Another Year Over – What Worked and What Didn’t

One of the best things about being a teacher is the chance for a redo. No matter how large a dumpster fire a school year might be (Goodbye and good riddance, 2021-2022!), the chance to start fresh in the fall is what keeps me motivated and excited about possibilities for the following year.

I use the end of June to reflect on what worked and what didn’t work in my class so I can adjust for the following school year, whether the practices relate to instructional practices or classroom management. This is the first year I decided to put those reflections into a blog post, that way I can revisit this post in September when school starts again. Here are my reflections on the 2022-2023 school year.

Things That Worked This Year

Logic puzzles. If you read this post, you know that I started incorporating the use of logic puzzles into my classroom after hearing the suggestion in the book Common Ground by Dr. Florencia Henshaw and Maris Hawkins. This activity is a keeper since it requires students to use some higher order thinking skills to solve the puzzles. Also, it can be used as a way to engage in whole class interpersonal communication. Next year I may tweak this a bit so that students who need extra help can work in a small group with me while my high flyers work independently.

Un Peu de Géo/Une Personne Célèbre. If you have read this post, you know that I have started giving students a French text describing a place in the French-speaking world or a biography of a well-known Francophone figure. Then students research to find the name, put the name on a piece of scrap paper, and, if they are correct, their name gets entered into a drawing for a piece of candy. Just like with logic puzzles, I may include a small group option for weaker students. In addition, I may also follow up with a short quiz for accountability.

Flexible seating. In my classroom, students sit at a table with a maximum of two students per table. During individual work time and story time, I allow students the choice to sit anywhere they want (this includes on the floor, on a table, or in one of the special chairs in my classroom). I have found that students really like this option and, for the most part, can be trusted to do their assignment responsibly and honestly. However, I still do have a seating chart in my room. I require students to sit in their assigned seats when they come into class to control the chaos since I don’t want them to think that my class is a free-for-all. In addition, I’m going to see if I can add even more seating options in my classroom, like wobble stools and beanbag chairs.

Expectations. In my first years as a teacher, I reviewed behavior expectations on the first day of school and posted them once I got my own classroom but hardly ever mentioned them again. This year I reread the book The First Days of School before school started up in August. Based on what I read, I decided to review my behavior expectations every day for practically the first month of class. After that, I reviewed them after every extended school break or any time I was not satisfied with my students’ behavior. Things weren’t perfect this year as a result of this practice but definitely been better than in previous years.

I also made a habit of reviewing my expectations before doing certain class activities that have been problematic in the past, like interpersonal conversations, group work, or pair work. For example, in previous years I was constantly annoyed when students would answer even the simplest French questions in English whenever I tried to have a structured conversation with them. This year, before we did this sort of activity I reminded my students that I expected them to answer in French (which I know they are capable of doing, especially since they have supports like Chat Mats). We’re still working on this but I have seen an improvement this year in staying in the target language.

Feedback. I have graded summative assessments with a rubric for a few years know. This year, a colleague and I added feedback to the rubric so students know what their strengths are and what they need to do if they want to improve their performance on future assessments. This is great because students know exactly what they need to do to improve their performance and gives them language they can use to talk about their progress. It’s also helpful when parents ask my advice for struggling students, since I can direct them to concrete and specific suggestions on the assessment rubric.

Manie Musicale. This is the first year that I participated in this event. This is an international competition that takes place during March. Students vote for their favorite French-language artists bracket-style (If you are a French teacher and are not familiar with Manie Musicale, click here for more information).

I thought my class would enjoy this but I was completely unprepared for how invested they were! Many students said that this was their favorite activity that we did this year and have already asked if we are going to do it next year. They liked this activity so much that I think I will have a mutiny on my hands if we don’t do it again.

Free Voluntary Reading (FVR). This worked somewhat. In my first-year class, I got a lot more buy-in from my students. Most of them interacted with either a French reader, Le Petit Journal Francophone, or issues of the Allons-Y Mary Glasgow magazine series. This is most likely due to the fact that they are mature and dedicated students overall but also because I invested a good deal of time talking about FVR before they started reading on their own. In my second-year class, I erroneously thought that I wouldn’t need to prepare them as much for FVR ahead of time because they were older and had higher proficiency levels than the students in my first-year class, so I didn’t really explain my expectations well or get them excited for reading. This led to less buy in and more off-task behavior. I will not make this mistake next year.

Things That Didn’t Work This Year

My Cell Phone Policy. It is unbelievable how pervasive unauthorized cell phone use has gotten in schools, even with middle school students. It is also shocking that many students think that it is perfectly fine to take out a cell phone at any point in class and use it. In my class, some of my students had the nerve to act surprised when they are asked to put it away or surrender it. If there is any one policy that I need to enforce with consistency, it needs to be this one. I was constantly telling students to put their phones and ear buds away this year. I even had a few kids who hid their ear buds under long hair.

Spanish teacher Anne Marie Chase mentioned cell phone use and abuse in her latest blog post. Next year, she has plans to project a slide reminding students that they need to put their phones and ear buds in their backpack at the beginning of EVERY class. I am going to follow suit. That way, nobody will be surprised when I confiscate a device.

