Volleyball Reading

I love to read and was a voracious reader throughout my childhood and adolescence. Unfortunately, most of my students don't seem to share the same interest in reading as I did when I was their age (which wasn't all that long ago!). Since many of them dislike reading in English, getting them enthusiastic about reading in French is no easy task!

I do my best to make the actual process of reading more fun for my students and I often read to them to provide them with input that is both comprehensible and accurate. From time to time I like to take the heat off of myself and have the students do the reading - but I also don't want to have to worry about students making comprehension errors when I step back, which means that I would have to work double-hard to undo something that had been cemented into their heads incorrectly.

Wikimedia Commons

Enter...volleyball. It's a technique I picked up a couple of years ago at a TPRS Workshop and it is probably my students' favorite reading strategy. It works best with smaller chunks of text at a time - say, an Embedded/Extended Reading or perhaps 1-2 pages of a chapter in a novel - and it provides students with LOTS of repetition and CI (provided that the text you pick is comprehensible)!

First, the students and I read through the text together; I give them the French, and they respond together in unison with the English translation, line per line. This is what helps to provide comprehensibility. If it is a text that features a lot of structures the students are already familiar with, I will ask them to read it together with a partner, and circle or underline any words/phrases they don't know. Before we start volleyball, I will clarify the translations of those words or phrases.

Then...we play! Students sit with a partner, and they begin to "volley" back and forth; Student A reads the first line of the story in French; student B translates that line into English, and then reads the following line in French. Student A translates that line, then reads in French, so on and so forth. During this time, I am circling and listening for accuracy; if I hear an inaccurate translation, we clarify, and I send them back to the beginning of the story. After an indeterminate amount of time, I call, Arrête (Stop)! and the students stop reading. If Student A was in the middle of speaking when I called stop, then Student B gets to mark one point on his/her paper and vice versa. I do my best to vary when I call stop, so that the students can't predict when I'm going to say it. If they get to the end of the reading sample before I call stop, they are to go back to the beginning and start again.

Whichever partner has the most points at the end of the game is the "winner" - and students usually ask for a rematch, which I love - more repetitions! and the students love - more game time!

Bonne continuation!

2015 New Year's Resolutions

I've never been one for making many New Year's Resolutions as I've found a tendency to attempt to accomplish things that are not actually that realistic - sometimes lofty goals with no supports in place are not the best recipe for success, shockingly! Likewise, as I move into the latter part of my twenties, I'd like to think of these less as one-year goals and more as steps toward becoming a more mature, responsible, and productive adult.

In addition to setting personal goals for my own health and wellness (eat more mindfully, be more active, spend more time reading), I have also created a few professional "resolutions" that I hope to work on this year as well.

Resolution #1: 90% Language, 100% Comprehensible.

I know this. You know this. The students need me to remain in the Target Language 90% of the time. I am inconsistent with this -  there are some days when I hit that target full force with 90% or more, and some days where it's all I can do to just stay standing until the end of the hour, let alone speaking French. I need to be more diligent about reminding myself (and having students remind me!) that since it's French class, that's the language I need to be speaking.

Resolution #2: #authres is where it's at.

I need way more authentic resources. I need to let the students discover the culture, rather than sit and listen while I tell them about the culture. I think learning stations are absolutely golden when it comes to this - they force me to take a back seat, and force the students to do the work and discovery. Additionally, students WANT to spend more time exploring the culture - if not a daily focus, this needs to be a more consistent, weekly focus. Pinterest, here I come!

Resolution #3: Less is more.

Though my do-it-all grammar obsession has waned considerably since I first started to wade into the ocean of technique that is TCI/TPRS (I'm still hanging out in the shallow end, relatively speaking), I still am trying to do too much. My expectations, per proficiency level, are still too high. I am letting the pressure of my non-TCI department get to me, to "get through the textbook" and to "cover" material. I also do not trust myself; I do not trust that they will learn sentence structure if I throw out verb charts! I do not trust that they will acquire vocabulary without a reference list. I need to trust. I need to slow down. I need to remember what the goal really is - and it's not to get through eleventy-bajillion verb tenses and 500 vocab words.

