Preview Foundations: A Natural Approach to the (Transition) Year

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A Natural Approach to the I Year a guide to the first year of stepping stones

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Foundations A Natural Approach to the Transition Year A Guide to the First Year of Stepping Stones Description, Narration, Information, & End-of-the-Year Projects

By Tina Hargaden © 2021 Tina Hargaden, CI Liftoff

A Note from the Author This book picked me up by the scruff of the neck in May of 2017, demanding to be written, at the end of my happiest-ever year in the classroom. It woke me up early in the morning and poured out into the computer as if I was not even the one in charge. I really wasn’t the one in charge. It was like the content came from somewhere else and I just happened to be the one whose fingers were pressing the keys to get it on the page to share with others, step-by-step instructions on what was working so very well in my classroom those days.

I would run to the book, right from class, and add fresh-from-the-classroom insights, sometimes sitting in the bus or train going to and from school, literally over the river and through the woods. This book is based, in part, upon the incredible power of Ben Slavic’s uniquely student-centered, extremely engaging approach to world language instruction. This approach is also deeply informed by the literacy work of Lucy Calkins and the Teachers College Reading and Writing Project. Both Ben and Lucy have opened up the classroom to student voice, choice, and direction. I will be forever grateful to their passion for meeting students where they are and guiding them to the next level, using their own kid interests and kid lives as the ladder to get them there. Without their vision, you would not be holding this book and I would not be the happy teacher that I am today.

This book brings the first edition, A Natural Approach to the Year (also known as ANATTY and Year One) up to date with the curricular framework that I developed towards the end of writing the first edition. It thus aligns this foundational book with Stepping Stones, most notably in the addition of the cycles of instruction, the daily instructional framework, and updated, much more useful assessment materials aligned to the genres of three of the six instructional cycles that comprise the Stepping Stones framework: Description, Narration, and Information. Stepping Stones is a powerful curricular framework that solves many problems that teachers have had for decades, in working to align comprehension-based instruction with what works in today’s schools. I am so pleased to share the foundations of Stepping Stones with you in this book.

Tina Hargaden Portland, OR February 27, 2021

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Table of Contents Part One - The Foundations of Instruction Page 5 Page 6 Page 16 Page 23 Page 35 Page 63 Page 69

The Purpose of This Book Chapter One: Introduction Chapter Two: How to Use This Book Chapter Three: Setting up the Classroom Chapter Four: Classroom Management Chapter Five: Introduction to the Stepping Stones Curricular Framework and Overview of the Foundational Instructional Strategies Chapter Six: Your Gradebook

Part Two - The Instructional Sessions Page 92

Chapter Seven: Beginning the Year

Page 98 Page 123 Page 136 Page 147 Page 160 Page 177

Cycle One Phase One: Describing Settings Session 1: Small Talk (Calendar and Weather) Session 2: Small Talk (Calendar and Weather) Session 3: Small Talk (Calendar and Weather) Session 4: Lesson on Second Language Acquisition (SLA) Session 5: Card Talk (or Slide Talk) on Places We Like Session 6: Visual Survey on Fun Places

Page 190 Page 212 Page 222

Cycle One Phase Two: Describing Preferences Session 7: Class Survey on Activities/Sports We Like Session 8: Card Talk (or Slide Talk) on Weird Chores We Have to Do Session 9: Community Survey on School Subjects You Like and Don’t Like

Page 230 Page 238 Page 261

Cycle One Phase Three: Describing People Inside and Out Session 10: Visual Lecture: What We Are Like Session 11: One Word Images (Making and Describing a Class Character) Session 12: Picture Talk: Our Heroes

Page 270 Page 280 Page 289

Cycle One Phase Four: Describing in the Past and Present Session 13: Baby Picture Talk Session 14: Class Survey: When We Were Little Session 15: Visual Survey: Old School Tech

Page 301 Page 313

Cycle Two Phase One: Narrating Personal Stories Session 16: Story Mountain: Why I Became a Teacher Session 17: Card Talk (or Slide Talk): Good and Bad Trips We Have Taken

Page 325 Page 346

Cycle Two Phase Two: Narrating Imaginative Stories Session 18: Visual Story: La Cité des Dames (or another literary work in your language) Session 19: Creating a Class Story about One of Our Class Characters

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Page 381

Cycle Two Phase Three: Narrating Cultural Stories Session 20: Visual Story: Renart et les jambons d’Ysengrin (or another culturally-significant folktale, legend, or story in your language) Session 21: Thought Bubble Review

Page 388 Page 401 Page 409 Page 419 Page 429

Cycle Four Phase One: Organizing an Informational Paragraph Session 22: Academic Card Talk (or Slide Talk) Session 23: Picture Inquiry Session 24: Big Book Session 25: Visual Syllabus Session 26: Pictorial Input Chart

Page 436 Page 444 Page 458 Page 465 Page 474 Page 487

Cycle Four Phase Two: Incorporating Topic-Specific Vocabulary Session 27: Word Card Review Session 28: Reverse Movie Talk Session 29: Class Expert Group Pages Session 30: Class Mind Map Session 30.1: Expert Group Reading Days Session 31: Process Grid

Page 497 Page 501 Page 507 Page 522

End-of-the-Year Options Option 1: Festival of Worksheets Option 2: The Word-Off Option 3: Story Books Project Option 4: Class Yearbooks

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Appendices (Digital Downloads: QR code to access) Appendix A: Appendix B: Appendix C: Appendix D: Appendix E: Appendix F: Appendix G: Appendix H: Appendix I: Appendix J: Appendix K: Appendix L: Appendix M: Appendix N:

Do-Nows and Bellringers Human Resources Manual Suggested Daily Lesson Framework for Block Schedules Performance Descriptors Rubrics and Writing Continuum for Description Rubrics and Writing Continuum for Narration Rubrics and Writing Continuum for Information Laying the Groundwork for Free-Choice Reading Free-Choice Reading Sheets Learning Logs and Choice Menus Using Grammar Discussions as Noticing Activities and PACE Lessons Comic Book Template Lesson on Second Language Acquisition Anchor Charts

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The Purpose of This Book This book is designed to be your yearlong instructional companion. It will lead you through a year of instruction that can be used in beginner classes all the way up through your highest levels. As you work through the book, my goals for you are: 1. Understand the reasons for comprehension-based teaching, the hypotheses that inform this approach, and how it is aligned to standards and cross-curricular literacy objectives 2. Understand the structure of the Stepping Stones curricular framework, and use three out of the six cycles that comprise the yearlong framework. These cycles are aligned to literacy functions/genres (Description, Narration, and Information), with four phases per cycle aligned to “literacy foci” within that genre (e.g. within Description: Describing Settings, Describing Preferences, Describing People Inside and Out, Describing Past and Present, or within Narration: Narrating Personal Stories, Narrating Imaginative/ Fictional Stories, Narrating Cultural Stories, Narrating Historical Stories) 3. Understand the Stepping Stones Daily Instructional Framework: a daily sequence of instruction that follows a “gradual release of responsibility” or “I Do, We Do, You Do” model 4. Develop a repertoire of instructional strategies as you work through the lessons, so that you can easily plan your own lessons using simple strategies that fit within the daily framework and yearlong structure, so that you can easily work with the more extensive information in Stepping Stones, when you are ready to go deeper 5. Understand how to collect daily assessments and grades and how to collect and assess work samples and maintain portfolios to assess students’ growth over time in reading, listening, writing, and speaking and help students see growth and set goals 6. Make comprehension-based teaching easier, more structured, and less complicated than it generally is for teachers new to this approach, as well as those who have been collecting strategies and ideas for years, without a clear picture of how everything might fit together across lessons, units, years, and throughout your language program.

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Chapter 1: Introduction There is currently a paradigm shift happening in language teaching, led by the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages (ACTFL) and a vibrant, growing community of teachers engaged in implementing practices derived from Second Language Acquisition (SLA) research findings. For the past few decades, this community has been hard at work developing and refining various proficiency-based language instruction methods. Many teachers are now shifting the focus of their programs away from conscious study of language and towards a communicative, holistic approach designed to build acquired competence, true

and lasting language proficiency.

The work of this wave of early adopters and brave pioneers and innovators, and the enthusiastic community that has grown out of their early successes, accounts for this shift. The profession is moving away from instructing languages as if memorizing a verb chart, learning a word list, or filling in worksheets could result in true language proficiency. The ACTFL standards guide us to use the whole language in meaningful ways, ways that align with SLA research, in order to build true, lasting proficiency, for all our students, not just the few. Further, the Seal of Biliteracy requires students to develop a higher level of proficiency than is most people will achieve through conscious study alone.

The Promise The community of proficiency-oriented teachers is growing at an ever-increasing pace. The internet has accelerated this growth, as colleagues are able to easily share ideas, successes, and samples of student work. Proficiency-based teaching has spread from one happy teacher to another, as teachers taking up this new paradigm have been happily surprised at how their students’ language abilities have soared. In many cases, first-year students from proficiency-based classrooms are able to comprehend, write, and speak at levels far above what traditionally has been expected of beginning language students.

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Teachers also find themselves working smarter, not harder, able to leave school while the sun is still up. They can leave work at work and significantly reduce their grading and correcting time.

Teachers are often motivated by the substantial increase in student engagement they see. When communicating about interesting topics - and not studying parts of language - becomes the curriculum, most students are naturally more engaged in class. Many teachers report that proficiency-based instruction has

helped them to reconnect with the joy of teaching. Their students are more engaged, and able to do more with the language, and feeling more successful and accomplished. Engaged, successful students usually feel more motivation. Teaching people who are internally-motivated is - for most of us - much more enjoyable than working hard to make grammar and vocabulary interesting.

It is a testament to the power of proficiency-based teaching that most of the growth in interest has come horizontally in our profession from word of mouth, and not from top-down mandates. It is a grassroots movement inside school hallways, from one classroom to another, from one building to another.

At the time of this writing, districts and departments that offer a fully proficiency-based program are few and far between. The change is still happening mostly at the level of individual teachers. In fact, many teachers are bravely shifting their programs to align with standards, research, human nature, and true communication despite their district requirements. These teachers are heroes, in my estimation, brave fighters on behalf of students, who often suffer greatly at the hands of district and building administrators and colleagues who have not yet made the shift to standards- and research-based proficiency-oriented instruction. I know that my own journey with this kind of instruction has not always been lined with cheering unicorns tossing rose petals at me in ticker-tape parades thrown in my honor by grateful colleagues and bosses. It has been joyful…yet challenging.

I developed the Stepping Stones instructional framework in response to the challenges I faced in fitting student-centered, proficiency-oriented language teaching into the expectations of my colleagues - making this natural, effortless way of learning a language “look and feel like school.” It’s an all-too-common problem for so many teachers.

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The Problem The research shows that exchanging meaningful, interesting messages is the path to language proficiency.

However, many teachers who wish to align with the standards and research find themselves unable to do so in their day-to-day instruction, because they are pressured to have their students consciously learn certain language parts. Many teachers thus find themselves in a difficult professional situation, as they work to implement the following important ideas.

The difficulty comes when teachers who want to fully align their programs with the standards and SLA research are required to teach word lists, follow a textbook scope and sequence, or prepare students for

assessments of grammatical accuracy and linguistic knowledge. These requirements are thick heavy cords weighing teachers down, tethering them to ineffective practices and impeding their ability to provide the building blocks of language acquisition through comprehensible interactions in the language.

Year after year, generation after generation, students show up in language classes eager to use the language, but the vast majority of them leave at the end of the year with their heads full of unconnected words and rules, and worse, a feeling that they are “not very good at languages”. The feeling is of having participated in something resembling a mathematics class, learning formulae to manipulate parts of the language they never even knew existed - definite articles, indefinite articles, the partitive, past participles, etc.

Many pacing guides and curriculum documents still reflect the structure of the textbook, its thematic word sets and grammar points. Some districts have cobbled together the new, researchaligned proficiency goals with the old textbook-driven word lists and grammar points. Many documents now delineate proficiency Page 8

goals for each year of study alongside word lists and grammar constructions to be learned at that proficiency level. These documents only partially align with the research and our national standards.

The Curricular Framework You Hold in Your Hands The proficiency-oriented Stepping Stones curricular framework offers an alternative. It connects our national standards to the way languages are actually acquired: by comprehending and processing language input through listening and reading, and allowing speech and writing to emerge at the Novice level, which is to say at the level of one-word or phrase-length utterances, and then the Intermediate level, which is to say beginning to use connected strings of sentences, and then at the Advanced level, using well-organized, more formal discourse styles. It aligns with research and standards, not with the financial interests of for-profit textbook companies. There is not a lot of profit to be made in selling a simple curriculum whose goal is to put student interests at the center of the material to be covered and to foster true communication in the language.

Stepping Stones is cost-effective, requiring only a trained teacher to lead the class, basic art materials, and a classroom library of interesting reading material. In fact, educators who implement a truly research- and standards-based curriculum will most likely find themselves dramatically reducing the materials expenditures in their buildings each adoption cycle. Instead, they can use some of that budget to train their teachers in speaking comprehensibly to their classes and also to purchase high-interest, level-appropriate reading material for free-choice reading, to support true literacy in world language programs.

The Simplicity of This Work

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Teachers who have a firm grasp on Second Language Acquisition (SLA) research and who understand the intent of the ACTFL standards will want to provide their students with opportunities to interact with comprehensible messages – linguistic data that builds a mental representation of the language, which leads to true proficiency.

This is the work of building acquired competence. It is an unconscious process that happens almost by magic, in an immutable and unknown order, in a part of brain that works on such intricate levels that the conscious mind could never hope to match it, and on each individual student’s unique timeline. The students’ mental representation of the language is built from spoken and written messages that they have comprehended. All that is necessary is that the students focus on the message and not concern themselves at all with the language that is used for its delivery.

Thus, the whole language that encodes the messages is the ingredient for language acquisition. We can literally talk about anything, using any words that come up, using comprehensible language, and students will build language proficiency. They will develop acquired competence, the kind of competence that allows them - after enough language input - to effortlessly use the language.

They will never acquire this ability through conscious study, or building learned competence. This I know from personal experience. In the lesson on Second Language Acquisition (SLA), in Instructional Session 4, you will learn more about my own experiences as a whiz-kid grammar grinder and vocabulary machine in high school Latin and French, and my subsequent fall from the precarious heights within my own self-estimation as a Real Good French Student, when I found myself lonesome and awkward, unable to do much with all the plus-que-parfait and Vandertramp Verbs that I had dutifully laid by in my brain for just such an occasion (and Xavier, if you are reading this, I wanted to flirt with you!).

I was a whiz-bang grammar learner, a straight-A French student, but all I was left with at the end of the day was learned competence. And that wasn’t what I needed, if I was going to have any hope whatsoever of seeing if Xavier was flirting with me, or if it was all in my o’er-French’d head. What I needed was acquired competence. Acquired competence, and willing conversation partner, that is! So, looks like my lack of ACQUIRED competence pretty much ruined my chances of potentially acquiring a dashing and sparkly French boy as a boyfriend, or at the very least, a summer fling! What is the difference between this allimportant, and potentially life-altering, acquired competence and learned competence?

Conscious learning of grammar rules or vocabulary leads to learned competence, which is an entirely different process from language acquisition. Conscious knowledge can help students to edit and refine their speech and writing. But, in order to comfortably produce that speech and writing, students must first build acquired competence, so they can actually express themselves in the language. Processing comprehensible messages builds acquired competence, which leads to true language proficiency. It is the only path to the students’ being able to use the language.

What About Required Word Lists and Grammar?

Despite the copious findings of SLA research and the communicative focus of our standards, many districts or departments still require conscious learning — grammar rules and lists of words. In other situations, some Page 10

teachers have given themselves the goal of purposefully targeting high-frequency words, the most common words in their languages, with the worthy goal of providing their students repeated exposure to useful elements of the language so that they can begin using words like “has” and “is” and “wants” and “big” and “small” to build messages that express their own thoughts.

These word lists are unnecessary, however, as the natural, comprehensible use of the whole language will embed high-frequency words into the growing language system with no pre-planning. The only pre-planning that is truly necessary is your learning skills and strategies that enable you to use the language comprehensibly as you deliver experiences to your students. This book will lead you to learn and practice such skills as speaking slowly and comprehensibly, and using images, visual aids, voice intonation, gestures, body language, and realia to support the entire goal of communicative language instruction - student comprehension and interaction in the language.

Working through this book, you will learn and practice instructional strategies to deliver experiences that are conducted in comprehensible language. Activities such as creating characters, discussing the day’s schedule or weather, listening to stories - even singing songs like Head, Shoulders, Knees, and Toes - can be used to deliver comprehensible messages to the students.

Until our district documents catch up with the research, we must separate our proficiency-based instruction from pre-chosen wordlists or grammar rules that might be imposed on our practice by others or by our own desire to “cover” or “teach” certain words or structures. Comprehensible input is the driver of language acquisition, but it is the wrong tool to teach specific elements of the language, word lists, etc.

It is a heavily-researched fact that comprehensible input doesn’t need any extra help to do its work of building acquired competence in students’ minds, and that it is easiest and most engaging when unfettered by wordlists and pacing guides. If we are required to teach certain wordlists or grammar points, however, then comprehensible input is not the right tool for that job. Communication works best when it is not constrained by the “grammar rule of the day,” as Dr. Stephen Krashen has called it.

We can simply use the language we teach in a supported and engaging conversational environment, so that each student can take from the stream of language the elements that they need at that particular time, to feed the growing linguistic system that they are unconsciously building in their minds. Then, in order to focus on required wordlists or grammar, we can use “Language Study Days” as explained in the Appendices, or perhaps a Word-Off or other conscious learning strategy, as explained in End-of-the-Year Option 2, to teach the conscious mind these conscious learning goals. The instructional sequence in this book is designed to provide a logical, engaging sequence of scaffolded, comprehensible language interactions whose goal is

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genuine communication in the language, not on using the language interactions as a vehicle for teaching the “grammar rule of the day.”

Some of the most common problems with teaching the “rule of the day” are: (1) Maintaining interest in repetitions of the pre-selected language can be a struggle for the teacher.

Further, the great effort required is not necessary, because the national standards do not require certain words or grammar to be acquired. The standards require only that students be able to comprehend and produce texts of increasing complexity as they progress through their language acquisition journey.

(2) Dr. Krashen’s Natural Order Hypothesis (explained below) states that students progress through a “natural order” of grammar points, and the order cannot be altered. Therefore, any specific elements we “target” in a given lesson will likely fall outside many students’ range of acquisition.

(3) Focusing on language elements can inhibit student interest in the messages.

(4) The effort required to sustain student interest in oftentimes unnatural or stilted language can take an emotional and energetic toll on teachers, who have jobs that are demanding enough without attempting to use the required structure “wanted to go,” or any other “rule,” enough times in the lesson, while also managing behavior, checking for comprehension, and keeping kids engaged.

For these reasons, it is recommended that class discussions not be used as a vehicle to teach certain language features. It is often difficult for the teacher and since students’ language acquisition devices might not be ready to uptake that particular “rule,” it could very well be a waste of time, anyway. If you need your students to consciously know things, it is generally much better just to go ahead and call in the conscious mind, so it can do what it does (memorize and analyze). This leaves the language acquisition to the unconscious mind, which is the only place where it actually happens, anyway.

If your school requires students to “know” or memorize certain features of the language, I strongly encourage you to simply take time away from the instructional sequence in this book to do so, perhaps using the suggestions on “Language Study Days” in the Appendices and End-of-the-Year Session 2, the Word-Off. You can address required vocabulary and grammar without having to fit certain words or structures into the day-today input…while at the same time thinking about what you are going to say next.

The Research Stepping Stones is based in large part on the research of Dr. Stephen Krashen, whose simple yet earthshattering hypotheses have not yet been disproven - after almost forty years - and to which I hew as closely as possible in my work. These hypotheses are explained in my own words below:

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Conscious learning about a language, including memorizing and learning and manipulating grammar paradigms, is a separate process in the brain from unconsciously acquiring a language. In order to build long-lasting proficiency, where using the language to communicate is the goal, teachers must teach for acquisition, not learning. Acquired proficiency comes from our internal mental representation of the language, a linguistic system we build in our minds, not from learned facts, lists, and formulae.

Understanding comprehensible messages (in spoken and, for literate students, written form) is the cause of language acquisition. There is no other way to feed the Language Acquisition Device (posited by linguist Noam Chomsky) the data that it needs to build a mental representation of the language.

The Monitor is our self-editing, or self-correcting function. It is useful for helping us produce grammaticallycorrect writing or correct speech. However, the Monitor can also impede our willingness to take risks and try using language. In the beginning stages of language acquisition, teachers should focus on communicating, not accuracy, and avoid correcting students’ attempts at output.

Language is best acquired when students are relaxed and focused on something interesting and pleasant. A classroom environment that keeps affective filters low, thus, is key for optimal language acquisition to occur.

