Celebrating the Path in 2017

It’s been a year of growth for the Path 2 Proficiency community: more than a dozen new teachers joined as authors and readership almost doubled, but most importantly the reflections and conversations grew well beyond this site. This blog doesn’t exist to promote anyone or anything. This blog doesn’t exist to showcase the perfect teacher. This blog doesn’t exist to provide all the answers. Instead, this blog allows regular educators like Michele, Jaime, Rebecca, John, Matt, Sharon, Tim, Christi, Maris, Paul, Juan Carlos, Holly, Rose, Amanda, Valerie, Betsy, Alyssa, Lisa and Meredith to share their reflections about what is working in their worlds, what failed, and how they plan on helping their students further their own path to proficiency. If you are a reader of this site, please take a moment to thank these brave teachers for sharing their reflections in such a public format. It’s because of them that we all become better educators. Of course with growth comes growing pains and some parts of our site are currently not functioning properly but that should all get cleaned up in January along with some other exciting updates.

Since all of our posts are very personal reflections some posts hit nerves with readers more than others. Here are the most-read posts of each month in 2017. They just might inspire your own reflections as you start the new year.

January 2017:

Forget about your goals this year!

February 2017:

Food for thought: Feeding proficiency with effective feedback

March 2017:

Clashing the Personalities in the Target Language

April 2017:

Enough is as good as a feast.

May 2017:

Let your students lead the way

June 2017:

Proficiency Has Made Me A Better Teacher

July 2017:

Transitioning from a Traditional PK-12 World Language Program to an Oral Proficiency-based Program

August 2017:

Becoming a better language advocate

September 2017:

Can It Wait?

October 2017:

When I’m Not There: Sick Days and Proficiency

November 2017:

Allowing retakes: how well is your parachute packed?

December 2018:

Interpersonal: are they talking with each other or at each other?

 

 

 

In The Weeds

I wanted to write an encouraging, end of semester blog what would linger over the holiday and inspire us to come back raring to go in January.  Unfortunately, I have to tell you, I’ve been in the weeds this semester. I felt like that 80s movie with Rick Moranis, Honey I shrunk the kids. You know, the one where the kids get lost in the backyard and have to make their way back to the house but everything is an obstacle—the blade of grass, the ladybug, the beetle carcass, the aluminum can, the water sprinkler. Our familiar world and things we never give a second thought become overwhelming hurdles that seem so daunting we feel we will never reach home. That is how I felt this semester.

Wasn’t I just being super cheesy and telling everyone how much I love back to school???!!  Yes, Yes, I did write my previous post about my joy of back to school, and how it is the most wonderful time of the year. About how much I love it—I really do!  And I meant it. I really did. Then.

But like the shine on a new toy, the excitement of a new school year quickly wore off and I was thrown, unprepared, into the weeds. And I have been fighting my way back to that joy the whole semester. But the obstacles kept getting in my way. The lesson plans. The CI. The winding path to proficiency. The new reading initiative. The new writing initiative. The new history prep I’ve never taught before. The club meetings. The observations. The sporting events. The service projects. The software trainings. We do them every year. However, for some reason, this year, they seemed so much more taxing, so much more demanding. I couldn’t find my way home to the joy of teaching, to the joy of helping young people build their language proficiency. I had let all the myriad and sundry aspects of this job block my view of the essential.

The Fatal Mistake

I had done what I always warn others not to do; I had allowed myself to get bogged down in the weeds and secluded myself in my misery. I had forgotten that one of the best things about this profession is the colleagues. Colleagues who have been in our shoes and walked our path.  Colleagues with wisdom born of hard work and experience. Colleagues who inspire us with their creativity and enthusiasm. Colleagues who have also spent their own time in the weeds but fought their way back home, to be better and stronger because of the obstacles they have overcome.