Notetaking. For years, I have not required students to take notes. I have decided to rethink this policy because I have had a number of parents complain that their child wants to study but doesn’t have anything to study. This is not entirely true since I house materials online, but in order to be equitable and reduce screen time, It’s not a bad idea for students to have a hard copy. In addition, having students take notes might be a good calming strategy for my energetic students, and might also ease the anxieties of my more anxious students who feel that they need to write things down.

I’m going to issue all students a composition book. Since I introduce new units with a vocabulary slide in my class, I plan to have students write down their new words. I will also have students use their notebooks when we do Write and Discuss in class. I’m planning to house student notebooks in my classroom so they won’t get lost. Since I see students for three years in a row, at the end of their third year they will be able to take home their notebooks to use as a reference for their high school French classes.

Student Check-ins. My new friend Evan Downey gave a great presentation at NECTFL this past March about daily check-in forms. He requires students to fill out a check-in form every day. Then he reads student comments and, if he needs to, he has a private conversation with any students who indicate that they might be struggling. In some cases, he may even loop in a guidance counselor.

This sounded great to me, so I started implementing this in my own classroom. It was not a successful experiment. Evan teaches at a school with bells, meaning that all students have to be in a seat before the late bell. As soon as the late bell rings, students know to stop what they’re doing and fill out their Check-In form. Then they all roughly finish at the same time and Evan can officially begin class.

At my school, we have no bells. Students have roughly five minutes to get from one class to another. Depending on what part of the school students are coming from, I may have some students show up at 9:00 but others don’t show up until 9:05. So while some students had filled out the check-in form at 9:00 and were ready to move on, students who arrived later didn’t fill theirs out until 9:05. Soon, those who had filled out their form at 9:00 grew restless waiting for other classmates to finish. Then they started socializing, which distracted those kids who still needed to fill out the form and led to their taking even more time to check in.

I still do believe that doing a daily check in is a promising practice, but I just don’t know if I can do this successfully since we don’t have bells at my school. I’m going to think about this over the summer and reassess. If I can come up with a solution that fixes the problems I’m having with this, I may try this again next year.

Rewards-Based Systems. I recently read a part of Alfie Kohn’s book Punished By Rewards. I was floored by the mountain of research that demonstrated that people promised an incentive upon completion of a task produced inferior results when compared with those that do not offer an incentive upon task completion. In a nutshell, rewards-based incentive simply don’t work. This revelation has caused me to rethink a number of practices regarding homework and grading.

That’s it for me this school year. Enjoy your summer! I look forward to seeing some of you in Savannah at the CI Summit, where I will be presenting. Hope to see you there!

Jump Into Interpersonal Speaking with Logic Puzzles

Last summer, I read the book Common Ground by Dr. Florencia Henshaw and Maris Hawkins. In this book, the authors discuss principles of language acquisition and how those transfer to classroom practice. One section of the book talks about the fact that language is only considered to be comprehensible input (CI) if it contains a message with a purpose. Many language teachers have known this for some time now and have replaced language drills without a message with language that has a purpose. As I read this passage in the book, the authors talked about some common language purposes that many of us who teach with comprehensible input are familiar with, such as telling a story or delivering content-based instruction. But then I came across a purpose that I had not thought of, which was to use language to solve a logic puzzle.

I am a huge logic puzzle nerd and have been doing logic puzzles on and off since high school (In fact, when I took the SAT, we had an experimental section that measured logic. I crushed it with a score of 780 thanks to all the logic puzzles I did. They discontinued the logic test pretty quickly but I’m still proud of that score). I was intrigued by this idea and decided to try it.

To start, I googled “Logic Puzzles for Kids” on the Internet. I found some examples which I then translated or adapted into French. Then Joshua Cabral from World Language Classroom published some logic puzzle templates. This made creating logic puzzles for my French students even easier.

For those unfamiliar with logic puzzles, let me talk a bit about what they look like and their premise. Logic puzzles by design all include a situation and some missing information. Then people use the clues given to try to find that missing information. Logic puzzles include a grid and clues. Using the clues, students use process of elimination to find out the solution to the logic puzzle. An example of a logic puzzle in English is below.

Once students have completed the logic puzzle, we move on to interpersonal speaking. Before I move on, let me stop and tell you what I have learned about interpersonal speaking. First, it is important to remember that interpersonal speaking is spontaneous and unrehearsed. Over the years I have seen many teachers say that a speaking activity is interpersonal when it is actually not. Any times students speak while simultaneously reading off a paper or if they rattle off language that has obviously been memorized, it is presentational. Second, the speaking can only be called interpersonal speaking if a message is being conveyed. That’s why substitution drills in a textbook cannot be considered interpersonal speaking because there is no communication. Finally, when teachers plan interpersonal speaking activities, they are usually planning for conversations between two or more students. Quite often what happens is the group of students start speaking in the target language but then they switch to their native language. This is especially true for students in the lower levels, who do not have the language proficiency to sustain a conversation in the target language for that long.

In my classes, I overwhelmingly prefer leading a conversation with the whole class. This allows me to make sure we stay in the target language as well as offer support and structure to my students. This is still interpersonal conversation because it is spontaneous and unrehearsed. I often do this after students complete a logic puzzle because it gives us a topic to talk about.

