Pat’s Polemics

Usually I blog on this topic after I've done something and I report on it. But I have been using a "Conversation profile" guide for stimulating conversation between me and my Urdu-speaking friends. I looked at it and realized it might fit in with a review project I've been working on. I want to make up a list of frequent words in our stories, words like "terrified", "leads/takes", "does/makes", etc. I've noticed that my second year esp doesn't seem to have picked up on these words and some of them (not "terrified" I hope) are useful for conversation.

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My students are pushing through, reading a story a day. I have slowed down with my second year students because it is clear they have not absorbed the vocabulary. That is my fault for pushing them too fast. They are such good students they seduced me into thinking they could handle all that input without reinforcing it.

What all classes like in this somewhat pressured reading schedule is to break into groups of 3 or so and take one section of the story, process it, then explain it to the rest of the class. I let them choose how to present it. Some read a translation, some summarize, some even act it out or draw it on the board. The presentations are done in English, a concession to the speed with which we are reading the stories.

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My students are pushing through, reading a story a day. I have slowed down with my second year students because it is clear they have not absorbed the vocabulary. That is my fault for pushing them too fast. They are such good students they seduced me into thinking they could handle all that input without reinforcing it.

What all classes like in this somewhat pressured reading schedule is to break into groups of 3 or so and take one section of the story, process it, then explain it to the rest of the class. I let them choose how to present it. Some read a translation, some summarize, some even act it out or draw it on the board. The presentations are done in English, a concession to the speed with which we are reading the stories.

The rest of the class takes notes on the presentations which can then be taken into the end-of-the-week test over the Stage (unit).

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I had my first year students take a section of the story (Caerimonia) and act it out, drafting students outside their group if necessary. It went well. My third year students I had simply summarize what happened in their section. The same with the second year but their vocabulary is just not up to where they are (Book 3, Stage 26). I'm seriouly thinking of retreating to the beginning of Book 2 and doubling up in the readings. That will make for a poor treatment of each reading but I think they will be able to capture more of the vocabulary. Even if it slows down our pace in Book 3, we can make it up at the beginning of next year, but if they don't know enough vocabulary to read a story without looking up every third word, it won't be of much benefit to get so far.

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Recently I took a story and had students get into groups to which I assigned a section of the story. They then had to explain that section to the other students, who took notes on what they were told. They were then allowed to carry those notes into the test. The test consisted of the stories copied out for them so any notes they had made on the stories themselves, on the page, would not be available to them nor would the glossary in the back of the textbook.

The questions were in English and the answers were in English. My freshmen liked that a lot and so Monday, tomorrow, we'll talk about why that is not the best way to learn the language. But I want to get to a certain point in the textbook by the end of the year for psychological reasons. No one is putting any goals on me; I just want to get to a point where when we start next year, we can read just three or four stages (15-20 stories), and then jump into a new book. That's serve as review yet getting into the new book quickly will give them a sense of progress.

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Since my name is Patrick and we just took over the care of my grandsons' snake and I work in a Catholic school with lots of Irish people and at Mass today the priest talked about St. Patrick and the snakes, I wrote up the following story:

There's a snake in my house. He lies in an acquarium. Everyday I enter the room and I look at the snake and he looks at me. He's happy. I'm happy.
But today, the seventeenth of March, when I entered the room, he got scared. I didn't know why he was scared. Then I realized, today is St. Patricks Day, my name is Patrick, so the snake thinks I'm coming to kill him.

If you know any Latin, you know there's a lot going on here grammatically

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Next week we present our fairly tales. This week has been revealing b/c I can see how well students can produce. Production is a questionable activity at first and second years. Nevertheless, I want to try it. What I got backs up what I've read others to have experienced, i.e. students are fairly effusive with a variety of errors. Because this is in presentational mode where the maximum use of the monitor is possible, grammatical accuracy is the focus. They are eager to "get it right" b/c it's for their presentation. They understand the corrections b/c they have internalized some Latin.

A side benefit was perceiving my own ability to listen to spoken Latin and spot agreement and genders errors and so forth. That was fun though stressful. What is fun, too, is finding words like 'magic wand' and 'fairy princess'. Some of the boys, of course, want 'machine gun'.

So Monday the illustrations will be done and we'll hear the presentations. Do I give them a graphic organizer to keep track of the elements of each story or do I just let them listen? What do you think?

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March is a great month for Latin teachers because everyone knows about the Ides of March and since we do dates in Latin every day, there is a degree of excitement leading up to March 15 (it's tricky, b/c Ides usually falls on the 13th exept for 4 months, March being one of those).

We are developing a fairy tale and my Threes are at the point of having written their basic sentences, the skeleton or framework of the tale and a good deal of the connecting material. So today I had them read what they had. As we went along, I probed with questions (in English) about what they were saying, asking, for instance, what noun an adjective was describing. That usually triggered an aha moment as they realized an agreement problem needed to be taken care of. Or it triggered a question on their part.

All in all, I was very happy with what they had produced, showing they had internalized some things and were able to use their monitor for other things.

The Twos, despite difficulty I've had with them, got down to work and asked good questions, some of which pushed me to the edge of my Latin (Latin is the language I've taught with the least amount of comfort).

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I just talk to the students about the story. Today I read a story out loud and asked one student to stop every time she didn't know a word. She stopped me often but I accomplished three things:
she is a middle-of-the-road person so it gave me an idea of what the others don't know
it showed students not knowing something is not a crime
it showed that she knew a lot of words.

I seldom do that but it is useful once in a while. I seldom give old-fashioned vocab quizzes but once in a while, it's fun for them to show what they know out of context.
You have to ask yourself just why you yourself would want to take a vocab quiz; what would it show?

In my school, students study a vocab book for English and take massive tests. The students indicate it doesn't seem to do them much good, although the Latin helps them figure out word meanings; but I wonder if the teachers can point to any studies that show that sort of testing accomplishes anything. Maybe I.S.P. Nation's work.

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On Monday the first moves toward a systematic approach to each story was begun. A new story was chosen and students were asked to pull out their character grids and their word grids.We went over the new story and identified those elements which would allow us to predict the content and/or outcome of the story. We skimmed the story for familiar names of people and places.

Then we went on to read the story, highlighting grammar elements and transition words which would help us see how the story is stitched together. We put new words into the word grid. I pulled pictures to go with all words, not just the new ones. We put down the characters and the characteristics of each character we will be looking at such as their names, the status and work, their residences and family connections, and so forth. As each cell in the grid is filled in and we associate pictures with each word, the students will be able to write in a write around about each character or speak in a speak around about each character.

The aim of this activity is to pull the class into talking in the TL (Latin) in a way that will translate into discussing themselves and other people beyond those in the textbook. Activities offer sources of discrete grades in the grade book and a good way to prepare for large-scale summative exams. Typical activities with the stories are: answering questions about the characters, writing up a story based on pictures displayed in the classroom, descibing each pictures unconnected to the story in the textbook, doing a web design of the story or a story board or other graphic organizer, doing a circle within a circle where one circle rotates, thus giving each student a chance to tell each person in the class his version of his character. Rotation can include rotating characters so everyone learns each character well.

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