The Path Home

I needed to find that path home. No matter how hard I tried, I was lost in the forest and felt like all my normal coping methods, all my usual tactics had been eaten by the birds. And then, suddenly, it was already November. Four months had flown by and I’d barely had time to register it because I was so caught up in the weeds.  But you know what November means: ACTFL. I went, well, because there really was no choice — a November without a conference is unthinkable!  And, of course, it was just the remedy I needed to help me find my way back. Going to a professional conference IS coming home. That safe haven where my needs are met and everyone welcomes me and accepts me. From the stimulating sessions to the collaborative conversations with dear and respected colleagues, I starting finding the breadcrumbs that led back to the joy of teaching

As I talked with peers from across the U.S., I was reminded of what really matters. I had lost sight of the destination—our students and their growth. As I listened to colleagues share best practices, engaging techniques and their own stories of the path to proficiency, I remembered why I had set out on the path in the beginning—to find a way to engage and challenge students on their own journey to language discovery and proficiency. I remembered that each student is also on his own path and will reach the end in his own time—and it was up to me to walk beside them as their guide—not to stress them and me with all the extra demands. I remembered that “enough is as good as a feast” and that as long as we were moving forward on the path, that was what mattered. I remembered that the time I take to give quality feedback is worth it. I remembered to focus on the essential and let everything else just fall into place on its own. I also realized that I am not alone and that we all face these times of trial when we can’t find the path home because we’re blinded by all the superfluous demands of this job.

The next time I start to feel abandoned in the forest and begin to panic that my breadcrumbs are gone, I will remember that I’m not alone. I have never been alone on this path, even if I sometimes forget that just ahead or just behind, are colleagues who share my joys and frustrations. Those ahead of me have left breadcrumbs for me to follow and I will leave breadcrumbs for those who come behind me. That’s how this profession works. We are all on a path that winds up and down and around many times as it leads us to success.  Without each other, we really would be lost in the weeds.

Image Credit: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Weeds_in_Waterloo,_Ontario.jpg 

Highlight Reel Or Highlight Real?

Whew. I’m tired just thinking of all that went into this semester, and I’m not actually sure how it all got done. Beyond just thinking, I find that reflection, true, intentional, pointed reflection, is critical, and as tiring as anything else. Coming off of ACTFL weekend recently and looking into various PD endeavors for the spring, I can’t help but juxtapose our highlight reels and how we highlight real.

Teachers attend sessions, read blogs, send tweets, listen to podcasts, and more, from the World Language Education all-stars we’ve come to know and love. Their strategies are proven, their classrooms warm, their student results impressive — but, how does that make us feel about ourselves? For me, not always awesome. I am not jumping to conclusions; psh, come on. I’m pogo sticking, high jumping, catapulting myself towards conclusions, and internalizing the verdict that 1.) they’re awesome, and 2.) I am not awesome.

Truth time: they are awesome. But also, we all are in our own, different way(s). But being awesome and expecting to bring your A-game every single day isn’t sustainable, for them, for us, for students, period. Proficiency has made me a better teacher, and a better understander of my students – understanding proficiency versus performance has truly helped me see that there is an ebb and flow to language, especially production, and that we can’t all be leveling-up all the time. If we maxed out at the gym lifting newer and heavier weights every single time, our muscles wouldn’t have a chance to rest. So, why do we expect it from kids, or from ourselves? We sometimes expect them to bring their very best every single day, or, we see others’ tremendous contributions to our field and assume that they are like that every single day. No one is because no one is meant to be, and that’s OK.

If you grew up in Illinois as I did, you had three baseball fan worlds to choose from: the White Sox, the Cardinals, or the Cubs. If you know the Cubs, you know that winning the 2016 World Series was a BIG DEAL. My father, 74, never in a million years (or 108!) thought he’d see it in his lifetime; he did, and it was pretty special. But even in their worst years, Cubs fans have always looked forward – “Next season, it’s going to be their year! I’m telling you, next season!” If we take that to the micro level of our classrooms after our worst days, pushing ourselves towards positivity and the growth process, we can be mini Cubs fans: “Tomorrow! Tomorrow is my day, I guarantee it.” In education, if not for process and optimism, what else is there? We cannot watch other classrooms’ clips, photos, project results, etc., and feel insecure. “Hmmm, I should do that…” is much more workable than, “I didn’t think of that because I’m insufficient,” the latter being a very easy conclusion to jump to. Our work is innately very personal; but, it’s important to be choosy as to which pieces we attach to our identity or not. The voice that speaks the loudest about ourselves is usually our own – we need to be kind.

Don’t get me wrong – people blog, post, tweet, and present on aspects of their teaching that are successful really well because they’re excited to share. Other teachers learn a lot from them, and it’s overall positive. That doesn’t mean that those people don’t have that one class (or several!) that can’t seem to keep X, Y, and Z together, or that parent who sends 70,000 e-mails, or the disrespectful outburst that cut to the core, the daily struggles, etc.; kids are kids, and those things happen to everyone everywhere, to one degree or another. But, it does us no good to see someone else’s highlight reel and compare it to our bloopers — in this crazy career of ours, we are in it together. I have to monitor myself on this in a big way, or else it’s a hop, skip, and jump to feeling like I’m not enough – my brain has been trained, finally, to feel the twinge of inferiority and pause, “Stop. You’re comparing apples and oranges.” Once we know better, we do better, end of story.

