The question above is one I have found myself asking quite frequently over the past year as we work to rewrite curriculum and try to dig deeper into what is input, how do we use input to help our students and why do students actually need input. When I first began teaching for proficiency, I focused a lot of my energy on finding and using authentic resources in my classes starting with my novices all the way up through the program. After all, it is one of ACTFL's Core Practices to guide learners through interpreting authentic resources. So as I collected and used resources I found myself in a rut of reading an article or watching a video and then moving on to another article or video that was loosely (if at all) related and some kind of speaking or writing activity that, again, was loosely (if at all) related to what was read or viewed. In all honesty, this seemed like the right progression and I felt that I was doing what was the "right" thing to do. Then, a few years later, I started a lesson by handing out another article and the students moaned and complained "another article...why?!" At the time, I didn't have a good answer and assumed this was just typical teenage sass but the question stuck with me- why was I handing out another article? My first answer to myself was that we were going to practice reading or practice listening which was important so we needed more authentic resources. But something about that didn't sit well with me. If we are just practicing reading or listening, are we interpreting the texts? And if we are, why do we need those texts in our unit? How do they fit in the bigger picture of what we're doing in the unit? And while I agree that reading and listening are skills that need to be developed, can these skills be developed in a more meaningful way? This lead me to reconstruct my definition of the interpretive mode and realize it's role in my unit design. While I know there is a large body of research that exists about the interpretive mode and input processing, in my new definition of the interpretive mode for myself I have preemptively answered the question "why are we reading/watching this resource?" 1. We are reading/listening in order to do something with this information Ask yourself, why are you reading this blog? Are you practicing your reading skills? Probably not. You are reading this blog in order to gain new information, in order to respond to the information, in order to share it with someone else or in order to refute what is being said (politely, of course). We need to think about our texts the same way. When I create interpretive activities I now plan for learners to do something immediately with the information. So if we read an article describing what someone thinks teenagers are like we should use that information in a task such as debating the validity of the arguments or writing a letter to the editor. If we watch a video on noise pollution in a target culture we should use that video as a springboard to discussing pollution in our own community or writing a note to someone who should watch this video and explaining why. In a novice level class we could listen to someone introduce themselves and decide who we want to get to know and why (granted this explanation would be in English instead of the target language). In other words, the activity doesn't stop just because we finished going through the resource and the questions/task. I have been asking myself what's next? Why does this resource matter? 2. We are reading/listening to enrich our vocabulary and add to our personalized list There have been so many times that a resource has the vocabulary we are working with and then some and I'd love for learners to start using those words as well. More often, those are words that I wouldn't have thought of for a standard vocabulary list but fit perfectly in our unit. One of the tasks I have added to my repertoire is asking students to circle and keep track of new vocabulary on their personalized vocabulary list. But, it's not enough to stop there and hope that they use those words. I've found that holding them accountable for trying to use those words in their speaking/writing is the necessary next step. These can be done using retrieval activities, asking targeted questions with those words, posting them for kids to use in conversations, etc. What I've found is that when I used to politely ask them to remember words, they politely wouldn't. When I make this a regular part of my instruction, kids know that these words are important and they try their best to incorporate them. 3. How does this affect interpretive assessment? There are many mixed opinions about assessing the interpretive mode and I agree with a lot of what people say. In all honesty, how can you truly assess what's in a student's head? How do you know what they were able to understand? What if they didn't understand the part that you wanted them to understand but they understood something else? All of which are valid questions that lead me to rethink interpretive assessments. On my assessments I have been including 3 sections that I believe help give the resource a purpose and help to gauge what students understand in a more wholistic way.
I recognize that many teachers are already doing this in their classes and have plenty more purposes to add and I'd love to hear them.
I also have begun to think of the interpretive mode as the analytical mode. By this I mean that the reason for which we are reading/listening is to analyze the information for a purpose and use it as we continue to create with language. Earlier in my proficiency journey I was thinking of the interpretive mode as simply understanding a text and not thinking about how this mode of communication can link to higher order thinking on Bloom's Taxonomy. So the next time you are planning an interpretive activity, ask yourself what are they going to do with this text and why are they reading/listening to this text? before your kids get the chance to.
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The interpretive mode is easily the most important mode that we work with in the language classroom but the way we go about it can often feel boring to us and our students. I know when I first started that I thought an interpretive task was "read this article and answer these questions". While answering questions can be ok to guide learning, if that's all I'm doing in my classes I'm missing out on some fun activities.