Resolution #4: My work day ends at 4:00 PM.

This is one I'm stealing from the ladies at Creative Language Class, because it's genius and it never even occurred to me. Seriously? It never occurred to me to put a limit on my work day. This is insanity, because I could (and have!) work all day and all night. It's easy to go home and keep that stack of grading handy as I watch TV, or surf for resources, so on and so forth - but I've got to knock it off. I need limits, a work-life balance, and better time management skills. I also want to put that time into pursuing new hobbies (and maybe walking my dog a little more...sorry Lu!).

Bonne année, toutes et tous! What are your resolutions??

J'ai entendu dire que...

We just wrapped our unit on Amour et Amitié (Love & Friendship) in my split French 3/4, and I have to say, I am so far thrilled with the results. I administered an IPA for this unit, as opposed to a traditional test, and I have been very pleased with my students' performances. I combined Storytelling with the inclusion of more authentic resources and lots of in-class discussion. For more structured interpretive, interpersonal, and presentational activities, I used an IPA-style approach to prepare them for what to expect on the summative assessment.

One particular part of the unit that we had a lot of fun with was the gossip/rumor-telling portion. During that time, our targeted structure was J'ai entendu dire que... (I heard that...) as well as refining our use of indirect discourse. I started off using Martina Bex's idea for teaching the structure "Dijo" but instead of focusing on the structure "said" (which my students already know pretty well), I focused on starting off each rumor with "J'ai entendu dire que." The kids LOVED this activity and we kept it going for nearly the whole hour! Like Martina, I had a lot of "Person A likes Person B" but plenty of other very creative rumors, too - I think my favorite was "Mademoiselle actually prefers to speak Spanish." In any case, it was a great way to provide lots of Comprehensible Input for students, and have fun, too. I always love to hear kids say, "We didn't do anything in French class today." They have no idea what they've accomplished!

We also took this time to review how to officially "do" indirect discourse - they already knew, but as I have particular grammar points I am required to hit throughout the course of the year, I took this time to do some more explicit grammar instruction (very limited, however).

After that, I had prepared some questions for discussion, which the students prepared first in partners, and then shared with the whole group:

1. Have you ever told a rumor about a friend?
2. Has a friend ever told a rumor about you? How did you feel when you found out?
3. What kind of problems can rumors cause?
4. Are rumors a big part of our culture? How do you know?

I was fishing for a particular answer for number four, which the kids provided readily when they talked about America's obsession with celebrities, hollywood, tabloid magazines, etc. I used that as a jumping-off point for analyzing an article from the French version of Marie Claire, who had done a write-up on an interview that Carla Bruni had given, discussing her marriage to Nicolas Sarkozy and whether or not she believed he had ever been unfaithful to her, in response to the endless rumors about the two of them. The kids read the article in partners and did the IPA-style activities; this particular article was chock-full of our unit vocabulary, so they actually found it quite easy to read!

After they read, they completed the interpersonal portion of the activity, in which they discussed with a partner the various contexts in which they themselves have been part of the rumor mill, and whether or not there was any truth to things they had said or heard. They were also provided with a series of scenarios that they had to rank using adjectives like "scandalous" or "revolting" and be prepared to orally defend why they felt the way they did. It was interesting to hear their perspectives on what would be the most shocking to them - many reported that the president having an affair would not rock their world, but their favorite athlete taking drugs would be an enormous scandal/shock. Interesting!

Ultimately, this whole thing acted as a lead-in to our discussion of François Hollande and his big cheating scandal, as well as marriage and relationship conventions in France.

In any case, I am providing the link to the work I developed. I departed a little bit from the traditional IPA format and CI conventions by including a very brief grammar section to review the construction of indirect discourse - this can be easily omitted if that is your personal preference! I also do not have a presentational part included for this particular assignment - the students in my classes had to write a blog entry on the theme of rumors and their impact on others, but you could add something in of your own choosing.

