By now I'm sure you've at least heard about ChatGPT or maybe even started using it more in your daily life. But what about to make your life easier at school? I know there are potential risks with using artificial intelligence but I've been on a mission to find ways to bring this unique technology into my classes. Check out these ideas and let me know what else you've come up with. Using ChatGPT To Have An "Interpersonal" Conversation One of the coolest ways to use ChatGPT with your classes is to engage in an interpersonal conversation with it. You can choose just about any topic that you are using in class and the bot will respond to you in the target language and ask you questions. It does a great job of continuing the conversation and asking follow up questions that helps kids stay on task with one particular topic for a long period of time. That being said, when you ask it follow up questions it does not always give you an opinion or an answer because it is artificial intelligence and claims not to have it's own thoughts. Here are the steps to make this happen in your classes:
Beat The Bot One of my favorite activities to do with ChatGPT is to play Beat The Bot. In this activity, I post a prompt into the program and ask it to write the essay in Spanish. Depending on the level I will ask it to write series of sentences or paragraphs addressing a topic on an upcoming writing assessment. Then, as a class we work together to grade the writing using our class rubric. We tend to avoid comprehension and jump to vocabulary, text type, culture and grammar. Instead of using terms like "it's an A" we talk about whether the evidence in the writing levels up, meets, approaches or doesn't show enough evidence. Then, after we've determined the score for the writing, students work to rewrite the text to improve on areas that were not meeting or leveling up. Kids are usually thrown off at first to see that their teacher has used ChatGPT and they also assume that the bot will automatically produce work that is exceeding the standard but that's not the case. Far too often, the sample doesn't include enough evidence of vocabulary, connecting words from class, cultural knowledge or grammar we've been working with in class. This activity is great for helping kids truly understand the success criteria for the class and gives them the fun chance to play teacher. Give Me Some Feedback Another great way to use ChatGPT is to ask it to give some formative feedback. Now, we know that as teachers we hold the keys to what true quality feedback looks and sounds like, but we can use ChatGPT as a way to help us with this as well. First, type into the bot that you want feedback written in English about your Spanish writing. The bot will read it and provide a list of things to work on. These tend to be more mechanical which can help kids see specific examples within their own writing. It will not have a good grasp on a variety of vocabulary, text type, evidence of grammar/culture, etc. but that's where we come in. This helps keep us important in the feedback process but provides a tool to help with those kids who want/need the smaller grammar points. Debate Questions/Would You Rather: I got this idea from a language teacher on Twitter and thought it was such a time saver. I sometimes struggle with really interesting debate topics or 'would you rather' style questions within my themes. ChatGPT does a great job coming up with those topics/questions for your classes. And the best part, you can keep asking it to make the language simpler so that your novices or intermediates can understand and engage in the content. Info-Gap-ish Activities:
Sometimes I struggle to find authentic resources or authentic situations for an info-gap activity and ChatGPT has helped with this. You can set it up so that person A has a description of a house and person B has a blank paper. Person B has to listen and draw what person A describes. Person A and B can then go through the description afterwards and identify what was drawn and correct anything after they've completed the activity. Granted, this isn't a pure info-gap activity but it serves the purpose of interpreting information and then verifying it together. What else have you thought of? There are so many applications that I'm discovering each day with this tool.
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We all know that when push come to shove we still have to give assessments in our classes. It's not always a bad thing that we have to do this and there are some key techniques and characteristics of these assessments that can help to make sure all students feel degrees of success in the language. The first, and most important one, is the use of performance assessments. This means creating real-life tasks where students need to use the language to communicate. These can be done in the interpretive, interpersonal and presentational modes to help provide a clearer method for communicating. And the best way to assess these is to avoid the practice of taking points off for certain errors but instead using a rubric to globally assess students' competencies in the different areas you're looking at. When you're writing those tasks, it can be a bit challenging so here are a few tips to help you in your planning. What do I want them to be able to do? Actually say this out loud or write this. It's important that that is clear to you and to your students. If you want them to be able to have a debate about the pros and cons of social media, state that as your goal. It shouldn't be a secret to you or to them. What mode of communication works best for this goal? Based on your goals, you can figure out what mode of communication fits what you're doing. If they're debating, you want them having an interpersonal assessment. If they're explaining, a presentational assessment would be a better fit. And if they're finding information, they should be doing an interpretive assessment. With output assessments, there are times that both are viable options and you have to weigh out what is most important to you in that moment. What is my scenario? Kids can't just talk for no reason or write about randomness. You have to have a clear scenario. Why are they having a conversation? What are they going to learn from that conversation? How are they going to use that information? What are they writing about? Who are they writing to? Why are they reading an article or watching a video? What context do they have? These are all questions to ask yourself to be able to write out a scenario. Based on the answers, you can use your creativity or Leslie Grahn's SCRAP page on her website to write out a performance task where students know why they are communicating. What will students do during the task? This is where you figure out the smaller details of the assessment. What kind of things will they be writing about? What should they be doing throughout the conversation? I write these as separate bullet points so it's clear to kids what to expect and it provides them with an outline of what to do. Now for the difference when planning novice high and intermediate low tasks. Sometimes the difference between these two proficiency/performance levels is small but when thinking about the tasks we want to be sure that we are making tasks that are level appropriate for our students. See this page to discuss the difference between the two sub-levels. Interpretive Mode: Novice High:
Novice High:
Novice High:
Above are examples of novice high and intermediate low interpretive, interpersonal and presentational tasks. All of those are performance tasks because they're asking students to do something with the language. You see elements of the different sub-levels when you see an interpersonal asking to just jump into a conversation in comparison to starting, maintaining and ending. Or when a novice high is providing information and an intermediate low is now raising awareness about something.
