I apologize for not being more “on it” this summer. Actually I don’t, but there have been a few emails not responded to and I apologize for that. Now, here is one from a month ago that I just love. It is from Michele, who really gets CI if anybody does, wondering how to handle a parent who has decided that she knows more than Michele, and, by extension, Krashen. Hmmm. I wonder if this parent would trust herself to fill a cavity in her daughter’s tooth as well! Here are Michele’s musings, which make for some light summer reading, file it under “Joke of the Day”:
Ben,
I have had two run-ins with the same mom this summer. Her daughter is a less-than-thrilled member of my future Russian 3 class. She evidently does not like telling stories. She wants classwork to be “real.” Last year the mom said that I needed to vary the curriculum (she wanted grammar lessons at least once a week). We did vary the input–we went into our historical/cultural studies, but we still told stories to acquire the vocabulary. Mom is now arguing that I need to do hands-on, project work. She says that they need output, and she thinks it could be like the artwork that her daughter did in elementary Spanish immersion. She says I’m appealing too much to one kind of learning style with all the verbal input. I am listening, because I always do, though nowadays I know a lot more than she does about language teaching. Her daughter resists being an actor, and she resists doing gestures–which are limited at best as we move up levels. I don’t give much homework, other than assigning things like finding songs. I am trying really hard right now to justify or to tell my side–I think it would be really great if I could figure out a way to tweak my teaching so that I reach this set of kids.
My response: Michele, you don’t need to reach this kind of student. They are wrong. They are part of a bill of goods sold to the American public long ago that is bogus and totally false. The ideas of the mother (we can’t blame the daughter) are so off base that you need not even dignify this with a response. I know that there exist schools where even administrators still think this way, and some college methods courses still advocate the idiocy expressed above. But let’s keep in mind that that stuff is just dust in the wind now, as Blaine and Krashen and all the rest have exposed such thinking for what it is – wrong and false.
{ 32 comments… read them below or add one }
Robert Harrell 07.27.10 at 11:30 PM
On occasion I have asked people like this mother, “So tell me, how does a person learn a foreign language.” Almost invariably the reply is, “By speaking it.” Then I say, “That’s great! Please begin speaking Urdu to me.” When they complain that they can’t, I remind them, “But you said you learned by speaking, so just start speaking.” Eventually we get to the realization that there can be no output without sufficient input. We could argue about how much input is sufficient, but by this time I have usually made my point that I am the expert. If the person is at all open we can have this happen with good humor and friendship. If the person is antagonistic, I win the argument but recognize that I will never win the person. I would (probably) never win the person anyway.
It has been great to meet people at iFLT that I’ve interacted with on the blog. Thanks again, Ben, for keeping this open.
Michele 07.28.10 at 12:08 AM
Thank you both–Ben, for the support, and Robert for the very funny but real response.
I am thinking about this, especially in light of what I learned from Jason a few weeks ago. He advocates “mixing it up.” After my first year of TPRS/CI, when I changed my teaching practice weekly, both to practice the next skill in Ben’s book and to follow whatever the flavor of the moment was here or on moretprs, I decided that I would follow a set routine last year. Being me, I couldn’t stick to that, but still, I did a lot of things the same way. Jason would often follow a really slick activity with a caveat: “do this only once a year.” Oh me, oh my. Because he had so many unexpected moments in his class, never doing what I would have expected, his class sped by. My brain was totally happy. My mind wasn’t, because it was ticking off the moments and recognizing that the class was going at warp speed, when all I wanted was to listen to Jason for more hours, but I am now a believer that I cannot do things the same way every day. I do have to fly off the beaten path, use new sounds, new songs, new routines, new props and new games regularly.
I think that what was really wrong for this kid was that I was in a series of predictable ruts, and if I’m going to have kids in my classes for four and five years, I’m going to have to mix it up regularly. No more PBJ every day.
Aimee 07.28.10 at 1:05 AM
Michele,
Couldn’t you just incorporate these in the homework? Give students a choice;
choose a song, do worksheets or make a quiz, complete some sort of cultural project. Then when things are kind of in a rut, you can share these finished assignments with the whole class.
Michele 07.28.10 at 7:31 AM
Aimee,
That’s another really good idea. Since I don’t give homework to anyone but the AP and IB kids, but do require five hours “outside class” time (usually to give them extra motivation to attend Russia events), these things could be on the list!