When we teach toward proficiency, we teach students the expectations that are appropriate for their level, the task, and where they are in their language acquisition journey. It isn’t about “include five adverbs, six adjectives, all forms of ‘to be’,” and so on. True proficiency is about “do __ task at __ level;” function before form; can-do statement over can-memorize structure. We take so much into consideration, and context is everything. When it comes to ourselves, I think we are far too harsh, and many of the same philosophies apply. Caring for ourselves and for each other is key. Using the new ACTFL Can-Do statements to craft some common assessments or leveled expectations? Divide the work! Taking materials you already have (perhaps you’re text-less) and merging mindsets? Start with one unit and use it as a model. I’ve been on teams where we wanted to revamp curriculum, and decided to start with Spanish 1, Unit 1, so that we’d start the year off a.) aligned, and b.) fresh. We ordered a bunch of pizza and basically had an all-day lock-in of writing, sharing ideas, and focusing. Once we had Unit 1 as the model, with simple Can-Dos and a MUCH more pared-down vocabulary selection, everything was task-based, we then could divide the work on future units; the vision (Unit 1) was there. Everyone wins! The students benefited, our relationships were strengthened, and no one or two people were burdened with the new endeavor (teaching toward proficiency).

I think it’s healthy to have a highlight reel, but we mustn’t be afraid to highlight what’s real — in the end, it brings us together and, in classroom teaching in 2017, I’d venture to say that we benefit from unity more than ever.

***

(The gallery of images above is from my own classroom that I think lend themselves to highlight reel. Sure, they were joyful moments that actually happened, so to a degree they do highlight the [momentary] real, but they are not a constant, and that’s OK.)

 

Interpersonal: are they talking with each other or at each other?

I think that most world language teachers will agree with me that interpersonal assessments (assessments on which two or more students interact with each other) are very hard to get right, but they are arguably the most important. Most of us have learned that there has to be some type of problem for the students to solve; otherwise, the students spit information at each other without actually having to interact. However, they also need to be prompts that allow/require both (or more) students to communicate.

Twice in my very short career (and I am sure this number will increase), I have had to have the students redo an interpersonal assessment because my prompt just did not fit the bill. This week, I gave the students an interpersonal assessment that I thought was going to be amazing, and it totally flopped…and it was totally my fault. We all make mistakes, right?

What went wrong?

So, the students did an interpretive reading on tapas in Spain, and we have been working with that material for a while. On the original interpersonal assessment that I developed, the students were given a hotel name and a tapas bar, and they were leaving from the same place; they had to discuss how long it would take, how they would get there, what metro line they would take, what tapas they wanted to eat, and they only had a certain amount of euros, so they had to make sure that they did not overspend. The problem was that one student was pretty much saying everything because my prompt wasn’t interpersonal enough. One person could easily just agree, state the tapa he/she/they wanted and be done with it.

How did I remedy this?

Unfortunately, I did not realize how bad my prompt was until after one of my classes had already taken the assessment. But I was not willing to assess students who only said two sentences because the teacher (that’s me!) gave them a terrible prompt. Surprisingly, the students were not mad at me when I made them redo it with the new prompt. They were actually happy about it. Weirdos (just kidding. I love them).

To fix the prompt, each student had a different hotel. This made the world of difference because they had to listen to each other, and they each had different information to share. If they decided that they were going to go “tapa-ing” at 8 PM, then they had to make sure that they arrived there at the same time. They pulled up Google Maps and were able to figure out the fastest route from their individual hotels to the restaurant. Once they did that, they needed to decide what time they, personally, were going to leave to get there on time. For example, if the metro said it would take 18 minutes, then they had to leave at 7:42 to get there for 8:00. Here is the link to the assessment if you want to take a gander at the prompt.

The results

The results have been amazing so far. Students are asking each other clarifying questions and negotiating meaning in their videos. In the first prompt, there was really no reason for them to clarify anything. However, once they were leaving from different places, they had to make sure they would get there on time at the same time. At first, I worried that the prompt would be too hard, but it wasn’t. They did such a great job communicating with each other. If we are really focusing on our students’ ability to communicate as opposed to their ability to speak perfectly, then our students can accomplish tasks like these without being discouraged by a bad grade because of their language accuracy.