Through these guidelines and examples it's my hope that designing assessments for these two sub-levels can be a bit easier. The difference between the two is rather difficult to distinguish on it's own but when you look at the MA State Frameworks you get a better idea of how they differ and how you can be sure your work is more level appropriate. These slides and explanations are from a 2022 presentation for MAFLA's Winter Workshop. Before we get into the technicalities of what is a novice high and what is an intermediate low, I want you to think about these three questions. 1. What's something you consider yourself to be novice at? 2. What's something you consider yourself to be intermediate at? 3. How did you know you went from novice to intermediate at that thing? These are important considerations to keep in mind as we think about novice learners becoming intermediate learners. Baring in mind that we know that second language acquisition is different than most things, it's still an important framework to have as we think about the kids sitting in front of us. The above pictures are from the Massachusetts new curriculum frameworks for World Languages. To help us get a better picture of what a novice high is we will look at each mode. Interpretive Communication: Novice High students...
Novice High students...
Novice High students...
The above pictures come from the Massachusetts new frameworks for World Languages. We'll use it as a basis to explain what it means to be an Intermediate Low. Interpretive Communication: Intermediate low students...
Intermediate low students...
Intermediate low students...
Let's put them side by side to see the differences by mode.
This is the first of a few installments on this topic of novice high and intermediate low. Check out other pages explaining how to teach students and get them to the next level, how to assess them and some strategies to help build them into the intermediate world. *This information came from a presentation that I did for MaFLA's Winter Workshops in 2022. As more teachers begin realizing the need to rewrite curriculum there is also the very real realization that of how much work and planning is needed in order to successfully write and implement a new curriculum. It requires teachers to have a set of skills, a common goal, time to write, examples of what to do in class, etc. The Knoster Model was created to help teachers (and honestly anyone) in managing a complex change. Take a look at the model and we'll go through a quick overview of the steps. For a more in-depth explanation, take a look at the article I wrote for ACTFL's The Language Educator. Overview of the Graphic:
Essentially, this graphic provides teachers and department leaders with a formula for success. The formula is vision + skills + incentives + resources + action plan = success. Each one of those pieces is needed (not sequentially) in order to implement a successful change. As you move down the graphic you'll see that there are pieces that are missing and each one leads to a different result that is not success. Let's take a look at each formula. Missing Vision: When a vision is missing for a complex change it can lead to confusion for teachers. Essentially, this is the buy in that is needed for teachers to help make the change. They need to see why a change is needed, what you're envisioning for this change and what they should expect. When teachers understand why a change is being implemented, there is more buy-in especially for the hard work that is ahead of them. Without this clear vision, there is a lot of confusion that can derail a project because teachers don't understand the essential 'why' behind the project. Missing Skills: Teachers come to the table with varying degrees of skills. Some are meant to find authentic resources, others are meant to develop assessments and others have a critical lens for social justice. We should tap into all of those great potentials and let each of those teachers lead in the areas they shine. That's not to say that each teacher needs to develop each of those skills before you can move on. It's saying that as a collective group, there should be certain non-negotiable skills and certain variable skills. Those skills let teachers have the confidence they need to carry on with a complex change. When a teacher is asked to do something without possessing the necessary skills there will be great amounts of anxiety that can cause a curriculum writing project to halt all together. Missing Incentives: Incentives for teachers sounds like an oxymoron. Isn't this part of their job? Yes and no. It's part of their job to teach and develop curriculum but at the current rate of things there is no time to do this well while also balancing the thousands of other things we need to do well. This is where incentives come in. Giving teachers specific time in their day to work on curriculum or finding money to pay them for their time outside of the contractual school year are ways to give teachers incentives to work on this difficult task. Unfortunately, without a certain level of incentives, there will likely be resistance because teachers don't have the time to manage all of their day to day work along with this curriculum writing. See the Complex Change blog post I wrote about reactions to change for some ideas as well. Missing Resources: You can't ask a teacher to do something without providing them examples of what they should be doing. Period. Asking a teacher to use videos in class without explaining how is a recipe for disaster. Asking a teacher to teach grammar in context without resources is going to lead to all kinds of problems. Teachers need a toolbox of resources where they can see examples, models and guides to help them through the process. This is a huge part of the task and it also requires a certain amount of teacher training on how to develop or use those resources. When a teacher