Low Risk Classrooms

5. Learning Environment: The teacher fosters and manages a safe and inclusive learning environment that takes into account: physical, emotional and intellectual well-being.

A foreign language classroom can seem like a high risk environment, students feel put on the spot and pressured, have anxiety about how they answer and whether they are correct or not. When your understanding and capability of communicating is questioned and then assessed in a high risk environment, well you would rather not participate and squeak by with a passing grade instead of taking risk and being wrong. Communication is so key to human beings, when this is compromised with high risk, anxiety and grades, no wonder students prefer not to talk or participate period in a foreign language classroom. In my own experiences I have preferred to not participate for fear of getting the wrong answer and humiliating myself in front of my peers.

Therefore I have made a point in my classroom to lower this sense of risk and anxiety through different activities which take a team effort to complete. One such activity is when I do warm-ups at the beginning of the period. Students will take a daily quiz on their own and then shift into the warm-up, working on it alone and silently until everyone is down testing, then I give them a few more minutes to work on the warm-up with their neighbors, checking their answers and working through difficult areas. I try to have all my warm-ups take up about 7-8 minutes, no longer than that, we then come together as a class and work through the problems they may have had. I use name cards and randomly draw students who will the write their answers on the white board and then draw another student who will “scribe” with the help of the class to make corrections. Throughout this process I encourage students to make corrections through inquiry based strategies, making them the ones who are correcting and affirming the correct answers. This lowers the risk for students because even if they do get the wrong answer everyone else helps work t the correct one. This I believe has lowered the anxiety in answering and participating for my students but also has helped them in learning the language better through whole class participation.

Another area where risk and anxiety run rampant is in translation. I for one hated being called on and made to translate a sentence completely on my own. To lower the risk and anxiety for this I again use my name cards, randomly drawing people to translate and having the whole class as well myself help the student work towards a viable translation of a sentence/passage. I ask pointed questions and encourage them to seek assistance from their peers through “phoning a friend” or breaking down the translation into manageable pieces and then putting it back together. This activity has helped the whole class see where there can be confusion and how to work through these confusing areas.

In addition to doing this for translation I also like to put students into groups (no more than 4-5 people) to translate a passage together, this also reduces risk and anxiety for students because instead of facing the whole class they are translating with a team of sorts. Everyone has be on the same page in order to move on so everyone is working together to translate even if it is someone else’s “turn”.

These different strategies I believe have culminated into creating a low risk, low anxiety classroom where student’s feel safe about making mistakes and therefore really learning.

image:http://www.uncp.edu/academics/colleges-schools-departments/departments/english-theatre-and-foreign-languages/foreign

Assessments

6. Assessment: The teacher uses multiple data elements (both formative and summative) to plan, inform and adjust instruction and evaluate student learning.

In my internship this past year I give my students daily quizzes which are a formative grade and then unit tests which are summative. The daily quizzes are a great indicator for me on where my students are in regards to concepts and learning the language, this also encourages them to spend at least 20 minutes a night working on Latin. The quizzes range from morphology type to translation, even a mix of either with grammar based questions.

One unit, demonstratives in particular I gave a quiz that used sample sentences with demonstratives and had students translate the sentences.

Rubric:

1.     Basic: Student recognizes the demonstrative but does not pair it with a noun correctly and mistranslates 3 or more words.

2.     Progressing: Student correctly pairs nouns and demonstratives but mistranslate 1 or 2 words and does not correctly render the Latin grammar.

3.     Proficient: Student recognizes the noun-demonstrative pairs, renders the Latin grammar correctly except for 1 or 2 words.

4.     Distinguished: Student correctly translates the sentence, renders the Latin grammar correctly and recognizes the noun-demonstrative pairs.

Analysis of Assessment: In this assessment I was looking for two English translations, the first sentences being: 

1. Hi canes modo latrant
2. Hic lectus est sordidus.

And two Latin translations of the other two English sentences:

1. I will throw this ball to Sextus.
2. These boys are happy.

 

Subject of Sentence
Score	# Students	%
Four	17	63.0%
Three	7	25.9%
Two	3	11.1%
One	0	0.0%
total	27

 

The first two and the last sentence tended to be pretty easy for students and about 63% of the class correctly translated these three sentences, as shown in the graph and table above, all of whom earned 4’s (Rubric) on these three sentences, meaning they could identify the demonstrative-noun pairs, render the Latin grammar correctly and translate correctly. For example, all of these students had similar translations for the first sentence, “These dogs only bark” or “These dogs are only barking”. Both translations maintain the grammar, the noun-demonstrative pair and correct translation of the Latin.