This suggests that we need to make all our students feel as comfortable and successful as possible, celebrate success, smile at them, and cultivate a warm, relaxed, focused, and stress-free environment.

Grammatical features of languages are acquired in a natural order that cannot be changed by instruction.

Students can learn about features of the language (e.g. the difference between the verbs ser and estar or how to form the past tenses) in any order, but true acquisition of the features is not under our conscious Page 13

control. Students progress along the natural order in the same order, but at different paces. We should thus provide our classes with the most complex language that they can still understand (which in the beginning is provided at a very slow pace, with lots of scaffolding such as pictures or translations or visual aids), so that students at all their different stages along the natural order of acquisition can all take linguistic data that helps them to grow their mental representation of the language.

The Vision Dr. Krashen’s vision of comprehensible input - whole-language, meaningful, interesting instruction for world languages - aligns with our national standards. That information can empower us to work within our systems to shift the local standards more into alignment with the type of input Dr. Krashen recommends as superior input that prioritizes communication and whole language over specific language parts.

With ACTFL leading the way away from the ineffective form-focused language instruction of the past, and with local teachers helping to shift the conversation towards our national standards and the research on how we learn languages, eventually we will become free of faulty standards and gain the unfettered ability to teach in a natural and much more enjoyable way, by providing comprehensible, community-building, and creative experiences to our students. This book lays down a suggested roadmap for that type of instruction.

Here you have a scope and sequence for a year of uncluttered, proficiency-based language instruction and assessment of students’ acquired competence, their proficiency in using the language for communication. If teachers had the full freedom to align only with the national standards, this could change language classrooms into community-building creative spaces more resembling a Montessori or Waldorf or Dewian school - those visionary radical education reformers of the Progressive Era - than the form-focused classrooms that most of us inhabited in our school careers as beginner language learners.

Advocating for Change My sincere hope is that professional language educators across the nation will begin to feel emboldened and compelled to educate their administrators, communities, and districts about best practices in world language education. In many programs, the students themselves see the results of a proficiency-based approach and begin advocating for change in their later language courses, where they see less-effective and less-engaging teaching methods being used. It is my hope as well that teachers will begin harnessing the power of their students and their parents to advocate shoulder-to-shoulder with them in pressuring the districts and states to rewrite their documents to support and even encourage a completely proficiency-based approach.

This is a fight worth investing time, toil, and energy into. It is a question of aligning our practices with the research on language acquisition. It is also a question of equity. Many students, especially our most academically-vulnerable students, do not find success with traditional grammar-based approaches. Who can blame them? Filling out a worksheet to learn to manipulate a certain grammar rule is not inherently motivating to many people. Several districts that have made the switch to proficiency-based instruction have found that students from historically-underserved backgrounds have begun making higher grades and are continuing on to higher levels of language study than they were with traditional grammar approaches.

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Until we change our district or state requirements, many teachers who are joining the growing ranks of proficiency-based instructors will need to pursue dual goals in their classroom - fostering language acquisition through devoting as much time as possible to exchanges of comprehensible messages at the students’ level while also preparing their students to succeed on grammar-based district assessments and align with their traditional colleagues.

We are in the midst of a historic time period in world language education. Interest in proficiency-based teaching is at an all-time high, and . There is currently a proliferation of ideas on using more of our languages in the classroom. Even the most staunch traditionalists are becoming aware that they need to incorporate more language interaction in their instruction.

We teachers who already have made the commitment to providing our students with the ingredient for language acquisition - the actual language itself - are in the first wave of change. This is a privileged position.

We owe it to tomorrow’s teachers, and especially to their future students, to advocate for, and strongly, a more equitable, joyful, heart-centered, and effective approach to equipping our youngsters for global human communication. We have been given a gift. It is the gift of awareness, of vision, of inspiration. As John Dewey himself has said, “Every great advance in science has issued from a new audacity of imagination.”

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Chapter 2: How to Use This Book The Stepping Stones curricular framework is backwards planned from student proficiency outcomes and cross-curricular literacy goals, and not from grammar points or wordlists. ACTFL provides us with curricular goals that are based on using the language, not learning about the language, and the Performance Descriptors and Can-Do Statements give us a roadmap to proficiency and guidance on how to assess student progress in listening, reading, writing, and speaking performance.

Thus, our national professional organization - and SLA research - recommend a whole-language approach, and does not recommend that students study certain word lists or grammatical constructions. ACTFL’s guidance focuses on communication over form: taking in information and making oneself understood, interacting with increasingly complex text, and deepening thinking skills and habits of mind.

The General Trajectory of a School Year The cyclical nature of the academic term is one of the great joys of the teaching profession. The school year has a life of its own. It is full of fresh starts, of chances to reinvent ourselves. Every term, the wheel begins its great turn again, and we fasten our seatbelts to see what kind of ride this one will be.

This book is organized to help you navigate the realities of how the term tends to go. It will help you establish a routine in your class and also to keep things fresh and novel by introducing new activities and new twists on old activities as the term goes on.

This combination of novelty within the routine is key to good classroom management. When students know what to expect, but also learn to expect novelty within the familiar structure of class, they are comfortable and engaged. Comfortable, engaged students are generally much easier to manage than uncomfortable, confused, or bored students.

The curricular framework is organized to help you bring freshness and novelty to your instruction, to keep the students engaged throughout the term. We all know that engagement waxes and wanes depending on the time of day, the month, the season, and the year. Everyone’s energy and enthusiasm is high at the beginning of the term: pencils are sharp, erasers pink, apples polished, and back to school clothes are pressed and fresh. At that time, we usually do not need to work too hard to captivate their students’ attention. In the first weeks of class, typical students will listen attentively to the most mundane utterances, mesmerized by the fact that they can comprehend a new language, or pleasantly surprised at how much they can do with the language after the break.

As the term goes on, and your students need novelty to help them maintain their enthusiasm for listening to the language, the strategies shift and provide new activities that build upon the routines you have already established. By the end of the term or year, when your students’ attention spans have waned from months of Page 16

work and growth, and you are tired and longing for a break, you can use the End-of-the-Year sessions that require less and less energy from you while providing much-needed novelty and interest for your students, and still keep the comprehensible language flowing.

The purpose of Stepping Stones is to guide you in providing high-quality proficiency-based instruction, authentic assessment that is aligned to proficiency standards, and, perhaps most importantly, to help you protect your own mental health. The goal is to help you make your job enjoyable, easy, relaxing, and fun, so that you can continue touching students’ lives for years to come. We teachers are precious and each one of us is a gift to our society. We are much needed in this world, and it is my ardent hope that Stepping Stones framework will help you relax into your career and remain in the classroom for a very long time, making a difference in our world, inspiring and supporting our precious students, and finding happiness, ease, and balance in your life.

Implementing the Stepping Stones framework can help you guide your students up the proficiency scales on the students’ own emotional and intellectual timeline. The strategies outlined in this book are designed to build community, include everyone in the classroom, foster success for all students, and develop creativity and a group esprit de corps in a relaxed, easygoing workshop-type environment that is focused, workoriented, and driven by students’ interests and ideas.

The Organization of this Book This book is long. It is not designed to be read straight through in its entirety, like a normal book. Part 1, chapters one through six, was designed to be read in this way, all at once. It is an introduction to the instructional program found in Part 2, which comprises the bulk of this book. Part 2 was designed to be read as you move through the year, used as a curricular resource and friendly voice at your side, guiding you step by step, as the year unfolds.

Part 1 - The Foundational Chapters These first chapters are an introduction to your work this year. They provide an overview of comprehensionbased instruction and recommendations on how to prepare for the year ahead.

Chapter Three, Setting up Your Classroom, guides you through setting up your physical environment, with student jobs and student engagement in mind. This classroom setup shifts a considerable amount of power to your students, which is an important component of the classroom management approach offered in this book.

Sharing the responsibility for the daily workings of the classroom builds community and increases student buy-in. This preparation will serve you well this year.

Chapter Four, Classroom Management, outlines ways to guide the class’s attention so that everyone is able to calmly focus on taking in comprehensible messages delivered at a leisurely, unhurried pace, in a safe, easygoing, relaxed environment. It guides you through mental and physical exercises designed to increase your self-confidence and leadership capacity, and also through step-by-step responses to student disruptions and disrespect.

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Chapter Five, Introduction to the Stepping Stones Curricular Framework and Overview of the Foundational Instructional Strategies, will introduce you to the yearlong structure of Stepping Stones, the Daily Instructional Framework, the specific cycles and phases from Stepping Stones that you will work with in this transitional year, and simple descriptions of the activities in the order in which they are introduced later in the book. The instructional backbone of this book is a daily instructional sequence, called the “Daily Instructional Framework,” that undergirds all the work we do throughout the year, regardless of the particular activity that we choose to deliver the input. It is a powerful sequence of oral input followed by co-creation of a shared writing text, and then reading the text together to provide written input, mixed with oral input, as the class discusses the co-created text.

Chapter Six, Your Gradebook, outlines suggestions on how to set up your gradebook to best foster student motivation and positive self-concepts as language learners, and to align to the Stepping Stones instructional and assessment system.

Part 2 - A Year of Instruction and Assessment When you arrive at Part Two, you are advised to begin using this book as a desk reference, a day-by-day guide to walk you through the three cycles included in this book. There is no need to digest the entirety of these next chapters, which are long and detailed, before the school year starts. The intended use is for you to keep this book open on your desk and use it as a desk reference as you would a lesson plan book. It will be a guide at your side and provide you with step-by-step directions on how to instruct and assess.

It will lead you through three cycles of the Stepping Stones yearlong curricular framework: Description, Narration, and Information. You will work through the instructional sessions, with explanations of the instructional strategies we will use in that cycle, and then you will come to a section on assessment for that cycle. You will find lots of how-to practical advice as well as friendly pep talks, emotional support, and management ideas. Each session contains a mixture of practical step-by-step instructions on the nuts and bolts of teaching, as well as friendly passages that provide a supportive presence in your work this year, as if I could be there with you, coaching you and cheering you on from the sidelines during your work day, every day, all year. How I wish that were the case!

A Note on Beginning This Work During the Term If you are picking this book up in the middle of the year, it is still recommended that you work through the sessions one at a time. They are offered here in a particular sequence for specific reasons. You will simply use the sessions that you are able to get to before the end of the term. You will still benefit greatly from working through the sessions as long as you work with them in the order presented and are able to avoid rushing through them. We must always go narrow and deep with our students. Less is more.

Let This Book Be Your Guide It is my firm belief that the teachers who will benefit most from this book are those who can find it in their hearts to entrust their year to its guidance. If you can commit to taking a sabbatical year from the endless pursuit of shiny new activities, and commit to following the steps outlined in this book, you will most likely gain the most from your work with it.

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My goal is help you relax into the Stepping Stones approach to proficiency-based instruction, to work alongside you all year, as your coach right there on your desk, or in your bag at soccer practice or propped on the steering wheel while you wait in the daycare pick-up line. For many teachers, this represents a real leap of faith. But please know that this work, when pared down to its essence, requires clear thinking, a mind uncluttered by “what ifs”, and a heart ready to connect with your students day after day. That is why I ask you, in utter humility and friendship, to give me a year of your time and why I strongly urge you to give up mixing in new stuff from elsewhere.

Of course, you can always choose to use this book as just another storehouse of strategies. You can continue to use the “grab bag” approach to CI. You can certainly keep on reading all the blogs and looking everywhere for something new. It is your choice and, understandably, many teachers might not want to jump ship into the Stepping Stones boat and set sail to unknown vistas.

There are indeed a lot of good strategies in this book that could be used alone. But my mission is not just to add some strategies to your “to-try” list. My intention and deep desire is to help you transform your relationship with language teaching. That is a very tall order and what I have seen from teachers who have used the first edition of this book is that it will only be accomplished if you rid yourself of the “cafeteria-style” or “grab bag” approach to teaching: a little of this, a bit of that, and a smidge of the other. That statement is the heart and soul of this book.

Allow it to lead you through a time-tested sequence of instruction and assessment that will, if followed faithfully, give you all you need for the year’s planning. Give yourself the gift of a sabbatical from the hamster wheel, from all the hunting and searching and cobbling together.

Retooling your language program from a traditional grammar-oriented approach to a proficiency-oriented, communicative approach is a big step. On the other hand, taming a communicative language program that you have built over the years from ideas and strategies you found in the Great Grab Bag of the Internet is also a huge undertaking. I’m not going to lie and tell you that it will be an instantaneous process, or that there will not be some cognitive dissonance or discomfort along the way, as you rethink, rearrange, reorganize, and, above all, prune and cut those strategies and materials and tools that are not serving the goal of language acquisition, or are not derived from/aligned to the standards and Can-Do Statements. It’s work. But, it is work that leads somewhere.

No matter what approach you use, or what collection of strategies you develop, there’s going to be some work involved with bringing your language programs in line with the standards and the recommendations derived from research on Second Language Acquisition and how our brains acquire language. But what I want for you is for the work to become as easy as possible as fast as possible. I want you to feel as confident as possible, as soon as possible. I want you to work as little as possible, and soon. That’s why I feel so committed that you need to invest your time in following the recommendations in this book.

Through doing, going through the instructional and assessment strategies in this book, you will develop a “bones-deep” sense of what Stepping Stones is all about. Here, you will read a brief overview of the Stepping Stones framework, but it is truly by working through the instructional sessions that you will come to know, in a Page 19

deep and “forever” kind of way, what makes this approach “work” and why it is proving to be such a gamechanger for individual teachers and departments.

See the graphs below for a visual representation of the general amount of effort required over the long term when learning a curricular framework like Stepping Stones versus learning a bunch of disconnected, yet fun, strategies with no overarching way to make it all make sense.

The Learning Curve with the “Grab Bag” Approach

The Learning Curve with a Curricular Framework

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Please take note of how both the “grab bag” approach as well as the “framework” approach have a steep curve at the beginning. But please pay special attention to how the effort invested in the “framework” approach goes down and STAYS down, while the teacher who invested the same amount of initial energy and enthusiasm in the “grab bag” approach is still working hard, much later, when the “framework” teacher is feeling much more solid and working much less.

Also, please note that when the “framework” teacher is ready to train others or introduce their colleagues to this approach, their task is much easier, because they themselves are operating from a system that they can simply teach to others, instead of being in the all-too-common situation of being just as confused as ever about the overall structure of everything, and trying to somehow impart that to their colleagues. Especially in the case when working to share with colleagues who really do want it all laid out for them (like the textbook does), we often find that the “grab bag” approach makes them want to literally grab their bag…and head for the hills, clutching their trusty textbook and workbook, because they can’t imagine jumping ship into the “grab bag” of “whatever idea I happen to want to try next.”

It’s a Solid Investment in the Rest of Your Career If you are ready to make that investment of time, and go all-in to learn a framework that can guide you for the rest of your career, no mater what level, what language, what content you need or want to teach, then you are in the right place. If you are tired of the hamster wheel of bunches and bunches of shiny, fun, yet disconnected ideas, then welcome home, weary fellow-traveler.

Rest yourself here in this book with me this year. It is designed to hold your hand through the year. Simply leave this book open to the current session, and use it as your guide through the year. If you do this, you will cut down your time spent searching for new strategies, and be able to relax and recharge after school. You will know what stress-free teaching is, and what quick, sure planning can look and feel like. You will also know what it means to have engaged students who exhibit a real desire to be in your class, and you will become more rested and settled, so that you can enjoy these engaged, eager learners each day in class.

The step-by-step coaching program found in these pages is designed for your growth and peace of mind as much as for your students’ success. Self-care and relaxation are the foundation of successful teaching.

Proficiency-based teaching, especially of beginning students, requires more of us emotionally. It requires us to connect, and connect again, and to be with our students, really be with them, day after day. It requires us to be responsive to a child’s energy, to maintain eye contact with face after face, day after day, down through the long arc of the school year, rain or shine, sleet or hail, well-rested or tired, or eyes red and raw from whatever life has thrown your way lately.

Your students deserve a well-rested, calm teacher in front of them in the classroom. As well-rested and calm as possible, given how life can toss us around.

Some might see it as hubris to suggest that you make this book your sole source of ideas and professional development for the year. I see it as a rescue move.

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If you can put your trust in the detailed system this book lays out for you, a product of many years of testing and refining, I predict that you will feel a shift. This year will be an important pivot point for your career and your sense of ease and confidence as a teacher. I predict that you will begin to feel calmer, more centered, more grounded, and less frazzled and confused, and that your calmness will transfer into your students and be observable by anyone who comes into your classroom.

Thank you for joining me on this journey. A whole new approach to the year! How exciting for you!

I take my obligation to our profession very seriously, and to you, my dear reader. Let’s work through this year together, hand in hand, and let’s turn our backs for a time on the mad online dash to find the Next New Thing.

Let’s get you strong and centered, and let’s tend to your skills, one session at a time, not leaving a session until you have mastered it. You will be amazed to see how that process works for you.

I have hammered out the ideas and strategies in each of the instructional sessions in this book with class after class, year after year, focusing my entire career 100% only on proficiency-based teaching. I have been there. And I have picked myself up, feelings bruised, confidence shaken, and I have wrestled this way of teaching into something that actually works for me, brings smiles to my face, and allows me to relax, finally, into teaching.

I know how it is. Perhaps one day we can all meet up and exchange stories and congratulate each other on doing real work, tough work, challenging and emotional and big, important work.

I would be honored to serve as your pilot this year. Fasten your seat belts. Get ready for liftoff. On y va!

Your pal,

Tina Hargaden tina@curriculumclub.com

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Chapter 3: Setting Up Your Classroom The Classroom Walls An almost-blank classroom wall space is advisable at the beginning of the year. This leaves room for what the class will create together. When students walk into a room full of posters and bulletin boards and decor that the teacher has selected, they get the message on an unconscious level that the teacher’s personality is the dominant one in the space. When they walk into a room with almost-blank walls, and plenty of room for them to create, they have room for their own work to take shape.

The visual clutter of walls papered with posters, maps, flags, and the like is distracting. We want to cultivate a sense of simplicity and unhurried calm, and the nearly-blank walls help to soothe us and our students. The reader is asked to trust that, if they follow this approach, their classroom walls will soon take on a feeling of student-driven ownership of the space.

All I have up on the wall in my classroom on day one is a calendar/weather station (discussed below), and my Classroom Rules (provided below) located somewhere where I can easily walk to and touch. I also have spaces designated for a class art gallery, to be added in the future (discussed later in this book). Later, I put each of my classes’ artwork into the gallery, but for now it is simply a blank space with a sign for each period that says “Period One” and “Artists,” but with nothing yet in those spaces, and no student artists’ names, since I have not yet assigned those jobs.

I also have a space on our whiteboard or a poster for listing the names of students who have jobs. Keeping that list current is up to the student “Human Resources Department” (discussed later in this chapter and in the Appendices).

The Rules Poster The Classroom Rules that I use are listed below, but you are encouraged to think about your own wording and specific rules. However, please do not put TOO MANY rules, since they tend to get lost as so much background noise. I have found that three to five rules is sufficient without being overwhelming.

1. Understanding is the number-one goal.

2. One person speaks and the others listen.

3. Support the flow of language.

Please note that Rule One can apply not only to listening in class and understanding the language, but also to the “productive struggle” or “stick-to-it-iveness” in reading and not giving up when an unfamiliar word is encountered. The goal is mutual understanding and respect.

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It is highly recommended that one of your rules, like Rule Two above, basically be a nice version of “Listen and don’t go having side conversations.” It is, by far, the number-one pointed-to rule during instruction. By far. In fact, if understanding were not such a Very Big Deal in comprehension-based, communicative language teaching, then maybe it would be Rule One! I suggest displaying these rules where you can easily point to them, because you will point to them frequently in the first weeks. I also suggest that you write them in the class’s stronger shared language only, for all levels, so that there is absolutely no question in the students’ minds what you are conveying to the class when you point to these rules.

Question Words or No Question Words, That Is the, uh…Question Some teachers like to hang up question word posters in the class’s stronger shared language (English, for me) so that they can say the question words in the course language (French or Spanish, for me) and point to the poster where students can read the meaning of the word in English as they hear you say it in the course language. The words are written in English so that students can establish the sound of the words before seeing them written, thus avoiding accent problems later. Other teachers, including myself, establish the meaning of the question words as they would any other word, in the moment that it is needed, by using gestures or sketching/writing on the board. The latter is my recommendation. Our brains encode knowledge more readily when it is “novel,” and writing out the question words in the moment they are needed is more “novel” than pointing to the same old, same old static, “been-there-since-August” question poster or graphic.

After a while, those same old visual aids just fade into the background. Plus, you can get in some extra exposures to the names of the letters in your language, if you write the question words and spell as you write.

Calendar and Weather Station The calendar and weather station figure extensively in the first few lessons of the year, and it is a useful routine to begin class, in any level, with two to four minutes of calendar check-in, because it builds community, settles the class into the Guided Oral Input for the day, and reinforces numbers, months, the date, and weather vocabulary, as well as school activities, sports, and other useful vocabulary.