Thanks!
Nathan Black 07.28.10 at 12:57 PM
Hi Michele,
I require 1/2 an hour (or so) a week “outside class” time for all of my classes and call it homework (level 1 starting in the last 1/3 or so of the year; they can’t really work independently enough for my purposes until then). Parents are happy because I’m “rigorous”, and I’m happy because I like seeing where my students’ interests take them. The parents want a label, so I give them one, even though it doesn’t mean what they think it means. About once a month I declare a “makeup week” where no new homework is due, but you can makeup for past weeks or work ahead for future weeks. (I’m not above taking a month off either if I need a blow, but don’t tell the parents that).
I basically tell them to do something in German, and they are accountable for reporting back (by reporting in their notebooks) telling me what they did that week. You get 8/10 points for saying you did something (I trust you) but you’ll have to give me details if you want the full 10 points. I have a class website (really a Moodle site) with links and idea lists for everybody to choose from, and then make a point of commenting on the coolest activities of the previous week so as to give people ideas.
Most kids (about 40% each week) like watching and translating music videos or getting German music on their iPods. Another huge group (about 35% each week) likes doing automated vocabulary games (hangman, word scramble, bug match) on Study Stack (where I’ll put vocab lists when I get around to giving those out). Some kids have found fellow-gamers in Germany/Austria/Switzerland through their X-box console and have struck up ongoing chats. I always have a few who are “teaching” the language to family/friends (my favorite report: “I kept calling my mom a door and she got mad.”) The variety is enormous. Seriously, one of the highlights of my week is Friday when I can read through their reports and see what new things people are up to.
But there are some kids who just have to have their grammar worksheets. That’s real to them. Great; I have a whole bookshelf full of textbooks and workbooks that I never touch otherwise, and they are welcome to them. If they want to do a “hands on” project; great. Just log your time and give me ongoing homework reports. If you insist on a group project, great, but you go talk other people into something; don’t make me organize it.
Nathan
Nathan
Michele 07.29.10 at 8:58 AM
Nathan,
Great stuff…I am seeing how I can tweak my system just a bit to make it more like yours and keep the mom happy.
Would you be willing to post or share your list of ideas? I have a list somewhere of what kids can do too, but it sounds as though yours is more complete.
Janine 07.29.10 at 12:48 PM
Might I add in? I seem to be bragging a bit this week, both here and at home that my French class with Slavic is wonderful. But I look at these entries and see something disturbing. I don’t know if homework is required at the schools you all work at but at mine we don’t have any homework whatsoever (in French class that is), or, that’s the way it turned out. At the beginning of the year all we had to do was listen to a tape of french language and in time we had done away with that as a requirement. In my opinion, homework is a strong reason many kids dislike going to class. It’s always “oh, I forgot to do my homework!”, or, “boy I hope the teacher doesn’t give me a bad grade on my homework, I worked realy hard on it.” Things get to be a real bother. As in my class we had no homework at all and many more kids showed up on time, or even at all, with relatively amuzed faces for a class that is worry-free. (Man, I feel like such a brag!)
Michele 07.29.10 at 3:26 PM
You are SO right about homework. I actually don’t assign regular homework, and that’s one of the big sales points that kids bring up when they’re representing Russian at open house and eighth-grade fair.
I intervene at that point to say, “Yes, I do!” because the parents of the potential students always look worried. “Students have outside hours to complete.”
The “sales rep” will say something like “Pshaw…that’s not homework.” They always flip their hands at me dismissively, and smile, like we have a secret. And indeed, they don’t seem to feel it is a bad thing, because they can do it on their own time, in a lump project or in a number of different activities, and I ask for the report on one piece of paper (five hours a quarter, which works out to slightly more than the half-hour a week that Nathan requires, over a nine-week quarter).
And then, to be honest, while I put in the grades for the kids who do the “hours,” I leave them blank (not counting) for those who don’t. No one has ever questioned me about that, strangely enough. It’s only when kids turn in only four of the five hours that they get a B instead of an A, but they almost never do. It’s either done or not. My guidelines are that the activities involve Russian or Russia, add to the enjoyment of studying Russian, and that parents would approve of them.
