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Just Play Defense 1
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33 thoughts on “Just Play Defense 1”
Jeff, I think this advice from Ben is solid. And it will be mostly unnecessary if/when you have a fresh group of kids that haven’t been misled as to how one (no, not “one”… ALL) actually become proficient in a language.
I have one Spanish 3 student (out of a small group of 3) who completely shut down our story/R&D routine this year for us. She is strong, but misguided, and thinks she needs the textbook like she got her first year of language. Last year, she was not allowed to bring up her negative opinions, because the class of 25 level 2 students were buying into stories/R&D and she didn’t have a footing. She was also new to the school. With only 3 now, and one of them being her girlfriend, she “won”, and they are dong “individual weekly options” instead of our typical classes. I gave up fighting her, but made damn sure that it was not easier than what we were doing before.
Jim-just make sure to give her a listening assessment, a speaking assessment, a reading assessment, and a writing prompt at the end of her textbook adventure. That should be interesting.
😉 (Feeling a little cranky about this giving in stuff)
Oh, trust me, the textbook option was not attractive, had all the “4 components” covered, and after two weeks of it, she will probably go back to reading novels (which is another weekly option… the most popular and encouraged within this small group of three.)
Hey Jim, what are your “weekly options” for that class? It sounds intriguing. I have a tiny group like that too.
Just sent it to you Jen (it is nice to have instant access to y’all’s emails!).
Jim would you send those weekly options for individuals or small groups of rebellious kids to me for posting? I will place it under the Bullying of Teachers and Mental Health and When Attacked categories. Thanks Jim.
And it’s really enjoyable and easy too. So, this group that did better on writing, is this the group with the 3 rude boys who is doing R&D all the time now, or a different group? Will you be doing speaking assessments with both groups also? That would be an interesting comparison.
Reading may be more important for writing, but I don’t think it can affect auditory processing, accent, and comprehensible (to a real French speaker) output in the same way speaking to them comprehensibly can.
If they don’t hear it, I don’t think they’ll be very good speakers. If they don’t read it, I don’t think they’ll be very good writers.
I wouldn’t throw out stories just because they are not being assessed orally at this time. It’s the foundation of language, no?
I may be missing something here. Fill me in.
I’m not saying throw out stories. Just looking too closely at some numbers, I think (which I reversed above by mistake). Such small samples! I’m glad you brought this up, Jody, bc what this topic is for me is I am wondering if I just spend too much time on stories. This whole thing of SSR translation of novels lowers the “Wow!” factor quite a bit in my curriculum, but it is so much easier to do and I often feel that I am throwing big buckets of pearls before swine sometimes, trying to get a good story off the ground in front of socially incapable kids. That is why I am looking so closely these days at the value of SSR. In the end, it will only be each of us in each of our experiences who will determine for us in our own classrooms what kind of distribution of instruction between novel/choral translation/R and D and stories we end up doing, and that will be a function of time.
I’m getting way too much into this writing stuff. I just now pulled four writing samples done three weeks apart with the last ones having been written this week.
So eight samples. The writing was noticeably better in those four most recent samples! Each of the four kids’ scores went up four points like from a 4 score (Novice Mid-Low) to an 8 score (Novice Mid-High).
I just would really like to know if that was due to the increased reading or something else. It very well could be in part due to my posting of a list of conjunctions in front of the room while they wrote this week but not in the earlier set of samples. Conjunctions and that our kids know and can use them are big time in this writing game!
We need to see if we can gather more and more of our own data on this topic. We won’t get any data from anyone else, I would think. Maybe teachers who use the Realidades program keep this kind of data somewhere. Probably not.