Let’s use the logic puzzle above as and example. If I gave a copy of this logic puzzle to my students in the target language, students would try to solve it and then we would review the answers as a whole class in the target language. Then I would ask students follow-up questions based on the topic. In this case, I might ask them whether they have read any of the books listed on the logic puzzle, what type of books they like to read, and what additional activities they enjoy doing. I might even reinforce how to say dates in my target language by asking students when their birthday is.

If you decide to try this in your class and have never filled out a logic puzzle before, I recommend you read this post. In addition, I highly recommend doing the first few logic puzzles as a whole class so students understand how to fill out the grid. I also recommend that you keep the logic puzzle pretty simple since more advanced ones can take up too much time. I usually start with the simplest logic puzzles possible, like the one below.

Another reason I enjoy giving students logic puzzles to do is because it is easy for students to learn how to solve them. Some students, especially those with low self-esteem, benefit from being able to solve a logic puzzle successfully because it makes them feel good about themselves. These days, with the number of students who are dealing with the psychological ramifications of early adolescence and pandemic trauma, being successful is good for the ego.

If you are interested in some ready-made logic puzzle, check out the two items I’ve posted in my TPT store. Happy logic puzzle solving!

Tricking Students into Reading for Information

This year, I implemented two warm-up activities that encourages students to read closely. I imagine that other teachers do something similar, but I have never seen it discussed by other comprehensible input (CI) teachers. Both activities are extremely low prep and have been very successful in my classes so far this year. I call one activity Une Personne Célèbre (A famous person) and the other Un Peu de Géo (A little geography).

Each week, I describe either a famous Francophone person or a location in the Francophone world in simple French. It usually takes only 5-10 minutes to prepare my slide.

Here is a famous person example:

This is a simple description of the French scientist, Louis Pasteur.

Here is a geography example:

This is a simple description of Togo, a francophone country in West Africa.

Once a week at the beginning of class, I project one of these on my Smartboard. I read it aloud and then students research the answer on the Internet. Students write their name and their answer on a small piece of paper and hand it in (My students also do independent reading in French class, so my fast finishers know that they should get their book and read once they have finished. That keeps them busy while I answer questions or offer assistance to my weaker students). The next day in class, we read and discuss the clues and then I reveal the answer. Then I take all the correct answers, put them in a hat, and choose 3-5. Those students receive a small prize, which is usually a Jolly Rancher or two (Note: I know which students struggle with this and frequently get the wrong answer, so I have been known to pick their paper on purpose once in a while when they finally get a correct answer).

In one class, I had a large number of students who were not motivated by candy. They thought they didn’t have to participate and were putting no effort into this activity. As a result, I turned this into obligatory beginning work for them that required them to list five facts about the person/place in English as well as giving an answer. I’m disappointed that I had to do this, but some students need the threat of a bad grade in order to take things seriously.

This has been a great activity to use to introduce students to a wide range of famous Francophones. Since I provide birth dates (and, when necessary, death dates), students have gotten very skilled at working with those large and complicated French numbers. In addition, I have done my best to highlight French speakers who are members of marginalized groups in an effort to dispel the narrative that only white men have made important contributions to society.

This has also been a great way to discuss Francophone countries, which I believe get slighted in most French lessons. I love hearing, “Wow, I didn’t know people speak French in South America” and similar comments as students learn that the French-speaking world is much bigger than they thought.

The best thing about this activity is that students have to read carefully in order to produce enough search parameters to find the answer. I have tricked them into reading carefully, all for a little candy!

If you teach French and would like to try this, here is my famous person folder and here is my geography folder. Enjoy!

Random Notes from Conferences

I’ve decided that it’s time to get rid of some of the clutter in my home à la Marie Kondo. I came across a large number of notebooks in which I took notes at various conferences I attended in the past four years. Before I toss them, I decided to save some of the most important takeaways here in this blog post. In no particular order, here are some of the big takeaways I have from those events.

Notes from a TPRS workshop with Craig Sheehy and Mike Coxon

• Authentic texts are not necessarily good sources of comprehensible input if they have too many unfamiliar words, especially for Novice students (read more about this here).
• The best comprehensible input is RICH (Repetitive, Interesting, Comprehensible and full of High-frequency words).
• Language is only input if it is used to communicate a message. Language used as practice is NOT input so it does not lead to gains in acquisition (research on that can be found here).
• Dr. Bill VanPatten says that in language acquisition, there are no language errors, just different stages of language development (see more about this here).
• Dr. Bill VanPatten also says that explicit correction of so-called student “errors” will not accelerate acquisition or increase accuracy (see more about this here).
• For teachers, delivering input is like a friendly game of catch. Teachers should use nice, easy language with no fastballs (talking too fast) and no curveballs (using too much unfamiliar language).
• Teachers who teach gestures along with high-frequency words can then use those gestures as non-verbal prompting when students try to produce language.
• If it’s at all possible, teach students, not curriculum, meaning that it’s inappropriate to move on if students haven’t mastered current material.