The AP and IB kids are supposed to read and work on the AP site, but again, if they don’t, they’re the only ones who hurt later, mostly because the AP kids will have to be ready to type in Cyrillic. If they can’t, they don’t do as well on that part of the test.
I was about to say that I have never seen a difference in ability that I could attribute to the doing or not doing of homework, but that’s not quite true, if you count outside hours. Last year, I noticed a huge improvement in the reading and writing of one set of kids. I smugly put it up to my great teaching. Only when I got onto the Russian Facebook and found that set of kids had been carrying on long conversations with their non-English-speaking peers did I realize that they had been getting many hours of compelling comprehensible input. I also realized why they’d been asking me for some unusual vocabulary.
Ironically, that set of kids never did turn in any logs of their outside hours, but they all got A’s on final assessments.
Still, putting it into words the way Nathan does as a 1/2-hour homework policy and adding grammar and projects to my list will give me an out with that mom and any others who don’t like what I do. Nothing else really has to change.
Jim Tripp 07.31.10 at 9:18 AM
Great thread! Boy I wish I could have been out at iflt with those of you who attended. NTPRS was really great though. We were graced with much musical talent there this year.
Nathan and Michele, your comments have me thinking a little bit more about “requiring” this sort of outside “study” for my students. I like the idea of having part of the class be “independent” and “self-selected”. That doesn’t happen much in the classroom, because of the discipline required for a TPRS class to work. I’m beginning to think, if we don’t expect kids to go out and spend some time on their own doing something related to the language and culture, we will not see them doing it, understandably. They are already too bogged down with other subjects’ homework. It’s a shame that math should get to monopolize students’ time outside of class.
That being said, I (like Michele) would never want to make it a part of the grade that could bring them down. They do enough in the classroom the way it is.
I also would love to see a list of ideas you give students, Nathan, of things they can do to fulfill that requirement. I might try it out this year.
Ben Slavic 07.31.10 at 9:18 PM
Nathan how is the outside requirement documented, specifically?
Comment on Janine’s comment – her score on the district (state/national standard aligned) assessment was so high, and, much more importantly, her ability to sit in a class and decode large amounts of French almost as if it were English (I know because I teach to my students’ eyes), show me without any doubt that homework of any sort is unnecessary in my class. Homework is bogus. It’s not mojorific. Janine enjoys learning French and she’s good at it. I am sure that giving her outside work would add much to that formula for success. Just my opinion, though. Maybe there’s something in homework that I don’t know about.
Michele 07.31.10 at 10:26 PM
I keep meeting more and more TPRS/CI-ers who don’t give homework. It’s hard for kids at this level to have CI that is compelling when they’re on their own. And also, homework at any age is adding to already overloaded kids. I absolutely hated having to ask my kids about homework before we even got to decompress at night.
So yeah…I have these hours in the syllabus, and some kids seem to love doing them and telling me about it all. Others “double dip,” getting their Honor Society/CAS (IB) hours in for volunteering in Russian. And some never tell me or simply never do it.
What’s nagging at me here in what I otherwise think is a perfect solution to the homework issue (because kids can’t be hurt, only helped, both for grading purposes and in connecting school to the world outside) is the stress Janine mentioned on kids who don’t do the hours. I bet that some are worrying about their grades and thinking, “Phew! She didn’t notice I didn’t do it,” so that not doing the hours causes stress. I don’t want stress to be a part of my students’ lives in my room at least. But I love the outside hours thing. Maybe I’ll just come clean and tell them about how outside hours are beneficial, but that if they don’t do them, there will be no negative influence on the grade. That could be one of this year’s experiments.
Ben, you are missing nothing in “homework.” Generally, it is simply a waste of time and worse, as Alfie Kohn points out.