Here are my favorite interpretive activities that aren't overly complicated but are more engaging for me and for my students. 1. True/False with Justification Ask students a series of True/False questions but instead of simply answering them, they also have to find the evidence in the text and explain why it's true or why it's false. 2. Write down the words you hear When listening to an audio or video, ask students to write down a list of all of the words they hear. Then, ask them to put those together to form the main idea of the video 3. IPA Template Use the IPA Template to ask students to identify key words, choose the main idea, find supporting details, make cultural connections and react to a reading or video. 4. EdPuzzle Give students a video but interrupt the video with questions to check for understanding in particular areas. 5. Manipulatives Find an article that has pictures and cut out the pictures and the descriptions. Have students match the two together based on what they read and see in the pictures. 6. What's the title? Chop off the title of an article or infographic and have students create their own title for the reading and ask them to justify why. 7. Tiered Reading Assignments Assign different readings to students based on their abilities and have them read about the same topic and fill out a graphic organizer to later discuss. 8. Kahoot Ask questions about the article or video in a fun Kahoot style to check their understanding of what they just read. 9. Elevator Pitch Ask students to explain the main ideas of an article or video for 30 seconds while the other person listens. Then, that person will repeat back what they just heard/remembered from their pitch. 10. ABC Summary Give students a list of the alphabet and have them come up with one word that starts with each letter that helps put together the main idea of the article or video. These are just a few of my favorite activities that students have mentioned they like quite a lot. After doing a few of these, answering questions doesn't seem like a lot of fun anymore. Have you ever had a class where all of the students are at the exact same spot on their path to proficiency? I didn't think so. We all have classes of such diverse learners that makes our jobs more interesting and yet more challenging.
This March I attended Leslie Grahn's presentation at MaFLA's Core Practices Institute and learned a lot about the idea of Tiered Tasks and Tiered Texts. She presented it perfectly to catch my attention. She asked us to envision a learner in our class who is exceeding all expectations and looking for a challenge. Then she asked us to envision a learner who is struggling in our class and needs added supports. How can we help both of these learners advance while still teaching the same content. Her solution- differentiate texts and tasks. Check out her website for all sorts of great tips and ideas. I know the term differentiate brings us all back to those teacher prep classes but this kind of differentiating is one that I saw really work in my class. The idea is pretty straight forward. Tiering The Task: Everyone reads the same infographic or article but with different tasks based on their level. You start by developing an on level task and then add supports for struggling learners and add more freedom for the challenge level. Example: The class is reading an article on the pros and cons of school uniforms. The on-level task is to read and fill in a T chart of advantages and disadvantages. The more support level will have the same T chart but with a word bank or sentence starters. The challenge level will give them the prompt and give them the freedom to make a chart, write a paragraph or create their own representation of what they read. Then, everyone comes together to discuss and eventually debate the issue. Tiering The Text: You find a bunch of resources on the same topic at varying difficulty levels (infographics work best for this). You can either assign the texts to students or have them choose what's appropriate for their own level. Meanwhile everyone is doing the same task. Example: The class is reading about the benefits of yoga and have different infographics to help them learn about the topic. Everyone chose a text that was challenging yet not extremely difficult. The students have a graphic organizer in front of them to fill in that categorizes the different benefits of yoga (these are themes mentioned in all of the infographics). After students finish reading and categorizing, they work in groups to write a persuasive argument in favor of allowing yoga classes in the school (each group will likely have learners that read different infographics but now everyone can participate in the activity). My Example: In class we were looking at the advantages and disadvantages of having cell phones in the classroom. •Activity #1: Everyone answered pre-reading questions about how they use their phones in school •Activity #2: Because this was our first tiered task, I assigned students a series of infographics that discussed advantages and disadvantages of having cell phones in schools. Students read the infographic and completed a chart (part 1, part 2) asking them to list the advantages and disadvantages, summarize the main idea of their infographics and keep track of new words they learned. •Activity #3: In groups, students came up with the top 3 advantages and disadvantages of having cell phones in schools using what they read. •Activity #4: Students each received a different role card and personality and debated whether or not WHS should allow cell phones in the classroom. My Takeaways: I loved this kind of activity because it let me put to use those collected resources that have been sitting in my Pinterest for years. It also gave each student a chance to add to the conversation because they felt confident and comfortable using the information they just read and doing something with it. Now, did the students know that they received different infographics, yes. Did they say anything? No. As long as it's not stated that one set is more challenging than another set then I can see this technique working for future lessons. There's this stigma out there that when you begin teaching for proficiency that you need an abundance of authentic resources for your kids. All of the sudden the Pinterest boards become filled, a list of websites and infographics is curated and you begin thinking of ways to use all of that.