Notes from a Classroom Management Workshop with Jon Cowart

• Students need explicit instructions about when they’re expected to use the target language, when they can use English, and what to do if they don’t understand. These instructions will most likely need to be repeated frequently.
• For accountability, have students self-assess their engagement and behavior.
• If you give students directions but some are slow to comply, praising and/or thanking the students who have already followed the direction may be the catalyst needed for other students to comply, thus eliminating the need to repeat the direction or singling out students who haven’t followed it yet.
• If the majority of a class is not following a certain rule, do a whole class reset. Stop teaching, review class rules, practice the correct behavior, discuss why the class follows rules, and try again to get back to the lesson.
• If one or only a few students are not following a certain rule, try norming the error. Stop teaching, explain what went wrong, state what should have happened, and give the students a chance to redeem themselves once you start teaching again.
• When praising students for good behavior, be SPECIFIC with your praise. Name the desirable action the student is doing.

Notes from a Classroom Jobs Workshop with John Sifert

• Classroom jobs create a better sense of community, relieve and reduce teacher stress, and can improve classroom management.
• Jobs in a CI language class fall into three categories: classroom management, story jobs, and language management jobs.
• Classroom management jobs include: materials distributors/collectors; people in charge of the door, phone, and lights; attendance takers; nurse (in charge of Band-Aids and Kleenex); and boss (reminds people to do their job, recommends firing or promoting people).
• Story jobs include: actors, quiz writers, illustrators, colorists, and Professor #2 (the person who gets to decide things when the teacher doesn’t).
• Language jobs include: timekeepers (tracks how many minutes can the class stay in the target language), English police (politely reminds students speaking in English to try to talk in the Target language if possible).
• Make sure to post jobs (preferably in the target language) so it’s easier for people to remember what they have to do.
• Take volunteers for jobs first and try only to assign them if you don’t have enough volunteers.

Backwards Planning with Jessica Haxhi

• Backwards Planning refers to creating units starting with the end goal in mind.
• The first step in Backwards Planning is to identify the goals students should meet. Teachers should set realistic goals based on the students’ proficiency level and they should be able to write 2-3 Can-Do Statements based on the goal.
• The second step in Backwards Planning is to create an assessment to measure how well students can meet the goal set in Step 1. Jessica suggests that students have a choice in how they wish to be assessed and the opportunity to demonstrate proficiency in all three modes (Interpretive, Interpersonal, and Presentational).
• The third step in Backwards Planning is to determine what vocabulary and language structures students need to demonstrate proficiency and reach the desired end goal.

Unit Planning with Arianne Dowd

• When planning a unit, choose the topic based on your passions or interests.
• If you can’t think of a topic, visit other teachers’ blog posts or Pinterest accounts, such as Leslie Grahn’s Pinterest page, grahn for Lang.
• Base your unit on an authentic resource you love. Then determine what vocabulary students will need in order to make the resource accessible to students.
• If possible, include a cultural comparison in your unit, where students compare what they see in the resource with their own cultural products, practices, or perspectives.

Teaching With Comprehensible Input with Gary DiBianca

• Students are prepped for success if they feel that they are in a safe environment (Safe environment = low affective filter = greater chance of acquisition)
• If you teach with comprehensible input, its important to talk to students about second language acquisition and how the way you teach facilitates it.
• Set expectations quickly and be consistent in enforcing them.
• Show students that you care about them and their success.
• Check often to see that students understand.
• Gestures, word walls, visuals, and props can all aide in comprehension.
• Levels of chunking language: single word, word pairs, word with prepositions, full sentences.
• Try to change activities every ten minutes to keep students engaged.
• Steps for Total Physical Response: Say and model, Say but don’t model, Say two commands in a row, Say two commands in a row with students’ eyes closed, Say three commands in a row, Say and add details.
• A TPRS story only needs 5-6 sentences.
• Classic TPRS story frame: A character has a problem and tries to solve it in three ways.
• Follow up a TPRS story with a pre-written text of with a Write and Discuss activity.
• Novel ways to reuse language: Songs, Picture Talk, videos, fairy tales, simple biographies, legends, and games.
• Rereading activities: Choral translation, pair reading, drawing comics from a reading, true/false questions in English, comprehension questions about the text.
• 5 ways to assess: Simple translation, listening comprehension, dictation, story retells, and timed writing.
• Before starting a novel, plan prereading and post reading activities ahead of time for each chapter.
• If you do Calendar Talk, lead students in conversation at the beginning of the month and fill out a calendar for the month based on what students say (one calendar for each class).

Equity and Social Justice in Lesson Planning with Dr. José Medina

• Everyone has unconscious biases which find their way into lesson planning if teachers are not careful.
• Whether teachers acknowledge it or not, lesson planning is a political act based on what teachers choose to amplify or ignore in their units.
• Teachers need to examine their practices through a social justice and equity lens.
• When lessons planning, plan with a content, language, and culture target in mind.
• Try to connect the culture learning target to self, community, and the real world
• The language target is the most important target.