Ben Slavic 08.01.10 at 9:32 AM
If Janine can be the student she is without being put in a position to lie about something to me, then why risk that? Have we no respect for what the combined effect of our projects/homework assignments is on these kids? We have turned these kids into pack mules. We take great care to teach them over their years of schooling to become responsible and then we turn them into cheaters so that they can do that. Take a good look at a senior after they have endured four years of that. Not pretty. Lies have been told and cheating has been done by kids who have been literally forced by us to compromise their integrity in order to succeed. Bad news. Plus, Janine learns a ton and gives me fully 100% of her attention in class all period long. I’m speaking French the whole time. She absorbs it all. What she learns can never be measured or branded or labeled, not by any test. I think that language teachers who don’t speak the language in the classroom and then give homework are the biggest hypocrites. Talk about misuse of instructional time. And Janine likes French right now as she goes to French 2 in a few weeks. That is my main job in all of this – to get her to want to learn more, because her greatest teachers will be the French speakers in the Francophone countries she eventually visits because she didn’t quit in high school. Many more kids are turned off by homework-driven English speaking French teachers than are turned on to French. They will never even want to go to into the target culture because they hate the language because they have been taught that they are not good at it, that they just can’t acquire a language even thought they get A’s in Physics and all their other classes. But Janine will. Even more importantly, she has a life after classes end each day and she can only pursue that if she is not required to continue her school day into the night. Hello. O.K. I’m done. And Michele, those Alaskans at the conference – pure gold. Get ready for some rock and roll up there this year.
Ben Slavic 08.01.10 at 11:24 AM
Another thing about homework is that the kid spends so much time on it and then the critique of the work is often done in seconds by the teacher, who has little time to honestly assess it, if in fact it was honestly done. How to tell if it was honestly done? By they get to their junior or senior year, they have become liars, not intentionally but as a survival mechanism. They, along with their fellow students, have become expert at shirking. Those who do in fact do all of the work as instructed are infuriated when the unaware teacher gives someone who has done a fraction of the project/homework the same grade. The lack of consistency in the homework game makes it impractical. We must learn to develop the old paedeia model and relearn the ability as teachers to interact honestly with our kids in the pursuit of their intellectual growth and eventual civic service. It’s time for the lies, the misrepresentations of what was actually done, to stop.
Profe Loca 08.01.10 at 1:08 PM
You should read this Valedictorian’s speech. It says just about everything we have already been talking about.
http://www.sott.net/articles/show/212383-Valedictorian-Speaks-Out-Against-Schooling-in-Graduation-Speech
Michele 08.02.10 at 7:31 AM
I have printed that out for my classroom door. Thank you!
Nathan Black 08.03.10 at 5:11 PM
Sorry to be absent from such a great discussion for so long! This is the summer of finishing my dissertation, and I am only sporadically present for most things (except dinner and bedtime stories). Anyway, as a result, I’d like to comment on the thread, but will likely do so in bits and pieces. For starters, here is a partial list of things I have accepted for homework over the past quarter:
• Listen to music videos
• Cook a German recipe for their family (or class)
• Draw a picture for me to illustrate a story we asked in class
• Rewatch a YouTube clips I showed in class/find new clips
• Set your Facebook language to German for the week
• Text or email a friend in German
• Read German cartoons online (or in one of my collections I post online)
• Check any book out of my reading library (including class-generated stories)
• Set your World of Warcraft/Runescape/Whatever-computer-game-you’re-sinking-your-life-into-at-the-moment settings to German
• Find an online shop in Germany that sells whatever you like (T-shirts, Amazon.de, etc.) and see what you can understand
• teach a sister German phrases/alphabet/numbers/etc.
• Take a class mascot (Knut [polar bear] or Bernhardt [brown bear wearing lederhosen]) home over the weekend, take pictures and tell what you did on Monday
• Make a video (skit, mashup, whatever) or PowerPoint about something that they’re interested in (can extend over several weeks on this one)
• One pair of kids a couple of years ago even put on a guitar concert for their class to play several Rammstein song they loved. I couldn’t reach them any other way, and this opened the door for both of us to appreciate what we each brought to the table.
My students get pretty quick that pretty much anything they can think of that involves the German language, country or culture in some way is going to get credit. I mention 30 minute a week guideline at the beginning, and then don’t mention time again and don’t require it for a grade. A lot of students put far more than 30 minutes a week; some I’m sure are putting less in. I figure it all evens out collectively.
By far the biggest challenge is for people to get new ideas, so I make sure to give a rundown at the beginning of the week (using the LCD projector) both what the most common activities were as well as what I thought were the most unique/interesting ideas. Most kids find 2-4 things they like and just rotate through those throughout the year; others push the envelope and entertain the rest of us.