I have found great success in having two calendars posted. One is a grid that I draw with my classes on a piece of chart paper. When I begin the year, there are no words, not even the name of the month on it, just a grid. I fill in all the lines, words, and numbers as I speak to the class. I can thus spell the words, and teach numbers through 31 in an authentic way, as we move through the month from date to date.

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Chapter 4: Classroom Management Classroom management is foundational to your teaching practice. The word “practice” is intentionally chosen because proficiency-based teaching is, in many ways, like a yoga practice or a meditation/prayer practice. It is more like an exercise in mindfulness and self-control than it is a set of nifty activities or “tricks”. In this chapter you will explore some foundations of this practice. It is strongly suggested that you return to them when needed later during the instructional sessions, which helps you effectively and efficiently move the new ideas presented here into your daily teaching practice.

The Importance of SLOW Slow pacing is the absolute foundation of classroom management. We must mentally prepare ourselves to speak extremely slowly. Way more slowly than we want to. It should be painfully slow to us. It is worth it, in many ways, but especially in classroom management, because students who comfortably comprehend our speech are easier to manage.

It’s ultimately, like so much in managing others, a question of self-esteem. Students’ self-concept is a fragile thing, especially in a new language, which in a way is like building a brand-new identity, and so we want to speak slowly enough that we never lose any of them in a thicket of unintelligible sounds. We want to write or draw on the board, or place our hand or pointer physically upon a visual aid (or the projector screen displaying the visual) to support every utterance, and then walk over and point to the support before we say the word, each and every time we speak, and then take a moment, before we utter another word, to sweep the room with our eyes to check for the “light of comprehension” before moving on to another language chunk, which we will then support by, again, physically indicating the visual support, pausing, and sweeping the room again.

Slow speech is of the utmost importance for student comprehension, and student comprehension is essential for classroom management.

Students who do not understand what is going on in class are more apt to tune out and be disruptive.

However, without a well-managed, attentive, calm class, it is virtually impossible to speak slowly enough to stay comprehensible.

It is a feedback loop: A calm, well-managed class feels patient and this allows us to relax into slow speech, without feeling pressured to go faster. See the images on the next page for a detailed look at how slow “SLOW” is.

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Chapter 5: Introduction to the Stepping Stones Curricular Framework and an Overview of the Foundational Instructional Strategies In proficiency-based teaching - especially with beginners - our only job is to exchange messages that the students understand and find interesting enough to attend to. If the messages can reach the level of compelling, that is ideal. But it is important to remember that simply hearing messages in a new language that they can comprehend effortlessly actually feels quite magical to most students. So, even the most basic discussion of the calendar or weather can feel quite compelling when the language is skillfully used in a calm, slow way, with copious visual support. The strategies outlined below have helped me achieve compellinginput status more often.

Are my students always, constantly listening with rapt attention? No, of course not. 180 days is a long time and I cannot always provide compelling experiences. Sometimes I am tired, or I have a cold, or the kids are not “with it” for whatever reason. Life happens. So we learn to go easy on ourselves. We strive for “interesting” and bask in the times when we hit “compelling”.

Providing understandable and interesting spoken and written messages to students is the backbone of proficiency-based instruction, especially in lower-level classes. There exists an unlimited number of activities that we can use to deliver these messages. This book presents what I consider to be the very best best bang for the buck in a sequence of instruction that builds upon itself, leading you from one activity to the other in a progression that helps you develop your skills. The activities I have chosen, therefore, are not simply good activities - they have the added advantage of providing you, the teacher, with a program of professional skill development. As you deliver an engaging, personalized, colorful instructional program with time-tested activities like One Word Images, your students will be developing their language proficiency and you will also be growing as you strengthen your language delivery skills. It’s a win-win for everybody.

You will work your way up through activities that increase in complexity through the course of the book. What follows in this chapter is a brief overview of the year-long curricular framework and the activities in the order in which they appear in this book, where they are described in step-by-step detail.

Please note that the Stepping Stones curricular framework is a framework, which means that it is a “container” or “organizational system” for strategies and content. It is not the content itself. Once you internalize this framework, you will be able to select from the wide array of strategies and content that is out there for communicative language teaching. There are so many excellent ideas! But without a framework or organizing system, these ideas can overwhelm us. Where to fit this cool new strategy? How to assess it?

Stepping Stones was designed to be larger than any specific content or strategy. You can think of it like the Dewey Decimal system versus a specific book. The curricular framework is the Dewey Decimal system. It tells you where the specific book “fits” into the whole system of the library. Stepping Stones can show you the natural place to “shelve” the specific strategies and content (the “books”) in your curricular plans.

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In order to provide a training ground or “on ramp” to Stepping Stones, I have selected the Description, Narration, and Information cycles (you could also call them “units”) for you to use during your transition. This combination will provide a gradual development of your skills as you move through the three cycles. Each cycle is based on a “genre” or language function (e.g. Description, Information).

Each cycle is designed to last about six weeks total. Within the four “phases” (or “mini-units”) that provide a pivot point, that shifts the content and literacy focus within the larger “genre.”

However, these phases (and the cycles themselves) are designed to be modular, meaning that you can skip some of them and still deliver a strong, literacy-focused, meaningful learning pathway through the year.

Below, you will find the entire curricular framework, followed by an overview of each cycle.

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cycles are

The Stepping Stones Cycles of Instruction (Note: in this book, we will use ONLY Cycles One, Two, and Four.)

Cycle One: Description How people, places, and things look, sound, smell, feel, etc using sensory details, personality & physical traits, and comparing/contrasting cultural practices, products, and perspectives, and comparing descriptions in the past and present time.

Cycle Two: Narration Stories of what happened, who said what, who thought what, who wanted what, where they went, and how they solved their problem or achieved their goals. This cycle, like all the cycles, is divided into four "phases" that focus on (1) personal stories, (2) imaginative/literary stories, (3) cultural stories, and (4) historical stories.

Cycle Three: Going Deeper with Narration Stories with more "writer's craft" such as stronger and more meaningful descriptions, dialogue and thinking that reveals more about the characters, and commentary on the significance or importance of the narrative, culturally, historically, or personally.

Cycle Four: Information Teaching about content (e.g. culture, geography, history, significant places, celebrations, global challenges, the environment), using facts, examples, and short stories to provide details, in well-organized writing and speech to lead through the topic and teach topicspecific vocabulary.

Cycle Five: Opinion Stating and supporting opinions on topics of personal relevance (e.g. holidays, school subjects, family responsibilities, activities, locations, clothing, food) with reasons or facts that explain the opinion (e.g. data from surveys, facts, personal stories, or quotations) to show examples of why one might hold that opinion.

Cycle Six: Argument Constructing arguments to support a claim and refute possible counterclaims by situating the claim in its historical context, citing and explaining evidence and reasons from credible sources with authority on the subject, and addressing and dismissing counterclaims by refuting their evidence/authority.

Optional: Writing to Make a Difference in the World Creating lasting resources for future students, or to memorialize the year’s learning in a tangible way for the current students to take with them, such as the Classroom Library Books Project, the Festival of Worksheets, Class Storybooks, Film Festivals, or Class Yearbooks.

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This book will lead you through the “Foundations” sequence illustrated below. Don’t worry too much about these cycles and phases at this point. The book will lead you step by step through the phases so you understand them by doing, so you are prepared to continue on to the full Stepping Stones framework in later years, if you want to deepen your work with these literacy-focused cycles. Below is a complete list of all the phases. You DO NOT need to understand these fully now; just take a look to get your bearings.

After working through this book, you should be able to return to this page and understand how everything fits together, so that you can begin to “tweak” the content and go forward for the rest of your career with a solid system to organize and sequence your instruction.

The Foundations Phases Describing Setting Describing Preferences Describing People Inside and Out Describing in the Past and Present Narrating Personal Stories Narrating Imaginative/Literary Stories Narrating Cultural Stories

Organizing Information Writing Teaching Vocabulary

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The Daily Instructional Framework (Excerpted from Stepping Stones) Teachers all over the place tell me that their top concerns in their communicative language classrooms are (1) how to sequence their instruction and (2) how to assess and measure student progress in a way that shows students that even though it “feels easy”, they are actually making progress in their language abilities.

A close third is how to stop the sense of overwhelm as they feel they are recreating the wheel day after day and chasing new instructional strategies without a sense of how they fit together. It is my sincere hope that this seven-step daily lesson plan and four-phase unit planning model will help teachers to find solutions to all three of those common problems, so that proficiency-oriented language teaching can become smoother, more relaxing, and more joyful, with less planning, less uncertainty, and less stress for everyone involved — teachers and students alike.

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What a Daily Lesson Framework Does for You Working with the Teachers College Reading and Writing Project (TCRWP) materials for ten years trained me to appreciate a flexible, student-centered daily lesson structure that can be repeated day after day, unit after unit, and year after year without becoming stale. It was actually quite the contrary to becoming stale; I found that using their well-structured lesson plan template allowed me and my students to be more creative and more responsive to emerging ideas and needs, because the cognitive load of “what are we going to do today?” was removed, for all of us.

This freed me up to be more present to my students. It also allowed me to plan lessons very quickly, because I only had to find an appropriate way to introduce the teaching point and think about the writing or reading I wanted to model for the class, in order to illustrate it, and the rest of the lesson was able to run on auto-pilot.

Developing an instructional framework with a repeating daily and unit structure, and a limited repertoire of flexible strategies that can be used to deliver many different kinds of content without growing “old” or “stale” has allowed me to really put the brakes on the lesson planning hamster wheel. I hardly plan at all, most days.

Sometimes during my prep, I go outside and sit in the sun and listen to a meditation. Literally.

How can I plan so little? It is because the only part of class I really need to plan on a regular basis is the 12 to 15 minutes that we spend in the Guided Oral Input portion of the day’s lesson (#3 in the graphic above), when the students and I are co-creating a new experience using the language to communicate.

The rest of the daily lesson framework is pretty much on auto-pilot as the information and language from the Guided Oral Input is recycled through the four parts of the framework that come after the input: Scaffolded Oral Review, Shared Writing, Shared Reading, and Student Application and Assessment. The strategies used in each of these four lesson components can be reused again and again, so they do not require much, if any, preparation, once you have learned and practiced a few strong strategies.

Once you understand how to use this framework, your lesson planning usually takes only about five to fifteen minutes of preparation per day, but still allows you to teach robust and varied lessons full of language and cool information, presented in engaging, interactive ways. Another very important benefit is that this daily and unit framework gives structure, but not so much that it takes away your ability to be creative, teach about things that you love, and connect with your students in a meaningful, personal, responsive way. That is how it was designed: to give structure you can live and grow with.

See the Appendices for sample lesson, unit, and term/year planning sheets.

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Chapter 6: Your Gradebook Sadly, many teachers today end up with students who have not gained much in the way of language proficiency even after years of language study, and whose grades have communicated to them that they aren’t really cut out for this whole language learning thing. It’s time for those days to be over.

We can and must do more for our students. We want them to gain true proficiency and happiness while they are with us. We want them to leave our classrooms wanting more of what we have given them during our time with us, wanting to keep finding ways to interact with the language and gaining further proficiency. Above all, we want to communicate that they are smart people, whose brains are amazingly well-suited, as all human brains are, to slipping almost magically into the ability to use our languages to express and understand real, authentic communication.

Dr. Krashen has said that the goal of our language programs should be to equip the student with a proficiency level that allows them to to make the world their classroom, able to take in input from the real world and continue to build higher proficiency when they exit our programs. We want our grades to build students’ selfconfidence so that, when they leave us, they are motivated and eager to continue their language learning journey, as Krashen suggests.

This book is not offered as just another book on second language acquisition. It is written as a challenge to world language teachers to make a strong decision to make a break with the kinds of instruction that have come before us. We can now seek the new.

The Messages Your Gradebook Sends Everyone can effortlessly achieve proficiency in the language they are studying with you, just as they did in their mother tongue. But to fully absorb that truth, and communicate it to students, teachers must finally begin to look at their work with their students through the lens of how people actually acquire languages. If we do that we will know that the only factor preventing all of our students from achieving is really nothing more than our own mindset and commitment to their success.

That bears repeating.

The only reason that all our students are not achieving is us.

Our instructional practices.

Our assessment practices.

Our mindset.

Our expectations.

If we have the right instructional and assessment practices, mindset, and expectations, all of our students can achieve. This is a powerful, and humbling truth. It means that the buck stops here, with us. We can set up Page 69

the conditions for all to succeed. And not just to “give away” the grades, but for students to actually earn those good grades, doing things that feel natural and easy and even enjoyable. What a beautiful vision.

So, how can we achieve that?

First, we need to think deeply about the truth that, barring severe cognitive or physical limitations, practically all people can effortlessly communicate complex messages in their first language(s).

Our students have already proven that they can acquire language. Only people who live with the most profound physical and mental challenges lack the ability to acquire language proficiency from the right kind of environment.

Each and every student can successfully build a mental representation of the language in their minds, and from this representation they can, after a period of time, begin to form utterances to express meaning. The proof of this? Just listen to them in the hall. Yak, yak, yak! Even the “slowest” student in your class can most likely hold forth at length, with all kinds of colorful language, and even highlyspecialized vocabulary, when you get them going on a topic they know a lot about and feel strongly about, like hunting or soccer trivia, or cheerleading, fixing cars, social justice, or fashion.

So, they can all achieve this in another language, given the right circumstances. However, students cannot control the rate and pace of that acquisition any more than a two-year-old can control the rate and pace of their own acquisition of their native language.

What does influence a two-year-old’s acquisition is the richness of the language that they hear around them, the amount of time their caregivers spend interacting with them, how much print material they see and interact with, and - perhaps most importantly - how they feel when they are being spoken to.

Therefore, like parents concerned with optimally developing their toddler’s L1 acquisition, we work to give our students an emotionally-supportive learning environment rich in texts and spoken language. From this environment, students can take what they need to build the language inside their minds, at the rate and pace that are natural for them. Each student will have a different timeline. Still, all can succeed.

In fact, some of the “slow” students in level classes one often turn out to be the most solid acquirers by level three. Our gradebooks must reflect the following truth: All can succeed, as long as they are being evaluated according to their own internal timeline.

We must reward growth, focus, and interaction with the language. We must NOT base our grades on the ability to produce (usually memorized) language on an arbitrary timeline set by external, and often for-profit, organizations, such as textbook companies and national exams of grammar.

There are so many factors that come into play in the rate and pace of a particular student’s language acquisition. Their already-established literacy is an important factor. The richer a student’s existing Page 70

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instructional practices that put students on the spot, such as asking individual students, “What did I just say?”), then many will begin to lose faith in themselves and in their innate ability to build a mental representation of the language.

When students lose confidence they, lose focus. Loss of focus leads to disengagement, and disengaged students do not comprehend because they are not paying attention to class. This leads to a further loss of confidence because students feel lost, and also to classroom management problems, as the disengaged students have more motivation to act up and disrupt class. These disruptions can make it more difficult for everyone to attend to the input, which decreases everyone’s motivation and enjoyment of the class. It is a negative feedback loop. The negativity thus experienced by my “lazy” or “disengaged” students is usually fully attributable to my failure to make sure that I am delivering messages that all of my students understand.

If we are to indeed fulfill our school mission statements to serve all learners, and we intend to live up to the promise of communicative language teaching, which is that everyone can do it, then we must avoid entering into that negative feedback loop at all costs.

Students’ self-concept as language learners is fragile. We teachers must take great care not to erode this allimportant foundation of confidence through conveying to students that their listening and reading efforts are not bearing adequate fruit. The efforts required from students to sustain focus on our messages and the rigorous mental work that they must do in order to comprehend on a daily basis meaning in a new language should be their only concern. It is concern enough.

Students’ self-concept as language acquirers can be almost irrevocably damaged by even one message that indicates that they do not measure up to expectations. Thus, our only expectation at the beginning stages of language instruction should be attention to, and comprehension of, the spoken and written messages that we are conveying. This, truly, is the only factor over which anyone has have control in the process, and the responsibility for providing understandable messages rests fully upon our shoulders as proficiency-based instructors. If students are not comprehending the messages they hear and read, then we must take the responsibility for slowing down, rephrasing, repeating, or scaffolding with visual supports or translation.

It has been said that “a flood of input must precede a trickle of output,” meaning that we would expect students’ performance in the receptive skills of listening and reading to outpace their productive skills in writing or speaking output. The assessment tools in Stepping Stones are designed to accommodate this reality; the receptive performance targets are, from the beginning, set higher than the productive language targets for writing and speaking.

See “Performance Guidelines for the First Two Years” in the Appendices for more specific examples of learning targets and typical student performance at various levels, for summative assessments at the end of the first four semesters (year one and year two) of working Page 75

with the Stepping Stones curricular frameworks and materials.

Our Gradebook Categories I set up my gradebooks with categories for both formative and summative assessment. If my school required me to weight the formatives and summates using a certain percentage, even if the percentages were not the way I would personally prefer, these assessments will work, regardless. It honestly does not matter how you weight these grades.

The more important considerations are that you use a consistent structure and format in your assessments and consistent assessment tools (e.g. rubrics, continua) over the course of the

Examp le of a wr iting

term or term(s). A portfolio system of regular performance assessments in reading, writing, listening, and perhaps speaking allows students to lay their collection of work samples out and see evidence of real, measurable growth in concrete, meaningful skills. For example, they can see their progress in writing more complex sentences with clauses and conjunctions, or incorporating more dialogue and inner thinking into narratives, or using organizational phrases in their informational writing or speech.

Exam ples of rubr ics

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Our gradebooks often have a lot of “cooks” in the “kitchen” looking over our shoulders, adding a dash of spice here, or substituting an ingredient there, in efforts to improve the department’s or building’s grading practices.

Administrators and departmental agreements often mandate certain gradebook setups one year or semester, and then adjust or change the requirements, so that the next year or semester, teachers need to readjust.

Stepping Stones was designed to “roll with the punches,” meaning that, since I have been through many different administrators, in several schools, and in multiple districts and programs, and also worked with teachers in many different situations, I designed the assessment systems and tools to be flexible enough to fit into a variety of possible grading setups, since they seem to be constantly changing. And, at this point, teachers faced with all kinds of requirements have ben successfully using and adapting the assessments in Stepping Stones, for three years now, and I have yet to work with a teacher whose gradebook requirements, no matter how specific and onerous they seem at first glance, have created any real impediment to implementing the assessment systems provided in this book. After seeing the success, flexibility, and adaptability of these measurement tools and systems, used in a wide variety of teaching contexts, I can confidently assert that they truly represent the next generation of World Language assessment practices and tools.

The Meeting with My Boss That Led to This Book I clearly remember the meeting in which I decided to take on the task of creating these materials. It was in late 2016, and I was debriefing a recent class period with Mr. Kellen, my supervisor. We were looking at some of my students’ portfolios, which at the time we were assessing with a general rubric derived from the ACTFL performance descriptors: Novice Low, Mid, High, Intermediate Low, and so on.

Mr. Kellen’s question to me that day was, “How do students see their progress when they go to Intermediate Mid writing performance by the time we completed the first round of portfolio assessment in early October of the first year, but then they are still at Intermediate Mid six months later?”

My response was, “That’s just how it works; it takes students a long time to grow from Intermediate Low to Intermediate Mid, and that process is out of my control. Students just need to listen and read, and the process of language acquisition will proceed on its own timeline, which we cannot alter or hurry.”

Most administrators do not like to hear “I can’t measure that, and I don’t actually care about it all that much,” which, while technically true, is not how schools are designed these days, with all the data and accountability that we are expected to demonstrate. So, understandably, my boss pushed me on my statement and assumption. If he had not pushed me that day, Stepping Stones might never have existed. But he did push me, saying, “Be that as it may, Tina, there surely must exist some assessment tools that would show World Language students more tangible progress, in smaller, more achievable increments than the huge jumps in the ACTFL performance descriptors.”

I replied, with growing frustration, “Actually, they do not exist. I have attended many ACTFL and World Language trainings, and I have looked far and wide, but I have not seen any tools for World Language that are as finely-tuned and student-friendly, with concrete, “next-steps” learning targets, as what I had when I was

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Chapter 7: Beginning the Year Teachers, welcome to the year! This is the beginning of a new start for you. Whereas in the past, you might have struggled, as I did and as so many of your peers do, with how to make sense of the vast array of ideas and strategies making their way around the internet and conferences, you will now have a framework to guide you step by step through this first foray into Stepping Stones, so you can take a long break from chasing down new ideas, or working to form them into a cohesive learning pathway, and simply devote your energy to getting good at the foundation.

It is so exciting to share this foundation with you, because, as I explained above, once you have invested the time and effort into understanding the yearlong framework, the daily instructional framework, and the portfolio assessment system and measurement tools, you will forevermore have a guidance system and a way to easily fit new ideas and strategies, and new topics and resources, into a strong yet flexible curricular framework that can serve as your GPS (Global Positioning System) every year, in every class, at every level, from here on out.