feels they have the resources they need, they feel confident. However, when those resources are missing there's a sense of frustration because they don't know what they are doing or what they are aiming to be able to do in the curriculum writing process. Missing Action Plan: You can have all of the visions, skills, incentives and resources in the world but if you have no plan of how to implement them it will never get off the ground. This action plan needs to be step by step and attainable to all teachers. There should also be input from the curriculum writing team so that you know that the steps are achievable and at an appropriate speed. Without this action plan, there is a strong likelihood of false starts happening where some people are ready to teach new curriculum while others still thought they had time to write or adjust to the idea. This model has been a good guiding principle for many districts as they manage rewriting curriculum in light of new state and national standards. Try planning in this way and let me know how it goes for your school/team! We've all been there. We have a new initiative that we're excited about sharing with our colleagues (like rewriting curriculum) and you're met with a myriad of different reactions and questions. Some are positive and others are downright negative. How is it possible that a group of people who, seemingly, were on the same page all year can be at so many different places just in their thinking about a change? To answer this, researchers at the Research and Development Center for Teacher Education at the University of Texas created a model that they call the Concerns Based Adoption Model- otherwise known as the Stages of Concern. Above is a visualization of the model that talks about the different places where a teacher can be as they begin to think about implementing some kind of change in their teaching life. According to the well-researched model, a teacher will usually fall into one or more of these categories as they begin grappling with the idea of changing and the change implementor's job is to identify the stage and plan for next steps. That is to say, if a teacher is stuck in the management stage of the model, they should not be focusing on information or collaboration but instead on how to help the teacher see that the change is manageable. Let's go through the different sections to simplify what they mean and what we can do to help teachers move out of that stage of concern. Awareness- What is it? This first stage is when the teacher has an awareness that there is a change being talked about but is not too concerned about anything else. You might hear them say things like "I heard about this project but I have too much going on right now to learn more about it." To help with this stage, a teacher-leader can share information in a non-threatening not overwhelming way. They can also encourage them to join in on discussions about the initiative just to be able to hear the information with no expectation of acting on it. This hopefully gets them involved a little bit and out of the awareness stage. Informational- How does it work? During this stage of concern, the teacher is aware of this initiative or change and is in need of more information. This is when they'll have lots of questions that relate to the process, the research, the logistics, etc. As a whole, they are usually willing to hear more information at this point because they want/need that in order to be able to wrap their heads around what's going on. At the same time, this can be an overwhelming stage for some teachers because too much information can sometimes cause them to shut down. To help them with this stage, a teacher-leader should be sure to provide clear, accurate, concise information to the teachers. They should also vary their approach to disseminating information through texts, videos, classroom visits, informal conversations, etc. This should allow them to receive the important information to be able to move to the next stage. Personal- How does this impact me? This is the stage of concern that is most prevalent and, quite honestly, is where most teachers live. It's at this point that the teacher has the information and awareness of the change at hand but is going into a slight panic about how this will affect their teaching. How will this look in the classroom? How am I going to do this? What about my lessons that I've used before? I developed materials for this unit, is this going away? You can hear the questions and imagine what they are almost before they are even asked. That's because this is a perfectly normal stage that teachers go through because a lot of our work is very personal. When working with teachers who are at this stage there are a few important steps to keep in mind. First, legitimize their concerns. It's important not to belittle their personal concerns because that will only make things worse. You also might want to connect these teachers with those who have already implemented the change so they can hear from another voice and another perspective to help them answer their questions. Management- How can I master the skills & fit it all in? After the teacher has enough information and has realized how this will personally impact them they begin to worry about time. How are we going to fit all of this in? How are we going to have time to do all of this? When are you expecting me to make this change? This is a teacher who, at their core, likely wants to implement the change but just needs those logistics beyond personal impact and more in the time management piece. The best way to help a teacher in this stage of concern is to provide step by step guides and help them plan out their time. Teachers want to see and hear the innovative solutions and want to be part of the process but oftentimes need someone to jump start the creation of those steps. Consequence- Is it worth it? Is it working?