Small Group Instruction Victory

If you ask any teacher, I think most of them would say that the 2021-2022 school year has been just as difficult as the 2020-2021 school year, if not more. It’s been difficult to keep my morale up when students are so traumatized from the pandemic. Almost every teacher will tell you about the increase in student immaturity and misbehavior and the decrease in student perseverance and stamina. I have found it difficult to recapture the joy that I had in the classroom before the pandemic.

The fabulous Spanish teacher Anne Marie Chase was feeling similarly until she started doing some small-group instruction in her extremely difficult first-year class. She decided to divide the class into three groups. On day one, two groups did individual, silent work (Each group did a different assignment). She led the other group in a conversation designed to provide lots of input. Over the next two days, the groups continued to rotate until they had all done all three activities. You can read more about her solution here.

This gave me the idea to try something similar with the class novel we’re currently reading. In class, I have lots of “fast finishers” who grow impatient when I don’t go through the chapter quickly and other students who are “late finishers” and absolutely need me to go slowly. I decided to divide students into two groups, with one group working independently and the other working with me in a small group. I let all student choose which group they wanted to be in but warned those who chose to work independently that I would make them join the small group if they completed their work poorly.

Students who work independently read our current chapter while listening to the chapter being read to them on the audio. Students who opt to work in a small group read together with me as I project the text on my Smartboard. When they’re done reading, both groups complete of one of three post-reading activities. I usually give them the option of taking a quiz on a Google Form, drawing a comic strip based on a summary in the target language about the chapter they read, or completing a cut-and-paste activity that requires them to cut out sentences and put them in chronological order based on the chapter.

I’m blown away by how well this system is working in class. I think my stronger students appreciate not having to plod through the whole chapter, and my weaker students appreciate the extra support I can give them in a small group. I can already see improvement in attention, engagement, and performance of some of my weaker students.

If you decide to try something like this, here are my suggestions:

1. Hold students accountable for their work. Give grades for the independent work and make students redo things that they do poorly on. Otherwise, they may not complete their work with solid effort.
2. While working with students in the small group, don’t forget to stop every once in a while to monitor students working independently to make sure they are not off task.
3. Don’t use this technique for the first chapter, especially if you haven’t done a novel in class before. Do the first chapter slowly as a whole class. If this is the first time reading a novel in class, you might consider reading the second chapter together as a whole class as well.
4. Don’t use this technique for every chapter or it will get monotonous. I usually do this every two or three chapters depending on how many new vocabulary words are in the chapter. For other chapters, you can read together as a whole class or you can have students follow along with the audio.

So far, results have been extremely positive. My “fast finishers” love being able to work at their own pace, and I heap tons of praise on them so they continue to be motivated to work hard. Students who choose to work in the small group love the extra support and attention. All students enjoy having the choice to decide not only which group they want to be in but also which follow-up activity they want to complete to show their understanding. It has been a real bright spot for me as well. As Anne Marie said in her blog, this technique is not that new to elementary teachers, who are masters of small group management and instruction, but it feels pretty new to me and has done wonders for my morale in what has been a pretty dark year. If you try this, let me know how it goes!

Using TV Shows to Provide Input

Using television shows in language classes is not a new topic, as Spanish teachers such as Kara Kane Jacobs, Mike Peto, and Dustin Williamson have frequently blogged about using Spanish-language TV in their classes as a source of rich comprehensible input. I’ve been very envious of them, because the right show can be incredibly compelling to students, and because up until recently, it has been very difficult to find a compelling, school-appropriate show in French on a streaming service that could be easily adapted for Novice language students.

I’m happy to report that this is no longer the case. Disney Plus has recently added two shows filmed in French in France onto their platform. I discovered this after reading Sarah Moghtader’s blog, where she wrote about using the new Disney Plus show Weekend Family in class. Weekend Family is a show about a thrice-divorced father living in Paris whose three daughters spend the weekends with him. Things get a bit complicated in Episode 1, because he has fallen in love with a French-Canadian woman named Emma and wants to introduce her to his children. If you are interested in exploring her fabulous ideas and resources for the show, you can find her blog post here.

While searching for Weekend Family on my own Disney+ account, I was pleasantly surprised to discover another French show filmed in France called Parallels. Online reviews of the show describe it as being in the same genre as the wildly popular Netflix show Stranger Things. Once I read that, I knew that I had found a show that my students could get excited about. This is a science fiction show about four teenagers in middle school who, after a strange course of events, end up in different, parallel universes (hence the title). Once they realize this, they then try to return to and restore their original timeline.

One of the things I like about this show is that a good portion of the plot and character development is represented visually. Facial expressions, actions, and silence are used as much as dialogue to drive the story. When characters do speak, the dialogue is spoken relatively slowly and with very little slang. This makes it very comprehensible for students. In addition, the action switches between parallel universes very cleanly, which provides a natural stopping point if teachers want to use Movie Talk techniques for only one scene

As I started to prepare resources for the show, I had four main goals:

• to acquaint students with the characters in the show
• to scaffold language so that students could understand the main idea of the episode
• to help students feel comfortable with listening to French but not understanding all of it.
• to use discussions about the show as a chance to use high-frequency vocabulary

To introduce the series, I plan to show the first thirteen minutes of Episode 1 in French with French subtitles. Students will fill out this handout as we watch and discuss. I anticipate that this will take about three class periods (Many of the techniques presented here are ones that I read about in Sarah Moghtader’s blog post).