This is the start of a new era for you as a language teacher! It is so fortuitous that you have chosen to use this book as your training program this year. I do not take my responsibility to you lightly. I intend to lead you step by step as we work through the year together. Thank you for joining me. It truly means the world to me that my fellow educators find value in what I have been developing and refining for the last 19 years as I have made my way through my career as a language and literacy educator, and an avid student of pedagogy, methods, and materials.

Once upon a time, in 2015, I was in the midst of completing my application to a doctoral program at the University of Oregon, because I felt a restless calling that was becoming more and more insistent, to work with teachers, develop curriculum, and attempt to find workable solutions to questions and roadblocks that seem to get in so many teachers’ way as they transition to standards-based, communicative language teaching, and especially when they are working to effect building-wide or district-wide change, without strong frameworks and materials to train their colleagues, or even to use as a starting point for making the often-nebulous concept of “communicative language teaching” tangible, “explainable,” and doable for departments that might not always agree on every specific element of what makes a strong lesson, unit, course, or program.

But, right in the middle of the application process, which I thought would make me into a teacher trainer with my Bona Fides, life came knocking, and I just went ahead and started teaching other teachers all the things I could, without the official OK from the Powers That Be. It’s all good; what it means is that instead of going off to school again, I stayed in my classroom, and worked out the system that you now hold in your hands. It, to me, is more valuable than a doctorate. Besides, I very highly doubt that I would have been able to work all

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this out if I had been busy all these years doing other people’s projects and writing papers that weren’t meant to go directly into teachers’ hands. Better like this. Cheaper, too.

The General Trajectory of the Term Stepping Stones is designed as a spiral curriculum. This means that the cycles of instruction, based on various “genres” or “language functions” (e.g. Description, Narration, Information) build upon each other through the term.

The cycles are also designed to spiral back to the same language functions year after year. After all, how can one truly say that they have “arrived” as a writer of description, or as a reader of information? It’s just not possible. Even professional writers are still learning, growing, and developing in their ability to write to describe or to teach/inform. For this reason, because there is no “end goal” in the development of morecapable, more-confident, and more-powerful writers, readers, and communicators, the cycles are designed to be used year after year, with different content and language/literacy objectives, and with increasingly-complex discourse within the genres The complete Stepping Stones curricular framework contains six cycles: (1) Description, (2) Narration, (3) Going Deeper with Narration, (4) Information, (5) Opinion, and (6) Argument. In each cycle, there are four phases of instruction, but in this foundational book, we will not use every phase. Should you want to tackle the entire Stepping Stones yearlong framework, after you have used this abbreviated “on ramp” foundational book, you can check out the complete framework in the book Stepping Stones.

For now, I truly think you have made the right choice. You are starting your journey with a new approach with this Foundations book, which will take you by the hand and lead you to understand through doing. As you implement the sessions, you will develop a very real and concrete understanding of the structures, strategies, tools, materials, and practices that are essential to successfully implementing this approach.

We will begin with Cycle One, Description. We will work with all four phases of the Description cycle: Describing Settings, Describing Preferences, Describing People Inside and Out, and then Describing in the Past and Present. When we arrive at the end of the sessions in this cycle, we will use the Description rubrics, the Description writing continuum, and perhaps the appropriate Speaking Rubric to help students self-assess their performance in interpreting and producing descriptions.

Then, we move on to Cycle Two, Narration. We will work with three phases of the Narration cycle: Narrating Personal Stories, Narrating Imaginative/Literary Stories, and Narrating Cultural Stories. You might well deduce that, as mentioned above, the spiral nature of Stepping Stones will carry forward the language and literacy from Cycle One, Description, into Cycle Two, Narration. When we tell stories, of course we need to describe the setting, and the character’s physical and internal traits and preferences, and we will be describing in the past and perhaps the present, too. So you can already see how the curricular framework is built to spiral back to and reinforce prior learning. Again, at the end of this cycle, after several weeks of Page 93

narrating these various kinds of stories, we will use the narration-specific measurement tools in the summative portfolio assessments.

In this book, we will not work with Cycle Three, Going Deeper with Narration. It is outlined in detail in Stepping Stones, but if you work through Cycle Two in this book, then if you later decide that you want to go deeper, you will find that the strategies, skills, and understandings that you developed as you worked through Cycle Two will be very helpful in implementing Cycle Three.

Next, we move on to Cycle Four, Information. We will work with two phases in the Information cycle: Organizing an Informational Paragraph and Teaching Topic-Specific Vocabulary. Again, we will use the Information-specific assessment tools at the end of this abbreviated Information cycle.

In this foundational book, we will not address Cycle Five, Opinion, or Cycle Six, Argument. These cycles are outlined in Stepping Stones as well, and, again, working through the selected cycles in this book will be invaluable should you choose to incorporate these cycles into your course in future terms.

Finally, to end the term, if you have time, or anytime during your course that you feel your students are ready for a more hands-on, project-based learning experience, you might implement one or more of the End-of-theYear project options in which students use the language to create artifacts and preserve their creativity for the future: Class Yearbooks, the Story Books Project, the Festival of Worksheets, and/or the Word-Off. The First Six Weeks - A Special Time The first six weeks are an especially exciting time in the classroom. You will be norming the group, igniting your students’ creativity, and cultivating group bonds. You will be building a platform for your teaching this year to get real liftoff. You will be working on your delivery skills, one activity at the time, with this book open on your desk, guiding you step by step, on a recognizable trajectory to becoming your best teaching self.

This is the part of the year that will demonstrate the power of comprehensible input to your students, that will teach them how it works, that will build their confidence while establishing a positive and focused classroom culture, and send their brand-new language proficiency zooming up the chart. The activities are sequenced to make students feel successful, engaged, and part of a community. By learning these skills and strategies, you will be able to start speaking to your classes comprehensibly, even your beginners, or students who have not had communicative language courses in the past, and you will be able to speak in full sentences, about topics that are of interest to them, right from day one of class.

Even if you are working in a building with strict expectations around your teaching grammar, and you are not able to teach exclusively with proficiency-based strategies all year long, I urge you to at begin the year with 100% language use, just communicating in the language in a comprehensible and engaging way, if at all possible. Grammar lessons are best put off until later in the year. Any discrete grammar instruction is always Page 94

easier grasped when the students have first been given a rich bed of comprehensible input on which to base their conscious language study.

During the first weeks of school, all classrooms - science, math, band, and PE - are working on norming the classroom, building community, and inculcating in their students a love of the subject matter. An observer who pops into a proficiency-based lesson at the beginning of the year may even start to shift their mindset about what is possible in language teaching, once they observe first-year students happily participating in a discussion or activity in a language that students only began to study this very month. I recommend fully immersing your classes in comprehensible language interactions, for at least the first six-week unit, if at all possible. If you do this, you will see something remarkable, almost miraculous.

Students need to understand why listening is the focus of the first six weeks. So it is recommended that we take one day to provide them with a basic understanding of Second Language Acquisition (SLA). This metacognitive orientation is suggested on the last day of the first week of school, or about three to four days into the year, after a few days of acquisition-focused communication activities.

CI is unparalleled in building community, trust, and love of the language during the first month of the school year. It just so happens that So in that sense, the activities in the Description cycle deeply support our instruction for the rest of the year. This cycle builds a foundation of goodwill and feelings of success that support students’ growth for the remaining cycles of the year. In doing so, it develops the students’ ear for the language, while building listening and reading confidence to prepare students for later independent reading.

A Note on How to Schedule the Instructional Sessions The instructional sessions of this book were written to guide you through the year. However, you will notice that there are not 180 instructional sessions; there are 31 total, plus four End-of-the-Year options. Each “session” walks you through a different Guided Oral Input strategy. Guided Oral Input is the third part of the daily lesson framework and the component that changes the most from day to day.

Before the Guided Oral Input, we have a short Reading Workshop. For many teachers, for most of the year this is free-choice reading time, usually beginning in late September or October for students who have already had a year or two of literacy-focused instruction in the course language, or in late November, December, or January, for students in their first year of this kind of language class. However, in the beginning of the year, first-year classes or those new to comprehension-based instruction will not be ready to begin free-choice reading during the Reading Workshop time.

For that reason, and because some teachers will not have yet collected enough texts to begin a free-choice reading program, each session in this book gives Reading Workshop strategies that can be used with a whole-class text, in lieu of (or, especially for block classes, in addition to) free-choice reading.

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If you have a sufficient collection of classroom library books or other reading material, you will want to start free-choice reading when students are ready. For my students, that is usually around Thanksgiving of the first year (so, after about three months of class) and at the end of September (after about four weeks of class) for my returning students who, for the most part, have previously had plenty of reading and communicative language teaching with me in their first year. So, after instructional session 15 and the first portfolio assessments, you will read strategies for launching free-choice reading, and then after that, you might use most of the daily Reading Workshop time to lead free-choice reading.

As noted above, the “heart” of the lesson is #3, Guided Oral Input, so that is the longest part of the average instructional sessions.

After the Guided Oral Input, the remaining lesson components are basically comprised of various ways to continue using the language and information in different formats.

In the interest of simplicity, it is best for you, to lighten your planning workload, if you have a repertoire of about four to six options that you can re-use for the various lesson components. For that reason, you will find that as you work through the instructional sessions, the later sessions do not include very many new strategies for these lesson components. Rather, they simply direct you to re-use a strategy that you already learned and used in a previous session, perhaps with a modification to deepen the strategy or to better align it with the phase of that particular session. You will be directed to refer back to the page(s) of the book to go back to the previous session in which the strategy was first introduced and explained, so you can refresh your memory if need be, when planning the strategy again.

The first four sessions are written day by day, so that you can get a very solid mental picture of what those first three lessons will feel like, as you plan and prep.

The fourth session is special. It is an introduction to second language acquisition and an overview of how things go in a class like this. It is conducted in the class’s shared stronger language and is scheduled for approximately the fourth day of school, after the students have had a chance to experience a few days of instruction conducted in the course language. After completing the first four sessions, you might feel the need to move on, or you might continue working with the activities in the first three sessions for a while longer, before moving on to the fifth instructional session.

Once the fifth session starts, the rest of the sessions are not laid out day by day. You will most likely spend two to three days (or even more) in each session, either returning to the same content that you introduced in the first lesson using that strategy, or presenting new content that fits with what you taught in the first lesson.

When you are sketching out the general schedule for the year, you might want to use the following pages to help you picture the strategies and content that you might cover, and when. I call them “bubble sheets” because the first time I shared these with the CI Liftoff Facebook group, that’s what Cyndi, a group member, said they looked like.

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There are three versions of these “bubble sheets” schedules provided for each phase: (1) for classes of about 55 minutes that meet three to five times per week (2) for year-long block classes of about 80 minutes that meet every other day (3) for 4x4 block classes that meet every day, for only half the year.

Please note that the lesson objectives on these “bubble sheets" will be for Beginners. In the instructional session, you will find suggested performance objectives for Intermediate and Advanced students.

Further, on the “bubble sheets” you may notice that in the learning objective it says “L” for “Language.” You would want to replace the L with the name of the language you teach.

In the instructional sessions, it says French, just because that is the language that I have taught the most, et elle me tient très à coeur ❤ .

Well, enough dithering, dilly-dallying, and delay. Time to jump in to the rest of your career! The water is great! Time for liftoff!

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Instructional Session 1

Objective: By the end of class, you will be able to…

(NOTE: The example objectives and lesson are given in French; they can be used with any language. You can download materials in multiple languages from our Teachers Pay Teachers store (CI Liftoff), or use the examples to make your own materials.

Beginner: answer questions with one or more words - in French! - about the weather and date.

Intermediate: answer questions with sentences in French about the weather and date.

Advanced: answer questions with strings of sentences in French, to describe the weather today and the activities that people in class are doing.

Notes on Norming the Class: On the first day of class, especially for classes for whom this is their first year with you, this part of class is going to take way, way longer than most any other day of the year. On the first day of class, you might have a lot going on. If so, you might only say TWO or THREE sentences during the Guided Oral Input. Considering how often you will most likely be walking over to the rules and executing Plan A of the classroom management moves discussed in Chapter Four, and how long it will probably take to norm the class today, maybe even three sentences of actual Guided Oral Input is a stretch.

In the first days of class, and, in fact, all year, your goal is not only to give students a whole bunch of Guided Oral Input, but rather to provide just enough input time so that you can process the new language and information by proceeding to the other components of the Daily Instructional Framework that come after Guided Oral Input (Scaffolded Oral Review, Shared Writing, Shared Reading, and Student Application and Assessment). In the first few lessons, since you will be setting up the routines and procedures for the entire year, you will not be providing much actual content during the class discussions in Guided Oral Input.

It will be easiest for you if you actually think through the following lesson word by word, picturing yourself teaching it in your actual classroom space, and really get comfortable with the concept that you will only be imparting a couple of new sentences in this lesson. This technique of mentally walking through a visualization of your future performance is often used by athletes, public speakers, and performers, to rehearse and prepare for a successful execution of the game plan or script.

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Perhaps it will help to set your mind at ease, if doubts creep in as you are visualizing the lesson, and you begin to question if it is “worth it” to invest so much time in preparing for a lesson in which you “only” teach a

couple of new concepts, to think about the very important information that you are imparting, through the structure of the lesson and the manner in which you deliver the instruction.

(1) You are speaking slowly and carefully, using pauses for processing time and so you can calmly walk to a visual aid and use it to clearly and unequivocally indicate the meaning of what you are saying. This demonstrates in a tangible way to students that, indeed, Rule #1 is, in fact, the prime objective.

Understanding is key, and you will show students, through your calm, slow, uncluttered speech, that you will make it very possible for them to actually implement that rule each minute of class. You are setting students at ease, lowering their affective filter, and helping to create the optimal conditions for language acquisition.

(2) You are conducting class in an unhurried yet structured manner, not rushing to “cover” a significant amount of new information, but rather perfectly prepared to only impart a couple of new sentences in Guided Oral Input. With the manner and structure of class as your primary goals, you can free your thinking mind to be present to the class’s attention, and to any slight distractions that might arise during the lesson. With your conscious mind attuned to the goal of noticing the faintest whisper of a side conversation or the beginning Page 99

indication that someone is about to start rooting around in their binder for their schedule when they should be listening and watching the lesson, you will be much more ready to interrupt your instruction and walk to the rules.

Thus, you will demonstrate to the class how serious you are about cultivating a focused, calm, attentive atmosphere during the times when you are communicating in the language. Since you will be communicating in the language a lot this year, your efforts in this area right now, at the very beginning, are a very important investment in the success of every lesson, all year, and, indeed, of this entire instructional approach. So this broader learning (that you will interrupt each and every little distraction) is much more important, especially in the first lessons, than any content or specific facts you will impart.

(3) You are demonstrating the daily framework to students, and actually completing it even though you might well actually be working with one or two sentences from the Guided Oral Input. This is fine, and even desirable, because it allows you to take a very simple, very short amount of language from the Guided Oral Input and process it using the lesson framework that comes after Guided Oral Input (Scaffolded Oral Review, Shared Writing, Shared Reading, and Student Application and Assessment), which demonstrates to the class how the lessons will go each year.

It is of the utmost importance that you move quickly and with intention through a complete lesson framework, with very short, simple, and straightforward individual components. For example, your Shared Writing might be only one sentence in these first few lessons. That’s fine, as long as students have the experience of doing some Shared Writing, no matter how short or simple, in the first few lessons, they will come to expect that it will happen every day. The first few lessons are very important in establishing students’ expectations of “what’s normal” in your class and “how things are done” in Latin class this year. Of course, your goal is to cover more information in your lessons than just one sentence. But without going slowly here at the beginning, and clearly and consistently demonstrating how the daily lessons go, you will, in all likelihood, not truly experience the power of the Stepping Stones daily lesson framework this year, because you will be constantly trying to establish the Daily Instructional Framework as the “standard operating procedure.”

Whatever you do in the first few lessons, and especially in the first lesson, will imprint on students’ minds in a special way, and become the standard operating procedure for “how we do class here.” So, please, when preparing and thinking through these first few lessons, give a good deal of thought to how you will feel delivering such small doses of new language and information in the Guided Oral Input part of the lessons, so that you do not second-guess yourself in class, wondering if you are “covering enough” or “teaching enough.”

These first few lessons are mainly about teaching routines, procedures, and expectations. THAT is enough.

It is an investment. You will live off the interest all year, and throughout all the years that you teach these students in the future.

You might very well find that you live off the interest for the rest of your teaching career, because you will forever after have a strong daily lesson structure, and you will find yourself implementing it with less and less planning, and with more and more confidence, until you, one day, in a year or two, look back on these first few lessons when you first established the Daily Instructional Framework as a real turning point in your development as a communicative language teacher.

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That’s most assuredly the way I feel when I look back on the first lessons I taught with the instructional frameworks I learned from Lucy Calkins and the Teachers College Reading and Writing Project. At first, it felt clunky, like using someone else’s words and trying to be someone else. To say that I was “using someone else’s words” might well be the understatement of the millennium. I was literally teaching from Lucy’s books, reading right off the page as I taught. I was telling “personal stories” that I had cribbed from Maggie Beatty, my TCRWP trainer from Summer Institutes, and pretending that they were my own stories.

But after the awkwardness of those first lessons, I gradually put the books aside, and began to develop and tell my own stories, and find my own voice as a workshop teacher, until I can now plan and teach using the TCRWP frameworks and materials, on my own, without even a planbook to guide me. That is the power of an instructional framework — it allowed me to outgrow the scaffolding that Lucy Calkins and her team provided, and learn to build my own lessons with my own voice, using their structure.

Now we will turn to the lesson procedures.

Having greeted the students in English, checked to make sure everyone is in the right room, introduced

yourself, explained where to put their things, etc., explain to them briefly that in this class we will be communicating a good deal in the language and that this is the best way for them to learn! Tell them that the first activity you will be doing is reading and then you will discuss the calendar and weather. Then get right to it in that first class, even if it is only a few minutes long. While all their other teachers lecture them on the first day, you will begin instructing them using the language as quickly as possible.

Tell the students that they simply need to sit back, understand the general messages in class, not every word, and that your job is to make sure they do not get lost. Tell them that you will not call on them individually to speak in class until they are ready, later in the year, so all they need to do right now is sit back and listen.

Remind the students that they will spend most of their time in class hearing the language and using it, and that you are about to begin a portion of the lesson in which everyone will work together to keep the class speaking in the language.

Tell the class that you will begin with a short Reading Workshop, and read a short text together about school schedules, and then you will have a discussion of the calendar in French. You can also share the objective with them (see the list provided for examples).

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Find That Cognate Project or distribute paper copies of a short text that has many cognates. You can download these texts from our Teachers Pay Teachers store (CI Liftoff) or create your own. When preparing your own text for the Find That Cognate strategy, it is best to think of a category of words that naturally contains a lot of cognates. For Italian Example

German Example

instance, these examples use the cognate-heavy categories of school subjects and sports.

The following Reading Workshop texts use the cognate-heavy topic of animals, with varying degrees of difficulty for various levels of classes. Of course, here in the very first lesson, you are strongly cautioned not to choose texts that are intimidating, even with your upper-level classes. That’s why there is only one level of the “school subjects” texts which were designed to be used during the first days of school. They only have one level, because I wanted all classes to have a strong, confident start in Reading Workshop.

I strongly recommend that leveled texts, like the examples above, be used only after at least three days of super-easy, one-level-fits-all texts. And, if your upper-level students are intimidated by the Advanced text, or even the Intermediate text, you can simply drop down to the lower-level texts so that they can get strong and confident. (You can always return to the more-challenging version of the text with your upper-level classes later, in a future Reading Workshop, and “stretch” them by revisiting the same topic and text layout, but the more challenging Intermediate or Advanced level text).

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For now, I suggest using very simple texts, such as the examples below.

German Beginner Cognate Reading

German Intermediate Cognate Reading

German Advanced Cognate Reading

You might conduct class in this way, if you are using the cognate reading below, in French. Please note that the lesson notes are written in English. To indicate the words that are said in the course language (French, in this example), I will use this standard black text. The words that are said in the class’s stronger shared language (English, for me and many teachers in the US) are written in this color.

You may notice that there is a lot of English in these first lessons. Again, it is an investment. You are setting up not only your classroom expectations, but also a framework, so you will not need to continually re-explain how class goes each day. You will save a lot of time that is, for many teachers, spent in English, throughout the year, setting up new activities and instructional frameworks. You will not need to do that, because you will follow the same basic lesson framework almost every day. Please do not balk at the amount of English you are investing in the setup here at the beginning of the year. It will come back to you, with plenty of interest!

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Once the students can see the projected text, or they have it on their desks, you can proceed:

“Let’s read this school schedule. Your job is to notice (if the students have a paper copy, you might say “mark the text”) the cognates. Cognates are words that are the same in English and French. I will read to you in French, then you will tell me the cognates you noticed (you can say them in English).”