This is the first time that teachers begin to ask more questions about the students than they do about themselves. That's not to put down the first stages of concern because they are very real and important stages to go through. However, this is the part of a change when the teacher begins to think about student outcomes and the impact on student learning. They wonder how this change is different and better than what they were doing before. They wonder about whether students will like the change or thrive on it. The consequences can be positive or negative and the teachers are beginning to think of all possible outcomes. To help these teachers, it's important not to overlook them. They are thinking about students and that's why we're in our positions in the first place. We want to give them feedback and continue to show them models in other districts while also allowing them to showcase their own classrooms and their own skills. We want them to essentially see that the time is worth it and that students are improving. Collaboration- It's working fine, but how do others do it? This is the stage of concern when the teachers have been implementing a new change after thinking about how it will affect them personally and their students. The teacher really believes in the work that they are doing and are on-board with the change. Now, they're ready to collaborate with other teachers. They might be interested in seeing how a colleague down the hall is working with the change. They might want to go out of district and learn more about how another school is working with the change. This is a positive concern because they are now at the point of wanting to hone in on their craft. When teachers are at this stage, we want to help encourage them to collaborate but without forcing it. We also want to highlight them, if they're ready for it, as go-to people who can answer questions and even promote their ideas by presenting at local conferences. Refocusing- Is there anything better? In this last stage, it's when the teacher is thirsty for more. They want to know if what they're doing is the most effective tool/strategy and want to see if there's another piece to it. These are the teachers that want to find a way to take the great things they're doing and make them even better. They also might be questioning some of their current practices and this is completely normal. To help these teachers we should encourage them and admit that maybe the change we implemented leaves a lot to be desired. Maybe there is something better. We should provide resources to these teachers to help them in their quest for knowledge. Conclusion: As you implement your next big change in your department, take an inventory of where your teachers are at on the Stages of Concern and think about what the next moves should be. You can think about this as a whole department level and also on an individual basis to allow for a differentiated approach. For resources, check out this website for explanations and more information about the Stages of Concern https://sedl.org/cbam/ Coming off the rush of NECTFL 2022 I have so many immediate applications for the different strategies I learned from teachers from across the country. I specifically want to highlight one I attended by Greta Lundgaard about building writing proficiency. In her presentation, she provided such a clear explanation as to what it means to build writing proficiency in our classes and the many benefits for both students and teachers. I have to admit, prior to this session I held great doubts about the value of writing in my classroom in comparison to the other forms of communication but that has changed. I also never thought that my students were well prepared for assessments and that my writing instruction needed a complete overhaul. Thankfully, her presentation gave me the jolt of energy that I needed. Above is my version of Greta's detailed writing plan that she so graciously provided us in her workshop. Let's take this step by step. Organization: In this table, Greta walked us through 8 possible writing prompts that we can build into our classes as we prepare students for a summative writing task. Each one has different prompts, indicates if they are timed or untimed, is meant for individuals, groups or triads, has scaffolds and supports built in for vocabulary, grammar and inspiration and has a looped in feedback process that doesn't always put the burden on the teacher to provide feedback and collect mountains of papers. Writing #1: This is a timed individual prompt for the first task. The teacher comes up with a prompt for writing and provide sentence starters and language chunks right away. These give students the language they need in order to answer that prompt. When time is called, the feedback process has options. Students can read their writing out loud to a partner and the partner can choose their favorite sentence or section and explain why. The teacher could also provide a peer feedback format where students acknowledge a positive section of their writing. Writing #2: This is a timed individual prompt. The teacher designs another prompt for writing and this time only provides the targeted chunks they are working with. These could be verb forms (already in the right forms) or any other chunks of language kids need to complete the task. Then, for feedback, the teacher can make this active by asking them to get up and find someone with similar answers, opposite answers, etc. They can then work together to combine their writing into one cohesive paragraph. Writing #3: This is an untimed writing in pairs. The prompt will relate to a picture stimulus that should generate language related to the unit. The teacher will also post or highlight specific vocabulary words from the unit that they can choose to use in their writing. For feedback, each pair combines with another pair to create one polished piece of writing from all four people. Writing #4: This is a timed writing assignment in triads (groups of 4 are too many). The prompt will come after a reading stimulus (an article, infographic, etc). The teacher will also draw students attention to new vocabulary from the unti and encourage them to go back into the reading stimulus and select words they can use in their writing. Each triad is writing one paper so the teacher could choose to collect the papers and provide feedback on those few papers instead of 25+ papers. Writing #5: This is an untimed writing for pairs. The prompt will now be related to a listening stimulus (video or audio) and the teacher can deliberately bring up recycled vocabulary words from prior units. This is a great way to build in retrieval practice. The teacher can hand out an editing checklist for each pair to work on. The checklist is not meant to make work perfect or correct every grammar mistake, but instead to find evidence of vocabulary, grammar, transition words, etc. Writing #6: This is a timed individual assignment. Students would view another picture stimulus that would relate to the topic of their writing. This is also when the teacher can deliberately draw attention to connecting words and transition words from the unit. When students are done, they can look over their own writing using the editing checklist to get more independence with the checklist. Writing #7: This is a not timed individual assignment. The teacher would show another picture stimulus and post recycled vocab from a prior unit to help with retrieval of previously learned material. The students would then give their writing to a partner who would look over the writing using a single point rubric to provide glow and grow feedback based on their writing. They could also receive a single line of the rubric that they could look at and focus on for feedback. Writing #8: This is a not timed individual assignment. Students would have one final reading stimulus that would spark a writing prompt. Within that reading students would find new vocabulary and find ways to combine that with previously learned vocabulary. This is when the teacher could collect and/or grade the writing. Here's a specific example from my Spanish 2 class. I'm really excited to try this out in my classes in the coming weeks. I think this has the right amount of novelty while reinforcing the forms we are working with in class.
