Bob sent me this in 2012 but it still applies now:
I always give the same three questions to my students at different points in the year (as a check in) and then after the final exam in the spring, regarding the entire year. Here’s a summary of what they told me. Items are listed in order of frequency, and singleton items are not included.
Nothing gives me better insight into what I am doing than these three questions. I get the students to write their answers on small quarter sheets of paper. They are free to sign them or leave them anonymous. I read every single one and tabulate the information. I promise them to make my plans for next year based on what they tell me. These, by the way, are the only people really qualified to evaluate what I do. These are the only evaluations I have ever received that have helped me become a better teacher. I have come to depend on this information every year.
Q. What have we done this year that has helped you learn Latin?
All of the responses in this section were Comprehensible Input activities and approaches, though my students do not know the terminology of “CI”. They included:
- Drawing/acting stories while we tell and read together.
- Reading a story aloud, including choral and spot translations (this is not slow, tedious single student translation, but choral, whole class, and often just spots that they don’t understand.
- Speaking Latin for most of the class time (90% is the aim. Next year, I will have a timer to keep me accountable).
- Timed writes (after a story has been thoroughly worked with—5 minutes, students re-tell the story in writing in their own Latin words).
- Multiple repetitions of vocabulary (always in conversations and stories).
- Dictatio—10 sentences dictated to students taken from an upcoming story.
Q. What have we done this year that did NOT help you learn Latin?
Without fail, I always get some items here that also showed up as high items in the “what helped category”. I often find that my 4 percenters report some of these items. But always, year after year, the most frequently reported item is the same.
- Nothing we did didn’t help.
- Dictatio
- Silent reading
- Grammar notes (of any kind)
- Timed writes
- Drawing
- Word studies (English derivatives)
My note here: I still lapse, from time to time, into thinking that a handout of some sort on grammar is useful. I continue to get feedback that it’s not, and that it is often confusing, except for the 4 percenters. This year, when Latin 1 students began to use constructions using the infinitive, I gave them a handout of all the verbs we had had so far listing the infinitive. One very astute young man wrote me a note about that. “The list of infinitives might have been necessary, but I really only learned them from the stories we told and read.” Point on. I’m still learning to let go of old habits.
Q. If you could change one thing about what we did that would have helped you, what would it be?
- I would not change anything.
- Give us more (activities involving CI—examples cited below)
- Drawing all the stories we tell and read
- More conversations about modern life/themes
- More speaking in Latin all the time
- More read alouds
- Slow down!
- More repetitions
I have never received such consistent evaluations as I have this year. They have been trending this way, but this year, students in all of my classes reported essentially the same things to me. This gives me a sense that I am finally teaching more consistently as a Comprehensible Input teacher and creating that kind of learning experience for my students. And, as usual, their input this year will help me do that better next year.
Next year, I already know that in each class, perhaps each day (why not) I will designate the following helpers:
- Time Keeper–to keep the watch on how much of our class time we spend in Latin
- Videographer–to video the class and capture what he/she thinks is the most useful parts of it to put on my website for home use.
- Translator–a student who will “sneeze” the English meaning everytime a new word is used that day. If there are three new words in a class time, then there may be 3 translators in the class.
- I am also going to make sure that I gesture every verb that I use. I continue to vacillate over whether this should be a gesture that indicates the action of the verb or a sign. Right now, I am more inclined to a gesture that indicates the action of the verb.