I am very happy with this assessment, but I would love to improve it, so feedback would be awesome!

This post first appeared on October 24, 2017 on the “Working Toward Proficiency” blog. http://workingtowardproficiency.blogspot.com/2017/10/ 

When the Tail Wags the Dog, or How a Standards-Based Rubric May Make Me a More Effective Teacher

How do we convince students to stretch beyond their comfort zone when writing and speaking in the target language? I believe that teachers have to educate students about proficiency, both on a course level and the task level, so that they are invested in our collective work. Truly, we have a mighty task before us as we lead students on this journey. A standards-based rubric can be a powerful tool for undertaking this work.

This year our department has a new standards-based presentational rubric that a group of us wrote over the summer to help guide our work on specific tasks. We spent four intense days at the Massachusetts Foreign Language Association’s Proficiency Academy with Thomas Sauer and Greg Duncan, and each afternoon (and some evenings after dinner…and some mornings before breakfast…) we gathered to peruse existing rubrics and think about how to craft our own. Our resulting “patchwork” product is most definitely imperfect and a work in progress, but having one common rubric forces us to hash out our questions and disagreements collectively, which has great value. I can talk to a middle school Mandarin colleague just as well as a high school French colleague as we try to decide what we mean, exactly, by “strings of sentences” or “highly practiced words” (oh, and the ACTFL glossary helps too). My dream is that by the end of this year, our department will have developed its own lexicon, where we define all the terms in our rubric with examples in English.

Break in Your Rubric Like a Pair of New Jeans

A new rubric is like a new pair of jeans – you have to break it in to get comfortable. Throughout the first grading quarter this year, I dreaded every presentational assessment because I knew I’d have to face our stiff, unfamiliar rubric again and figure out how to make it fit me. Nothing was as cozy as my old rubric from Terrill & Clementi’s The Keys to Planning for Learning! Working with colleagues who shared my struggle made this work easier, and gave me many new insights into proficiency. At my middle school, teachers of four different world languages spent time rating ELL samples and comparing rubric scores so that we could debate and share our areas of uncertainty. As a result, we’ve got a running list of unanswered questions and an emerging glossary of terms to push our work forward. I also brought work samples and our rubric to my regional middle school French PLC so that I could hear what colleagues from other districts had to say about my students work, too. As a result, we are now piloting a different layout of our rubric to make it more comprehensible to middle schoolers.

Expose the Gaps in Your Instruction & Assessments

A new rubric may also expose some areas where there are gaps in instruction. Our new rubric mentions posing questions in the “text type” category for Novice High and beyond, which presented me with a challenge. Very few of the prompts that I was using gave students the opportunity to ask questions in their writing. To be perfectly honest, my first reaction to this change was a feeling of annoyance. Here’s a brief summary of the internal monolog running through my head, so that you can see what I mean.

Me, looking at the draft rubric: “Why are we including questions as part of text type? Isn’t that the rubric dictating instruction? Well, I guess I know why…asking questions is a hallmark of Intermediate proficiency. But I rarely have my students include questions in their writing. And now we’re saying that can’t even reach Novice High unless they can do that?!”

Me, thinking again: “Ooooh…maybe I need to change my presentational scenarios so that students need to include questions as part of the task. Then the door is open for those who can do it, and they can reach Novice High.”

Me, a few months into this school year: “I really need to give my students more practice with asking original questions. That’s the only way they’re going to start asking non-memorized questions in their presentational work.”

So although I was initially a bit miffed that our rubric was the “tail wagging the dog,” it actually got me to improve my instruction so that I can bring students along the path to proficiency. By committing to a new rubric, we were raising the stakes significantly for ourselves and our students. Having a standards-based rubric obligates teachers to ensure that we are providing students with all the tools they need to “level up.” We have to write prompts that let them shine: that push them to show what they know and can do in the language on many fronts: specifically, comprehensibilityvocabulary, text type, and cultural awareness. It’s the tail wagging the dog, but in a good way: the rubric nudges us toward writing assessments that closely match the standards outlined in the rubric, and ensure that we’re faithful to ACTFL proficiency levels. And when we write assessments that match the standards, our students stretch to match those standards and grow their language proficiency.

To Finish: A Thrilling Plot Twist!