 

Direct Object of Sentence
Score	# Students	%
Four	2	7.4%
Three	20	74.1%
Two	3	11.1%
One	2	7.4%
total	27

 

Yet 93% got a 3 or less (Rubric) on the first English to Latin sentence as expressed in the graph and table above. I was expecting these sort of numbers since that sentence in particular is difficult in part to being English and the students had to translate into Latin. The other spot of difficulty was in using the correct form of hic, haec, hoc. What these results show me is that students recognize and understand when a demonstrative is paired with a noun in the nominative case as well as its function in the sentence but have more difficulty translating and using the correct demonstrative when it is not in the nominative case and therefore the subject.

Those 93% also used the wrong gender and/or the wrong case. Students had seen and used the nominative/masculine case of the demonstrative in previous readings/lessons yet had not used the feminine demonstrative in the accusative case and would therefore try to pair “ball” or “pilam” which is a feminine word with a masculine demonstrative form in the nominative case. They would also correctly render “pilam” in the accusative case because it is the direct object in the sentence but would not make the demonstrative agree with the noun in case/number/and gender. This would result in a 3: “Student recognizes the noun-demonstrative pairs, renders the Latin grammar correctly except for 1 or 2 words”, instead of a 4 (Rubric) for this particular sentence. What this evidence shows me is that students recognize the nominative masculine forms of hic, haec, hoc but have not connected the fact that the demonstrative declines like an adjective and therefore needs to agree to the noun it is paired like a noun-adjective pair.

The remaining 37% from the original 63% ended up with 2s or 3s due to not translating correctly or not correctly rendering the Latin in grammar and vocabulary, such as using the wrong tense for the verbs, mixing up the singularity or plurality of words and/or missing the cases/functions in the sentences. One student who received mostly twos on her sentences did so because she did not render the grammar correctly, she translated the vocab but not the grammar or the demonstrative, like in the first sentence she put down “This dog was only barking”. Here the student did not correctly render the number of both the noun-demonstrative pair or the verb nor did she use the correct tense for the verb hence why she received a 2 (Rubric). A mistranslation such as this shows me how the students struggle with recognizing the singularity/plurality in the Latin and English and have to make the corresponding words agree.

The next steps for the whole class would be to using as many different forms as possible in sample sentences, both English to Latin and Latin to English so that everyone can have practice with seeing a demonstrative in a different case and function with a corresponding noun. To encourage the whole class to become more familiar with other forms of the demonstrative I will use more example sentences where the demonstrative is not used with the subject nor only in masculine forms. I use both Latin and English sentences to give them more practice with not only forming the grammatically correct demonstratives but also for each case/function in the sample sentences.

image:http://spanish-ab-initio.blogspot.com/p/language-ab-initio.html

Differentiation in the Classroom

3. Differentiation: The teacher acquires and uses specific knowledge about students’ cultural, individual intellectual and social development and uses that knowledge to adjust practice by employing strategies that advance student learning.

For this Criteria I am going to pull one example from my Latin 1 students, I have a number of students with either 504 Plans or IEP’s and have an array of accommodations. One student in particular has dyslexia and dysgraphia and so has a hard time with spelling and reading text. I and my mentor teacher have come up with a variety of strategies to help this student succeed in Latin.

For starters was how to help the student read the passages every week, the solution came in the form of audio books. My mentor teacher started recording himself reading the chapters and sending these chapters to the student before the week they were due. With this sort of tool the student was able to hear the correct pronunciation and learn how to read the Latin in the passage. This definitely improved her reading and comprehension of the text. In addition to doing audio books, I started giving passage based quizzes/tests to the student orally. This also improved the students scores and comprehension of the subject.

Another way in which I have helped the student in working with her circumstances was to revise the quizzes, formatting them to be easier to read.