1. Introduction and Hook. In this introductory presentation, I set up the very first scene of the show and lead a map activity where students try to figure out in what region of France the story takes place. Then I’ll show the first scene clip (times are in the presentation’s Speaker Notes), in which a young boy and his dog disappear, and I will invite students to guess what happened to them. With any luck, this will ignite student curiosity and get them invested in the story.
2. Character Identification. After the opening credits, all characters except one are introduced in about ten minutes. Students will watch the first ten minutes with the understanding that their only goal is to identify who each character is. Here is the presentation to review characters (Times are once again in the presentation’s Speaker Notes).
3. Movie Talk #1. Once students can identify all the characters, I will give them this handout with lines from the show to review and translate. Then I will play the same first ten minutes after the opening credits narrating with Movie Talk techniques while students try to identify who says each line as we watch, which we will then review and discuss.
4. Write and Discuss. I’ll use this technique to write short descriptions of the main characters (Bilal, Sam, Victor and Romane). This will give me a chance to add some important vocabulary that will pop up later on in the episode.
5. Movie Talk #2. I’ll give students this handout with lines from the second part of the first episode for students to review and translate. Then I will play and narrate the rest of the episode using Movie Talk techniques while students try to identify who says each line as we watch, which we will then review and discuss.

I’ve only created resources for Episode 1. As I create resources for future episodes, I’ll place them in this folder. If you are a French teacher, you are welcome to use or alter these materials to better serve your students.

Teaching Those Obligatory Topics Through a Cultural Lens

Today I went to observe the student teacher I have been supervising. As he practices and hones his skills, he has been feeling a bit frustrated because he does not enjoy certain topics in the school curriculum. This week, the curriculum calls for a comprehensive review of the alphabet and numbers. My student teacher needed some ideas on how to make this topic engaging to students, which he found especially daunting since these topics are a review for the class and because it’s the week before Spring Break.

Anyone who has ever been obligated to teach according to a traditional curriculum knows that it can be difficult to make certain topics interesting. My suggestion to my student teacher was to approach these topics from a cultural perspective, which might make lessons more engaging. Below I have created a list of topics you might be obligated to teach that I believe can be made more interesting by leading with culture. I’ve done my best to make these as low prep as possible and have tried to include comprehensible input components to each lesson.

Teaching the Alphabet

If you teach a language that uses an alphabet as opposed to characters, an activity where you combine spelling with an exploration of notable people or places from your target culture(s) could make this topic a lot more engaging.

To prepare:

• Create a list of notable people and/or places (Spanish teachers, think about all those long words like Popocatépetl that come from indigenous languages that you can use here! French teachers, geographical terms like names of cities and regions would be good choices here)
• Create a slideshow with the correct spelling of the person/place on one slide followed by a picture of said person/place on the next slide.
• Spell out each word in the target language and have students write down the word letter by letter.
• Show the slide with the correct spelling so student can check their spelling.
• Show the picture of the person/place and describe it using Picture Talk techniques.

Teaching Numbers

There are lots of ways to reinforce numbers. Here are a few low prep possibilities:

• Calendar Talk is a great way to reinforce numbers as you discuss the day, the weather, student birthdays, and holidays in the target language (asking students to predict the temperature is a good way to reinforce those larger numbers)
• Prepare a slide with a table of the size or population of cities/countries where your target language is spoken and lead a conversation where you talk about which area is the biggest/smallest or the best way to travel between areas based on distance between two places. Calculate distance in both miles and kilometers.
• Show an advertisement with prices in foreign currency and use the target language to convert the amount into US dollars (or the currency of the country you live in).
• Vote on pretty much anything (What is your favorite sport/type of music/leisure activity) in class and discuss how many students or what percentage of students liked what.

Teaching Time

• Find a movie schedule in your target culture and talk about which movies from the US are the most popular and times those movies are being shown.
• Compare and contrast a typical class schedule at your school with a typical class schedule at a school in your target culture(s).
• Compare time differences in different areas where your target language is spoken.

ln closing, let me end by saying that these ideas mainly touch on what is referred to as “surface culture,” as presented in the image below. Think of surface culture as products and practices of the speakers of your target language.

Touching on topics that are referred to as “deep culture,” or perspectives about the target culture’s product and practices, require a different and more deliberate approach. Teachers who are interested in exploring how to teach “deep culture” should check out Michael Byram‘s book, Teaching and Assessing Intercultural Communicative Competence.

Italian Teachers, Rejoice! Voces Digital in Italian is here!

One of the benefits of teaching Spanish is that, since it’s the most widely-taught world language in the US, teachers have little difficulty finding high-quality resources and curricula for their classroom. Teachers of French, another widely-taught language, can also find classroom resources fairly easily. But world language teachers who don’t teach those two languages are not so lucky. I’ve seen many posts from teachers of less commonly taught languages about how difficult it can be to find ready-made materials in their language.