To really put some fire in our bellies, our department head decided that on top of piloting a new rubric we’d also move to standards-based grading this school year. This means that meeting the course’s proficiency target will result in a grade of B, and only exceeding the target will earn an A. In the affluent, highly successful district where I teach, we all felt some butterflies in our stomachs about this transition. Our students want As! Our parents want As! And here we were, ready to mostly offer them Bs, Bs, and more Bs. Here is a rough summary of our (ongoing) debate on this matter in our department:

Ultimately, I was won over by the argument that a B for meeting the target ensures that most students will stretch their skills in language class. What else could we possibly want for our students?  My students received their first report cards of the school year just over a week ago. While only 2% earned Cs in French, just 26% received As. The vast majority of students (72%) met the target and therefore earned Bs of various flavors. I can say with confidence that most of these students are both unsurprised by their grade, and thinking carefully about how they can exceed the target in Term 2. And I haven’t received an angry parent email or phone call yet! My hope is that as we become more familiar with our rubric, I will sharpen my instruction so that it is more effective, and my students will internalize the rubric expectations so that more and more can exceed the course proficiency targets. In this way, our rubric’s “tail” will “wag” us along the path to proficiency.

Allowing retakes: how well is your parachute packed?

In my education program, my professor would tell us a great analogy about grades and retakes.  She said that as teachers we should allow students to retake assessments, so they can continue to practice and improve with the language.  We want students to practice so well that they can attain a proficiency with the language.  Then, she made this analogy: if we were going to jump out of a plane, we would want to have the person who got an A in parachute packing, packing our parachutes instead of someone who earned a C.  Even if the person had to keep practicing until they earned an A, we would rather have the person who kept practicing until they earned an A instead of the person who got a C and then went to work.  Therefore, we want to let our students practice as much as we can to make them as proficient as we can.  We frequently discussed “how well is your parachute packed?”  It made sense for me; however, it was difficult to implement.  As my assessments after college mainly relied upon discrete grammar and vocabulary, it didn’t make sense to retake assessments.  I wasn’t sure how to recycle the material well enough for a retake.  

This year, I shifted my grading to focus more on each mode (presentational, interpersonal and interpretive) and less on completion work like classwork or homework.  I wanted to help my students to not feel like everything was riding on one assessment or two and I was a bit nervous to make this transition.  Wendy Farabaugh mentioned on Twitter that she gives assessments back and asks students if they are satisfied with their grade.  If not, they can do it again.  A light bulb went off, and I decided that I would try retakes this year.  As my assessments shifted to being more performance based and less discrete points, I was happy to let students retake it, and I have seen great results for a variety of reasons.

When we assess, our assessment timelines are built based on the school timeline and reporting guidelines.  We assess when we feel like we have covered material sufficiently and the majority of students are prepared, but some students may need more time or practice to truly attain what they need to be successful.  While I still have to give assessments based on a certain timeline, allowing retakes gave my students the freedom to improve and progress at their own pace.  I also became less concerned with my timeline of assessments and more concerned about my student’s improvement.  

However, I had some concerns that I am sure other teachers have when they think about retakes on assessments:

Would everyone just want to retake assessments to get one or two more points?  This really didn’t happen.  Over the course of the trimester, I had about six students retake assessments.  Plus, if students really wanted to improve their grade, they had to change their performance based on the rubric.  They had to improve their writing by including more details or utilize more vocabulary in their speaking responses.  Those significant improvements in their proficiency are worth the retake to me.

Would I take the first or second grade?  I would take whatever grade was the highest.  Ideally, they would improve.  In most cases, they did; I only had one student who did not improve.  However, I saw some improvement on his later interpretive work.  I do not believe that retaking a test should be considered a penalty.  These students want to improve, so I should do everything to encourage that.  This ended up being a reoccurring trend where I saw later improvement on the same type of assessment.  One student wanted to retake her interpersonal assessment.  She improved significantly on the original assessment, and she also did well on the next interpersonal assessment.

Couldn’t students just not prepare for the first assessment then take a later one?  Does anyone really want to fail- even the first time?  They are not blowing off my assessments to get an easier one later. Overall, I did not see a drop in first assessment scores when I gave the option of retakes.  In addition, performance assessments are hard to blow off.  They are a reflection of the students’ performance on a given topic based on their acquisition from class.  While I like students to look over their notes, I don’t expect students to really cram before an assessment.  Normally if a student struggles is can be because he or she needs more input or practice with a topic.  As we continue to build on each unit, students’ development and acquisition occur at different rates, so if they have accomplished my goals for the last unit a week into the new unit, I am happy to let them show off what they have learned.  