Again, thank you to Greta Lundgaard for the inspiration for this post and for the continuous amazing ideas. Click here for the document if you would like to check it out more! This is the third in my series of reflections on whether or not I'm truly promoting communication in all 3 modes in my classroom (click here for my reflection on the interpretive mode and here for my reflection on the interpersonal mode). Last year, I was asked by MaFLA to do a presentation on the presentational mode as we got ready to teach online, hybrid or whatever else happened in between. In the midst of creating this presentation, it dawned upon me that a lot of what I had been doing in my classroom in terms of 'presentational writing' was more just writing practice and not actually presentational. There were plenty of opportunities where we practiced writing and students felt that they were doing a lot of writing in class, but the reality was that we weren't presentationally writing or, should I say, we weren't communicating in the presentational mode. ACTFL has their explanation of what the presentational mode means in their Performance Descriptors for Language Learners. When we take a closer look at this excerpt from the ACTFL Performance Descriptors for Language Learners we see that there are 4 key components of what makes a task truly presentational communication. The first talks about the creation of messages and then gives us reasons why they are writing. This isn't just writing so that we are able to use the past tense to say what we did last week or write a paragraph using the new vocabulary words. There are key functions which provide us with a reason as to why we are writing. In the document they provide us with options like inform, explain, persuade or narrate and these remind me very much of Laura Terrill and Donna Clementi's Key Language Functions. That chart is from a presentation I did and the information comes directly from Clementi and Terrill's book They Keys To Planning for Learning. So when we think about creating tasks where students are writing, are we just having them practice the vocabulary or grammar? Or are we asking them to communicate with a purpose such as describing their favorite vacation they ever took, expressing their feelings about returning to school, giving their opinion about an environmental issue, retelling a story of something funny that happened last week or expressing their dreams for after graduation. Those all have a communicative purpose behind them. The second are that ACTFL mentions is that it is one-way communication. I feel that this is an area where we understand that our writing tasks don't involve the negotiation of meaning of the back/forth communication of an interpersonal exchange. What's interesting is that there is a mention of understanding the culture of the targeted audience which relates nicely to the third point mentioned in the document. There needs to be some kind of knowledge about the audience of the message which implies that there is an audience. While not every presentational writing task is a letter to someone, there should always be some kind of intended audience to whom our students are writing. Even if that is to write to their partner, write to a fictitious person, write something to publish to their blog, etc. This audience allows for true personalization of their message. For so long, I had students writing to me when they did 'presentational' writing tasks. As much as they may or may not like me, I'm not the best person to be writing to. We already know each other and the way you write to a teacher is different than how you would write to a friend, a person you've never met before, a famous person, someone you admire, someone you dislike, etc. I've found that this has been the biggest shift in how I write tasks and I've yielded awesome results from it. I've seen students write such personal messages that are intended for different people and I see them using language that they wouldn't have necessarily used if they had just been writing to me. For example, if they are writing to persuade someone of something, I'll see them talk directly to the person and sometimes invent drama or information about the person they're writing to and it's more fun for them and more fun for me as the person reading. The ultimate goal would be to have students ACTUALLY writing to someone such as an e-pal or a classroom in a different country. I'll admit that this intrigues me but the little details of pulling that off still intimidate me. If this interests you, here is a like to my colleague Rebecca Blouwolff's blog where she goes into more detail about this very concept. The last part just talks about the different mediums which we can use for presentational communication. It doesn't always have to be a paragraph on a lined piece of paper. It can be a published blog that students create, a presentation that students make on Google Slides or PowerPoint, it can be a series of Tweets, etc. There are tons of different creative ways that students can communicate presentationally that go beyond writing a paragraph. A quick note on presentational speaking because that may be something you notice is lacking from this blog post.