As shown above this is a quiz that I would have given to all students but spaced out more and broken up into more manageable pieces. Instead of one big paragraph I broke the passage up by sentences and made the text larger, as well as put in a lot more space. I or my mentor teacher would take the student out into the hallway so that we could read the quiz to her, letting her hear the passage and then working through the translation on her own. We would repeat the sentences or phrases when needed and she would write notes down for herself.

Inside the classroom when we do group activities I try to place this student with other students who have clear speaking voices and can be heard easily, this also helps the student further in pronunciation and understanding the flow of the language.

This is a great example of differentiation in the classroom because having dyslexia and/or dysgraphia makes language difficult for anyone especially a written language like Latin. yet the really beautiful thing about Latin is how phonetic it is and therefore easily understood orally. With these new tools on differentiating my instruction and assessment strategies I believe I can build up more ways to assist students with situation like this student or others who may need accommodations in the classroom.

image:http://bie.org/images/uploads/objects/blog_differentiated_instruction.png

Feedback on Evaluative Questions

2. Instruction – The teacher uses research-based instructional practices to meet the needs of all students.

• 2.1 Using Questioning and Discussion Techniques

Most of the teacher’s questions are of high quality. Adequate time is provided for students to respond.

• 2.2 Engaging Students in Learning

Most activities and assignments are appropriate to students, and almost all students are cognitively engaged in exploring content.

• 2.3 Reflecting on Teaching

Teacher makes an accurate assessment of a lesson’s effectiveness and the extent to which it achieved its instructional outcomes and can cite general references to support the judgment.

I have mentioned previously about the socratic seminars I have been doing in my Latin 2 classes on history and mythology. A few weeks ago we did a short discussion on Augustus and his policies that were enacted during his reign. To prepare for this brief discussion I had students write one evaluative questions as well finish the comprehension questions from the reading they were assigned on Augustus. I warned students that if they did not write a question to be discussed then they would not get full credit and would have to take minutes/notes on the discussion. I had my students at the end of the period turn their questions into me for me to look over and grade. I only had about 3-4 students who did not do the questions in both of my Latin 2 periods.

The discussions overall were great and students were even more comfortable voicing their opinions since this was nothing new for them. With two other seminars behind them my students were capable of formulating great evaluative questions and were making modern day connections without prompting. I did not need to prompt discussion much which was great to see my students take that step towards self prompting.

When I was going through the questions, the evaluative questions I was looking for a few things, a true evaluative question, whether it was original and whether it would encourage discussion. A number of questions were similar but some students came up with some really good questions, making observations and connections I had not thought about. I was careful about the feedback I gave, focusing on 1 or 2 good points but then in turn asking a question of my own that would encourage my student to delve deeper into the question they had originally asked. Some students who were not present for the seminar or who did not write their questions could make up the assignment for full points as long as they did three things:

1. Finished answering the comprehension questions on Augustus
2. Wrote one evaluative question about Augustus
3. Answered their own question fully

This seemed the best solution to help those students who were not present for the seminar but could still participate in way. It also encouraged those students who didn’t do the assignment originally to get it done. After receiving this flood of questions and responses I got to see even more from my students and their thought processes. I had more material from these to give more in depth feedback and ask more pointed questions.

?????????????

Now looking at standard 2 and the sub-standards of it I would say that this activity definitely fit all three sub-categories, I asked questions, helping direct discussion but maintain a facilitator type position. I made sure to encourage all students to do the assignment and move towards higher thinking questions. I also returned these assignments with not only a grade but also some feedback/question that would encourage even more thought process on the students end. I look forward to using these seminar style discussions even more in the future. I wanted to incorporate more feedback in my grading, especially with the seminar questions and after reading more about how to use feedback from my EDU class this quarter I was able to glean some very helpful tips. Such as asking the student a question and pointing out some good things as well as ask for more development.

image:http://archive.constantcontact.com/fs042/1101604644883/archive/1101866352165.html

Socratic Seminar on Roman History

4. Content Knowledge – The teacher uses content area knowledge, learning standards, appropriate pedagogy and resources to design and deliver curricula and instruction to impact student learning.

I was talking with a History teacher about the Socratic Seminar he had recently done in one of classes and how successful it was. Well, sure Socratic Seminars could be very successful if students do the right preparation and have enough prior knowledge to aid in the student led discussion. This conversation played over and over again in my head as I prepared for this last for my different Latin classes. I eventually had an epiphany about my Latin 2 class. We had just read and answered comprehensive questions on The Roman Republic, Cicero and Caesar. What perfect topics to have a Socratic Seminar on!