What I'm advocating for may seem unusual but I think it is the way to help reduce teacher burn out and increase student interest. Instead of finding hundreds of resources why don't we look for 3-4 good readings or infographics for each topic and use those...and only those. That means ditch the Pinterest board with every resource known to man that talks about food and instead find a few quality resources that you can use for a long period of time. Recently I asked a group of my Spanish 3 ACP students to reflect on their first unit that we did on living situations. I asked them what they liked/dislikes in terms of activities and overwhelmingly they told me that there were too many readings. They said that each day they had a new article and never really saw how each article connected to each other. For their second unit I experimented by using one resource for 3 classes and they've already commented on how much more they like this unit than the last because of that. Here are some of the Frequently Asked Questions that I've gotten from colleagues as I have switched to this approach: Don't the kids get bored of doing the same article/video for 3 days? Each day the kids are given a different task that they need to complete with the resource. If I asked multiple choice questions of them each day they would easily get bored. Instead, I ask them one day for the main idea, another day for specific details, another day I ask them some inference questions. So what do you actually do in class? In three days here is what I usually do Day 1- Previewing vocabulary that they will need for the resource, reading/viewing the resource with general questions to discuss the main idea, interpersonal speaking activity (interviews, speed friending, ask ask switch, give one get one all based on the theme of the resource) Day 2- Work with the vocabulary from the resource, re-reading/re-watching the resource and ask students to answer specific details, presentational writing activity (writing a tweet with their opinion, recording a FlipGrid where students explain a picture related to the resource, a formative writing where students respond to a question all based on the theme of the resource. Day 3- Ask students to recap the resource, re-read/re-watch the resource (if needed), an engaging activity that gets at the root of the resource (a debate, a role play, in class presentations, socratic seminar, writing a blog post, writing a persuasive letter). Can you give an example of a 3 day lesson? Day 1: -Preview vocabulary related to article on bottled water -Read article on bottled water being banned in a local community -Answer main idea questions -Work with a group to make a Pros/Cons list on the use of bottled water Day 2: -Vocabulary discussions on pictures from the article -Re-read article on bottled water and answer inference questions -Prepare for a group debate on whether our town should ban bottled water Day 3: -Elevator Talk- recap the article to your friend -Group debates- should Wellesley ban bottled water? -Writing a letter to the selectmen with your own personal belief I know this sounds like an odd adjustment BUT I promise you that you will feel less stressed and your students will see the value in the quality resources you choose instead of overwhelming them. Usually my summer vacation is a time of travel and relaxation. Last year I spent most of it in Spain or by the beach. This year I'm continuing with the beach theme but decided to give myself a few goals to help me in my classroom in August/September.
So just like my honors kids who diligently complete their summer reading, I too picked up some reading with the hopes of improving my ability to teach reading. I purchased The Teacher's Handbook to Contextualized Language Teaching and spent many an afternoon sun burning and taking notes. Going into this self-driven assignment, I looked back on last year and saw great strides in my students interpersonal and presentational language but wanted to work more on improving interpretive reading in particular. Authentic texts really brought my classroom to life and lead to some thought provoking conversations and some powerful writing. That being said, I knew that input was so important so I wanted to make sure I was maximizing my time with authentic resources so I hit the books and this is my take away so far. Take Away #1: I've been doing way too many texts. I drove myself crazy looking for a different authentic text or video for every lesson last year. This lead to this bank of incredible resources and one very exhausted teacher. The more I read and research I'm realizing that I'm not doing enough with the same text and really only hitting surface level thinking. Each resource I use has the potential to be seen in multiple viewpoints and they can lead to many different kinds of tasks. So there's no need to stress next year in finding a perfect resource for every single class. Now I can find a truly excellent resource and use it to do more! Take Away #2: Don't be afraid to make a reading last multiple days. Not to try and pass the blame but I think my school's schedule last year had an impact on this practice. With only being able to see students every other day it made me feel that students didn't see the relationship from one class to another other than the theme. In the book I've been reading I learned about an approach called the Interactive Model for Interpretive Communication which would align well with my style of teaching. -Preparation phase- preview or setting background for text -Comprehension phase- skim text for gist or main idea -Interaction/Discussion phase- work in pairs/groups to discuss and use the text as the launching ground for a meaningful conversation -Creativity phase- present the information in a fun/original way -Extension phase- compare this text to another or revisit this text with new focal point Take Away #3: Students need to be prepared before the reading. This makes so much sense and is such a crucial step. Think about it. You don't pick your next Netflix series to binge by pressing a random button or having someone assign it to you. You get the background or get some preparation before jumping into it. Our students need this same kind of preparation before they start reading. My idea is to incorporate this into the warm up to set the stage for what we are going to do today. It doesn't have to be a huge production but just enough so that students don't have to interpret the text while also figuring out the context of where the article came from. The more pre-work that we can do the more work we can do with the text. By no means do I think that my first assignment is "complete" but I'm very happy with my work in progress. If you have any suggestions for assignment #2 please let me know! |