I’m glad you wrote this Jody. We have a big data culture at my high school and I think I got sucked into looking at numbers and thinking that way. Gathering data when many of the kids don’t have enough food to eat, looking at that data as if it is based on work by highly motivated kids is strange. I think that in these two sentences, Jody –
…if they don’t hear it, I don’t think they’ll be very good speakers. If they don’t read it, I don’t think they’ll be very good writers….
you support the idea that language acquisition, unlike other fields, really is a process and that the gathering of data to prove or disprove anything (what?) can never be really accurate. I support that statement, oddly, by pointing to Krashen’s book The Power of Reading. In it, he sites hundreds of studies to conclude, simply, that if a person wants to become a better reader, they should read more.
It seems like common sense. I think this same sentiment is in the book called the Outliers. How do you get good at something? You do it over and over and over and over….However, we want to test more to see what they are learning. They are learning one thing well: how to take a test.
I’m throwing out/deleting those numbers I posted earlier. Why? too few students. One or two kids, maybe three, scoring at different levels could have skewed the data to show stories superior to novels.
Just to throw in some meaningless numbers, here are the results from my current combined 3/4 class, with their two or three years of traditional teaching preceding their first year of TPRS/CI instruction:
Novice Low – 0%
Novice Mid-Low – 8%
Novice Mid- High – 88%
Novice High – 4%
Intermediate Low – 0%
And my point there is that my level 2 TPRS/CI kids were outscoring my level 3/4 traditionally trained kids by a lot. The higher level kids had no Intermediate Low writing scores, and few Novice High scores as well, which is significant bc those kids that get to the higher levels are the 4%ers and their writing was, at best, weak compared to the level two kids. They all wrote at NMH after two and a half, or three and a half, years of study. Like 9 out of 10 of them. The Int. High scores earned by my super star 4%ers didn’t exist in kids who had a full year, or two full years, more of study than they had. The kids with extra years of study used incredibly boring and simple level one type of verbs throughout. And yet their years were filled with worksheets and the book – one would think that with all that practice in structure they could write better. But just to be clear I deleted that earlier comment about scores bc I just don’t believe they are real indicators of anything. Maybe someone can do some research on novels vs. stories for real. How accurate are any numbers (from only three classes in this case) unless they are gathered in a much more controlled way with a lot more students. I don’t know if Beniko Mason is still in town. I’ll ask Diana. This would be a cool project for her.
We need to get that chart from the Ohio Dept of Education on here and analyze it
A little bit of analysis (after mentally reversing your periods):
The class with the “Smart Boys” has a wider spread, some students who have already reached Intermediate Low and a larger percentage of students at Novice Mid-High or above. It also has a larger percentage of students who are at Novice Low.
The class without the “Smart Boys” has a narrower spread, no students at the Intermediate Low level and a smaller percentage of students at Novice Low.
If you combine Mid-Low and Mid-High into the single category of Novice Mid, then you have a higher percentage of students at Novice Mid in your non-Smart Boys class (86% vs 77%).
My conclusions: the class without the Smart Boys is more homogeneous as far as language acquisition is concerned (and probably also more of a community), and you are leaving fewer students behind. I further conclude that your Smart Boys are detrimental to the overall language acquisition of the class that they are in.
Yes and yes, Robert, but again, too small a sample so meaningless information. I wonder how many students would be needed to get some real data on this deal. Hundreds? And what if the teachers involved in such a study had different ideas of what it meant to do stories vs. novels?
Ben, there is a writing rubric on the DPS website. It has the ACTFL Levels across the bottom and number of clauses across the top. I found this on a link to the Berlitz website:
http://www.berlitz.us/SiteData/docs/SLPWriting/658d3c5bc7a2b5fa/SLPWritingAssessmentRubric.pdf
Here is p. 1 of the DPS Rubric. For some reason, p. 2 does not display.
http://alhsfrench.weebly.com/uploads/1/4/2/1/14216048/alhs_wl_writing_assessment_rubric.pdf
I will look again for page 2.
here is the DPS Speaking Rubric:
http://curriculum.dpsk12.org/lang_literacy_cultural/world_lang/assessment/Speaking_Rubric.pdf
This looks like p. 2 of the DPS writing rubric. On the DPS website under assessment, there was a link that I was not permitted to access.