So I started designing scaffold type questions to help students to start thinking about the major themes that bridged the Republic, Cicero, and Caesar as well as making modern day connections. I found this a difficult task but also rewarding when I was able to create questions did exactly this. This was the first time Socratic Seminar was used in this Latin classroom and I was a little nervous about whether students would be prepared for the seminar. This is always a worry for any teacher who introduces a strategy like this I think. Yet this also allowed me to be pleasantly surprised during the seminar.

Yes some students came in with unprepared questions but they still participated in the discussion, especially when I asked students to write down any other questions that cropped up throughout their discussions. The other plus was that I kept these discussion groups no larger than 6 students, the smallest being 4. I also refrained from interjecting and answering any questions that were based on their discussions. I instead circled around the different groups answering logistical questions and clarifying any confusion, yet when I saw the discussion lagging I would ask if they though about a certain topic from a different perspective. I did not have to do this often and I was extremely pleased by this. Students were invested and said some very thought provoking things (whose support was more important? The senate or the people or the army?). They also were unfazed when I would walk up to their groups, they would continue talking and making great connections, some even went on tangents that were connected but they didn’t feel constricted by the discussion which I was excited to hear.

When the groups had discussed all of their questions I had each group choose their favorite question they discussed and give that question to another group to discuss, this allowed the students to think from another perspective and deepen their discussion. After this I had students come forward and write up any question that came from the end of their discussions. We would then come together as a class and tackled these questions. The question that came up that made excited was one student asking what does power mean. I then asked the whole class to define what power meant to the Roman Republic in comparison to what it means today. Students then launched into modern day figures who exhibited these definitions of power, connecting ancient figures of power and influence (e.g. Caesar, Pompey, Sulla, etc.) and current figures of power and influence (e.g. Oprah, Trump, Stalin, etc.).

By the end of the period students had thoroughly discussed this aspect of Roman History and were able to make modern day connections. I was astonished how well this Socratic Seminar turned out. This activity was just a random hopeful strategy for students to have an avenue to better understand Roman history and important figures from the Roman Republic Period. I also gave students a self-assessment questionnaire, it asked how they thought they did and how the discussion went as well as gave them space to write further comments about what they thought about the whole activity. I received great feedback, some students had a similar reaction to me, they were surprised by how much they enjoyed the whole seminar, others gave some great suggestions for the next one. I will definitely be taking these into consideration for the next Seminar.

image: http://d4nations.com/webpubl/articles/socratic-circles.html

My First True Experience in a Latin Classroom

I have posted a lot of things on this blog, most having to do with EDU classes I have taken and relating these assignments to my understanding of what an educator looks like. Yet I have not written much on actual experience I have had inside the classroom, this mostly due to how my program is set up and when I actually do step into the classroom. This past quarter has given me that opportunity. Talking about hypothetical and philosophical ideas is all well and good, but being able to incorporate some of these ideas inside of a classroom is whole different ball game so to speak. So here is a little self-reflection on my experience so far in a Latin classroom.

I am at a large public high school in Seattle, where I have a lot of diversity in regards to ethnicity, ELLs, learning ranges and specifically language experience. I work with a seasoned Latin teacher who is very helpful and takes the role of mentor teacher seriously. My first days in the classroom were nerve-racking and exciting. With the sort of program I am in, undergrad, I only am in the classroom once a week. So I took longer to learn my students names, and these were only a third of my mentor teachers students, he teaches levels 1-AP, and made it more difficult for me build individual relationships with the students. Yet I have come to recognize a number of students by different facets of their persons. I had not realized how different my first understanding of what the classroom is like to how it really is. And for those of you out there who are teachers pardon my naïveté for what a high classroom looks like, please comment with anecdotes and advice, it would be much appreciated. I mean I went to a traditional public high school as well as a private one, both very different environments, yet these experiences were form the students perspective, not an educators. I also had not realized how important parents are to my classroom and to the learning environment of my students. For you parents out there with current or past high school students I would love to hear anecdotes and wishes from you as well.