When it comes to ranking the different modes of communication, presentational does come last in my book in terms of connection to real-world context. And while writing and speaking are both part of the mode, I think of presentational speaking as something that students won't do very often outside of the context of the classroom. I can think of a few situations when kids would need to stand up and give a presentation or record a video/audio of themselves (one of which being a voicemail and they don't particularly care for those right now haha). So while this blog post is about presentational writing, the concept is easily applicable to presentational speaking. I do some presentational speaking in my classes but I find that writing gets me more milage with my kids' language production. Greg Duncan once asked us at MaFLA's Proficiency Academy if we could identify the number one reason why students take a world language course. Naturally, we had to get past the instinct of saying "because they need it for graduation/college" and we ultimately landed on the idea that kids take a language course so they can learn how to speak the language. It sounds pretty intuitive if you ask me. Kids aren't lining up at our doors because they want to become writers of the language (although that is an important literacy skill to build). They want to speak and it's our job to help them get there. So what seems like a good way to solve that problem of helping them learn to speak? Dare we say, they should speak more in class after receiving a lot of input? That sounds like a winning answer to me. When we are able to get past that hurdle and incorporate more speaking into our classrooms we can then begin to answer a tougher, more pressing question: Are kids actually engaging in interpersonal conversations or are they just speaking? At first glance, this question may not seem to be one that should be that difficult. Aren't all interpersonal speaking conversations the same as just speaking? In the ACTFL Performance Descriptors for Language Learners (2015), ACTFL defines the Interpersonal mode by saying that it is the "active negotiation of meaning among individuals", "participants observe and monitor one another to see how their meanings and intentions are being communicated", "adjustments and clarifications are made accordingly", and it involves "speaking and listening (conversation); reading and writing (text messages of via social media)" When we look at that more refined definition of interpersonal communication we begin to see the difference and that there are more components in a true interpersonal exchange than just speaking. In order for something to be interpersonal, students should be discussing something where they are learning something new about another person or, in other words, have an explicit purpose as to why they are having the conversation. It's not simply turn and say something to your partner, it's more about saying something, asking a follow up question, reacting and asking for clarification all with the explicit purpose of finding out more about the other person. Let's take a look at a few examples just to illustrate how we can take a speaking task and make it interpersonal. Task #1: Students are currently in a health unit where they are discussing healthy and unhealthy habits that they have. The teacher asks students to turn to their partner and talk for 5 minutes about some of the healthy or unhealthy things that each person does. Let me start by saying that up until this year, I did this task and always loved it. I heard lots of Spanish and kids used the vocabulary we were practicing. They were speaking but not interpersonally. There wasn't a goal for this exchange. I redid it this year with the express purpose of making it interpersonal and here is what I did. New Task #1: As part of the school's healthy team, you've taken it upon yourself to help your friends lead a healthier life. With your partner, you want to learn more about their health habits. You will discuss for 5 minutes by asking lots of questions to learn more about each others' healthy and unhealthy habits. When you're done, you will have to make a determination as to whether or not the person leads a healthy or unhealthy life and make recommendations to change/keep doing what they're doing based on the conversation. What's different about this conversation is that now they have to listen to the other person. They have the goal of learning about the other person's health habits because they want to know what they can recommend. The other conversation didn't require active listening but this one did and there is a follow up activity that helps keep them accountable for staying engaged with the conversation with their partner. Task #2: You all just came back from summer vacation and want to talk about what you did. Turn and talk with your partner about your vacation including what you did, how it was, etc. This is a conversation I have done quite regularly with my students after our vacations. Again, I think they're just speaking at each other and there's no point in actually listening to what your partner says. Let's try this again. New Task #2: How was your summer vacation? Turn and talk about your favorite parts of your vacation with your partner to learn more about what they did, what they thought about it and whether or not they would enjoy doing it again. After the conversation, your teacher will show you 3 potential vacation activities for Winter vacation and you will determine which kind of vacation your partner would most likely take and why. You'll share that with your partner to see whether you both agreed. There is now a bit more at stake for this conversation. Each partner wants to ask as many questions as possible to try and get a complete picture of this person's ideal vacation activities. They'll get immediate feedback if their interpretations were incorrect when they reveal what their partner should do and see/hear their reaction. This kind of conversation involves more than just speaking and goes toward the interpersonal nature. So what should I keep in mind to make something really interpersonal?
1. Why are they talking? This question isn't meant to be sarcastic. What is the purpose of the conversation they are having? Are they persuading/convincing? Are they expressing opinions? Are they telling stories? What are the key language functions that are needed in this exchange? That will help you determine why the conversation should take place. 2. What are they learning about each other? Students should be listening for a purpose. They should be finding out something new about their partner/group members. This could be personal information about the individual or something that each person learned about in class that they are sharing. Either way, they must find something in the conversation that gives them new insight and knowledge about the person or the world around them. 3. How will they use that information? Now that they've spoken and learned something about each other, they should do something with that knowledge. There should be some kind of brief follow up to the conversation where students take what they heard/understood and use that to complete a subsequent task. It doesn't have to be a lengthy task but something where they rank, rate, determine or draw some kind of conclusion is always a great way to wrap up the activity. It is a bonus if they can also get corroboration from their partner/group members. 4. How will they work through a conversation if there is a breakdown? This is an area that is mentioned in ACTFL's definition of interpersonal communication that is key. We don't want kids not being able to understand each other and just moving on with the conversation. They should have skills/strategies to be able to ask for clarification and there should be a need for them to clarify when they don't understand. They shouldn't feel comfortable just moving on because that means that what they are listening to isn't important. If kids know they should be active listeners, they will want to ask for clarification/rephrasing when needed. We can help promote this by writing tasks like the ones mentioned and by giving kids phrases to use when they don't understand (phrases that go beyond 'repeat'). Try some of these out and see if you can level up your speaking prompts to make them truly interpersonal. As corny as it may sound, one of my favorite times of year is the end of the calendar year. I promote a lot of reflection with my students and feel like I should practice what I preach. Looking back at 2019 there were areas of tremendous growth as I ended my fourth and began my fifth year teaching. I also have some targeted areas where I want to grow in 2020.