Looks like the rubric tops out at Intermediate Low. I have some kids who are writing in excess of 14 clauses. Does your rubric go beyond Intermediate Low. I have just begun working with this rubric and I could be overestimating the quality of their work?
p. 2 writing rubric:
http://curriculum.dpsk12.org/lang_literacy_cultural/world_lang/assessment/Writing_Rubric.pdf
Oops!
chill it took me over two years to get a feel for this rubric. We are just now as a group here in DPS starting to wrap our minds around what Int. Low is. This summer in June we will meet to further explore what Int. Low and beyond looks like that, but that will take a few years to bring into focus, in my opinion. But we have to, bc we are producing large numbers of superstar kids across the district in levels 2 and 3 who have left the Nov. High chart and need a new one to evaluate their writing. We have done that by sheltering output for the first two years in favor of input.
I will look forward to that conversation. It would be great to share examples. Skip suggested that last year for NTPRS, (Skip, are you out there???) but I had already had mentally and physically checked out of school. It would be neat to sit down with teachers from all over in language specific groups to chew over the rubrics with real examples.
Something akin to what a AP reader does to be familiar with the scoring.
Thank you to everyone. It has been quite the battle. I was really low yesterday and this morning, but I am improving because of your awesomeness. I will heed Ben’s advice. I decided that I couldn’t do any more this week. I decided to give the class a culture assignment with a worksheet and some reading. They were as happy as larks. Go figure. I will have them do a culture project the rest of the week and then next semester I will do RD and give the others some grammar packets that I have for the book. They should love it.
This girl definitely won this battle. She got 3-4 other girls in a class of 31 to breed her hatred. A very unpleasant young lady. My wife’s intuition was right. She and her comrades are bullies and I am a victim of it.
Thanks all again. Keep up your awesomeness!
If we “lose” one or two battles here and there because of a spoiled brat and their influential parents, that should not take our attention away from how important this kind of teaching is for the other 99%. I say 99% because it’s only a small % of the 4%ers who are rude enough to take issue with us and try to shut down what we do.
I a few words to Jeff in a private email, and I wanted to pass it on to everyone, because we need to understand that by teaching with CI, we often find ourselves in the midst of a power struggle between social classes (and we are near the bottom). As with the French president’s attempts to ban homework, this is good pedagogy as a means of achieving justice and equality, and it is going to piss some powerful people off. Here’s the end of my email to Jeff:
If it’s any consolation, this experience proves that the work you are doing is just. You are seeing what happens when someone take measures to truly level a playing field. The elites will not simply stand by and let their status and privilege be compromised. This is also when the ugly class differences come out between students of Latin (and their parents) and teachers of Latin. Parents will pull this card when necessary, and it is not pretty, especially when admins don’t see it for what it is, or refuse to, and put the burden on you. It’s ugly.
Remember that you are in the right, pedagogically and morally. Do your best to leave all baggage at school before you go home for a well-deserved break.
Just to add to this by John:
…remember that you are in the right….
