strategies I know: the Sentence Patterning Chart. I like to call them “Word Rainbows” because it is a lot more fun to say, and they are, in fact rainbow-colored and also made out of words. Sentence Patterning Charts are a GLAD strategy that are super-fun to make and use, and they can provide a nice break in the daily writing routine. They are bestused towards the end of a topic study, and generally best-suited to informational content, such as historical, cultural, or geographical information. It is recommended that you use this strategy towards the end of the topic study, as is scheduled in this lesson sequence, so that students will have interacted with a good amount of language that might be used to write about a category of information that was central to the topic study.

Sentence Patterning Charts can also serve as a word bank from which students can draw when speaking or writing about the topic, and they also have the nice little bonus of reinforcing English Language Arts standards — parts of speech — and are also a way to “teach grammar as a concept in context,” which is one of the six Page 468

Core Practices recommended by ACTFL. Plus, they are just really fun and visually appealing, because each column is color coded.

Many teachers color code them red, then orange, then green, blue, and purple so that the completed chart looks like a rainbow. That’s not totally necessary, but it is just super-satisfying to create a “word rainbow” with your class, and it is a fun strategy to announce to the class because most people really like rainbows. “Hey, we are going to make a rainbow!” sounds a lot more fun than the truth, which is “Hey, let’s review the PARTS OF SPEECH!”

You can read the procedures in the next paragraphs, and also see a graphic version of pictures from a workshop below, to picture this very visual strategy. To begin, simply choose one noun (or a noun phrase) that your students know well. In the example, I chose the noun “sites” to correspond with the topic study of regions of France. You will preselect ONE noun, and perhaps also fill it in on the chart. The rest of the columns will be filled during class with your students’ ideas and suggestions.

Working in front of your students, you will make a grid with room for adjectives, the noun that you have chosen, verbs, adverbs, and prepositional phrases. In French, we have to have two adjective columns due to the large number of common adjectives that come before the noun, as well as the even-more-common position after the noun. You might have to change the order of the columns, or add more than one column for a certain part of speech, depending on the way that your language behaves.

During class, you will briefly introduce each part of speech, generally beginning with adjectives, writing the title in the course language (e.g. “adjectifs” or “adjectives” in French) and a few examples in the top of the chart, using the color you assign to that column, and briefly explaining what its function is.

Then you have students generate possible words for each column, brainstorming adjectives, verbs, etc. that could be used to form a sentence with the chosen noun. You will record students’ contributions - even if they are a little wacky - in a list in the applicable column, ideally writing in the color you have assigned to that part of speech.

Red Black Orange Green Blue Purple

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The words that they give might not be all that “academic”; that is fine. They might also call out ideas in their stronger shared language(s); that is also fine. Just write down all their ideas in a list, and add a sketch to show the meaning of the word, and translate any words that they offer in their stronger language(s) into the course language as you write.

Note: You might feel nervous, if your course language is not your strongest language, at the thought of having to take students’ off-the-cuff ideas and translate them into your language. Here is a nifty “trick” that may help you deal with such a situation.

If, at any time I am making a chart or writing in front of the class, I find that I do not know a word, or that I’m unsure of a word, or I have forgotten it, which happens often since I don’t generally teach in my native language, I use a modification that I developed, of a trick that my GLAD trainers taught me. They modeled jotting a “SP?” for “Spelling?” in a circle around the word. Sometimes, even though they actually know how to spell a word, GLAD-aligned teachers will “pretend forget” how to spell it, to model this helpful habit for their students, to increase the chances that they will begin doing this on their own.

Extending on that strategy for World Language students, and their often-harried, non-native speaker teachers, I will sometimes put a “FR?” around words I do not know how to translate, and that I need to look up. Sometimes I tell the class, “Oh, I forgot that word in French.” This is a good way to model for your students that you are still a language learner, and it takes the pressure off of us to know everything about the languages we teach. Even native speakers who know all the words in the unabridged dictionary would be well-advised to pretend not to know the occasional word, and say, “Oh, I forgot how we say that,” in order to model this strategy for students. The idea is that if they are writing and they do not know a word, or they are not sure how to spell something, that they will simply make a note of it and come back later to fix it.