Carla Bruni et les rumeurs

Whole-Group Listening Game: Combien de gens comprennent...?

I'm posting today a kinesthetic listening game that can also function well as a formative assessment or review for just about any classroom topic. The idea came from some of the English teachers at my school, who use this activity as a way to practice vocabulary definitions, but it can be easily adapted for use in the World Language classroom, as either a way to review singular vocabulary words, or target phrases/ideas from a story! It is also a good way to provide students with a lot of repetitions of structures, but keep them engaged at the same time.

How to play:
1. Divide the class into two big teams (or three, if you have really large classes. My max is 25.).

2. Provide the students on one of the team's with a word or a phrase in the Target Language. Say it loud enough so that the whole class can hear, but only one team gets to guess first. This can be done with singular vocabulary (Que veut dire, "il y avait" en anglais?) or with details from a story that have already been established. For example, in French 3 we have been practicing the subjunctive with Bryce Hedstrom's Introducing the subjunctive with a story script, so I might ask the students, "Où est-ce que Haley veut que Marcus aille?" knowing that the detail has already been established in class.

3. The students on the team who believe they can confidently answer the question stand up and the teacher randomly calls on one standing student for an answer. I have a set of index cards for each class that have every student's name on one card, so it really is a random "cold-call," if you will.

4. The student gives the answer in English, if doing a vocabulary check, or in the TL if providing a detail from the story. If he or she is correct, his or her team gets as many points as they had people standing up, claiming to know the correct answer. If the answer is incorrect, the OTHER team has the opportunity to steal and get as many points as they have people standing up, PLUS the number of people from the other team who had originally stood up.

This game has been a big hit in all of my classes so far. Sometimes, in the spirit of competition, kids will encourage their teammates to stand up even if they don't know the correct answer, but the fact that by standing up each person makes him or herself eligible to be called on for the answer has tended to keep them pretty accountable and honest.

I have had a few "social loafers" during this activity - you know, the kids who use the idea of a whole group activity to just sit there and do nothing/tune out - but a quick comprehension quiz at the end of the game put an end to that behavior fairly quickly when they did poorly on a "quiz" that I had already given them the answers to and would have been an easy A, had they just paid attention and participated.

Happy teaching - and have fun to all of you attending #ACTFL14! I am beyond jealous - I hope to join you all someday!

Month One

We're in the fourth week of school now; nearly a month done and things are going extremely well. I cannot even begin to explain how much easier it is to start the school year in September than it is to try and come into the classroom in February after four teachers and many months of discord. Cue a giant sigh of relief.

On the TPRS/CI front, things are progressing nicely. I'm still so new at these techniques and have so much to learn, but as they say - even a bad day of TPRS is better than a good day of teaching grammar style. It is so true.

My French 2s are the primary recipients of my TPRS techniques, but French 3 is progressing more and more into it this week and French 1 will get there in short order. I have three sections of French 2, and only one each of 1 and 3, and right now I can say confidently that my French 2s can already outproduce my 3s. It's really amazing - for the past week we've been working on a story that I adapted and translated from Martina Bex's website, called Les filles ne jouent pas au football américain. It highlights the structures jouer à, avoir envie de and the verb + infinitive construction. Their level of comprehension is just incredible - we're still working on refining output (writing and speaking) but it's only week 4 an I am excited to see how they progress throughout the semester and the year.

In French 2 today, we did a Horizontal Conjugation based on a reading that we completed in class yesterday. One student in particular, who has had a lot of difficulty with French in the past, was struggling to conjugate être (to be) with je (I) to say "I am." I pointed out the error to him as I monitored, and asked him what the correct version would be, and he could not tell me. Then I went to back to our stories and rephrased the question, asking instead, "What would you say if I asked you, [Are you sad]?" He was immediately able to answer "I am..." in French, without even thinking about it. Wow! Even he was amazed.

All in all, though there have been a few hiccups and I'm trying to adjust to the learning curve that comes with a new method of teaching, things have been going smashingly well in the first month of school. Let's hope the progress can continue upward!