My job is to make sure my students continually know how much I love reading their homework reports and appreciate the work they put in. It takes some time to read through the homework and write up weekly summaries, but I love doing it, and when the students see that I’m putting my time in by reading the reports, appreciating them and giving personal feedback (usually by way of personalized congratulations when I see them) they don’t balk. The vast majority of kids don’t feel oppressed by a system they feel is fair; for those who do, I keep my radar up and have some one-on-one chats. Doesn’t happen often.
Nathan Black 08.03.10 at 6:50 PM
Homework rant, Part II:
One of my favorite guiding principles from homework came at the beginning of last year from the Chemistry teacher at our school, whose son is in my class. She was doing the mom thing in going through how he was doing at keeping up with homework for each class, and when he got to German he said “We don’t need homework because Herr Black teaches it well enough that we understand based on just what we did in class.” She meant that as a compliment, and I thought “Wow, this kid really gets the point of what homework should be about.”
I think homework is a tool; no more, no less. Use it when you need it and put it back in the toolbox the rest of the time. A lot of teachers use it as a way to reinforce their authority; we don’t need that. A lot of teachers use it to make themselves feel like professionals; we don’t need that either. So what do we need it for? Antoine de Saint-Exupéry expresses it best, in my opinion:
If you want to build a ship
don’t herd people together to collect wood
and don’t assign them tasks and work,
but rather teach them to long for the
endless immensity of the sea.
If my students are going to learn German at the level I really want them to, I need them to be engaged in learning it even after they’ve left my class. I want them to go on that exchange trip to Germany, or even just go on a Spring Break lark. I want them to claim ownership of any German quote or reference or exchange student they come across. Simply put, I need them to develop their own way to interact with the language/culture/people independently of me, and I can’t trust that will happen reliably after they leave my class if I don’t show them how to do it while in my class. For me, the purpose of homework is all about learning to “long for the endless immensity” of the German world, and homesteading their own claim within it.
I love getting to know my kids better through the homework they choose to do. I have one girl who will now be in my German IV class next year who for the bulk of three years kept me at a huge arms length and pretty much let me know she was doing me a favor by being there. The thing is she was right, but it took me a while to realize that. She won’t speak German, she will only occasionally deign to favor one of our stories in class, and she’s continually talking on the side with a friend. And as I learned through the homework she turns in, she’s the most remarkable German writer I have in any of my classes. I knew she liked to write, but when I started requiring homework about halfway through last year, she started sitting down every week and giving me a one-page handwritten newly generated story that blew my mind. It only takes her 10-15 minutes to write it. It was all building in there, and she has a ton to say, but writing is the only output she embraces, and I was too thick to recognize that until I started noticing her better through her homework.
I could go on with many other stories, but I have found that discussing and praising homework choices and projects with my students that usually keep me at arms-length has been among my more successful strategies.
Aimee 08.03.10 at 7:16 PM
Nathan,
Wow, I love your ideas, your grading policy, and you way of connecting with your students! I printed it all out to use for future reference. Thank you for sharing.
Laurie 08.04.10 at 7:28 AM
Beautiful Nathan…just beautiful…
with love,
Laurie
Ben Slavic 08.04.10 at 7:59 AM
“…my students get pretty quick that pretty much anything they can think of that involves the German language, country or culture in some way is going to get credit…”.
Nathan what you describe above is homework taken to a new level, one consistent with the free choice that must involve all true learning. I never even thought it possible but there it is happening in your classroom. Let’s call it nathanwork instead, because what we know as homework doesn’t even resemble the new model you describe above for expansion of what we do in our classrooms. The keys are that your students know
“… how much [you] love reading their homework reports and appreciate the work they put in…”
“”…[discuss and praise] homework choices…”
“… make sure to give a rundown at the beginning of the week (using the LCD projector) of both what the most common activities were as well as what [you] thought were the most unique/interesting ideas…”
That last one is particularly important, in my view. I agree with Aimee and Laurie – this is an important ramping up of what seems to be an endless series of ideas that we who embrace input based instruction are now encountering on a daily basis.
Nathan Black 08.04.10 at 8:42 AM
Homework Rant, part III
My deal on homework is that I’ll put it in my syllabus, but I usually don’t feel a need to start assigning it until sometime in the second quarter (and then only to my II, III and IV classes), and then when I start getting the feel that they need it. And yes, I do think there is a point when they need it.