Did I require students to submit something to retake an assessment?  For me, this was an extra step that I didn’t need.  A pure desire to improve was really all it took for them to “earn” a retake.  And in theory, being in Spanish class each day was probably enough to really help them improve in each domain.  If I really wanted to add an extra step, I could have students reflect on how they can improve for the next assessment.  But if I want reflection, I would rather the whole class reflect instead of just a student who didn’t do as well.

Did it take a lot of time on my behalf? Well… this was the one result that I haven’t resolved.  I did have to find another article on Frida Kahlo for one of my interpretive assessments.  But I did feel that the desire to have my students improve is sometimes worth a little sweat on my behalf as well.  If my two goals (grading for proficiency and striving to have students constantly improve) were something that I really wanted to achieve, I was willing to dedicate a little extra time to find a new article or video.  However, if students wanted to redo an interpersonal or presentational assessment, I slightly change the questions or the prompt.  These two tasks do not require a lot of time and effort on my part.

Out of all of my doubts, I saw large gains on behalf of my students.  And I believe that I am continuing to send an important message to my students- that I believe that they ALL can improve and learn Spanish and that I acknowledge that it is not a linear process.  I believe that I am preparing them to really pack those parachutes well!  And thank you Dr. Ruth Ferree for sharing this idea with me that I can finally implement after 10 years- and for packing my parachute, so I was ready to jump out of a plane into the world of teaching!

Starstruck

The character Leslie Knope from the show Parks and Recreation is known for her love of organizational binders, waffles, and geeking out over giants in her field that other people might not recognize.

I do the last thing on this list, which I call “Knope-ing out” from the infinitive “to Knope out.”

A couple of years ago, I was looking at the list of conference attendees, and immediately I started to Knope out over who was going to be there, who I might get the chance to meet, and who I might get the chance to talk to. I got to meet some folks and shake their hands while there, but the key thing I learned was that they were educators like me. In fact, one of the first posts I wrote for Path 2 Proficiency was on finding my voice as a teacher leader <insert link>.

But every time I go to a conference I still Knope out–no matter if it’s a regional conference or if it’s ACTFL. Passing former ACTFL Teachers of the Year in the hallways or greeting district or state supervisors with a smile and a warm hug still causes my little language nerd heart to palpitate a little. What is it about a Twitter like from someone who is considered a giant in world language education that makes me Knope out a little while my wife just kind of pats me on the back and sighs a little through a smile?

But, you know, our students feel the same way about us when they see us in public outside of what they consider our natural habitat of the classroom or school.

I’ve seen students–both current and former–at grocery stores, at restaurants, at the gym, and at the mall, but I’d like to share four situations that really stick out from my years of teaching:

As I was putting my groceries away one afternoon, I had one former student come up to me and thank me there in the parking lot because he said I worked with him to help him graduate high school.

I was in a different grocery store once with my wife when the assistant manager came up to us, say he liked my class in high school and asked about my family.

I was yet in a different grocery store (yes, I go to the grocery store a lot) when I saw three different families of students.

Recently, I went to pick up my sons from the childcare area of my gym, and my youngest son came up to me and said he made a new friend. His new friend was a student at my school.

I know it’s easy for me to Knope out about people in our field and marvel at their work, but as teachers, let’s not forget that in the midst of lesson plans and grade reports and all of the other million things that run through our head every second of the class one important thing.

Our students get a little starstruck by us.

Fresh Eyes: Seeing Work Through the Lens of Proficiency

Through my posts on this blog, I’m tracking my experiences, as both a novice teacher (in regards to proficiency) and as a more veteran teacher, with ten years of public high school teaching in my past.  This first two months of being back in the classroom, after five years outside of public schools, have been the most engaging and tiring of my career.  I finally have a spare minute to write this post.

I’ve been looking at student work through the lens of communication, and this new perspective has significantly improved my classroom.  I’m seeing student work with fresh eyes – and I’m uplifted and inspired by what students can do.

At the beginning of the year, I spent the first class establishing French as a the language of communication.  I also began the process of engaging students through comprehensible input and an authentic resource. For example, in level 2, I used an excellent video from 1jour1actu about rock music.  Leading with input was incredibly fun, and the video provided ideal subject matter for reviewing functions from level 1, including expressing preferences, describing family, and asking and responding to questions.  As an added benefit, the content was interesting to students, and also helped me learn more about the individuals within my classroom.