I would say that we need to remember that we are 4%ers. In high school and college we used our language study to gain plaudits for ourselves, boost our GPAs, and, in my case, for lack of any other major, we majored in the language we now teach. We were good at it where a lot of others weren’t. We liked that. Some of us liked it so much that we became teachers. Then we tried to sell that same 4%er shit to all of our students in our first years of teaching, repeating a lot of the patterns we had learned from our own teachers (boy do they look shitty now in restrospect!). But then, oh no oh no oh me oh my some of us started to align with Krashen and a more democratic and non elitist way of teaching and now many of us have a kind of daily struggle going on in ourselves about this issue of the elite vs. the rest of the class. When we run into this kind of situation, either the 4%er in us has to die or we will allow it to continue to influence our teaching. So, Jeff, I am just trying to point out here that the very person in you who is being attacked is a new, more complete, much better teacher, but is being tested right now by that other stuff we carry in us from before. Wouldn’t it be nice to take the elite snots and turn them into scholars? But they don’t want that. They just want the grade, which is the power for them. Where their parents measure success by money, their children do so by grades. It’s about power and manipulating everyone, including their teachers. That girl doesn’t give a shit about Latin. Kind of a rant there. I just want to suggest that you not listen to any voice condemning yourself. You are not wrong. John and Robert and Bob and David and others here would support my point here. You cannot believe that 1% voice that says you really are wrong and screwing up this outrageous situation that you now are in. You are not wrong. Protect that new green shoot of the new teacher you are becoming. Have you ever noticed where that shoot comes from? Dirt. You are covered in it now. But as you grow stronger, the dirt will fall back down to the ground, the snot will find other things to stick to, and you will very soon be a strong CI based teacher, and the four or five Latinists here will have become thousands over the next years. This I believe. In 2007 there were 5 CI out of the 100 WL teachers in DPS. Now there are just under 80 of us. The other 20 are pathetic. They used to be so vocal against us. But that’s what five years of the kind of year you are having can do. Those are the numbers. Do not doubt that you are doing the right thing here.
Very encouraging. Thanks, Ben.
Some questions:
Does Blaine have a list of important structures for Pobre Ana for purchase? I just made my own class set and plan on doing the backwards plan stuff?
Once I have the structures for a chapter, do I just get reps on them as much as I can while the kids have the novels? (I know with crappy classes we are discussing in this thread that it’s best to do as little D as possible but can I get a reminder about what is done with more workable classes? Would it be alright to plan how many pages I’ll have them read and PQA just the structures on those pages the day before? I’m thinking it could be cool to have a AB-AB schedule….just toying around.
With the crappy classes, which I’ve got, what-if anything-do we say to them about why we are going from stories to now a book everyday? Those crappy classes are where the students will be the FIRST to question it, especially if we are taking away the personalization factor and they’re less engaged….Might this not create a bigger problem?
Jen, I think there is a list/glossary somewhere. Maybe Carol Gaab’s site maybe Blaine’s. I have some of his older Pauvre Anne books that do not have a glossary in the back so I think I may have looked for them at some point.
Thanks, Carol. I had actually replied a comment under your bio a few weeks ago about really actually getting a time to talk on the phone. My supervisor is right now trying to get the director of curriculum to pay for the Carol Gaab workshop that’s coming to Newark in Feb. Aaaaand, one of my hesitant colleagues has agreed to go check it out. Yay!
We have those structures already isolated out of Pobre Ana on the DPS website. Paul Kirschling and I are the ones who did that five years ago. However, there are too many of them in our list. Plus, I don’t know if they are accessible to you if you are not in the district. Carol have you come across them? I don’t go to the site much bc everthing we need is sent to us.
Look, on the crappy classes, Jennifer, I don’t care how the students feel. I just told my class with the Three Smarties in it six weeks ago that we will not be doing any more stories bc the feel in the room was not what it had to be for stories to work, so we started reading novels and that was that. End of conversation. There was grumbling for a few weeks and then they gave up bc I meant it. Bad vibes during stories? Not for me, thank you. I’ll pass on that.
Jim if you are reading this you will see that I pulled that data comment from earlier today. I just don’t want to imply that one or the other, stories over novels or vice versa, leads to better writing. I just felt after I posted them that the numbers I got are from way too small a sample (28 kids) for them to mean anything so I pulled them.
I don’t think we have access to it. I’ve searched high and low for as many resources I could pull from the site.
*access to the structures that you isolated.
It is so eye-opening to see you ‘draw the line’ with a group of kids who cannot act in the ‘spirit of the thing.’ They simply cannot do that which is required.
I am starting to understand that this is just something that you, the TPRS teacher, must be willing to do to maintain your emotional equilibrium.
Thank you for teaching by example, and for being so candid.