Once students have generated a list of adjectives, you move on to the next part of speech and generate a list of possible verbs, adverbs, and prepositional phrases that could be used when writing about the topic. You might only list a few words in each column the first time you use a Sentence Patterning Chart, but that is okay; you can come back to it in subsequent lessons and add more, which is an excellent review strategy for these final lessons in the Information cycle.

For Shared Reading, you will process the chart using a super-fun and almost magical-seeming strategy that I Page 470

“The Farmer in the Dell” Reading

Shared Reading is quite different when using a Sentence Patterning Chart for Shared Writing. It’s more like “shared SINGING!” It’s a nice break from the routine.

Once the chart is done (which can take a couple of lessons), then you can have student volunteers choose the words they want to combine into a sentence, by coming up to the chart and putting post-it notes on the words they want the class to use. They need to choose two adjectives and one from each of the other lists.

Then, quite surprisingly, the sentence can almost always be easily sung to the tune of “The Farmer in the Dell.”

It goes like this, but you might need to switch up the order in your language: A volunteer marking the

Adjective, Adjective, Noun (to the tune, “The farmer in the dell…”) Adjective, Adjective, Noun (to the tune, “The farmer in the dell…”) Adjective, Adjective, Noun, Verb, Adverb, Prepositional Phrase (to the tune, “Hi, ho, the derry-oh, the farmer in the dell…”)

You can sing the tune with the names of the parts of speech in your course language a few times, just for “practice” and to reinforce the names of the parts of speech in L2. Literally, you would sing,

“Adjectif, Nom, Adjectif… Adjectif, Nom, Adjectif…Adjectif, Nom, Adjectif…. Verbe, Adverbe, Phrase prépositionnelle!”

Then, once you are all warmed up, you can sing the sentence for your students (or sing along with your class).

You can then have another volunteer remove the first set of post-its and make another one, if time permits.

To review the information you have studied, or just to have fun, you can return to the chart at any time.

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You will perhaps be surprised at how often, after you make a Word Rainbow Chart, how much you see kids sneaking glances at it when they are writing or speaking, or even listening to lessons on the same topic. It somehow “sticks” in the brain in a very deep way, and, for many students, it serves as a valuable resource for the duration of the rest of the topic study.

Nine times out of ten, “The Farmer in the Dell” fits almost

Sentence Patterning Chart

You can have your students make their own Sentence Patterning Chart, working independently or with a partner, or perhaps working in the Expert Group that you will assign them to in the next session, to read their Expert Group Pages. This is a good way for the group to “gel” with a creative, fun, often silly activity: copying the chart and adding their own words to it. You can provide the noun or let students/groups choose their own.

You can specify that they have to include a certain number of elements from various columns of the class chart, if you want. This helps students process the elements they are copying again, and reinforces the language used in the lesson.

You can have students make a Sentence Patterning Chart and then conduct a “Farmer in the Dell” competition, with students trading charts and engaging in a singing competition (Room 22’s Got Talent called…they want their talent back). If your students love Sentence Patterning Charts as much as most of mine have, then you will surely find plenty of ways to use them to extend the language input, reinforce students’ learning, and have a down-home kneeslappin’ hootenanny of a good time up in German class!

Just in case my Georgia’s acting up again, I am defining this term, for those who did not benefit from a southern upbrangin’.

At the end of the period, as always, you might want to debrief with students, congratulating them on what went well, and setting goals for future improvements.

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Welcome to Easy Street!

This is a special day…or days. It could be one day, if you are in a hurry to get somewhere, or you could take multiple days, which is like teacher Shangri-La. It is like the nirvana of teaching. And no, I’m not talking about the grunge band from Seattle. I'm talking about real nirvana, like paradise. Expert Group Reading Days are basically Teacher Paradise, because you are about to get your kids interacting with their expert group pages, which means that they will be getting absolutely tons of high-quality language input, while you take on thr role of Guide on the Side. In small groups, your class will read an Expert Group Page about one of the remaining subtopics from the Process Grid. In this example, they will read about one of the remaining regions of France: Normandy, Nouvelle-Aquitaine, or Corsica.

All the work the you and the class did together with the first subtopic (the Grand Est, in this example) has prepared them for this day, or two or maybe even three days, to work on their own. You simply move into the role of guide, coach, and manager, as they interact with the language in a deep way, because of all the scaffolding and preparation that is built into the lessons and materials that you have created or developed together throughout the preceding sessions in Cycle Four (Information). Yeah, it's better than a Nirvana concert in 1993.