My “AHA!” moment happened during the second class of the year.  I asked students to produce a quick write, discussing their preferences.  When I looked at their work, I felt invigorated and impressed by what they were able to produce.  Looking at their writing through the lens of communication helped me to focus on what they were able to express.  Before I learned about teaching for proficiency, I would have seen their writing, and only thought about the grammatical errors.  In the past, I thought accuracy reflected language skills. I now realize that language control is just one part of communication.  I also believe that accuracy will increase with proficiency levels; I see errors as a reflection of where students fall on the proficiency scale.

New room, new robot, new views and perspectives

Changes I’ve made that I like:

  • I’ve been focusing on providing comprehensible input. I now see this as a critical piece of communication.  Every class, I try to engage students with input that is meaningful.  Grammar and vocabulary is introduced in context or in relation to specific student work or performance goals.  If students are struggling with production in a certain unit, I think about what additional input students need to be successful.
  • I’m looking at student work in terms of communication and not perfection.  As a starting point, I’m using rubrics that contain elements of the ACTFL rubrics from the book about Implementing Integrated Performance Assessments(Access those rubrics here.)
  • I track student performance in my grade book using the three modes of communication.  My labels include “interpersonal tasks,” “interpretive tasks,” and “presentational tasks.  It’s been really powerful for students to be able to see their performance across categories, to get a sense of their strengths and areas for improvement.
  • I’m focusing on the “tree and its branches” instead of its “leaves.” Instead of seeing the vocabulary list as integral, as in the past, I see the language functions as the branches, and the vocabulary as the leaves.  The branches are more important to the tree; the leaves provide students with the ability to personalize what they’re saying or writing.
  • I’ve been dabbling with storytelling and movie talks. I’ve used them to introduce and review key concepts in context, and I’ve found them be very useful.  My level 1 students are producing more in November than any of my students in the past.

What I don’t know:

  • I’ve been struggling to give students a sense that they are learning. I need to do more of a focus on the Can-Do Statements and to show progress over time. I’m going to dive into the new version of this document soon.
  • I need to find a system for getting students to use more of the target language in class. I’m speaking a lot of French, and I’ve been very pleased that students are doing more spontaneous production for me than in prior years. However, I want students to use more of the target language.  I’ve been thinking about using a class participation rubric, whole class rewards, or individual conferencing.  This is a work in progress.

 What I’ve been thinking about:

  • How do I push students to the next level? What does individualized feedback look like?
  • How do I help students who missed a class or multiple classes in a row? It’s hard to recreate all of the input for students who were absent.  What does meaningful make-up work look like?  Valerie Shull has a post about this topic.
  • What type of homework would be beneficial in a proficiency-focused classroom? Connected to this, how do I get students to engage with the target language, outside of class, with topics of interest?

In my next post, I hope to focus on one specific topic, and truly desire to be able to write again within the next month or so.  If you are new to proficiency-based teaching as well, I would love to know how your experiences compare to mine.  Or if you are a veteran, please share any advice that may be useful!

And one last thing:  Here is a list of my favorite resources in the past two months:

  • I truly enjoyed Alyssa Villareal’s keynote presentation at the fall conference for the Connecticut Council of Language Teachers. Click here to view her page on the Path2Proficiency blog.
  • The new NCSSFL / ACTFL Can-Do Statements.
  • The fall conference of the Connecticut Council of Language Teachers was fantastic. Here is a link to some of the conference presentations.
  • I learned about this interpersonal activity from Amy Leonard called “The Blitz” that is great for practicing spontaneous speaking and elaboration. Kathy Turner, from the Massachusetts Foreign Language Association, shared this idea during her presentation at the fall conference.
  • Martina Bex’s stories have provided inspiration for a couple of my own. My favorites have been “The Impossible Girlfriend” and one that is in progress now, about a dinner date that goes awry.
  • Interested in TPRS, and new to it, like me? Check out my own list of resources that I’ve tagged with “TPRS.
One of my jobs for TPRS

Pop Check-In/Pop Coaching: Timely Formative Feedback

“They know it for the quiz and then 15 minutes later they can’t use it properly.” How could they score so well on a scheduled quiz and then not use it correctly in a spontaneous classroom interaction? How could I make a more accurate appraisal of where they really are in acquiring a concept? How could I offer formative assessment on what they truly understand/know?