✅ Glow : Curriculum writingThis year our department took on a new task of writing language neutral year 1 curriculum. Over the summer and through the school year I was able to work with an outstanding group of teachers to really delve into good unit design. I always thought that I understood theme vs topic but not until really listening and learning from Thomas Sauer at proficiency academy. Themes are what tie topics together. Themes are what allow students to be individuals in our classes. Themes are what grab our students attention. In 2020 I want to keep up this momentum of finding what students want to learn about and create themes so that all students can succeed in our curriculum. 📈 Grow: InterculturalityI have been overwhelmingly inspired by the conversations post ACTFL 2019 that talk about social justice, race, inequities in our classrooms and more. This is an area where I know I need to grow and I am happy to do so in 2020. I already have books by Manuela Wagner and Dorie Conlon Perugini on the way from ACTFL and I follow so many inspiring educators who make me rethink the way I approach teaching language and culture. In 2020 I want to make interculturality and social justice a regular part of my unit and lesson design for all learners. ✅ Glow: Presenting at conferences/volunteering with local organizationsIn 2019 I presented at the MaFLA conference and won the Best of MA for my presentation But What About The Grammar. I was also able to facilitate a breakout group at MaFLA's Core Practices Institute about grammar in context and tiered reading/writing tasks. I have learned so much from this great organization and I have been thankful for their support. In 2020 I am excited to present a workshop at MaFLA, facilitate a group at Core Practices and attend NECTFL for the first time and present. 📈 Grow: Learn more about retrieval practiceIt seems that as you get good at one skill you learn about another that makes you question the new skill. Thomas Sauer taught me about unit design but Greta Lundgaard made me think about brain research for the first time in a long, long time. I realized that my units incorporate targeted structures well but as the year progresses there is little to no spiraling of functions. In essence, there is no need to remember what you learned in Term 1 because by Term 3 there will be other functions to care about. From there I learned about the book Powerful Teaching by Pooja K. Agarwal and Patrice Bain that talks about a concept called Retrieval Practice. My goal for 2020 is to read this book and begin to think of how to meaningfully and with no-stress incorporate intentional spiraling of vocabulary and functions through a year's study. ✅ Glow: LeadershipTeacher leadership became a true passion of mine in 2019. I have always enjoyed helping other teachers and leading groups of people but this year, thanks to my department head and various other leaders, I have been able to hone in on some leadership skills. Whether leading a curriculum team, helping neighboring districts as they come to visit or reading books and blogs on teacher leadership, I actually see myself as a teacher leader and in 2020 I hope to continue working on those skills. 📈 Grow: Improving student writingAs I've implemented proficiency based teaching I realized I put a lot of emphasis on speaking. Only Spanish is spoken in class. Incorporating speaking assessments in every unit. Adding role plays and fun games to get kids wanting to speak the target language. I do this because it is not what I experienced learning Spanish until I studied abroad. Through this, I believe I "forgot" about writing. Not that I actually forgot but I think my efforts have been more in student speaking and I need to find a way to get students as excited about writing as they are about speaking. 2019 was overall an outstanding year of teaching and learning and I can't wait to see what 2020 has in store. Thanks to the incredible work of MaFLA and the generosity of my school’s PTSO, this past weekend I was fortunate enough to be able to attend one of ACTFL’s MOPI (Modified Oral Proficiency Interview) workshops.