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Before we look into this much-touted Teacher Vacay, we need to get one thing out of the way. English. Or whatever the students’ stronger shared language is.

You will hear it during this session. Probably a lot. But it’s OK. It’s actually worth it.

Here’s the deal.

When the kids are doing this work, I know from experience, there will be a lot of English being spoken among the kids. It its worth it because of the high level of reading interpretation that they are able to do and the high level of topic-specific language that they are able to address in these very scaffolded reading tasks that were set up throughout this whole process. It’s a trade-off. But if you think about how much language input they have gotten all year long, and how much they are getting from the readings, you will most likely agree that it is worth the “price.” Further, students will most likely find it very frustrating to try to complete the tasks that comprise this session in the course language. It’s just not worth the frustration.

You could always skip this session, if you just cannot abide English in your classroom. You probably should. Even upper-level students quite likely would feel the need to discuss and process in their stronger shared language, at least some of the time when they are working in their groups. Of course, it’s your choice, ultimately, but just gird yourself for some hitches in your giddy-up if you do choose to maintain the expectation that students complete the rather challenging (yet completely achievable due to all the prior scaffolding in the Process Grid Process) task of processing their group’s reading.

Below, you can see an outline of the process. Then we will dive into each step and you will read an explanation of how to set up, manage, and quality check the groups’ work.

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Setting Up the Expert Groups

I recommend that you divide the class into groups of three students. I learned in a BeGLAD training that research has suggested that three is the optimal number of members in a high-performing group. You will probably want to form the groups yourself, so that you can group students in heterogeneous, or in other words, mixed-ability groups, so that each group, as much as possible, is comprised of member whose reading ability is high, medium, and low. You might not readily know your students’ reading levels. When in doubt, ask their English Language Arts teacher, who will most likely have that data handy. You could also ask Guidance or your administrator for students’ reading scores on standardized testing, but these scores are in no way able to give a full picture of a student’s true abilities. Teacher data and observations are much more reliable and usually give much more detailed insight.

If your class does not evenly divide into groups of three, you will need to make one group of two or four. But you are strongly encouraged to use heterogeneous groups of three as much as possible.

Each group will need the following materials.

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Managing the Expert Groups as They Work

Before you get started, you will want to think about how to keep everybody working the whole time, even if their group completes their reading early. They are going to be working somewhat independently, so want to set up some systems where they are going to have some quality control with you, the teacher, and they are not just sitting over there farting around and goofing off.

You will also want to have some activities ready for groups who finish early. I suggest the GLAD strategy of “Team Tasks.” Set up a menu of team tasks that will serve as “sponge activities” to “soak up” early finishers’ extra time, and keep them learning, engaging with the language, and - perhaps most importantly - our of your hair as you manage the rest of the class. Some sample Team Tasks are given here, but you can select any task that requires them to use the information and language in their group’s reading, in a creative way, and gives them options over what they choose to complete.

Team tasks are not the main task of the Expert Groups. The group’s main task is marking up their expert group reading, like you did with the text that you read as a class in Session 29, and then making a group Mind Map for their subtopic, just like you did as a whole class in Session 30. Team Tasks are for differentiation. They are not optional, as you will require students to work the whole time you have scheduled for the Expert Group Reading Day(s), but not every team will complete Team Tasks. So they are not optional but they are an option. More suggestions on Team Tasks will be provided below.

I suggest that you tell your students that their grade for the Expert Group reading is not based on finishing fast or getting done before everybody else. Their grade is based on learning the whole time for the next two days, next three days, or even the next four days. Take a vacation, give yourself a sub day. Seriously, you want - above all else - to make sure that you set up the expectation that everyone works the whole time. Otherwise, you will have created an incentive to rush through the work, and do a half-hearted job, to get to the “prize” of extra time to go on their phones, visit, relax, or just cut the fool. So please take pains to establish a workshop-like environment tin which here really is no finished. There's no “Done.” You want people to keep re-interacting with the language for the entire course of however many days that you have planned for Expert Group Reading Day(s).

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The Group’s First Job: Reading, Highlighting, and Sketching

The group’s first task is to work through the text together. You truly do want the groups working together, especially because the less-skilled reader in the group will really benefit from their teammates’ working with them every step of the way, through every line of text.