One of the great things about TPRS that is so wonderful about the method is that students learn the language so effortlessly. This is a great thing that is true and provides a welcome respite for the students as a refuge from the rest of their school day (as Ben has eloquently driven home many times). A few months into the school year, however, once the rules are established and the routines are set and everybody starts getting into the mental zone that you’re in for a long car ride, students start getting antsy. My four percenters express this by asking me why I’m not challenging them more, but even the other students who cringe when they hear that question express it by a general sluggishness of acceleration, a fiddling around for distractions, etc.
I think Goethe expressed this feeling best in Faust when his Lord figure explains why he allows Mephisto (a devil) to tempt Faust by saying:
Des Menschen Tätigkeit kann allzuleicht erschlafen / Er liebt sich bald die unbedingte Ruh / Drum geb gern ich ihm den Gesellen zu / der reizt und wirkt und muss als Teufel schaffen
(Man’s desire for action can all too easily fall asleep / He soon seeks after unconditional rest / that’s why I like to give him that companion / who entices and works on him and must as a devil create)
Even though we work so hard to create a safe zone for our students, I think it’s human nature to take that zone for granted after a while and start losing the focus that that zone otherwise enables for them. That’s when I start pulling out the homework requirement, which starts putting more of the responsibility for learning onto them. We have a good talk about how they have grown since the beginning of the year and how they have become more capable students, and now I believe so much in them that it’s time to kick it up a notch. They can handle it. Again, I don’t do this with my German I class until fourth quarter (when they know enough to work more independently) but I was surprised at how much they embraced it and by and large were truly interested in pushing themselves to go new directions.
But not everybody will push themselves, of course, and some people won’t do the homework. In my experience this is a fairly low percentage—enough so that I have time to pull aside the kids who haven’t turned in homework for a couple of weeks and figure out a way with them to get them back on track. I fiddle my grades such that if a kid just will not do any homework (I have a few every year) they still won’t get worse than a B if that is the only thing missing. I have no problems giving a kid a B as long as he knows I see him as an A student who didn’t push himself that quarter. And, to be brutally honest, if a kid can’t do MY homework, chances are pretty good that a B grade is still among the highest grades he’s getting in school, and he’s pretty happy with it.
To answer Ben’s question, I have the students hand in half sheets every week, which leaves space for them to describe what they did. I also accept emails (which are popular with the last minute crowd and those that do their stuff online anyway). I like that because it allows them to record it at home, and allows me to read a pile of reports all at once (I give an automatic 8 points for doing it, but I need some details for the full 10, which makes for better reading). This year, I’m thinking of simplifying even that by creating a space in their notebooks (probably at the back, filling in pages backwards as the year progresses), which creates the added advantage of them being able to see how their outside-class interests develop over time.
Nathan Black 08.04.10 at 8:49 AM
Thanks again for the positive feedback; I appreciate it very much. The reason the method is growing so much as Ben says, is in big part because of the culture of honesty you all foster that makes it easy to admit that something isn’t working somewhere and we innovate until it gets better. Danke sehr!
Ben Slavic 08.04.10 at 10:47 AM
“… that’s when I start pulling out the homework requirement, which starts putting more of the responsibility for learning onto them…”.
This is about an organic emergence of something necessary to learning. Again, assigning nathanwork and not homework – as per the brilliant Goethe passage (wow!) – reflects the emergent nature of things. We do that in the naming process, don’t we. We don’t just slap a name on a kid for the year – we wait for their right names to emerge. Likewise, in the questioning process, we let facts emerge naturally. We explore empty spaces in our questioning process to see what emerges.
This is really the Natural Approach applied to homework. Nathanwork – buy the book! (That means that you have to write the book now, Nathan. I’m serious. I need to be able to remember points like you are making, and they are so groundbreaking that I could easily lose them in the shuffle of starting another year. So if you could at least go back and use what you have already written here to make a little booklet, at least, of how to assign and follow up on Nathanwork, I’m sure I would not be the only one happy to have a copy.)
By the way, the Goethe passage is a winner. There are passages in literature, the rare ones, that turn a key leading us into something celestial, and that, for me, is one. I bet Harrell devoured that and had about ten spinoff references to it go off in his mind. Love that stuff. If you are teaching German with things like Goethe as a goal, then your kids are beyond lucky. Of course, French literature for me is life itself so then I am a bit biased.