“We need a “French time” signal so we all know that it is time to transition to heavy-duty French listening.”

“What do you guys think would be a good signal? We need the signal to have a visual component - some kind of gesture that everyone can see - and also something that we can hear, like a phrase or a sound.”

(Take ideas, and perhaps vote.)

“That is a great signal. Shawn, nice job!”

(The student whose idea was the winning signal is generally the most willing to take the job, so you will use the “Positive Preemptive Peer Pressure strategy to encourage them to agree to the position, as described below.)

“Class, clap for Shawn!” (You beam at Shawn as if they are the most wonderful student in the history of school.). No, no, clap ENTHUSIASTICALLY! Shawn, do you want to be our Class Starter?”

(Usually, Shawn will say yes. If not, ask them whom they would like to nominate. Then have everyone clap for that person, to preemptively peer pressure them a bit. If that person does not want the job, you might have them nominate a third person, or you might just say that you will start class, but you will just give the teacher signal, and use some signal that you like, unless someone in class wants to change it.)

“OK, we will read this text and talk about the words we see, and then we will talk about the calendar. I will talk in French and your only job is to listen and understand, and my job is to make it easy to understand French, by pointing and talking slowly and clearly. Shawn, let’s go!”

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(Shawn gives the signal. You take a deep, calming breath and center yourself to lead the class through a simple, very comprehensible task.)

(Place your hand or pointer on the title of the text and begin reading in a slow yet fluid way, moving your hand or pointer through the text as you go. Resist the temptation to stop and establish meaning. The goal is for students to actually read through the text in its entirety with you, looking for cognates.)

“List of Classes. School year 2020-2021. Hour. First, Second, Third, Fourth, Fifth, Sixth. First hour: Physical Education. Second hour: Algebra, etc.”

(Once you have read the entire text, point to or circle a very obvious cognate and ask for its meaning in the class’s stronger shared language.)

“Class, ‘list’ in English?”

(Students answer. Then you write the English on the text, and spell it, saying the letters in the course language, as demonstrated below.)

“Yes, list in English, is list. L-I-S-T. List.”

(Note: This sounds like: “Oui, liste en anglais est list. ell-eeyy-ess-tayy (saying letters in French). Liste.”)

(Moving on to another cognate,) “Class, ‘courses' in English? Yes, courses in English, is courses (or classes). C-O-U-R-S-E-S/ C-L-A-S-S-E-S.” (Asking a more open-ended question — you might skip this in beginner classes) “Class, look. (gesture “look.”) “Look means look (gesture). Show me look. (gesture)” (Note: This sounds like: “Classe, regardez (gesture). ‘Regardez’ (gesture) means ‘look’. (gesture). Show me ‘regardez’ (gesture).”)

(Note on management of these gestures: You may need to “park” yourself here to make sure that everyone is showing you their comprehension by gesturing with you, even if their gestures are not very energetic or dramatic. You will simply repeat if needed, “Show me ‘regardez’” until the entire class is gesturing, even just a little bit.)

Today in these first moments of class it is of supreme importance that the entire class comply with your first request. When you use the gestures in your own speech, it is not important that the entire class also use the gesture, though some students just naturally will gesture along. However, when you are introducing or reviewing the gestures, and you say, “Show me,” you will want to maintain the expectation that everyone gesture together, to focus their attention on associating the gesture, the sound, and the meaning.

You do not need to go into a long-winded explanation here, or plead to the class. In fact, the less said the better. You will exert a stronger “presence” as a leader in class if you simply repeat “Show me regardez” as you gesture, and give the class as a whole an expectant look as if to say, without speaking, “you all need to do this.”

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If some students still do not comply, simply repeat again, “Show me ‘regardez.’” If, at this point, there are a few holdouts, you will probably want to do some “selective not noticing,” and make like you think everyone has complied. You can take mental note of those students, and plan to move a little closer to them next time you ask the class to gesture with you, to see if a little more proximity will nudge them into participating.

If that is not successful, you should still continue on and not get into a power struggle, and just plan to have a follow-up conversation with them in which you explain that they can just make the slightest of gestures to show their comprehension, but that you will be asking them to get their hands involved because it is good for their vocabulary.

(Moving on, speaking in the course language and getting back to the sentence that prompted the gesturing,) “Class, look (gesture). Other cognates?”

(Note: Point to the word “Cognates” in the text, or write it on the board, and then point around on the text, to indicate nonverbally that you want the class to give you more English cognates.)

“Can you read any other words?”

(Getting back into the language, and repeating the same words that you just used in that little English aside,) “Class, look (gesture). Other cognates?”

(Students answer, probably in English.)

“Yes, algebra in English, is algebra. A-L-G-E-B-R-A.” Reading Workshop only lasts about 6 to 8 minutes on a normal day, and this is a very not-normal day, so you might very well only look for two or three cognates before moving on. Another note is that you do not need to worry about how to “tie” the content of the Reading Workshop into the rest of the lesson; the content of Reading Workshop is, mostly, not tied to the lesson. Rather, it is a “warm-up” time to spend working with comprehensible texts, to give students comprehensible input in written form as they read and in aural form as they listen to you read and discuss the text. So, after a few minutes, you will want to move into the Guided Oral Input, the calendar discussion.

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Small Talk (Calendar and Weather) You will begin with a blank calendar, just a piece of chart paper with a blank grid on which you will create the current month, as pictured below, or perhaps with a digital calendar like the example below, available in our Teachers Pay Teachers store (CI Liftoff).

Example of a Digital Calendar

Example of a Chart Paper Cale

ndar

Simply put away the Reading Workshop text and move to the calendar, so that you can transition to the Guided Oral Input without needing to speak in English.

“Class, look. (gesture “look.”) “Look means look (gesture).

Show me look. (gesture)” (Note: This sounds like: “Classe, regardez (gesture).

‘Regardez’ (gesture) means ‘look’. (gesture).

Show me ‘regardez’ (gesture).”)

“Class, look (gesture) at the calendar (put your hand on the blank grid).”

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(Write the title “Calendar” in your course language and spell it.)

“C-A-L-E-N-D-R-I-E-R. Look (gesture) at the calendar (put your hand on the grid).”

When you speak about the calendar and weather, do so in a slow, animated voice, with lots of pointing and pausing. You will write the needed words into the blank calendar, such as “August” and “Monday” and the numeral that denotes the date, and perhaps the word “hot” and/or “sunny”.

You are not expected to teach certain words, just to communicate with them as the strategy’s title suggests (Small Talk). So, you do not need to write all the days of the week, or all the kinds of weather. Just write the words you need for the specific lesson today. The focus is on communicating, not on teaching certain words.

The conversation might go something like this (with long pauses of two or more seconds between words in these early stages of them listening to you as you first speak the language): “Look (gesture and pause to sweep the class with your eyes to check for understanding) at the calendar (point and pause, look at the class). The month ... is … August. (write August in the language, and spell it in the language) A-U-G-U-S-T.”

“August (point to August) … is … the month. M-O-N-T-H. (write “month” in the language, spelling it, and draw a line to August) Class, “month” in English?”

(Some kids call out the word “month”) “Yes, class, the month (point to month) … is … August (point to August).”

“Class, is today…August 21 (jot “21” somewhere, perhaps on the board) or August 22 (jot “22”)?”

(Some kids call out “22” in a mixture of French and English, which one depending mostly on how much of a risk-taking nature these particular students have) Page 108

“Yes, class, today is August…22 (write 22 on the calendar).”

“Monday (point, but don’t write), Tuesday (point), Wednesday (point), Thursday (point)…Thursday, August 22. (write and spell in your course language) T-H-U-R-S-D-A-Y.” “Class, is today Thursday (point)…or Monday (point)?

(Some kids call out “Thursday” in a mixture of French and English, which one depending mostly on how much of a risk-taking nature these particular students have) “Yes, class, today is Thursday (point). Thursday (point), August (point) 22 (point).”

You have arrived at a good time, having established with perfect clarity to all the students in the classroom what the date today is in the TL, to take a nice deep breath and to smile approvingly at your students. In those moments, much information is conveyed, that: 1) the class will be conducted in the target language, (2) the mood of the class will be positive, (3) the students will not need to “think” as much as “feel” the language in order to get what is going on, and (4) the students will therefore be able to understand without effort and that you will make it easy through your slow speech and visual support.

Quick Quiz This review strategy is simplicity itself, and I use it frequently. This is, by far, the Scaffolded Oral Review strategy that I use the most, and you could probably use this strategy in 75% of your lessons, without it ever getting too stale. Why can you just re-use a strategy like this over and over without it becoming painful?

Because the content of the lesson changes each day. And because, as the year goes on, and you work through this book, you will learn ways to deepen the questions you ask. And, perhaps most importantly of all, because you will adopt the attitude that you are completely justified in this sound pedagogical practice.

You will remind yourself that your own mental health and professional development come first this year, and simplicity is your new standard operating procedure. You will reflect on how you are completely in the right to provide ever-changing content within a strong, pedagogically-sound “I do, we do, you do,” Gradual Release of Responsibility lesson framework. You will tell yourself that yes, the brain does crave novelty, but that, no, the brain does not crave chaos, and that what we are really striving to provide is novelty within safety, and that a consistent, predictable, comfortable structure provides safety.

You simply move to your Review Spot and ask a series of questions about what was just discussed. Where is your Review Spot, you ask? Excellent question. Your Review Spot is the place where you will go each day to physically signal to the students that you are moving on from Guided Oral Input to the next part of the lesson.

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They do not need to know the official names for the lesson parts. They just need to know that there is a point in class where new information is wrapped up, and it is time to review and then transition into Shared Writing.

They really don’t need all the fancy teacher terminology; they just need to live the experience, and they will quickly just “get” how class flows. And then everyone can just relax and get down the road of the year with a nice, easy structure and a sense of safety and predictability in the challenging world we live in.

The best Review Spot I have found is right by the artists’ easel.

Even though you will not have used the artists yet (you will hire and train them later in this book), and thus you really have no reason to be in that particular spot today, you can just get into the habit of standing over there, so that you will have established that as your Review Spot when you do start using the artists’ work, as shown in this photo.

It is far simpler, and thus strongly recommended, especially in My Review Spot

the first lessons, to have the class just chorally respond to your questions. Later you will ask students to write the answers, but I recommend keeping it simple today.

Generally I ask between six and ten questions, or even more. But on the first day, you might ask only two or three, or even just one.

In these first lessons, you are advised to stick to literal review questions and not branch out into asking other questions, but we will add on ways to ask more personalized questions in later sessions. I want these first lessons to feel easy to the students, so I ask ONLY soft-pitch, quick wins, and never any “gotcha” questions.

At the beginning of the term, and throughout the course, especially with beginners,I suggest that you stick to simple “either-or” or “yes-no” questions, and then provide two choices, one of which is correct and the other incorrect. For example, if the class discussed a picture of a colonial mansion in Mexico, you might ask, “Was the house big or small?” Or you might ask, “Yes or no, was the house small? Was it small, or was it not small?”

In addition to saying the correct answer as one of the either-or choices, I recommend that you literally give students the answer as you ask the question, and also provide plenty of “hints” in the form of extra-linguistic information such as vocal inflection, gestures, pointing to visuals, and facial expressions. I have been known to wink, say “a-hem,” tap on or even noisily slap the board where the answer can be seen, or wave a visual aid around, as I ask these “soft-pitch” questions, just to help students see the right answer, so they can have a successful experience interacting in the language.

It is sound pedagogical practice to “give away the answer” because the purpose of the Scaffolded Oral Review is not really to test students’ memories and see if they remember the facts that were discussed during Guided Oral Input, but rather to provide repetitions of the language used in class up till that point, and show Page 110

students how well they are doing at understanding the language, with your expert support and scaffolding, of course.

That’s why this part of the lesson is called Scaffolded Oral Review. Because you are NOT really “quizzing” or “assessing” the students; you are simply reviewing the information from Guided Oral Input together, re-using and re-focusing on the scaffolding that you just used the first time you presented the information.

Today, for Scaffolded Oral Review you will ask one or more either-or questions about the calendar. First, you will set up the expectation that students will listen to you repeat the question before they answer. This is an important expectation, because it basically doubles the amount of input that students will interact with during a Quick Quiz, and during a time when they are extra-primed to pay close attention, to boot - a quiz. Thus, you are very strongly urged to use the suggested procedure outlined below, to set up and reinforce that practice.

“OK, time for a review quiz. I will ask you the question TWO TIMES in French. The first time, LISTEN. Do NOT talk. Just listen. The second time, answer.”

“Number One. (hold up one finger) Class, the month …. shhhhh…. the month is August…shhhh…or the month…..shhhhh….is September.shhhhhhhh? Shhhhh! The month is August….shhh …. or the month is September?”

(The class calls out, “August!”)

“Yes, class! The month is August.”

“Number Two. (two fingers) The date today is August 21…..shhh….or the date today is August….shhhhh….22.shhhhhh? Shhh! The date today is August 21…shhhh…or the date today is August 22?”

(The class calls out, “August 21!”)

“Yes, class! The date today is August 21.”

You might ask more than two questions, if time permits, but even if you only have time to ask two (or even one) question in this very first lesson, you are reinforcing the language used in Guided Oral Input and also demonstrating to the class that each day there will be a time in the lesson to review. While you will use a Page 111

variety of strategies for Scaffolded Oral Review this year, today you are demonstrating with the most oftenused strategy of a quick call-and-response whole-class Quick Quiz.

Write and Discuss Write and Discuss is a simple, yet incredibly powerful, literacy-building practice. Later in the year, we will begin working with Anchor Charts to help you model traits of strong writing during Shared Writing, but while you get comfortable with Write and Discuss, you will simply pull out the document camera or project from your

Write and Discuss with a

computer, or perhaps write on the board or on a

Document Camera

piece of chart paper.

Whatever format you choose, you will review the information from Guided Oral Input and write or type out some sentences to describe the date, the weather, and the facts that emerged during Guided Oral Input.

You will compose, with the input of the class, a summary of what you just presented and discussed in the Guided Oral Input and reviewed during the Scaffolded Oral Review. These preceding lesson components provided mostly aural (or listening) input. Now, Shared Writing will provide written input in the course language, as well as continued aural input, as you discuss. You guide the students to co-create a text, using a series of questions. By asking questions and filling Reviewing Col

ors by Voting

on

the Pen to Use

in the class’s answers, you re-create the day’s experience together in writing.

As you write, from time to time, it is suggested to read to the students from the beginning, to recycle and repeat and reinforce the previously-written language.

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For example: Write: The Story of Say: The Story of FRENCH class or the story of SPANISH class?

Students: French Class!

Say: Yes, the story of…(writing and spelling in French) F-R-E-N-C-H class.

Write: The month is Say: The month is August or September?

Class: August!

Say: Yes, the month is…(writing and spelling) A-U-G-U-S-T. Reading/Recycling: The story of French class. The month is August.

Write: The date today Say: The date today is August 21 or August 22?

Students: August 21!

Say: Yes, the date today is (writing and spelling) A-U-G-U-S-T 22.

Reading/Recycling: The story of French class. The month is August. The date today is August 22.

If time permits, you might do a little Write and Discuss move called Writing More Than Originally Existed.

This is when you - time permitting, and remembering that there are still two more lesson components Shared Reading and Student Application and Assessment - add on additional sentences, making up the details with your students and adding them to the text. For example: Say: Look (gesture)…out the window (walk to the window and point) Look (gesture) out the window…is it hot (gesture)…or cold (gesture)?

Look (gesture), is it hot (gesture) or cold (gesture)?

Students: (in English or French, depending on students’ ability/inclination) Hot! Say: It is hot (gesture) today? Yes or no?

Students: Yes! Hot! (Walk back to your writing setup) Write: Today it is Say: Class, is it hot (gesture) or very (gesture) hot (gesture)?

Students: Very hot!

Write: V-E-R-Y hot.

Say: Today it is very hot.

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Reading/Recycling: The story of French class. The month is August. The date today is August 22. Today it is very hot.

Today, you will most likely only write one or two sentences for Shared Writing. That is OK; you are building the foundation today. Tomorrow, you will already see the “payoff” for your work today, because when you get to the Shared Writing part of class, your students will act like, “Oh yeah, this is no big deal; this is what we do in this class after we talk about something.” You will soon begin to appreciate Shared Writing for its calming effect, and also for its power to drive big literacy gains. This will be especially apparent when you begin using Anchor Charts, later in the year, as explained later in this book.

The “Go-To” Daily Strategies During Shared Reading, you will work with the text that your class just created together. The three “Go-To” strategies are, taken together, a daily powerful instructional sequence that combines language acquisition and conscious learning about language.

Reading these texts is a powerful practice for language acquisition. Since you wrote them with your class, helping them to create a text that is more complex than what they could have produced on their own, these texts are a perfect example of what Dr. Krashen calls i + 1, or “input plus one,” which means input that is just one step higher than what a learner can produce, and containing just a little more language than they can comprehend, just a few elements that stretch them beyond their current level of acquisition.

These little class-created texts are the perfect vehicle for this i + 1. They are the most perfectly-aligned level of text that could possibly exist for your specific class on this particular day.

You will move on to a brief Reading Workshop in which you will use these three “go-to” strategies.

Read in the Language Choral Translation Grammar Discussion (Block Option) Reading from the Back of the Room Block teachers might find that they also have time to introduce this fourth “go-to” strategy, or you can always insert any other reading strategy that has been successful for your students in the past.

The strategies used in Shared Reading are generally more active for students, asking them to interact with the text and sometimes to work in partnerships or independently to process the reading. Therefore, in block classes, it makes sense to spend more time working with shared reading, because the activities are sort of an energy-release valve, allowing students to move into a more active phase of the day’s lesson, after the more listening-focused parts of the lesson.

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Let’s look at each of these strategies in detail.

Read in the Language This strategy is simplicity itself, but it is so valuable that I will recommend that you do it it every single day before moving on to any of the other reading strategies. You simply read the entire text back to the class in L2, exactly as it is written, with no pauses or asides, just allowing students to hear what they wrote, as a whole text. During Shared Writing, students do not hear the entire text as a piece, because of the discussion.

So, reading the piece back to them, without interruptions, is an important first step into shared reading.

Read fluidly, with expression and intonation appropriate to the piece. I like to place my hand or a pointer, such as my pen, at the beginning of each line of text that I read, to help students track. An even more supportive way to move through the text is to place a sheet of blank paper over it, uncovering the text line by line as you read each one. You do not want to read too fast, so that students lose the ability to track the words you are reading in the projected text, but you do want to read fluidly, with expression and phrasing. It sometimes feels a bit magical to students, to hear their writing read back to them as if it were an important piece of literature. It is very honoring to their learning process.

In languages such as Japanese where there are no spaces between the words, it is recommended that you draw circles around each separate word, including particles, as you read to the class. This might mean that you read more slowly and deliberately. That is fine; you might choose to read the text again to them, with the circles in it, in a more fluid fashion, after they can see the words as separate entities with circles around them.

Choral Translation with Grammar Discussion This powerful shared reading strategy has also become a daily practice for me, since I first learned it from Ben Slavic.

In fact, many days all we have time to do with the text we wrote is Read in the Language and then Choral Translation and Grammar Discussion, and that is a perfectly satisfying and educationally-sound lesson.

After reading the text in the language, go back through the piece and have students translate it word by word, chorally saying the meaning of each word in the text in their stronger

Circling the Class’s Noticings and

Teaching Into Them

shared language. Having students translate word by word, and even coming up with ways to say a possible meaning for words that really have no equivalent meaning in English, can reveal much about their linguistic knowledge.

It is recommended that you not translate aloud along with the class, but rather point to each word silently, as the class translates chorally, so you can listen for their hesitations, confusions, and inaccuracies. Then, you Page 115

can teach into those moments, circling the “problem word”, very briefly explaining the grammar to them, and writing a bit on the text to show the meaning or the language phenomenon that caused the breakdown in ability to match words between the languages.

This practice meets the ACTFL standard of Comparisons, which includes the learning target of comparing linguistic systems, “Learners use the language to investigate, explain, and reflect on the nature of language through comparisons of the language studied and their own.”

I like to use a colored pen (Flair pens are my ideal pen for this) to point to the words one by one as the class translates. The first few times I set up the

Many grammar points naturally come up in context.

activity, I say to the students, “You are going to read together in English. I will point to the words and your job is to read them in the exact order I am pointing to, and to stay with the class and my pointer, not going too fast, or too slow, or too loud, or too quiet. The English might be in a weird order, but that is just how languages work. It’s why I get paid the ‘medium-size’ bucks; you need a teacher to help you figure out what order to put the French in. OK, let’s start here. 3-2-1-go!”

A note on classroom management: sometimes I pretend that I can tell that not everyone is reading. Usually, I cannot really tell that, but I pretend from time to time, especially the first few times we do this. By pretending, I convey to the students that I really mean business and that everyone should participate, reading together. I just say, after they read a few words, in a pleasant yet no-nonsense voice, “Not everyone is reading together.