What I want to say in reflection to these last 10+ weeks is that I realized that I knew absolutely nothing about the classroom but I also have learned a lot through my recent training. Classroom management is key aspect in the classroom. This is something that gets covered in some programs, mine included, yet I had not realized how essential and relevant such a topic would be to the classroom. I figured, go over rules and regulations in the first couple weeks, set up some routines and we’re good. Ya…no. Classroom management is still a current aspect of the classroom that I and my mentor teacher are still engaging in with our students, well past those first couple weeks, and I am going take a guess and say it something that I will still be working on well into the school year. Those little routines that help a class run smoothly, how you pass paper around the class, when should you be coming in for quiz re-takes and tutoring, where extra handouts are kept, using the course log; all of these little things really set the tone for the class and the year. This is something I did not give due credit to. I feel my program does an excellent job in bringing this concept forward and opening dialogue about but I still feel ill-prepared for my first year of teaching. I will definitely be supplementing this with videos and senior teacher advice (please comment) on how to to start those first few days at the beginning of the year to help set the tone for the rest of the year.

Aside from the classroom management aspect I have also been further encouraged by my experience of how much I want to be a teacher and how this job further excites me. I look forward to my first year and I hope I have the same feeling in 10 years. I have read the statistics about the number of teachers who quit or retire well before making a life long career out of it. I don’t want to end up there. Looking at my experience so far I don’t feel it will be a problem, but I have barely scratched the surface. I have seen that light bulb moment, that moment that every teacher is holding out for, I have also seen the slow decline of enthusiasm and interest, the slow death of a students interest and grade. Yet I see both of these instances as learning opportunities and ways to be another perspective for these students to see from. These two very different students have forced me come up with new ways to present material, to diversify the content and how it is presented, as well as to get to know the student on a personal level. I definitely struggle with doing this and have not necessarily fixed anything completely by I have made that step and hope to finish through.

So this post is just a brief idea as to where I am at currently in my program and what I have experienced so far in the classroom. Thank you to my program professors and mentor teachers, to my past teachers and to you.

image:http://www.dl.ket.org/latin1/review/classroom/class.htm

Writing Workshops in a Latin Classroom

Would the writing workshop approach work in your discipline? How might you organize a workshop?

Incorporating other disciplines into ones subject area is difficult, not necessarily in relation but giving adequate time that other subject to strengthens students skills and knowledge (Content Area-Writing; Daniels, Zemelman, Steineke). Writing is an essential aspect of language, especially Latin, yet this writing happens in Latin, not English. So for my classroom I would have to be deliberate in how I go about doing a writing workshop. I have a few ideas as to what sort of projects we could do but the hard part would be to encourage strong writing while at the same time relating it to my content-area.

One possible project would be writing a response to one of the Pliny the Younger’s letters. This would be great practice for students to first translate the letter and understand what is being said. I would give instruction on how to write a formal letter to a friend. The response would be in english but students would have to follow the typical format for letter writing. I would have them take this a step further and have them delve into what is happening in the letter or response. Perhaps start research on the Mt. Vesuvius eruption, what sort of place Pompeii was, what a historian might write about about this incident. I see a lot of other projects stemming form this reading and singular workshop on writing letters. I would follow this day up with another letter writing workshop but instead of letters between friends, a business letter. Possibly one between senators. I would expect my students to use their prior knowledge they have, from pervious lectures, on Roman elite society and the senatorial politics.

Another possible writing workshop I could do would be on an ancient artifact, a research paper that could be published in an archeology journal. I would first start the students by letting them choose an artifact ( vessels, clothing, coins, etc) and then have them research the background of that particular artifact. This would be a workshop that extended beyond a day or two, probably a final project/paper. I would create deadline benchmarks for students, when to have the background info by, when to have your argument for the usage of the artifact by whom, a thesis and intro, primary and secondary sources, a rough draft and then a final draft.

Writing workshops can be daunting but starting with singular projects, taking a day or two to complete is easier to swallow and will not interfere too much with current lesson plans. I find this somewhat exciting and I look forward to using these same ideas in my classroom.

image:http://quemdixerechaos.com/2012/12/04/translatingplinypt4/

Day 1 of Reading Latin for Comprehension Lesson Plan

Here is a potential reading and writing lesson plan for chapter 1 in Ecce Romani I

Lesson Plan reading and writing

image:http://www.amazon.com/ROMANI-LEVEL-STUDENT-EDITION-HARDCOVER/dp/0131163701

Writing Crisis in our School Systems?