This is why you will only provide ONE shared copy of the text for each group. It goes a long way towards ensuring that the groups truly do work together. As they read, students will mark it with the shared group highlighter (which will encourage them to work together to choose the words they highlight, to indicate the “important” or “key” terms in each section. You might want to specify that they highlight at least a certain number of words in each paragraph. If you do so, you will want the number of terms in each part to be a multiple of three, because there are three people in each group, and each one should be doing an equal amount of work. For example, you might tell them that they need six sketches for the first paragraph, six sketches for the second paragraph, and so on.

Instruct students to highlight using the same method that you demonstrated and taught when you read the class Expert Group Page: first letter, last letter, and everything in between. You might require them to pass the highlighter around in the group, taking turns wielding the mighty group highlighter.

After they highlight a term in the reading, they will take turns using their different-colored pens to circle the term, draw a line to the box under the paragraph, copy the word, and make a sketch to show its meaning.

A Process Chart for the First Step

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A “Process Chart” is a special kind of input chart. It tells you how to do something. Process Charts are superuseful in working with language learners, because as you have probably noticed, giving directions that students understand (and actually follow) is hard. It’s hard even for teachers whose classes are conducted in the stronger shared language! But World Language teachers really have to work to impart directions, if they want to speak in the course language. Process Charts to the rescue!

Because input charts use so many visual symbols, you are basically creating a handy visual step-by-step guide to doing whatever it is that you want students to do. Additionally, the chart is displayed where students can refer to it as they work, which might cut down on the number of “I just explained that three minutes ago!” moments in this lesson.

See the example below for a Process Chart that explains to students what to do in their groups for this first step. When you make the chart, I suggest that you begin with a blank page, and write/sketch symbols as you speak to your students. My suggestion is that, when making a new Process

Chart, you write in the course language on the chart and speak in the stronger shared language, as modeled below. Then, later when you are referring back to the chart, you will most likely find that you can speak in the course language and your students will understand.

This Process Chart is entitled, “Expert Reading.” Below, you will find suggested ways to explain the elements of this chart as you sketch and write in front of your class to make it.

1. I will divide you into groups. Groups of three people. That’s YOU, plus TWO other people. NOT you plus one more person, NOT you plus three others. YOU plus two. How many is that total? Yes. Three.

Some groups will read about Corsica (labeled on the chart with “Corsica” or “C”), some will read about

Nouvelle-Aquitaine, and some about Normandy. 2. You will have three pens and one highlighter. Each person will choose a color. Each color will make three notes per paragraph (or however many you wnt to ask your students to annotate). 3. When you finish, come see me with your group. Bring your paper. If there is a line just wait in it. But please DO NOT be grumpy! 4. If you are waiting, just come to the front and watch and listen. You will learn a thing or two. 5. When your group is okayed, you will move to the next step.

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You can supercharge the Process Chart’s comprehensibility by speaking in the class’s stronger shared language as you make the chart, but writing/sketching in the course language. This “glues” the comprehensibility of the stronger shared language onto the chart, so that it is “stuck” in students’ minds when they refer back to it, even though the writing on the chart is in the course language. You can set up the chart in this way and then, when you refer to it in the future, speak in the course language, pointing to the sketches and symbols on the chart to reactivate students’ memories of what the symbols mean, because when they originally saw them being created, you “glued” the stronger shared language into their minds. This is powerful, and I highly recommend using this process to create a Process Chart any time you need to convey directions that you will need to repeat in the future.

Once you have your groups set up and working on their expert group pages, better grab a cup of coffee fat, because the “Me” Time probably won’t last too long. You will soon have some groups bringing up their page to you. You might ask them to bring up their first paragraph without finishing the other two, so you can make sure that they are on the right track. If they have done this before, it is more likely that you can tell them to finish the whole page and then bring it to you. When they bring it to you, you might make a process chart similar to this one that shows them how the quality control process will go.

This process chart is based on the process that I like to go through.

I like to make a little version of this chart and keep it by my work area, so I can remind myself of the steps I intend to use.

Each step is explained in more detail below.

1. I ask the first student what color they used. I would look at their Expert Group page with their notes on it, point to the colors to reinforce what I am asking, and say, “I see…green…who used green?”