The creators of Voces Digital recognized the need for resources in languages besides Spanish and French and have recently released a version of their online resources in Italian (German teachers: A version for you is coming soon too!). Currently, Levels 1 and 2 are all that is available, but Levels 3 and 4 will be available by the end of the year. In this post, I will review the Italian version by comparing it to the French version, which I have used extensively for the past two years.

Before I go any further, I want to be completely transparent and tell you that I recently became a Voces Ambassador. My job is simply to help spread the word about Voces Digital at conferences, on my blog, in my district and state language organization, and/or on social media. It is NOT a paid position, so I will not be compensated for this review. Also, although I am not an Italian teacher, I do have decent enough proficiency in the language to understand all the stories in the two levels I reviewed.

What I like about the Italian Version of Voces Digital, Nostra Storia

1. Nostra Storia is a comprehensible input-based program.
2. The Italian version of Voces Digital offers all the functions found in the French and Spanish version. That means it has stories that can be read and listened to, the ability to assign independent work, automatic scoring for multiple choice, fill-in, and true false questions, the ability to edit and add pages, audio and video activities, and more (If you’d like a more detailed explanation of what Voces Digital has to offer, here is my last blog post about that and here for a list of features from the Voces Digital website).
3. The photos are beautiful and are of excellent quality. I especially like the panorama photos.
4. The stories are current. You’ll find references to modern technology and social media as well as updated language (my personal favorite word that I’ve seen so far is friendzonato/a, which made me laugh out loud).
5. The Italian version is based on AP themes (Contemporary Life, Families and Communities, Global Challenges, Beauty and Aesthetics, Science and Technology, Personal and Public Identities) and has essential questions for each chapter, just like the Spanish and French versions.
6. Just like the French and Spanish versions, the Italian version is ACTFL aligned and has Can-Do Statements for each chapter.
7. Voces Digital provides resources for teachers on how to implement the program and on how to teach using comprehensible input methods as well as resources for students on why and how to study a new language, just like the Spanish and French versions.

What could be better in Nostra Storia

1. Nostra Storia has fewer stories and fewer activities per story than Nuestra Historia or Notre Histoire.
2. The Ancora! Ancora! sections do not have embedded cultural readings like the French and Spanish versions do.
3. The Assessment sections at the end of each unit do not have Integrated Performance Assessments.
4. The units do not begin with a set of “Let’s Visit” activities (If you are unfamiliar with these, they are activities that introduce students to a certain location where the target language is spoken. In the Spanish and French versions, the pages have a series of pictures with captions and then questions for students to answer. They are nice because they introduce students to places that are then used as settings in the unit stories).
5. I’d like to see more diversity in Nostra Storia. Yes, you will find a few stories with characters who are Muslim or who are people of color and one reading discussing the inaccuracies of stereotypes about Italians but, as far as I can tell, all interviews are with White people, all religious holidays presented in stories are Christian, and all stories with romantic themes are about relationships between a man and a woman. Luckily, teachers can customize all pages in Nostra Storia and add new pages that can include more diverse story lines and characters if they want to, but I wish they didn’t have to.

One of the nice things about Voces Digital is that, since it is an online resource, the developers constantly update it and add new features. Since the Voces Digital team explicitly states on their website that the Italian series is available as “Early Access,” I predict that they will continue to add new stories, videos, and other features to Nostra Storia over time (but my guess is that this won’t happen until after Levels 3 and 4 are released). But even though the Italian series seems a little light compared to the French and Spanish series, I would most likely still purchase access to the series for the upcoming school year so I could have a comprehensible-input based resource to supplement my classroom curriculum.

Pricing for Voces Digital is on their website. If you would like to test it out, you can sign up for a free 10-day trial and explore Levels 1 and 2. If you have any questions about the Italian series or any other Voces Digital resource, please reach out and I will do my best to answer you as soon as I can. Arrivederci!

Turning My Love of Eurovision into a Class Unit

Even though the Eurovision Song Contest has been around for over 60 years, I didn’t discover it until a few years ago when the wonderful Cécile Lainé wrote about a French Eurovision participant in her wonderful resource Le Petit Journal Francophone.

If you aren’t familiar with Eurovision, it is an annual song contest. Participants from Australia, every European country, and a few countries geographically outside of Europe like Israel and Armenia are eligible to compete for the title of Best Eurovision song for the year. The winning country hosts the contest the following year, which can potentially generate millions in revenue from tourists for the competition.

After I learned of this competition, I started developing what may be called an unhealthy obsession with it. My obsession started in earnest when Netflix released the Will Ferrell and Rachel McAdams movie Eurovision Song Contest: The Story of Fire Saga, which was about an Icelandic band performing in Eurovision. My obsession then solidified when the 2021 Eurovision competition became available for streaming in the USA for the first time on Peacock (I think Netflix has plans to show it on their platform also).

I love sooooo many things about Eurovision. I love the elaborate sets, the freaky costumes, and, most especially, the diverse selection of songs and performers in the competition. I’ve seen a heavy metal band dressed as demons, a group of singing grandmas, a man in a hamster wheel, a puppet, and millions of dollars worth of pyrotechnics. Year to year, it is impossible to predict what one will see on the Eurovision stage.