Let’s go back and start over.” This is slightly frustrating for kids, and so they generally begin to exhibit better participation, because they do not want to have to start over. If students read too fast, I make them go back and re-read, staying together.

By having students reveal their understanding of the various words in French, even those which might not have a direct English translation, I can teach into the places where they do not yet understand how French compares with English. For example, in French, there are most often two parts to the written negation of a verb. To say, “I am not”, which in English requires three words, you would write four words in French, “Je ne suis pas.”

Thus, students who do not yet know that there are two words in French to express what is generally expressed in one English word will tend to translate the french sentence “Je ne suis pas française” (I am not French) as “I not am…” and then get a bit confused or hesitant when they need to say something for the word “pas” since they can, by reading the next word, see that “French” would be the next word in English. So they will naturally hesitate there, if they have not yet learned or figured out that “pas” also means “not” in French.

In this situation, you would want to simply say, “In French, ne and also pas both work together to say what in English is one word — not.” Then, you will simply circle the words ne and pas, ideally using a different color pen or marker, and write “not” above them, or put a slash through them to indicate negation, like a “No Smoking” sign.

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Then, once this short little explanation is done, and now that students have a visual representation of the words’ meaning, you will want them to take another pass at the translation, to solidify their learning and increase the chances that they will retain this linguistic information as they interpret its meaning once more in a meaningful, comprehensible context.

Simply say, “OK, let’s start over here,” putting your pointer under the first word in the sentence, or maybe in the first word of the phrase, if the sentence is very long, and starting them over with their English translation, so that they get a “running start” on the word(s) you translated, in a meaningful context.

You must do this backing up to the beginning of the sentence or phrase every time, beginning with the very first one on the very first day, with good cheer and an attitude of “You will like this,” so that students just think, “This is what we do when we read,” and it seems normal, so they will not grumble about having to re-read.

It is not recommended to parse each and every word in the text, or to give in to the temptation to teach them every cool language feature we as teachers and confirmed Grammar Nerds find interesting, as student motivation in the activity will tend to wane, and they will likely become overloaded with new linguistic facts.

However, when they hesitate or display confusion, it is a good time to stop and explain the language in this fashion.

You do not want to talk about every single cool language feature because you do not want to nerd out too strongly with all the fascinating-to-you grammar hocus-pocus, because not every kid in class is likely to share your passion for French verb conjugations. However, we all know that there are junior Grammar Nerds in ever class, and if you have been teaching in a communicative way for very long at all, you have probably found yourself in conflict with a few of these budding linguists from time to time because they really want to learn all the grammar.

Hey, I totally get it. I love grammar too. For these students, it is especially recommended that you make a daily practice of explaining some of the language that trips the class up in general, and also perhaps a couple of “can’t miss” viewpoints on the Scenic Tour of the French Language. You will also want to invite them, and the rest of your students, to discuss features of the language that they noticed in the reading, after you have concluded the choral translation.

Class Grammar Discussion After the translation, ask, “Did anyone notice anything about French that they could teach the class?” For me, this wording is important, because of the authority it confers upon the students, and I use it almost every time I do this, which is to say almost every day, because I really prioritize this invitation to share our noticings about the language.

The reason that I make such a point of conducting these short class discussions of the language on a daily basis is because it has benefits for the whole class and for me, as their teacher. For the grammar crowd, it provides an opportunity to do the analytical contrastive linguistic work that they crave. It gives them the chance to be publicly acknowledged for their ability to draw inferences and comparisons from the data presented in the reading.

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I make a big deal about their noticings, saying things like, “Wow, you are really thinking like a linguist! That’s a scientist who studies how language works!” or “That is such a cool thing to notice! Way to use your noggin!

Why do you think the language does that?” If someone asks a question, I first turn it back to their peers, to see if anyone in class has anything to offer by way of an answer. I generally say something like, “Hey, good question! Does anyone have an idea of why that might be?”

These remarks have been carefully crafted over the years I have worked with students, to decenter teacher authority over the “Rules of the Language” and invite more students into the Grammar Fan Club. Our brains are meaning-making machines, and we are programmed to notice and analyze patterns. It should be noted that I am referring here to our conscious minds, our prefrontal cortices, the thinking part of our brains.

Language acquisition is not a conscious process, and so this activity, as well as choral translation, are not designed for language acquisition, but rather to give students’ conscious minds, their higher-order thinking, a little workout in the middle of a whole bunch of language acquisition during most of the rest of the period.

Your Grammar Superstars will really appreciate the daily exercise for their frontal lobes.

This daily practice of inviting the class to engage in a short grammar discussion helps students like this to calm down during Guided Oral Input and Scaffolded Oral Review, knowing that there is always an opportunity for them to ask questions and do this language work, with the class’s shared text. Plus, who knows, but you may be raising up a new generation of linguists or college language teachers, who will understand both the conscious grammar and also how they got their start in French by getting tons and tons of communicative input in the language.

Your little Junior Linguistics Society of America members are not the only students who benefit from this practice of short, frequent grammar discussions. For the kids who would not naturally think grammar study was all that interesting, there are also benefits to this regular grammar discussion. In fact, the benefits for them might well be greater than those derived by the grammar lovers.

When these students have regular opportunities to see their peers pointing out what they noticed about the language, they have a chance to revise their own self-concept as language students. Imagine that you are a not-so-enthralled student of the linguistic arts, and you are sitting there reading along, and then the teacher ask the class to point out things they noticed, or share questions that they have, and you realize you they, too, had already noticed that thing the language does, or you realize that you would have given the same explanation of what is going on in the reading as one of the nerdier folks in class.

You might well, in that case, have a little private moment of, “Oh, I noticed that too,” and thus a growing sense that you, too, can analyze the language system for patterns from which you can derive inferences. In fact, you might very well develop more confidence about yourself as a language learner, from just sitting around and quietly noticing that you are quite capable of noticing how language works.

When your students continue on to other teachers, or want to know more about how language works, these experiences might well give them confidence that it is completely possible for them to analyze the structure of the language. At the very least, they can sit back and listen to what is interesting to their peers, and see that normal, everyday kids can actually deduce linguistic principles from the language.

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This experience might even, over time, open the door, just a crack, for them to peek into the Grammar Club, and may even, eventually, change their concept of themselves, into a person who notices patterns in linguistic data, just the same as everyone else. I believe that these short, simple, daily forays into kid-centered language work can really help these students to be more successful in any required grammar study, if and when they encounter it in their language careers. This is an excellent example of the ACTFL Core Practice of “teaching grammar as a concept, in context.” By just lightly touching on grammar each day during Shared Reading, we can make a regular practice of introducing students to some conscious language study that is in alignment with the ACTFL recommendations for our teaching.

Reading from the Back of the Room This strategy, which I also learned from Ben Slavic, is one of my very favorites, and it is especially rewarding to do this when adults are visiting your class. It is most impressive to see a class having a rather deep, flowing class discussion in another language.

However, blowing the minds of folks who stop into your class is certainly not the only reason to do Reading from the Back of the Room. This strategy is also very satisfying for you as the teacher, as you see your students’ ability to turn away from the class text and use the language that was introduced that day, perhaps even

My Reading from the Back of the

Room Spot

language that they heard for the first time that day, in an authentic class discussion of the ideas in the text.

After finishing up your grammar discussion in the class’s stronger shared language, this strategy also gets the class right back into the flow of the course language. You simply walk to a comfortable spot in the back of the room and begin asking questions. I have a big teacher desk back there and I like to sit on it, take a load off, and conduct the discussion from a comfy spot.

If you always head to the same spot each time you do this strategy, students will soon become accustomed to turning around and participating in a discussion in the course language, and you can therefore minimize the English you need to use as you transition to this activity.

You might have students stand up and walk to the opposite side of the room, and remain standing during this activity. This is a nice way to help them focus at this point in class, and moving to a new spot is said to help refresh the brain and aid in memory formation. At the very least, a change of location and moving to a standing position helps to “reset” students’ attention so that they can better attend to the discussion.

After students have become familiar with the routine of standing up and crossing the room to find a spot to stand in, you can change this procedure up. You can say, in the course language, more specific directions to add another layer of variety to the transition. You might say things such as: Take 9 steps. Take 17 baby Page 119

steps. Take three giant steps. High five six people on your way across the room. Say “Bonjour” to four people on your way across the room.

The first few times you read from the back of the room, I recommend saying something like this to the class in English as you walk to your comfy spot and get settled in for this very enjoyable strategy: “OK we are going to discuss what we wrote. (Maybe if you want to establish the walking routine, you might also say something like, “Stand up, walk to the opposite side of the room, and turn to look at me back here.”) If you need to look back at the text, you can. It is right there. But if you can look back here and answer the questions, you will feel really smart and know that you are learning a lot of French.” Then, you can begin the questions in the course language.

You do not need to pre-plan the questions, and in fact the discussion really feels more authentic, interesting, and free if you just follow the class’s energy. The reason this strategy is called Reading from the Back of the Room is because you are reading the text, which you can see behind the students as it is still projected or displayed where you just finished working with it. As you scan the text, you can just take your questions from the information that you and the class just wrote. It’s an easy, no-prep activity that is really quite satisfying, because it generally makes everyone feel pride in their ability to have a rather high-level discussion in the language.

Here on the first day of class, you will want to give “soft-pitch" easy wins — either-or questions about the text, with lots of visual scaffolding, so that you are basically giving them the answer. You might, especially in upper-level classes, find that, even on the first day, you can move into less-structured questions, such as asking for details of the text like where, what, etc.

Today, Shared Reading might sound something like this: “Now I will read to you in French and then we will read in English

“Giving Away the Answer” Using

Gestures

together.” (reading with expression, and pointing to the words) “The story of French class. The month is August. The date today is August 22. Today it is very hot.”

“Now we will read together. Your job is to read with the class, not faster not slower, not louder, not softer, just say each word as I highlight it. It might be in a strange order when we say the English, but that’s how language works; you can’t always translate every single word. Say the words as I point. 3-2-1, go!” (class reads: the story…of….the…class….of?) (sensing confusion, you circle “de”) “This word means ‘of,’ so in French we say ‘the class OF French.” (write “of” in English) Let’s back up to here and go again. (class reads: the story…of….the…class….of…French…the month is august…the date…) (sensing confusion, you circle “d’aujourd’hui”) “This word means ‘of today’ which is a really long complicated word in French, huh?” (write “of today” in English) Let’s back up to here and go again. (class reads: the date…of today…is…the 22…of…)

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(sensing confusion, you circle “22”) “It sounds like you are noticing that in French, we say the twenty-two, but in English we say the “twenty-second. ” (write “22nd” in English) Let’s back up to here and go again. (class reads: the date…of today…is…the 22nd…of…August…) (you circle “aujourd’hui”) (class reads: Today…is…very hot) “Did anyone notice anything about the French language, how it is spelled, or put together, that they can teach the class?”

(Lead a brief class discussion and circle any students’ noticings on the text, ideally using a second color, and perhaps writing the students’ name/initials by their contribution.)

To continue to Reading from the Back of the Room: (You have walked to the back of the room and settled into a comfy spot where you can relax a little after all this bopping around. If you train your body to SIT during this time, you will build in a ready-made daily rest period for your body whenever you use this strategy. I use it in about 75% of my class sessions, so I really appreciate having a nice routine of relaxing a little during Reading From the Back of the Room.)

“We are going to discuss what we wrote. If you need to look back at the text, you can. It is right there. But if you can look back here and answer the questions, you will feel really smart and know that you are learning a lot of French.”

“Is this French class…or Spanish class?” (the class responds: French!)

“Yes, this is French class. Is the month August…or is the month February?” (the class responds: August!)

“Yes, the month is August. Is the date today August 21…or is the date today August 22?” (the class responds: August 22!)

“Yes, the date is August 22.”

Quick Quiz The end-of-class Quick Quiz is almost identical to the Student Application and Assessment. The only real difference is that you will move to your “Quiz Spot” instead of your “Review Spot.”

My own Quiz Spot is in the back of the room, by the door, so that I have a good vantage point to observe and connect with students as they prepare to leave class.

Just like in the Student Application and Assessment, I want students to listen to the question twice, because that gives processing time as well as more repetitions of the language.. So, again, I do a lot of “shhhing” as I ask the question the first time, to remind them not to call out the answer.

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“Shh” in between words

as I ask the question the

first time

I used in class. Here I Lots of the same scaffolding that word “said.” am using a gesture to scaffold the

Further, the Quick Quiz, especially on this first day, is not a “gotcha.” So, if needed, you can still use gestures, facial expressions, or even walk to the board or Shared Writing text, to point out visuals that might make the questions more comprehensible. You want students to leave class today, and every day, with a feeling of pride and wonder that they were able to conduct almost an entire class period in the language, and you want them convinced that you are a magical unicorn who makes it easy for them to understand a whole ‘nother language!

Your Student Application and Assessment today might go something like this: “OK, time for a final check to see what you learned. I will ask you the question TWO TIMES in French. The first time, LISTEN. Do NOT talk. Just listen. The second time, answer.”

“Number One. (hold up one finger) Class, the month …. shhhhh…. the month is August…shhhh…or the month…..shhhhh….is September.shhhhhhhh? Shhhhh! The month is August….shhh …. or the month is September?”

(The class calls out, “August!”)

“Yes, class! The month is August.”

“Number Two. (two fingers) The date today is August 21…..shhh….or the date today is August….shhhhh….22.shhhhhh? Shhh! The date today is August 21…shhhh…or the date is August 22?”

(The class calls out, “August 21!”)

“Yes, class! The date today is August 21.”

At the end of the period, you might want to debrief with students, congratulating them on what went well, and setting goals or perhaps telling them that tomorrow they will be able to understand and say even more.

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Instructional Session 2

Objective: By the end of class, you will be able to…

(NOTE: The example objectives and lesson are given in French; they can be used with any language. You can download materials in multiple languages from our Teachers Pay Teachers store (CI Liftoff), or use the examples to make your own materials.

Beginner: answer questions with one or more words in French about the weather and date.

Intermediate: answer questions with sentences in French about the weather and date and compare the weather here with locations in the francophone world Advanced: answer questions with strings of sentences in French, to describe the weather today and the activities that people in class are doing, and describe the weather yesterday

Again, greet the students in English, review where to put their things, etc., remind them briefly that in this class we will be communicating a good deal in the language and that this is the best way for them to learn!

Tell them that each day the first activity of class will be reading about a student’s dreams/goals for the school year, and then you will continue the discussion of the calendar and weather that you began yesterday.

You might want to set up your Videographer before you begin this lesson. If so, please see the HR Manual in the Appendices for the Videographer job description and some guidance on how to interview and hire for the student jobs.

Hand out (or project/display) the Reading Workshop text (an example is provided below and you can download this text in multiple languages from our Teachers Pay Teachers store (CI Liftoff). Then, share the lesson objective, check in with your Class Starter, and have them give the signal (or give it yourself) and begin speaking in the language.

Find That Cognate Project or distribute paper copies of a short text that has many cognates. You can download these texts from our Teachers Pay Teachers store (CI Liftoff) or create your own. When preparing your own text for the Find That Cognate strategy, it is best to think of a category of words that naturally contains a lot of cognates. For instance, these examples use the cognate-heavy categories of school activities.

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Italian Example

German Example

The following Reading Workshop example texts use the cognate-heavy topic of fruits, with varying degrees of difficulty for various levels of classes. Of course, here in the very first lesson, you are strongly cautioned not to choose texts that are intimidating, even with your upper-level classes.

I strongly recommend that leveled texts, like the following, be used after at least three days of super-easy, one-level-fits-all texts. See the notes in Session One for more recommendations on choosing leveled texts.

Spanish Beginner Cognate Reading

Spanish Intermediate Cognate Reading

Spanish Advanced Cognate Reading

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In the sample lesson, I use the cognate reading below, in French. Again, this is a one-level-fits-all “launching lesson” text. It is designed to be super-easy and super-successful, and I recommend using it for all your classes, to build confidence and motivation at the beginning of the year.

French “Launching” All-Levels Reading

Please note that the lesson notes are written in English. To indicate the words that are said in the course language (French, in this example), I will use this standard black text. The words that are said in the class’s stronger shared language (English, for me and many teachers in the US) are written in this color.

Again, you will notice that, in the first lessons of the year, there continues to be a good deal of English used to set up and explain the lesson structure and the specific strategies/activities/procedures. Please be assured that, as the lessons go on, the session outlines will use less and less English, as your students and you become comfortable and familiar with the lesson framework and the “go-to” strategies, so that you can conduct more and more of the lessons in the language as time goes on. This is one of the great benefits of a daily instructional framework for World Language teachers — it supports more communication in the languages we teach, because it cuts down on new instructions. This is due to the repeated nature of the lesson structure and the strategies within it.

Now we will move on to the lesson procedures:

Once the students can see the projected text, or they have it on their desks, you can proceed: “Let’s read this student’s list of dreams or goals for the school year. Your job is to notice (if the students have a paper copy, you might say “mark the text”) the cognates, the words that are the same in English and French. I will read to you in French, then you will tell me the cognates you noticed (you can say them in English).”

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(If you have a Videographer, have them begin the video. Have the Class Starter give the signal.)

“We will read this text and talk about the cognates, and then we will talk more about the calendar. I will read in French and remember that your only job is to listen and understand, and my job is to make it easy to understand French, by pointing and talking slowly and clearly. Shawn, let’s go!”

(Shawn gives the signal. You take a deep, calming breath and center yourself to lead the class through a simple, very comprehensible task.)

(Place your hand or pointer on the title of the text and begin reading in a slow yet fluid way, moving your hand or pointer through the text as you go. Resist the temptation to stop and establish meaning. The goal is for students to actually read through the text in its entirety with you, looking for cognates.)

(This is the contents of the sample reading text. Read aloud in the language.) “My dreams. School year 2021-2021. Study. Communicate with teachers. Listen to French music. Investigate universities.

Participate in a school club. Ideas: Theatre, Technology, Black Lives Matter.”

(Once you have read the entire text, point to or circle a very obvious cognate and ask for its meaning in the class’s stronger shared language.)

“Class, ‘ideas’ in English?”

(Students answer. Then you write the English on the text, and spell it, saying the letters in the course language, as demonstrated below.)

“Yes, idea in English, is idea. I-D-E-A. Idea.”

(Note: This sounds like: “Oui, idée en anglais est idea. eeyy - dayyy - uhh accent aigu - uhh (saying letters in French). Idée.”)

(Moving on to another cognate,) “Class, ‘theatre' in English? Yes, theatre in English, is theatre (or drama). T-H-E-A-T-R-E.” (Asking a more open-ended question (you might skip this in beginner classes).)

“Class, look. (gesture “look.”) “Look means look (gesture). Show me look. (gesture)” (Note: This sounds like: “Classe, regardez (gesture).

‘Regardez’ (gesture) means ‘look’. (gesture). Show me ‘regardez’ (gesture).”

(See Session One for an important note on the management of these gestures.)

(Moving on, speaking in the language and getting back to the sentence that prompted the gesturing,) “Class, look (gesture). Other (gesture) cognates?”

“Can you read any other words?”

(Getting back into the language, and repeating the same words that you just used in that little English aside,) “Class, look (gesture). Other (gesture) cognates?”

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(Students answer, probably in English.)

“Yes, technology in English, is technology. T-E-C-H-N-O-L-O-G-Y.” Take a few more cognates, or ask questions (like the example for “ideas” above) if students do not volunteer.

After a few minutes, you will want to move into the Guided Oral Input, and continue the calendar discussion.

Small Talk (Calendar and Weather) You will continue writing on the calendar that you began yesterday.

Simply put away the Reading Workshop text and move to the calendar, so that you can transition to the Guided Oral Input without needing to speak in English.

“Look (gesture and pause to sweep the class with your eyes to check for understanding) at the calendar (point and pause, look at the class). The month ... is … August. (put your hand under August, which you wrote on the calendar yesterday) Class, “month” in English?”

(Some kids call out the word “month”) “Yes, class, the month (point to month) … is … August (put your hand under August).”

“Is the month August…or…December?”

(Some kids call out “August” in French or English; depending mostly on how much of a risk-taking nature these particular students have) “Class, is today…August 22 (jot “22” somewhere, perhaps on the board) or August 23 (jot “23”)?”

(Some kids call out “23”) “Yes, class, today is August…23 (write 23 on the calendar).”

“Monday (point, but don’t write), Tuesday (point), Wednesday (point), Thursday (point), Friday (point)…Friday, August 23. (write and spell in your course language) F-R-I-D-A-Y.” “Class, is today Friday (point)…or Monday (point)?

(Some kids call out “Friday” ) “Yes, class, today is Friday (point). Friday (point), August (point) 23 (point).”

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“Class, think.”(gesture “think.”) “Think means think (gesture).

Show me think. (gesture)” (Note: This sounds like: “Classe, pensez (gesture).