One point of clarification – an important one for me – I don’t think that any of this would indeed work in my own large urban level I classes at East High School. The homework culture is one of just do the minimum to get by, to become valedictorian, to keep your cell phone, etc. So that starting this in level 2 only is an important point – so to clarify: you indeed don’t ever assign nathanwork in level ones, correct?
I am very excited to know about this. In my mind, it is the first time in my career that I have ever heard about homework as a potential positive tool in the kids’ education.
Stephen V 08.04.10 at 11:48 AM
Thanks so much for sharing about the way you do homework, Nathan.
When I was at Concordia this summer we used a portfolio as a major part of the overall grade in the credit program. The portfolio asked students to find ways of experiencing and using Spanish in the village, and then put an artifact in their portfolio about that experience along with a written reflection in English or Spanish (or both). I liked the way that it put the students in the driver’s seat over their learning in some ways. It helped them to see how the whole camp experience was part of their acquisition process. My entire class re-wrote one of my stories from class as a skit to perform in front of the camp. This served as a portfolio entry for the “presentational communication” category. One student participated in a salsa class at camp, reflected on that experience and translated a salsa song to include in the “interpretive communication” category. Some of them took a picture of a counselor that they had a conversation with in Spanish and included that under “interpersonal communication.”
As a teacher, I like the portfolio in theory because of it allows the student to creatively direct their learning. But for some students they felt a lot of pressure with the portfolio, in part because of the significance played in their grade. I think doing something simple, like “nathanwork” with little or no grade consequence and very little time demand might be a good way to encourage students to find their own Spanish learning experiences, without some of the pressure of the portfolio grade.
I’ll be thinking about this over the next week for sure.
Profe Loca 08.04.10 at 11:49 AM
I am really loving this idea of “nathanwork”
But, how do I find a way to honor this philosophy of homework, when I am required to make homework worth 15% of a student’s grade? Not only that, but we switch students at the semesters, and the other teachers in my department have mentioned they don’t want to be made to look like the “bad guy” simply because I don’t assign homework or textbooks. So… I assign both. But, it goes against so much I believe in…
Profe Loca 08.04.10 at 11:49 AM
Ben, Would you mind taking Nathan’s comments here and making them into a thread?
Stephen V 08.04.10 at 12:02 PM
Jennifer,
Maybe you could have a homework notebook or folder where they keep a cumulating record of their “30 minute” free homework activities/experiences. You could check the notebook every Monday. If they do one for the week they get a hundred. If they don’t, you enter a 50 (there has been some discussion on here before about the sometimes unjust mathematical implications of putting zeros in grade books). And then you have those make up week opportunities once a month or so to let students get back points they lost.
Then, you still have that grade you have to have but it’s really low stakes and student directed.
I am thinking of doing something like that, but the grade will probably be a lot less (if anything at all) unless my school has a requirement that I don’t know about yet.
Just what came to mind.
Nathan Black 08.04.10 at 1:54 PM
Steven,
I really love the idea of portfolios as well, but haven’t satisfactorily translated them into practice. It might be time to revisit that. When I used to work for a School of Education, we did tons of things with portfolios for student teachers, but it I haven’t satisfactorily transferred the concept to the public school environment.
Why? Portfolios, properly done, are about growth. People who care enough about their growth to document it and reflect back on it and notice where they’ve come. Student teachers who wrote their portfolios with a target audience of prospective employers in mind failed miserably, because they only wrote what they thought their future employer wanted to hear. The best portfolios write to themselves as a target audience. That’s why it hasn’t translated well for me yet, because the students I’ve had so far at the III/IV level have only been about what they think I want to hear to get a grade. I’ve had outliers, but they aren’t invested enough in their own growth yet to get portfolios to work properly.
That said, I’m saving everything from year to year that would make for good reflection. This year (maybe a quarter or semester in) I’m having them look back at last year’s writings to notice what developments occured. I also saved their homework slips from last year and want them to chart patterns and give me their reflections on them. People aren’t allowed to throw away their old notebooks in my class; so much blood sweat and tears invested in that bad boy, that it is great grounds for reflection. But I need the right group to claim ownership of their German growth. Until then, I don’t feel like pulling teeth just for its own sake. I think I’ll revisit that thought a bit again, though.
