So the University of Georgia workshop was yesterday, and here is most excellent Bob’s report. Thank you Bob!
Hi Ben,
Yesterday was simply magnificent–at least from where I stood, and the 30 or so folks from the department seemed to be pleased, too. Here’s a brief on what I did.
I was betting that most would not have Latin as a background. As it turned out, only 4-5 had any Latin at all, which made most in the room absolute beginners. Because we “love data” I gave a pre-test and a post-test of 30 core vocab that I would be using that day. More on that below.
I chose a fable from the middle ages “Mus in Cervisa–The Mouse in the Beer.” Across 6 hours of CI work I did the following with them: TPR to get some basic actions and objects in the air–had a BLAST with that. Circling with everything I did,btw. PQA around the objects in a box (a stuffed cat, lots of stuffed mice, a bottle of wine, a bottle of beer, a large urn, etc. So, TPR blended into circling and PQA and more circling. I front loaded all of the “rules of the game” including gestures, safety net words, etc. I told/asked a story, did two timed writes (5 and 10 minutes) and different parts of the day, R and D’d and drew two embedded stories, did some one word pictures and then finally chorally read the original fable at the end of the day.
On the pre-test, the average score was 9/30. On the post test, the average score was 27/30. While they were taking the post test, a Spanish teacher blurted out load–damn, I am SOLD! This stuff really work! (There was plenty of evidence all day long that it was working). The timed writes were stunning. A group of people (albeit all 4 percenters) who knew no Latin were writing 50-75 words retelling a story.
After just 20 minutes of introduction at the beginning of the day, I let them know that there would be no more talk ABOUT what we were doing until the last hour of the day. So, in the last hour, after doing all of the above (about a week’s worth of work in the classroom) we had really wonderful Q and A about this work. They got a handout of a Krashen article, biblio, and links to the PLC, to Krashen, to Laurie Clarq’s blog, and to the iJFLT journal. Before I left, talk of follow up workshops in the fall and spring of next year. I hope you see new entrants into the PLC, which I referenced often.
Full range of folks here from brand newbies just now doing their student teaching to faculty members, and they all played the game with me equally and throughout. One prof even had to leave to go teach a class, and then came back though he had the perfect “out” if he had wanted. They were just delightful.
There were several golden moments, but I’ll close with two: after I told/asked the story at midday (which had most of the components of the final story in play but which we would expand with embedded stories, etc), without expecting this, one teacher asked if I ever asked for someone to retell the story. I said: not at this point. I wouldn’t expect anyone to be able to produce this early in the game. A young French teacher raised his hand and asked if he could try. He retold the whole story in Latin and it blew the group away. He had no prior knowledge of Latin.
Later in the afternoon, while looking at the second embedded version of the story, a conditional clause was in front of us. I had been using the same kind of conditional clause with the group all day because I knew it was coming in the final story several times. A teacher who had no Latin background at all asked if she could try and translate that clause. She gave it back in English perfectly. At the end of the day, I offered that as proof that we must shelter vocab but not grammar. In Latin textbooks everywhere, conditional clauses are the “bad boys” that we save for advanced students only. This absolute newbie nailed it.
I reminded them throughout that they were not normal, that they were four percenters. I thanked them for repressing their fourpercenter urges through the day, but that paid off. They saw over and over again how CI work produces equity in the classroom.
And, did I ever sleep well last night! Spring break starts today, and it’s a gorgeous spring day in Atlanta! Thanks for putting me in contact with them, Ben. It was a grand experience.
Bob