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2. I ask the student who used green to count the sketches on the group’s sheet with me. If I told them that they need nine things in each paragraph, then that means each student had to do three. I count one to nine with the student(s) counting along. I say “Good job, you’ve got nine”.

Note: If they do not have nine, I send the whole group back to work and make sure that kid has nine things. I don't care if somebody else picked up the slack. That's not the message I'm trying to impart to my kids. I don't want them to think that they are going to have the smart kid or the fast kid do all the work. So even if everybody in the group is complaining, I just remind them that everybody is expected to learn the same equal amount. That's why we use different colors. So I do NOT go on to check more work from this group. I have them sit as close to me as they comfortably and reasonably can, so I can keep an eye on their hopefullyimproved group workflow, and tell them to make the kid do some more work.

3. If they have everything all in order, then I move on to the next step in this guided conversation. I ask them to show me their favorite drawings in the first paragraph. They just point at it. Many students say the term from the text that they copied in the box, but they don’t have to. Many times, I have to name the drawing for them in the language. They might not know the name of the thing that they drew, in the course language.

For example, if they drew somebody looking tired, they might not remember the word for tired in the course language. So, if they drew a tired person, and the word in the text was “fed up,” (as in “frustrated with something that will not stop”), but clearly the student is trying to describe the sketch but doesn’t have the vocabulary, I would simply tell them in French "la personne a l'air fatiguée.” This basically gives them the word, in a meaningful, communicative context, if they didn’t already have it.

4. I ask them in the course language, What word from the text does this “tired person” (fill in the words that you just used when asking the student what their favorite drawing was) represent? "Quel mot dans le texte représente la personne fatiguée?” The term is already highlighted in the text, so it shouldn't be hard for the student to find it. Basically, I'm trying to scaffolded them with easy questions that lead up to some harder questions, so they can start having these, small academic conversations with their teacher.

The other two group members are listening and watching, as I interact with the first student, but that's fine. They all know what is in this document. They have all done the work together. Now they are putting some conversation - interpersonal communication - to this information.

Often, you will have another group waiting to talk about their paper. When this happens, you can make the waiting more educationally-valuable (and also keep the lined-up students quiet so that those who are working can have a more focused work environment) by asking the other group(s) to look over the shoulders of the first group. Give them a little note-taking sheet, if you want them to be really focused on listening. I tell them that as they are listening to make notes, and (to provide a level of accountability and “teeth” in my request) I say that I expect them to turn these notes in when they arrive at the front of the line and we talk. This makes the waiting much more educationally-sound, because they are hearing some more interpersonal communication (and keeping busy) while they wait. Page 482

5. If I feel that we have the time, I will ask them why does this tired person represent the term fed up? Maybe the text said, in French, “Jacques Cousteau was fed up with everyone eating so much fish. So he launched Vegans for Fish Incorporated. (I made this up for the purpose of this explanation). This is a slightly more challenging task, but it - like the whole Process Grid Process is super-scaffolded. The student can basically look back into the text to tell me why, or if they are an advanced learner, a more confident student, or they are in a higher level class, then I can delve in deeper with them and ask them some more questions.

If their expert page is to my satisfaction, I give them their group Mind Map. This is like the “prize,” except that the prize is…MORE WORK! If their work in step one was not done to my satisfaction, I'll send them off to make improvements. Either way, yay, more learning!

After they check in to quality control (or QC) their notes, the group will work together to create one shared group Mind Map for their topic, writing facts from the reading in the course language on their Mind Map, in much the same way that you did as a class for the first subtopic.

You can set this task up in many different ways. Groups could do one big mind map on a piece of chart paper, and then come together to synthesize everyone’s information into a group sheet, or they could simply make a Mind Map on a regular-sized sheet of paper.

Before sending the group off to work, you might refer them back to the class mind map, perhaps hanging on the wall, to help them get started. There is so much language input happening in this step, even if students are interacting in English, because while they are filling in the mind map, they are going to have to start, even if they are talking about the process in English, using the language from the reading and putting it, or choosing it, or selecting it, or arranging it onto their mind map. The mind map is going to be completely created in the language. Their use of the language might not be perfect, they might not arrange it perfectly, they might add some things that are not perfect language. But they are going to be processing and doing a lot of interaction with that text and these topic-specific terms.