‘Pensez’ (gesture) means ‘think’. (gesture). Show me ‘pensez’ (gesture).”)

(Note: after introducing a new gesture, cycle back through any previously-established gestures (at this point, you only have one (look) from yesterday) and end with the new gesture, to transition back to the communication that prompted you to teach the new word/gesture.)

“Show me look. (gesture). Show me think. (gesture)” “Class, think (gesture) about Friday (put your hand on the word Friday that you just wrote on the calendar in the language).”

Think (gesture) about Friday. (You might mime being happy as you act out thinking about Friday, since most people like Fridays so much.)

Think (gesture) about Monday (write on the calendar in the language and spell). M-O-N-D-A-Y (You might mime being sad/tired/disgusted as you think about Monday, since most people dislike Mondays.)

Class, think (gesture) about Friday (mime happy) and think (gesture) about Monday (mime yuck).

Who…(gesture with an expansive, two-hands-out, “everyone” gesture, and then raise one hand as if to answer a question)…who…in the class (if “class” is a cognate for you; if not, skip it)…who (gesture) in the class…prefers (gesture)…

Prefers means prefers (gesture).

Show me prefers. (gesture)” (Note: This sounds like: “‘Préfère’ (gesture) means ‘prefers’. (gesture). Show me ‘préfère’ (gesture).”)

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(Note: after introducing a new gesture, cycle back through any previously-established gestures (it sounds smoother if you say any other verbs in the same conjugation that the first verb naturally used in the original communication, in this case third-person singular) and end with the new gesture, to transition back to the communication that prompted you to teach the new word/gesture.)

“Show me looks. (gesture). Show me thinks. (gesture) Show me prefers. (gesture)” “Class, think (gesture) about Friday (put your hand on the word Friday that you just wrote on the calendar in the language).

Who (expansive “everyone” gesture and then raise one hand) prefers (gesture) Mondays (gesture)?” (before taking answers, ask in English: What did I ask?) (students say, “Who prefers Monday?”)

“Yes, class, think (gesture). Look (gesture) at Monday (hand on Monday).

Think (gesture). Who (gesture, hand raised) in the class prefers (gesture) Mondays?”

(Stand with your hand up, looking expectantly at the class for raised hands to indicate who prefers Mondays.

Often, this is a funny moment, since no hands are raised, or maybe only one or two people raise their hands.)

(If some hands are raised:) (Counting on your fingers and gesturing to the raised hands to make it obvious that you are tallying the votes) One, two.

(If no hands are raised:) (Look at the class in mock astonishment, pretend that you can only conclude that they obviously did not understand the question, and repeat, very very slowly and very very clearly as if to “correct” their understanding because clearly there cannot be a class in which no one likes Mondays (sarcasm)!)

“Class, think (gesture) and look (gesture) at Monday (hand on Monday).

Who…(gesture, raise hand)…in the class (gesture to the class)…who…(gesture)…prefers (gesture)…

Mondays (hand on Monday)…(raise your hand and look expectantly at the class).”

(If still no hands are raised) “Class, my job is to speak slowly and clearly so you understand French. I’m just not sure you are understanding, because no one is answering. Listen again.”

“Class, think (gesture) and look (gesture) at Monday (hand on Monday).

Who…(gesture, raise hand)…in the class (gesture to the class)…who…(gesture)…prefers (gesture)…

Mondays (hand on Monday)…(raise your hand and look expectantly at the class).”

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(If still no hands are raised, say in mock astonishment) “Class, ZERO (gesture a zero with your hand) people prefer (gesture) Mondays!”

(This is optional, but it can be really fun.)

“Class, look (gesture) at Monday! ZERO (or two) people like Monday…Monday is SAD!” (mime being sad, and draw a sad face on Monday. If time permits, you can also draw a happy face on Friday and tell the class that X people like Friday, or 100% of the class likes Friday, and that Friday is happy.)

(If time permits, begin discussing the weather. Walk over to the window, or display the weather forecast, if you have no windows.)

Look (gesture) out the window (walk to the window and point).

Look (gesture) out the window…think (gesture)…is it hot (gesture) or cold (gesture)?

Look, is it hot (gesture) or cold (gesture)?

(Students answer, in English or French, depending on ability/inclination, Hot!/Cold!)

It is hot (gesture) today? Yes or no?

(Students answer, in English or French, depending on ability/inclination, Yes! Hot!/No! Cold!)

Class, is it hot (gesture) or VERY (gesture) hot (gesture)?

(Students answer) Today it is hot. Very hot. (write and spell) V-E-R-Y hot.

If time permits, you might continue on, using the gestures that you have already established, to ask questions like “Who in the class prefers when it is hot? Who prefers when it is VERY hot? Who prefers when it is cold? VERY cold?”

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You can tabulate/record the numbers of students who respond to each option, either by counting and writing tally marks or a numeral, or by writing (and perhaps also spelling) students’ names. You can ask who is happy/sad (using the faces you drew on the calendar) when it is hot, cold, very hot, etc, or on Mondays, Fridays, the weekend.

Quick Quiz We will use the same Scaffolded Oral Review strategy that you introduced yesterday. In Session Three, you will introduce a slight variation on the Quick Quiz, a True-False Quiz. If you find yourself feeling internal pressure to “move on to something new” or introduce more “novelty,” you might tell yourself that yes, the brain does crave novelty, but that, no, the brain does not crave chaos, and that what we are really striving to provide is novelty within safety, and that a consistent, predictable, comfortable structure provides safety.

Move to your Review Spot and ask a series of questions about what was just discussed.

Generally I ask between six and ten questions, or even more. But on the first days, you might ask only two or three, or even just one, depending on your class schedule.

Just as in the first session, you are advised to stick to literal review questions and not branch out into asking other questions. At the beginning of the year, I suggest that you stick to simple “either-or” or “yes-no” questions, and then provide two choices, one of which is correct and the other incorrect. Additionally, I recommend that you literally give students the answer as you ask the question, and also provide plenty of “hints” in the form of extra-linguistic information such as vocal inflection, gestures, pointing to visuals, and facial expressions.

After moving to the Review Spot, you will say: “OK, time for a review quiz. Remember, you will hear the question TWO TIMES. The first time, LISTEN. Do NOT talk. Just listen. The second time, answer.”

“Number One. (hold up one finger) Class, Monday …. shhhhh…. is happy…shhhh…or Monday is…..shhhhh….sad…shhhhhhhh? Shhhhh! Monday is happy….shhh …. or Monday is sad?”

(The class calls out, “Sad!”) “Yes, class! Monday is sad.”

“Number Two. (two fingers) The date today is Friday, August 22…..shhh….or the date today is Monday, August….shhhhh…..23…shhhhhh? Shhh! The date today is Friday, August 22…shhhh…or the date today is Monday, August 23?”

(The class calls out, “Friday!” or “August 23!” or “Friday, August 23!”)

“Yes, class! The date today is Friday, August 23.”

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Write and Discuss The actual contents of Write and Discuss will, of course, depend upon your class’s discussion from the lesson. You will follow the same procedure as in Session One. Write and Discuss is truly a powerful, low, low-prep strategy that pay off BIG in student literacy, for very little investment on your part. It’s the ultimate win-win.

If time permits, you might do a little Write and Discuss move called Writing More Than Originally Existed. See Session One for an example.

Today, you will most likely only write two or three sentences for Shared Writing. That is OK; you are building the foundation in these first lessons. You will probably notice that even in the second lesson of the year, students are already more comfortable and Shared Writing (and the rest of the lesson framework) goes more smoothly, with less need to explain/give directions in English.

Your Shared Writing might sound something like this today: Write: The Story of Say: The Story of FRENCH class or the story of MATH class?

Students: French Class!

Say: Yes, the story of…(writing and spelling in French) F-R-E-N-C-H class.

Write: The month is Say: The month is August or September?

Class: August!

Say: Yes, the month is…(writing and spelling) A-U-G-U-S-T. Reading/Recycling: The story of French class. The month is August.

Write: The date today Say: The date today is Friday, August 22 or Friday, August 23?

Students: Friday, August 23!

Say: Yes, the date today is (writing and spelling) F-R-I-D-A-Y, A-U-G-U-S-T 23.

Reading/Recycling: The story of French class. The month is August. The date today is Friday, August 23.

Write: Friday is Say: Class, who (gesture) prefers (gesture) Friday?

Class: raised hands Say: One, two, three…(counting)…29 people prefer Friday! Who (gesture) prefers (gesture) Mondays?

One…(counting). One person prefers Mondays! Friday is POPULAR! (Note: “popular” is a cognate in many languages. If your language does not have a cognate to use here, you might say “Monday is sad” or “Friday is happy” or some other statement that comes directly from the Guided Oral Input. In languages with many cognates, the more-obvious ones can easily be used in Shared Writing to provide richer vocabulary.)

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Say: Friday is POPULAR….or VERY (gesture “big”) popular?

Students: VERY! Write: is very popular.

Reading/Recycling: The story of French class. The month is August. The date today is Friday, August 23. Friday is very popular.

Say: ONE person (hold up finger) prefers (gesture) Fridays…or a LOT (gesture “big/lots”) of people prefer Fridays?

Students: A LOT! Write: A lot of people prefer Fridays.

Reading/Recycling: The story of French class. The month is August. The date today is Friday, August 23. Friday is very popular. A lot of people prefer Fridays.

The “Go-To” Daily Strategies During Shared Reading, you will work with the text that your class just created together. You will continue to use the three “Go-To” strategies introduced in Session One (or, for block classes, perhaps four strategies, if time permits). These strategies, taken together, are a daily powerful instructional sequence that combines language acquisition and conscious learning about language.

Read in the Language Choral Translation Grammar Discussion (Block Option) Reading from the Back of the Room

Today, Shared Reading might sound something like this: “Now I will read to you in French and then we will read in English together.” (reading with expression, and pointing to the words) The story of French class. The month is August. The date today is Friday, August 23. Friday is very popular. A lot of people prefer Fridays.

“Now we will read together. Your job is to read with the class, not faster not slower, not louder, not softer, just say each word as I highlight it. It might be in a strange order when we say the English, but that’s how language works; you can’t always translate every single word. Say the words as I point. 3-2-1, go!”

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(class reads: the story…of….the…class….of…French…the…month…is…August…the…date…of today…) (you realize that the students remembered one of the teaching points from Shared Reading yesterday) “Hey, you remembered that this (circling it and writing “of” in English) means “of” and this (circling it and writing “today” in English) part means “today!” Well done! Let’s start here.” (class reads: the date…of today…is…Friday….the…23…August…?) (sensing confusion, you circle “Le”) “This word means ‘the’ which we have to say here in French but we don’t have to say “the Frrday” in English (write “the” in English) Let’s back up to here and go again.” (class reads: the date…of today…is…Friday the 23…of…August. The…Friday…is…very…) (students just read a word they were never “taught”) “WOW, I never even taught you what “très” means, and your brains just figured it out from the context! Nice job, brains! You guys are SO SMART. Let’s back up to here and go again.” (class reads: the…Friday…is…very…popular… a lot…??) (sensing confusion, you circle “beaucoup”). “This word means “a lot.” In English “a lot” is two words. In French, it is one word. This is “of” (circle “de”) so “beaucoup de” means “a lot of.” Three words in English, and just two in French. Let’s back up to here and go again.” (class reads: a lot…of…people…prefer…the…Friday) “Well done. Did anyone notice anything else about the French language, how it is spelled, or put together, that they can teach the class?”

(Lead a brief class discussion and circle any students’ noticings on the text, ideally using a second color, and perhaps writing the students’ name/initials by their contribution.)

To continue to Reading from the Back of the Room: (You have walked to the back of the room) “We are going to discuss what we wrote. If you need to look back at the text, you can. It is right there. But if you can look back here and answer the questions, you will feel really smart and know that you are learning a lot of French.”

“Is this French class…or Spanish class?” (the class responds: French!)

“Yes, this is French class. Is the month August…or is the month February?” (the class responds: August!)

“Yes, the month is August. Is the date today August 21…or is the date today August 22?” (the class responds: August 22!)

“Yes, the date is August 22.”

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Quick Quiz Just like in the Student Application and Assessment, I want students to listen to the question twice. So, again, I do a lot of “shhhing” as I ask the question the first time, to remind them not to call out the answer. Further, the Quick Quiz is not a “gotcha.” You can still use gestures, facial expressions, or even walk to the board or Shared Writing text, to point out visuals that might make the questions more comprehensible.

Your Student Application and Assessment today might go something like this: “OK, time for a final check. You will listen to the question TWO TIMES. The first time, LISTEN. Do NOT talk.

Just listen. The second time, answer.”

“Number One. (hold up one finger) Class, the month …. shhhhh…. the month is August…shhhh…or the month…..shhhhh….is September.shhhhhhhh? Shhhhh! The month is August….shhh …. or the month is September?”

(The class calls out, “August!”)

“Yes, class! The month is August.”

“Number Two. (two fingers) The date today is August 21…..shhh….or the date today is August….shhhhh….22.shhhhhh? Shhh! The date today is August 21…shhhh…or the date today is August 22?”

(The class calls out, “August 21!”)

“Yes, class! The date today is August 21.”

At the end of the period, you might want to debrief with students, congratulating them on what went well, and setting goals or perhaps telling them that tomorrow they will be able to understand and say even more.

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Instructional Session 4

Objective: By the end of class, you will be able to…

All Levels: state six facts about SLA (Second Language Acquisition) in a creative way Notes/Prep: The project that I use in the example lesson is the brochures project; you might also simply have students make a collection of memes, and not the complete brochures, if you want to shorten/simplify the product they create, in the interest of time. You can also have them make posters instead of brochures, perhaps having them work with a partner or in a small group of three students.

To prepare for the lesson in Session 5, Card or Slide Talk, you might want to go ahead and tell the students to upload (for Slide Talk) or think about (to sketch on a card for Card Talk) a place they like to go. You can leave this very general (simply “a place you like to go”) or ask for more specific information (in the example in Session 5, I will ask students to upload images of a place they like to go that you can walk to from our school.

You could also ask them for places they like to go in summer, or places they would like to go, perhaps a place they would like to go to speak the course language, or places they like to study, or places they like to go to have fun.)

Continue to greet the students in English, review where to put their things, etc., remind them briefly that in this class we will be communicating a good deal in the language and they need to work together to focus and listen because that is the best way to help yourself and everyone else be successful in this class. Tell them that today is a special day. Note: you will not be following the usual daily instructional framework today, as it is a special lesson, which is why this lesson is scheduled for the third or fourth session, so that you can use the first lessons to establish the “flow” of the daily instructional framework before briefly deviating from the “standard operating procedure” in this session.

Tell your students that they will first read in the language (French in the example lesson), then do a quick calendar check-in, and then you will teach them a lesson on SLA (Second Language Acquisition) in English (or the class’s other shared stronger language, if you teach advanced students who can handle this), after which they will make a mini-project to show what they learned and share with others.

If you have not yet set up your Videographer, you might want to do that before you begin this lesson. If so, please see the HR Manual in the Appendices for the Videographer job description and some guidance on how to interview and hire for the student jobs.

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Hand out (or project/display) a Reading Workshop text. You might make your own, use the ones in our Teachers Pay Teachers store (CI Liftoff), or re-read a Shared Writing text from the first lesson(s) of the year.

Then, share the lesson objective, if you have not already done so, check in with your Class Starter (and perhaps Videographer), and have them give the signal (or give it yourself if no one has yet to volunteer for the job), and begin filming, and then take a nice deep calming breath and begin speaking in the language.

German Beginner Cognate Reading

Find That Cognate These Reading Workshop example texts use the cognate-heavy topic of languages, with varying degrees of difficulty for various levels of classes. You might here in the fourth lesson (or the third lesson for block classes) use more challenging texts with your upper-level classes, if they can handle the additional challenge.

See the notes in Session One for more recommendations on choosing leveled texts.

German Intermediate Cognate Reading

German Advanced Cognate Reading

In the sample lesson, I use the French beginner reading below.

French Beginner Cognate Reading

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As always, the lesson notes are written in English. To indicate the words that are said in the course language (French, in this example), I will use this standard black text. The words that are said in the class’s stronger shared language (English, for me and many teachers in the US) are written in this color.

Now we will move on to the lesson procedures. Once the students can see the projected text, or they have it on their desks, you can proceed: “Let’s read this text about “The Business of Languages”. Your job is to notice (if the students have a paper copy, you might say “mark the text”) the cognates, the words that are the same in English and French. I will read to you in French, then you will tell me the cognates you noticed (you can say them in English).”

(If you have a Videographer, have them begin the video.)

“I will read in French and remember that your only job is to listen and understand, and my job is to make it easy to understand. Shawn, let’s go!”

(Shawn gives the signal. You take a deep, calming breath and center yourself to lead the class through a simple, very comprehensible task.)

(Place your hand or pointer on the title of the text and begin reading in a slow yet fluid way, moving your hand or pointer through the text as you go. Resist the temptation to stop and establish meaning. The goal is for students to actually read through the text in its entirety with you, looking for cognates.)

(Read the text aloud in the language.)

(Once you have read the entire text, point to or circle a very obvious cognate and ask for its meaning in the class’s stronger shared language.)

“Class, ‘affaires internationales’ in English?”

(Students answer. Then you write the English on the text, and spell it, saying the letters in the course language, as demonstrated below.)

“Yes, international business in English, is international business.

I-N-T-E-R-N-A-T-I-O-N-A-L-space-B-U-S-I-N-E-S-S. International business.”

(Note: This sounds like: “Oui, affaires internationales est international business. eeeeey - ennn - tayyy uhhhh - errr - ennn - ahhh - tayyy - eeeey - ohhh - ennnn - ahhhh - ellll - espace - bayyy - euuuu- etc. (saying letters in French). Affaires internationales.”)

(Repeat with another cognate, or move on to open-ended questions as explained below.)

“Class, look (gesture). Other (gesture) cognates (point to the word cognate in the readings or write it on the board with translation)?”

“Can you read any other words?”

“Class, look (gesture). Other (gesture) cognates (point)?”

(Students answer, probably in English.)

“Yes, native in English, is native. N-A-T-I-V-E.” Page 149

Take a few more cognates, either by asking what a word is in English or by taking what volunteers noticed. If there are not many volunteers, or if no one wants to speak up, you can just ask the questions yourself. After a few minutes, you move into the Guided Oral Input, which - because today is special - will be a very short, two to five minute calendar discussion.

Small Talk (Short Calendar and Weather Check-In) Move to the calendar to transition to the Guided Oral Input.

“Look (gesture and pause to sweep the class with your eyes to check for understanding) at the calendar. Is today’s date…August 28 (jot “28” somewhere, perhaps on the board) or August 29 (jot “29”)?”

(Some kids call out “28”) “Yes, class, today is August…28 (write 28 on the calendar).”

“Class, is today Monday (point)…or Tuesday (point)?

(Some kids call out “Monday” ) “Yes, class, today is Tuesday (point). Tuesday (point), August (point) 28 (point).”

(Walk over to the window, or display the weather forecast, if you have no windows.)

Look (gesture) out the window (walk to the window and point).

Look (gesture) out the window…think (gesture)… is it hot (gesture) or cold (gesture)?

Look (gesture), is it hot (gesture) or cold (gesture)?

(Students answer, in English or French, depending on ability/inclination, Hot!/Cold!)

Class, is it hot (gesture) or VERY (gesture) hot (gesture)?

(Students answer) Today it is hot. Very hot. (write and spell) V-E-R-Y hot.

Note: You will most likely only ask a couple of questions in the short time allotted for Guided Oral Input today, as you will spend most of the lesson on the Second Language Acquisition mini-lecture and projects, as described below.

Special Beginning-the-Year Lessons on Second Language Acquisition and Why Study Languages?

This lesson is designed to be delivered in the class’s stronger shared language, if applicable, which, for me, is English. You can, with more advanced classes, who have had at least a solid year of experience with communication-based language teaching, present some or all of this information in the course language. And in classes where there is not a stronger shared language, such as ESOL classes, you can present this information in the course language, perhaps in a simplified way, especially with beginners.

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If you do share a stronger language with the class, even for upper-level students, it is recommended that you preface the lesson in the stronger shared language with a thorough overview of what you will present. Most students, unless they have already been taught this information in previous courses, will not have very extensive background knowledge of these concepts. Thus, it is recommended that you present the information first in the stronger shared language, or even exclusively in the shared language, to ensure that your class understands these important, foundational concepts for why your class operates the way it does.

Investing a day or two in explaining your approach to the students, and having them use that information to create products, such as brochures, posters, or videos, to teach it to others, will help your students to develop a positive attitude towards your approach to teaching languages. Many students and families can be resistant to this way of learning. However, I have found that with Stepping Stones, which provides a framework to use the language to explore content-based topics such as history, environmental challenges, cultural products and practices, then students and families tend to become calmer, because the learning becomes more visible.