Nathan Black 08.04.10 at 2:10 PM
Jennifer,
Even if a student loses 15% for doing no homework, that puts him at 85%, which is almost a B plus for the quarter if he has everything else in. Do what you want to be homework and call it homework. I certainly don’t call what I give out “nathanwork”, I just call it homework and let the students “get” that I’m not after them and that the term gives them cover with their parents to explore the world of German how they want to.
It sounds like you need similar cover with your department, so avail yourself of it. Basically what it does is impose some structure on the exploratory process, and it sounds like in your department learning to adapt to that structure is a necessarily life-skill for your students. (BTW: we need a better term than “nathanwork.” Independent research? Discovery learning? “Homework” with the quotation marks attached? I don’t know, but I’m hardly a guru on the subject, and am just doing something that works for me)
Steven’s idea of giving them weeks off as a safety net for when they haven’t yet adapted to that structure is exactly what I try to do as well. Given that I’m in a small school, with just another Spanish teacher and me constituting our world language department, I don’t have those pressures so I can be a bit more cavalier about when I start and stop the process. But as long as you do right by your kids to the best of your ability, you don’t have to feel like you settled. They have to live under the same department stresses that you do, so those “adjustments” you make to your otherwise ideal help them in adapting to that environment.
Robert Harrell 08.04.10 at 5:16 PM
Project COACH has presented something similar to “nathanwork” for several years. We call it CPR (Cultural Participation and Research). I have used it in a number of different ways.
-Give a long list of possible assignments at the beginning of the quarter/semester with one or two due dates. This isn’t very effective because it presents many students with too much choice and also sets deadlines too far into the future
-Give only a few possible assignments on a regular basis. This works a lot better, but some students will not find the assignment that fits them on a short list.
-Give a “short list” with an emphasis that it is suggestive rather than exhaustive and encourage students to come and talk about other possibilities. This seems to be the best solution for me.
I haven’t used this much the last couple of years. Perhaps I should think about doing it again. One of the issues I have had is the sheer amount of time it takes me to go through everyone’s CPR. As I look over Nathan’s description, though, I realize that I was making the reporting far to complex and burdensome for both the students and me.
One of the perennial favorites on the list is making a German food or meal. It can be done for the family or class. If done for the family, I encourage a note from the parent to accompany the report. I also tell students that they get full credit even if the food (or other product) turns out to be a disaster. One question I have is “What did you learn from this for your personal life?” A student once wrote: “I learned that I should never be allowed into the kitchen again.” Many parents and students have told me that the project has enriched the family life – particularly the food, adding a new dish to the family’s repertoire. BTW and OT: This year while reading Arme Anna we discussed Nutella. Now that it’s available in stores here, I bought some and treated my students. Several students told me that they are now “addicted”.
I’m sure some teachers use CPR just as ruthlessly as the old worksheets, but there is higher intrinsic interest in the CPR-type assignments, and Nathan’s suggestions make it that much more useful. Students can use it a la Nathan to resuscitate their grades.
And yes, I loved the Goethe quote from the other thread.
Ben Slavic 08.04.10 at 10:15 PM
Jennifer/Profe Loca as per your request ABOVE for this to be made into a thread – I made a category for Nathan Black. All of his comments about nathanwork are on this one blog from Michele Whaley. So all you have to do is remember “nathan” or “nathanwork” and find his name in the category list and it will take you to these 30 comments. In that way, when it scrolls out you won’t have to look for it. Even if that doesn’t work, however, Carla had a good idea for searching comments. She told me that you can search comments by googling benslavic and then putting in any key words from whatever discussion you are trying to locate, like backwards design or something like that – it often finds blog comments that way.
Michele 08.10.10 at 7:55 AM
One last comment! I’ve been reading Rethinking Homework, by Cathy Vatterott. The first half of the book tries to explain why all the research supporting homework is invalid. The second half suggests ways to improve homework if it is necessary. I thought you’d all like this quote:
“Quality homework tasks promote ownership when they
-allow for choices.
-offer students an opportunity to personalize their work.
-allow students to share information about themselves or their lives.
-tap emotions, feelings, or opinions about a subject.”