I also love how Eurovision has come to symbolize inclusivity. Countries that we think of as being predominantly White send performers of color, thus highlighting the growing racial diversity in Europe. Eurovision’s first transgender contestant was in 1998, which was incredibly groundbreaking at the time. They’ve also had drag queens, openly gay and bisexual performers, and performers with disabilities ranging from cystic fibrosis and Tourette’s Syndrome to autism and down’s syndrome. Performers are free to be completely genuine and honest about who they are, and I love that.

This year, I have channeled my Eurovision obsession into the final unit of my French 1 class. Here is what my lesson included.

Day 1: Since most of my students have never heard of Eurovision, I started with this presentation. In the first part, I explain what Eurovision is, how long it has been around, and a few other facts such as voting rules, which country has won the most number of times, well-known participants, and the most well-known song. In the second part, I discuss some memorable Eurovision performances and milestones. I make sure to mention some performers that I think my students will know, like Céline Dion, who performs the signature songs from both Titanic and Disney’s Beauty and the Beast and Alexander Rybak, whose song “Into a Fantasy” was featured in the movie How To Train Your Dragon. This presentation was especially great for practicing numbers because we could talk about what year something happened. This is especially needed in French since the numbers 70-99 can be problematic.

Day 2: Students completed a Pear Deck about my Eurovision presentation to check comprehension (For more information about Pear Deck, click here).

Day 3: Since I had done a clothing unit with my students this past year, I showed them this presentation about some of the more outrageous Eurovision costumes worn over the years. I did a Picture Talk activity with the presentation, but in the future I may print out the presentation and have students do a Gallery Walk activity with the pictures, matching descriptions of the photos written in French with the correct pictures.

Day 4: I told students that we were going to do our own mini-Eurovision contest. First, I grouped students in teams of two or three. Then, I assigned each group a country (I printed out flags of each country, which students put in the center of their group). Then we located each country using Google Maps and talked about its major cities and its location (which gave us ample opportunity to use prepositions and directional words).

Day 5: We watched the videos that were part of our mini-Eurovision contest (Please make sure you preview ALL your videos ahead of time!). Since I knew that almost none of my students knew anything about this year’s winners, the videos in my competition were the top ten performances for 2021 (I did this activity two weeks after the Eurovision contest aired). If you replicate this, you can choose any group of videos you want, but using this year’s winners gave this unit a degree of authenticity and made it more exciting for my students, because we were able to compare our results with the real winners. I also recommend that the videos you include in your contest come from the countries you assigned students previously. This makes things a little more interesting since students cannot vote for their own country.

Day 6: In the target language, we tallied votes. In the real contest, countries give a series of points ranging from one to twelve, and viewers at home call in to cast votes too. To keep things simple for us, our country teams just gave points for first, second, and third place (twelve, eight, and four points respectively). Once we tallied up all our votes, we established our class winners and compared our list to the real list of winners.

This was a really fun unit for the end of the year. Many of my students got really excited and very animated as they made their case for their favorite performance. The fact that my students were all in groups required them to compromise and collaborate, which are always important skills to practice and refine. I hope that my students also started to develop an appreciation for songs that aren’t sung in English. Since I teach in the US, students don’t usually listen to songs in anything other than English, which means that they are missing out on some fantastic music!

The ABCs of Providing CI Through Remote Instruction: Z is for ZoomIt

Yay, I’ve made it to the end of this A-Z series!

When I started this series last year, I never thought that so many educators would still be conducting instruction remotely over a year after they started. But here we are, and many of us have spent the last year teaching in some sort of remote or hybrid model. We have become very adept at navigating much of the technology that seemed so new and exciting to us a year ago when I started blogging about it in this series.

When I got the idea to begin this series, I was sure that this, my last installment, would be about using Zoom, the meeting software that allows people to hold meetings remotely. But that was a year ago when hardly anyone had heard of it or used it that much. But now it’s a year later, and I think much has been written and said about how to use Zoom and similar applications like Microsoft Teams or Google Meet and all their features in an education setting. We’re tired of virtual classes, saying “You’re muted,” and teaching to black screens. We’re so over Zoom. So instead, I’ve decided to use this post to talk about another application called ZoomIt.

ZoomIt is a downloadable tool that allows users to annotate on and zoom in and out on their computer screens. It is a piece of software that users can download. Once it’s installed, it stays dormant until the user activates it . Once activated, users can customize keyboard shortcuts to operate it. It also plays very nicely with other software on computers, including virtual meeting technology like Zoom or Google Meet.

I heard about ZoomIt from Brett Chonko, how maintains a YouTube channel called Comprehensible RVA. You can click on the picture below to access his video demonstrating this software.

I have been using Zoom for over a year now and I know that Zoom has a feature that allows users to annotate directly on the screen. My school district disabled that feature, however, to prevent mischievous youngsters from being able to use it, so I found this tool to be handy as a workaround to that. And I am not familiar enough with other virtual meeting software to know if the ability to annotate is available, so if not, teachers may want to explore using this software if they are interested in annotating anything on their computer.

Thanks to everyone who kept up with my A-Z series. I hope you found something useful in these posts and that you will stick around for future, non-pandemic teaching thoughts on this blog!