I’ve been to a lot of professional development workshops in the past few years but none have ever left me with such a state of reflection like the MOPI. Going into the session I had heard how transformative this training can be to a world language teacher and was warned that I would be challenged in ways I couldn’t even imagine. To say that I was challenged is an understatement and one that I now appreciate (although in the moment it may have manifested more as frustration haha). Here are my biggest takeaways that I’ll be pondering all summer as a result of the MOPI: Takeaway #1: Re-read the proficiency guidelines Going into the MOPI training I felt pretty good about my understanding of the different proficiency levels but I realized I had a lot more to learn. Just because you have a sense of what the Can Do Statements say doesn't mean we should forget important things like the Proficiency Guidelines that define what it means on a more global sense. It's a lot clearer to me now that: •Novice means they can create lists with the language •Intermediate means they can create with the language AND ask and answer questions •Advanced means they can narrate in the past, present and future This seems so basic looking back on it but it is really a game changer in terms of the way I view our course goals. Takeaway #2: Don't assign proficiency targets on rubrics Our department has a fantastic presentational writing rubric that divides up performance into categories and labels them by proficiency level. I had never thought twice about this practice until the MOP training. I feel like for so long I have been mislabeling kids as Intermediate High when in reality they're just exceeding the expectations for a course where our goal is Intermediate Mid. It really brings us back to the discussion of performance vs proficiency. It's extremely difficult to give a proficiency level to kids because what I'm measuring is performance or their ability to do the task that we've been working toward in class. Unless I do spontaneous assessing where I try to find their writing and speaking proficiencies this is a practice that I feel we need to back away from. Going forward I think a good practice would be to set expectations by course level and label them as exceeds, meets, approaching, does not meet all while keeping the proficiency targets in mind. Takeaway #3: We need a better interpersonal speaking rubric After watching and listening to countless MOPI interviews during the training and on the ACTFL training site, it's clear to me that what I've been measuring and looking for in speaking tasks has not been an accurate representation of what they can do. Our presenter explained the ACTFL tree which included functions, content/contexts, text type and accuracy (trunk, roots, branches and leaves respectively). These seem like a better way to assess our students ability to speak and will give us a better picture of what they can do in terms of the functions we are asking of them. This summer I'm going to try and create some kind of rubric that incorporates that. Let's see how that turns out. Takeaway #4: My prompts need to be rewritten This became clear as I watched more interviews take place. What I've been asking kids to do in the past have either been too difficult and required a higher proficiency or was below their level and did not give me the kind of language I was looking for. If we are actually looking for our students to perform at these proficiency levels we need to rewording our prompts to give them the chance to show what they can do. For example: •Novices should be asked questions that allow them to list and maybe, just maybe create a sentence here or there •Intermediates should be asked questions involving "why" or "tell me more about" to give them the chance to create with the language. They should also be in the habit of asking questions whenever possible. •Advanced should be asked questions involving "tell me more about" but that also require narration whenever possible. This means narrating in the past, present and future in different moments (they have to show evidence of all three to be considered an advanced...but not all in the same prompt). Takeaway #5: Conceptual vs Partial vs Complete Control At the end of their presentation they talked about the elephant in the room...the grammar. I really liked the explanation of adjusting our expectations in terms of accuracy. The presenter described three levels of control of language- conceptual, partial and complete. When students first learn of a new grammar concept they will have a conceptual understanding of how it works but will be minimal at best in terms of usage. They will then move to partial control of the language where they will use it with frequent errors but understand how to form the grammar. The last stage is the complete control where they will still have errors but they will have a better grasp of meaning and form of the grammar. This was a nice way of summing up a concept that many teachers struggle with. As we assess and listen for oral proficiency we need to know their background with the grammar and adjust our course expectations to not expect perfection (especially because that's not a requirement of superior or distinguished speakers either) Takeaway #6: Our grammar expectations need to change This last part is 100% my opinion and based on my interpretation of what was said in the sessions. I know it needs more reflecting but I think it's a good starting ground. As most people work through the proficiency movement, grammar continues to be the awkward topic. MOPI gave me a new perspective on grammar expectations that I think could help this debate a bit. There are a lot of tenses/grammar points that can be taught over a 5 year language program sequence but in reality we need to prioritize what our kids really need to complete the functions appropriate for their level. This involves careful conversations with teams of teachers who hone in on the functions and what they want kids to be able to do. For example, a Spanish 1 teacher may have a goal of Novice High for their students. This means that an obvious grammar point will be teaching sentence structure and subject verb agreement in the present tense. A Spanish 3 teacher may have an Intermediate Mid goal which means their students will work on creating with language and asking and answering questions mostly in the present tense. A lot of us are working through this proficiency movement and still have questions about what grammar, how much grammar and when does grammar fit in. For example in my department I know our level 3 class is loaded with too much grammar especially if we are expecting kids to use it. And that's my new perspective after MOPI...if we expect them to use it. If we really focus on the functions at each level for novices, intermediates and advanced learners we can see that there are clear grammar forms that are needed and others that are not mentioned. I would argue that if you want to keep the grammar you can absolutely expose your students to it but your assessments should be based on the Novice, Intermediate or Advanced functions. Example: In Spanish 3 our goal is to have kids reach an Intermediate Mid proficiency level. In this year we introduce them to the present perfect tense. I can still work with the present perfect with them in class but when it comes time to assess them I should look back at the function and plan accordingly. So I might instead write an assessment that involves them telling me more about their health habits while they're in school vs while they're on vacation. This addresses the function of creating with language but doesn't require them to use the present perfect unless they feel comfortable and ready to try narrating in the past. |