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You can require them to do certain things on their mind map like use highlighted terms that you drew pictures of or added sketches to their meaning. Once the group has completed their shared Mind you could have each student generate their own copy of the mind That is particularly useful if you do ever want to use the mind maps more advanced uses.

One of the ways you can use the Mind Maps is a student who worked in the Normandy expert group would match up with students Corsica and Nouvelle-Aquitaine groups to trade information, making on a blank mind map or another graphic organizer (e.g. perhaps a Diagram, a Three-Circle Venn Diagram, or a T-Chart) of what they show Map, map. for

from notes Venn

are learning about the other subtopics. Even in the most basic format, the Mind Map gets them to interact quite a bit with the language and with that text, and they read it with a critical eye and a task that they have to do.

One thing that you should know if you have everybody doing their own individual mind map is that the content should match up. So even if everyone is doing their own, they should all be identical copies of the same information. If you let them do whatever they want on their own paper, as you probably have seen happen in your own class, the advanced kids will just leave everybody else in the dust and the kids that most need the support will be left to struggle through the task on their own.

After the Expert Group Reading Day(s), you can have students use these mind maps for all kinds of things, especially if you want to do some presentational speaking or interpersonal communication tasks, in particular for older or upper level students. You could have them use their notes from the Expert Groups to plan in a

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little presentation, perhaps using the appropriate level of the Presentational Speaking Rubric, shown here and available in the Appendices.

This rubric is great because it includes transitional words and introductions, and it gives you some teaching points to use in preparing students as they plan, practice, and deliver their presentations. If you look into the rubric and see the criteria for an A or B, it gives you some teaching points on delivery and how to help them with their public speaking.

I really love teaching specific public speaking skills. When I taught social studies we were required to do a couple speeches. We had to collect speaking work samples. For some reason, they always made social studies the discipline that was in charge of that. Health did one and we did two in Social Studies. We would do a lot of speaking practice and speaking preparation. There are some pretty fun teaching points in that academic or advanced presentational speaking rubric.

You can have them use their mind map for anything that you want, to extend the learning further, or you can simply move on to the final lesson in the sequence - the class Process Grid. But first, let’s look at the final steps of the Expert Group Reading Day(s).

When groups are finished with their Mind Map, they will bring you their work and you can ask them some questions about it and, if time permits, engage them in conversation, like you did when they brought you their reading notes in Step Two. When you are sure that it looks good and you are going to give them a good grade and they are finished, it is time for them to start doing some team tasks. So, there really is no finished. There's no “Done.”

These Team Tasks are basically something for your fast finishers to do when their entire group is finished and their work has been checked and approved. You want to prepare a choice board of team tasks they can complete, to process the information from their reading in a new way. I like to tell them that their grade is not

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based on finishing fast or getting done before everybody else. Their grade is based on learning the whole time for the next two days, next three days, or even the next four days. However long I want my visit to Teacher Shangri-La to last.

The team task board should have different various options. You can put anything on here that you want. You can say, make a crossword puzzle, make your own input chart, make a quiz about your expert group pages, find a movie on a clip and write questions about it. There are all kinds of things that you can do, but what you want to be sure of is that you have some “sponge” team task activities prepared for the early finishers.

You really need to set up the expectation at the beginning of this fun day, the objective and your expectation is that everyone is going to work the entire time. There is no getting Done. If they are finished with their expert page task, they need to be working on a team task. If they are not working on a team task, they are not meeting your expectations for doing school in class today.

I want to impress to you it is very important to set up your Team Tasks. Without them, and without the clear expectation that the groups will work the entire time to interact with the readings, your potential visit to ShangriLa can quite easily become a real drag.

You can display the Team Tasks on the board or on chart paper, and/or give the groups a sheet with the list on it. Explain to the kids and be clear about what you want them to do if they finish their group expert pages.

You want people to keep re-interacting with that information for the entire course of however many days that you have planned out to do this expert group work. For more ideas on Team Tasks, please see the appendices for more information on Learning Logs. You could also ask them or give them the option of doing these team tasks with the other groups’ topics, using copies of the other Expert Group Pages. So if they read about Corsica in their group, you might have them read about Normandy or Nouvelle-Aquitaine, and do some tasks with that topic.

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