You might choose to use the Visual Lecture that I provide here, to scaffold this information in the course language or the stronger shared language. But the first part should ABSOLUTELY be provided in the stronger shared language, if possible, so that no one is confused as to what you are yammering on about.

(This is a good rule of thumb no matter what, in any lesson; set the context and purpose for learning in the stronger shared language, if you can, so that everyone is comfortable knowing what they are supposed to be learning/doing/accomplishing.)

The convention in this book is to use black font when you are speaking in the course language and in a lighter color when you are speaking in the stronger shared language. However, in the interest of readability, since this lesson is special, and, for most classes, will be conducted in the stronger shared language, the font is black, even though you will most likely be speaking in the class’s stronger shared language. If your advanced students can handle this information in the course language, you will most likely want to simplify/modify the content below, as it was “pitched” at a level that students in grades six and above can generally comprehend in their stronger shared language. If you teach younger people, you will also need to modify the contents, even if you are speaking in the class’s stronger shared language, to adapt to your younger students’ developmental needs.

You can find a graphic version of this lesson in the Appendices. The slides pictured in the following section are from our Teachers Pay Teachers store (CI Liftoff).

“Let’s look at some research and science about how we develop, or acquire, the ability to speak a language.

Many of us came to French class with ideas of how a language class works, because of classes we have taken in the past, or because of what we have heard from our siblings or parents or friends.

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Lots of French classes focus on memorizing vocabulary words and filling out worksheets to practice the language. You might have noticed in the last couple of days that we are not doing much of that kind of learning in this class. The reason why is because I have designed this course to align with the latest research in how we best learn how to communicate in a language.

So many people say that they took language classes in high school or college, and they never learned how to USE the language to do what languages are meant to do — communicate, make friends, learn things, and entertain ourselves. This class is designed to teach you to USE French.

I have spent a lot of time learning how to teach a language so that my students can USE it, because I love French so much that it makes me sad to think that anyone would take years and years of French and not be able to use this beautiful language to communicate with the fascinating people all around the world that speak French. It just makes me so sad to think about that.

I love being able to communicate in French, and in Spanish, and in English, and I want the same for you.

It is so fun to speak in another language, and I want you to have that fun. It is so cool to meet people from all over and be able to talk to them in their own language, and I want that for you. It is so fun to be able to watch videos and listen to music and read books and articles from around the world, and I want you to be able to do that.

I am so excited to share the French language with you, and I want you to understand how I have designed this class to support your French language development.

Today I want to teach you about how we acquire languages, and why this class is designed the way it is.

I will tell you about some brain science and how it applies to your work in this class.

At the end of class, we will brainstorm some “slogans” and make brochures to teach our families (or, teachers, you might choose to have them make posters to hang in the school, or both) some facts about language acquisition and what we are going to be accomplishing this year in class.

I am so excited to offer you a cutting-edge, modern, twenty-first century language class that will help you to achieve more in the French language than I was able to achieve in high school myself.

Language teaching has changed a lot since I was in high school, and I am just thrilled to be teaching a class designed to give you true success in the language!

(At this point, you might switch into the course language, or continue on in the stronger shared language. You could also do a hybrid approach in which you explain the concept in the stronger shared language, and then re-explain in the course language. The images in the example can be found in the Cycle One Phase One materials. In the example, the images are in English. You can find this presentation on our Teachers Pay Teachers store (CI Liftoff)).

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Here is a person.

They want to learn French.

They want to be able to speak French, and talk to other people.

They want to be able to listen to music in French, watch videos in French, and movies in French.

And they want to be able to write in French, and read in French.

Maybe one day they want to live in a French-speaking culture. Here are some examples of places where French is widely spoken: France, the Hexagon, the mothership, Sénégal, Belgium, Côte d’Ivoire, and many other parts of Africa, Canada, especially Québec, French Polynesia, Martinique, Guadeloupe, etc, etc.

And this person wants to use French naturally, easily, without having to think too much. When they can use a language naturally, sometimes people say they can “speak from the heart.” We can think about WHAT we want to say, and HOW we want to say it, and not the WORDS and RULES to use.

When you speak English, or your other stronger language(s), you can speak from the heart. And that is what I want for you in French.

So, when we learn with our brains, we can learn the rules and memorize words.

But if all we know is rules, then when we try to speak from the heart, we have to think first, about the words and rules. That slows us down. It makes us feel awkward when we speak.

That’s what happened to me in France when I was 18. Which was SUPERsurprising to me cause I made all As in French in high school. I loved it. I was super-interested in the rules, and super-good at memorizing vocabulary words. Not to brag…we all have our weird talents in school. Mine is languages. Not math…you’ve seen me try to count…

Anyways, I was really into French and it just came easy to me, and I really did well on all the vocabulary and grammar tests, like the verbs test and the plural adjectives test…so of course, I thought I would make a lot of friends in France. cause I was SUCH a little French GENIUS! Makes sense, right?

But then I was so sad - and SHOCKED! - when I was in France, because I could not talk! Everyone was talking so fast, I could not understand them. In my French classes, we had not really TALKED a lot.

So, this was all new to me and I was so nervous and awkward and slow when I tried to talk to them. I cried a lot!

I still loved French, though, even though at that time it really wasn’t exactly loving me back…and I still wanted to be a French teacher. First I thought, “Well, I guess I need to figure out how to actually Page 153

LEARN to SPEAK FRENCH, huh? And I thought, I want to know how to teach my students so that they can USE French, and make friends, and not be sad and slow and awkward.

So, I learned more about teaching. And now my goal for you is to learn to USE French. And the way I learned is best for that, based on the science of Second Language Acquisition, is to use French all the time as much as we can, anyway -in class.

So, basically, we are learning not just with our heads, like I did in my high school classes, but with our hearts, too. Now, of course, we are also learning with our brains. But there is actually a special part of the brain that is designed to acquire language. To help us USE the language, to help us communicate.

This part is separate from the part that learns the rules. And these two parts of our brains run on different inputs. And they have different functions.

The “heart” part of the brain, the part that we use when we are thinking about WHAT we want to say and HOW we want to express ourselves, the part that lets us be ourselves in the language, and express our personalities, and feel free and natural and NOT awkward and slow, runs on MESSAGES. This part is technically called the “language acquisition device” and it is a special part of being human. It is what lets us learn our first language from our families and not have to do worksheets, or take tests, or use flashcards, and we can still just start talking, even when we are little kids like one and two years old.

The “language acquisition device” runs on MESSAGES. Like what people say to us - like when I talk to you in French - and what we read or watch or listen to online. When we understand messages in the language, this special part of our brain takes those messages and — almost like magic — it builds a new language system inside of us.

Then when we want to talk or write, we use that system and language just pops out of us, like it does when we speak English, or whatever languages we are strong in.

Because I want you to be able to USE French, I want to feed that system — your “speaking from the heart” system — your “language acquisition device” — and the way to do that is to give you lots and lots of French. So we will talk in French. We will read in French. We will write together in French. We will watch videos in French, listen to music in French.

It will just be French, French, French, for most of the time in here. Just basically one big old French-a-thon.

It’s just the best, most efficient use of the time we have in class.

The awesome thing about this system — the “speaking from the heart” or “language acquisition device” is that we ALL can do it. You do not have to be super-smart; you do not have to even really TRY, and in fact, some people say that you do not even have to WANT to learn the language (even though, of course, as a French Page 154

teacher, I want to get you to be interested in learning more and continuing on with languages in general and especially French!). All you have to do is participate in activities in class to hear and read and communicate in French.

And, like magic, by understanding French, your language acquisition device will build the language inside of you.

We can all do it, no matter who we are. No matter how good we are at school…every single person can be an awesome French student and speaker…the proof is that we all speak another language already.

We have all already proven that we can acquire the ability to speak and read a language. So, the good news is that the process of acquiring the ability to communicate in French is just the same.

All you have to do is relax, and listen, and participate in the activities we do in class, and you will make lots of progress. It’s just what your brain is designed to do.

But, the brainy part of us, the part that learns the rules, it also has a role to play. One thing that the brainy part of us can do is help us edit our work.

Another thing that we use our brains for in language is planning how to write better.

We will be learning things like how to organize paragraphs, and how to write better stories, and how to spell things and make our language sound as good as we can. Another thing that it can do is look for patterns in the language that we hear and read, and some people find this super-interesting.

In fact, there is a whole science called linguistics, that studies how languages are put together and how they work — the spelling, the forms of the language, all that. It’s a really interesting field, and maybe some of you will get interested in linguistics and study more later.

So, we will also be using our brains, the thinking part that runs on rules and thinking about the language, in class every day, to look at what we write, and to notice and learn things about French spelling and how the language is put together, and how it is different from English, and how it is similar to English. This is actually super-fascinating to me, and I really love thinking about languages.

But this is not the main focus of this class. The MAIN focus of this class is to use the language, so that we can develop the ability to speak from the heart, and not have to think about it so much, and be able to express ourselves. You will find that your abilities to express yourself in French grow rapidly, and they will grow faster the more you listen and read the language.

We will not be having tests and quizzes on vocabulary words and facts about the language. We will have assessments that grade you on your ability to understand French, and to start writing and speaking. At first you will not be able to write or say much.

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But the more you listen to French and read French, the more fuel you will be giving to the “speak from the heart” system, the “language acquisition device”, and the faster you will be able to say more, write more, and use more French.

Of course, I want you to listen and read attentively in class. But you might find that you are motivated to seek out more French in your out-of-school life, too.

The good news is that anything you do to entertain yourself in English, you can also do to entertain yourself in French — and get more fuel, those messages in the language, that your language acquisition device uses to build the French language in your heads!

There are many ways to get more listening and reading in French — listening to French-language music, YouTube videos with the subtitles on, books like the ones in our class library, reading French articles online about things you are interested in.

We will be using as much French as we can in class, but you will develop faster the more you listen and read French. So, if you want to know more ways to find things to watch, listen to, or read in French, just ask me and I will be happy to hook you up.

The Mini-Project Now, if you want to do the mini-project, you will have the class brainstorm slogans that they can use in their brochures or posters. I usually have my students brainstorm six to eight slogans together, and then ask them to use one slogan per section in their brochure, or - if I do a poster option - two or three slogans on their poster.

I also ask them to include two or more additional facts per slogan, so that they are processing the information in their own words, which helps them to internalize and understand the information. The rubric that I use, and a sample project, are below.

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My goals in giving a lesson on SLA are to teach my students why this class operates the way it does, so that they can relax into the French communication in class without wondering why we are not doing more traditional vocabulary and grammar work, which is what they might have envisioned in a language class.

I also want them to experience the excitement that I feel, when I teach others about how wonderful it is that we now have tools and strategies that can catapult them into high levels of proficiency in the language, when they share their posters or brochures with others and teach them about this fascinating (at least to me) information on how our brains acquire the language.

Communicating with Families I have had great success with having the students, after the research and rationale for the course is presented to them, work together as a class to make a class list on the board or overhead projector of the facts they learned.

Then I like to lead a class brainstorm to list six to ten “slogans” on SLA (to summarize their learning) and then use those slogans to design flyers, posters, or brochures to take home and share with their families.

I ask the students to choose a slogan as the title of their brochure, flyer, or poster, and to add four to six facts that they learned from the talk, to share with their families. Some of my favorite past slogans have been, “Babies Don’t Take Tests” and “Working Hard is Hardly Working” and, my personal all-time favorite,

" Spanish is LIT! " Man, you just gotta love seventh graders!

A sample letter home is included in the Appendix “Home-School Connections.” I make sure to get the letter signed so that if anyone challenges my grading system later in the year, I will have their signature to prove that I communicated the expectations at the start of the year.

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End of the Year Option 2: The Word-Off

This project is one of the best things I stumbled upon in my years of teaching World Language. One, it gives us something fun to do and a big shared class goal to work towards, and two, it helps me integrate with my vocabulary-list-loving colleagues. There is one important caveat here. The Word Off is NOT a language acquisition activity. But it does make memorizing lists of words a whole lot more fun!

Basically, the Word-Off is like a spelling bee, but instead of spelling, students will translate vocabulary items from a list that they have worked with for a few weeks. Where do you get the vocabulary items? You can either get then from the required vocabulary lists that your department wants you to teach, or from a list that you brainstorm with your students.

Here is an example of a list that my friend Elena brainstormed with her students at Madison High School.

They first listed categories of vocabulary words and then gave her lists of words within those categories that they wanted to learn.

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Each week as you lead up to the Word-Off, you will work with a list of 12-18 vocabulary words. First, you will need a Quizziz account, or another online vocabulary application, to play with the terms. I like Quizziz because it has the “class score” feature. By using this feature, you can bypass the need to pre-teach the words. The students will effectively teach themselves the words as they play the Quizziz.

If you are using lists of vocabulary words from a textbook, you might be able to find pre-existing Quizzizes that are already made for you, using those words. If you are using lists of words that your students brainstormed. If the lists of words you are working with are not in Quizziz, you will have to set those up. You might have the students make the Quizzizes themselves one day in class. You will probably want to make a Quizziz yourself before having students do this, to practice, so you know how to lead them through the process.

When you introduce the Word-Off, you will want to tell students about the PRIZES! You can use whatever kinds of prizes you want, but I am pretty into bribing my students with food. The important thing is that there are 1st, 2nd, and 3rd place prizes for each class as well as a Big Mega-Prize for the class with the highestscoring first-place winner. This would be the first-place winner rom all your classes who makes it to the

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highest number of rounds. Basically, this is a reward for the class who studies the words the most, because if the class goes to a very high number of rounds, then that means the competition was fierce and fewer students were eliminated in lower rounds.

Here are the prizes I offer: First place in the class: Bag of candy plus the opportunity to win the Class Prize (a pizza/donut party) Second place in the class: Small bag of candy Third place in the class: "Some" candy (basically some pieces of candy from a bigger bag) Fourth place in the class: Bragging Rights and Warn Fuzzy Feelings of Accomplishment I make a big poster and hang it in the hall to generate "buzz" about the upcoming Word-Off. Each week, leading up to the final Word-Off, we work with the words for the week. We start each little cycle of working with a new set of words on Friday. The best, fastest, easiest way I have found is the online game Quizziz. If you do not have access to technology, you can do a lot of different activities or games to start

working with the words — paper flashcards that you can use to play games, Charades, Pictionary, or any other vocabulary review game that you and your students like. But I like to take the path of least resistance and use Quizziz!

On Fridays, in the weeks leading up to the Word-Off, we use Chromebooks, go to the computer lab, or get kids on their own devices. I have a set of vocabulary words ready for them. These are either required words or words that they brainstormed as a class.

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I do not pre-teach the words; I just tell the class that we will play Quizziz until the class achieves a 75% or 80% (or higher, depending on your students) class average. This is why I like Quizziz, because it displays a class average, so that I can use it as the way for them to learn the words. We simply play the set over and over until we achieve the class goal. Students thus learn the words as they play. As they learn the words, the class average increases round after round. If a student scores very high more than one round in a row, I have them stand behind another student who wants a “coach” and I have the high-scoring student coach them, but no answer for them. This effectively turns them into study partners for other students.

Once we achieve the desired class average, I let them play a Quizziz that they like better than vocabulary, as an incentive. Searching in Quizziz for “top songs 2019” generally returns a set of questions that kids enjoy.

You can ask them for suggestions of topics they want to use as a reward. Sometimes we do not achieve the class average, and if not, that is OK, but we just do not get to play the more-enticing set of questions that day.

At the end of class, I give the class a sheet of the vocabulary in L1 (English for me) and L2 (French or Spanish for me) and tell them that they will help their class beat the other classes and get the pizza or donut party if they take some time to quiz themselves or each other outside of class.

Then the next Monday through Thursday, each day at the end of class or for a mid-class brain break, I do a “mini word-off”. I hold the class’s list of words (if I have multiple levels of classes, or if the kids brainstormed the words they want to work with, each class might have different words, but I just use that class’s list) and go down the list, asking for whole-class responses to the words.

On Monday and Tuesday, I give the L2 (French or Spanish for me) and ask them to call out the English. On Wednesday and Thursday, I give them the English and ask them to call out the L2. I tell them that if I get to a term for which the class’s response is hesitant or weak, I will back up to the first term and go back through them all, to give them a “running start” on the term that they were weak on. This encourages participation, as most kids do not like to hear things repeated; they like to make fast progress through lists. Basically, we are doing a flashcard-type review as a class, daily, for four days.

On Friday, we play another round of Quizziz with the next week's set of vocabulary words. I hand out another sheet with that week’s words plus the prior words, and encourage them to study so as to beat the other classes.

Then the next week, I work with the new words in class each day at the end of class or for a mid-class brain break. I will periodically mix in previous word lists, to keep them fresh on their minds. After about three or four sets of words, it is good to do a “practice word-off” with all the accumulated words and give a mini-prize to the first, second, and third place winners in the class.

After five or six weeks, the students will have memorized 60 to 90 or more words, and it is tine for the big Word-Off.

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To prepare for the day of the competition, you will need prizes for the first place, second place, and third place winners in each class (I gave a big bag of candy, a small bag of candy, and "some candy" to these kids) and a plan . to bring a class treat to the class whose first-place winner competed to the highest number of rounds in all your classes. I gave the first-place winner the option of a pizza party or a doughnut party for the class the next day. You can give whatever prizes you want, but I am not above motivating the youngsters with sugar and junk food.

Basically, the Word-Off is run like a spelling bee. I put the desks into rows, and then made a seating chart that had the rows on it. When the kids came in on the day of the Word-Off, I wrote their names in their spots. You could assign spots, but I figured what the hey, it's a celebration, and I let them sit wherever. I also had a group of six or eight chairs in the "Winners' Circle" for the last kids remaining in the last rounds to move to, to increase the suspense for all the kids who were already out of the competition.

To keep the "out" kids focused during the final rounds you could hand them a sheet of all the words in English, with blanks beside them, when the final kids are competing, and have a secondary competition with a minor prize like a fancy pencil or a cool sticker or a dip into the "prize bucket", for kids who get the most Spanish words filled in. In order to make it an incentive to listen, I suggest requiring them to write the number of the round in which the words were asked, beside the word, so that they do not just fill in the words they know, but instead actually listen to the competition.

I made a list of the words we had prepared and held them in my hand, in a random order, and began the competition. In once of my classes, I hd a heritage speaker of Spanish (heritage speakers in my school tended to go into the Dual Immersion program, so we did not have a large number of them in the "late entry" (which is to say, elective) Spanish classes. I asked him to hold another list of the words and make sure that his classmates' answers were correct.

If you have a large number of heritage speakers, you might have them do a separate competition with different words, or an actual spelling bee, or just give them the day to marvel at the late entry kids' struggles with basic-to-them vocab. Depends on your kids.

The first two rounds are "warm up" even though the answers still count. I say the word in Spanish or French and they respond with English. If a kid gets the word wrong, or cannot say the word in the time allotted (8 seconds is good), then I simply put an X over their name. In a "real" spelling bee, kids have to exit the "stage" but I figure that's kind of harsh. You could do it, though, if you are into the public humiliation factor!

I announce the round number as I begin the round, which means that I am back to the first kid in the first row, and then just go down the rows, calling on kids who are not yet "out." If I run out of words on the list, I just go back through and ask them again. (This is cool because kids end up hearing the words in English and Spanish over and over, so it is just another study session, if you really think about it.)

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It is important to keep track of the number of rounds the class competes through, because the first-place winner in the class that goes to the most rounds gets the Big Class Prize for the year. This prize is for ALL classes, at ALL levels, regardless of whether or not they were using the same vocabulary lists.

When we get to the end of the round in which there are only six or eight kids remaining, we switch to the "Winner's Circle" and all eyes are on the best word-offers. If you have a few students who just know EVERYTHING, then you might need to do what I did when Carmen and Elisa were competing in French a couple years ago.

It was getting close to the end of the period, and we were on Round 68, and they had literally gone through the whole list twice, and it was clear that no one would emerge the winner. So, in a stroke of teacher geniusborn-of-desperation, I said, "The final rounds include spelling. You must say the French word, then spell it correctly." This eliminated Elisa in . a few rounds, and Carmen was crowned the winner and scored a doughnut party for her class, because they went to the highest number of rounds.

Well, there you go! Fun times at the end of the year, and lots of vocab memorized without too much work on anyone's part. I hope you and your students like the Word-Off as much as we did!

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coach speaking directly to you

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The mission of the World Language Proficiency Project is to equip language educators with the materials, frameworks, and skills to implement comprehension-based communicative teaching, and build true, lasting language proficiency for ALL students.

Tina Hargaden is the Founding Director of the World Language Proficiency Project and the developer of the Stepping Stones curricular framework, CI Liftoff teaching materials, and the E-Lit App for independent reading for proficiency-oriented language programs. Tina taught humanities, French, Spanish, and ESOL in K-12 public schools or 15 years, and has worked full-time in curriculum development and teacher training since 2019. She lives in Portland, Oregon, USA, with her husband and daughter.

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