Is there a writing crisis in this country and how might you use a strategy or two to get students to write to learn?

What many people talk about in the writing crisis are how students are not writing like they are, or used to. There is a disconnect between current writing styles and what are being taught or are expected to be taught in schools. Students are not interested in the writing done in class because it is not related to the writing they are doing outside of class (Content-Area Writing; Daniels, Zemelman, Steineke). Students are writing constantly, blogging, texting, journaling, social media (Facebook, twitter, etc.), even fictional writing on different sites. Students are writing, and many are writing well, just not in the context of classroom writing. This is where the crisis lies. I remember a comment my AP Language and Composition teacher in high school made on the first day of class, “I do not want to receive an email in ‘text language’ from you [the class] or your parents.” She then proceeded to show us an email from a previous student’s parent which was written in text message format. The class laughed and we moved on our merry way of “writing by the law” in her classroom. Don’t get me wrong, I enjoyed this class and the teacher but I cannot help but think about how pertinent text messages are to any other prose we read in the class. Writing is writing, whether it be classical prose, poems, novels or even a message of 140 character limit (twitter).

Another aspect of this writing crisis is preparing strong writers for the work force, students will not find interest in these in class writing exercises and therefore not develop the strong skills to write a memo, or an e-mail, or even a business letter. All of these skills are needed in the work force but if students are not getting the interested in the usage of these skills then they will not practice them in their everyday writing let alone in class.

In my area of teaching, the classics, specifically Latin. I can fall into this trap of requiring students to write poetic epics like Homer or Vergil, or write prose in a similar fashion to that of Caesar or Cicero. Yet knowing how to summarize an entire book from the Aeneid in 140 characters covering all the key points is just as difficult. Helping students develop these skills in writing, and preparing them for the future, can be done in the context of a text message or Facebook post. Limited word count is just as important as content of the writing. I have heard, quality over quantity many times in my writing career. Why cannot this quality be in less than 500 words?

Some strategies I might implement in my Latin classroom would be: Fictional dialogue between the gods or goddesses, this would be based off of reading on particular deities and a students prior knowledge. What this dialogue could tell me is where the student was influence in terms of the gods and goddesses personalities (were they heavily influenced by Ovid or other contemporaries) and how well did they get the personalities of these characters across, was the dialogue clear in who was speaking, what type of dialogue took place, etc. Other ways to help students build these skills could be in a writing project that slowly builds throughout the year, or morphs with new material. I may have them write a fictional piece but then research the main ideas they address in the writing, or even have them write a persuasive paper on a particular aspect from Roman history, like the treatment of women, how slavery worked or even the laws of inheritance. I can see a lot of aspects where I can incorporate different styles of writing into my Classical classroom.

image http://forums.shoryuken.com/discussion/155340/umvc3-forum-off-topic-thread-you-down-with-ott/p262

Struggling Readers and Strategies to help them Succeed

How do secondary students struggle with content area reading and how might you help them with a reading strategy or two?

Many struggling readers do not see a problem until it has been discussed in depth and brought into focus (Subject Matters Daniels, Zemelman, p. 278). These students only see words and are trying to read a language at the basic level, they are not jumping to context, or comprehension, all they are trying to accomplishment here is to get the words out. This is one of the first problems. Another being that after this “picture” has been constructed they need to go back through the reading and determine what information is important and what is not in order to answer the question. For some students they are still working through the first level of reading, reading for sound and correct pronunciation, not for content.

Some ways to help these students with getting to that point would be to build a relationship with your student and care about their reading, no matter the level. Using a think-aloud strategy, breaking down the passage into smaller sections and after every section discussing what was happening up to that point, what you know, what you want to know and what do you think will happen. Another helpful strategy for these students would be to have them draw out the situation, act it out, argue through it. Give them other tools to analyze the reading so they can understand it better at a deeper level.

All of these ideas will work across different areas of content in reading and should be considered for all current and future teachers. I hope to implement these same ideas in my Latin classroom.

image:http://freeology.com/reading/reading-strategies-posters/