And so this year I began the “Pop Check-In”. When I first announced one in my Year 3 class there were looks of horror. “A pop quiz? You hadn’t warned us! A quiz? For marks?” So I explained what the ‘pop check in’ is and isn’t:

  • It is a chance to see what you have in your head ‘right now’
  • It is not ‘for marks’ but it is ‘for learning’
  • It’s a chance for me to see if I have further teaching to do regarding this concept

Typically I “mark” the check-in that evening by putting a coloured dot next to response that needs another look  and the next day ask my students to look at/correct the problem. They receive a ‘complete’ mark when this is done.

This works well but one day I returned them the same class and noticed the effect. I realized that I should be opting for immediate feedback and immediate coaching, especially for those students who have still not mastered the concept. In other words if I could pop-check then I should pop-coach. So now I find myself 5 minutes during the class – 5 minutes to quickly look over the check-in and return them that very class. For some it’s a quick look and often “I know where I went wrong!”. But for the others it’s a great time to revisit the concept. When students are working quietly I take a moment to individually help those who need the extra support.

Students tell me that they like this approach. That it really shows them what they know and some are surprised that they didn’t really understand the concept as well as they thought they did.  They also say that it is a way to check in on their learning without a fear of it reflecting on their mark (their concern as always).  For others it gives the confidence to know that they are expressing themselves appropriately and correctly. And I’m finding the quick coaching moments to be more effective because they occur right away.

The other day I announced a pop check-in and one of students turned to his partner and said “I told you we’d have one! She’s checking to see if we’ve got it!”  And that’s formative feedback I’m happy to provide!

 

 

When I’m Not There: Sick Days and Proficiency

For many years I’ve wrestled with how to handle my absences from school– but generally, I have two options for my elementary and middle school students: 1) cancel classes or 2) have an adult who is not normally with the students/not a Spanish teacher supervise class time.  My struggle with this stemmed, essentially, from the fact that I was focusing on discrete grammar and vocabulary, which provided little flexibility in what a substitute could do with the students–the children were very reliant on me for their learning.  This week, I had to call in sick for the first time this year, and quickly found how shifting to teaching for proficiency has changed how my absent days look.

My upper elementary students met with my teaching assistant who facilitated independent activities: FV (free and voluntary reading), choice work(fast finishers) and playing Verba. This fall, I started with FVR in class– the students love it and are in the routine of independently choosing books and articles that are a ‘good fit’ for them. I was inspired by Martina Bex and her laminated fast finishers that focus on language in context that can be completed with a dry erase marker and self-checked, when applicable. I’ve been compiling the work from a variety of sources, including Mad Libs in Spanish. Like the books available for FVR, levels from novice low to my heritage speakers are represented in the choice work and the children decide what feels like a ‘good fit’ for them. They can seek the help of another student if or when they need.Finally, the children can play Verba. I have five sets of this game, which is alike to Apples to Apples(available in Spanish, French, Latin, English, Chinese, Japanese).  The Pericles Group has generously made this game available for free if you’re willing to do some laminating and cutting. And for the future, once they’ve got a lesson on it, the children will be able to use our Chromebooks to play games on our Rockalingua subscription, and hopefully, work on Flipgrid and other tools.

In middle school, the work for the students was equally choice-rich. I emailed the 7th and 8th graders to let them know I’d be out and they could choose to spend their class time(supervised by a middle school teacher) on the following: 1) working on Duolingo 2) listening to and completing a curated list of activities on Spanishlistening.org 3) listening to the current podcast on https://www.newsinslowspanish.com/latino/ and either write a summary or fill out a from (from Martina Bex) to prepare for a conversation with a partner (then have the conversation) 4) Read one of the articles from our “Mundo en tus manos” news subscription and fill out the same form to have a conversation with a friend, and then 5) play Verba in a small group.

All of these activities rely on self-selection, independence and a focus on language proficiency over discrete vocabulary and grammar. They offer an opportunity for review and/or exploration of new language based on student choice. Most importantly, they are in response to feedback the students gave me in: they value and want choices in their learning. Arriving at this place, in which I’m still evolving, learning and developing, was a long time in the making. I’ve had to let go of some of my old ideas about how the children learn language and their role in their process. In letting go of some of those old ideas and practices, I’ve embraced trust–trust in both the process of language acquisition and in the children themselves.