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Report from the Field – Nathan Beck
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11 thoughts on “Report from the Field – Nathan Beck”
Hi, Nathan! Congrats on your newfound autonomy, acceptance and acknowledgement at your school — Bravo!
I like the following:
Year 1 – Jim Tripp’s stories for Sem 1; first half of Anne Matava’s first book of stories for Sem. 2. Mostly listening, with Y/N quizzes and reading quizzes.
Year 2 – Continue with second half of Anne’s first book. Then start her second book. Continue quizzes. Start more writing.
Year 3 – Start daily reading of topical (not hard) current events online (project onto screen), reading aloud with students, as they develop their own personalized lists of favorite words from readings. Continue all of the above activities several times a week.
Year 4 – Is it AP for you?
Nathan, When I say, “topical (not hard),” I meant, “not ‘hard news.'” Topical items would include discussions about: proposed legislation, upcoming festivals, figures in history (on their birthday or anniversary of their death), scientific breakthroughs, technology, sports, women in the arts, etc.
Also, I find that websites oriented to upper-elementary and jr. high are the best. I don’t teach Spanish now, so I am out of the loop when it comes to that sort of thing…
Good luck!
Thanks for your response! I have Anne’s first book of stories and will have to check out her second one. I also should get my hands on Jim Tripp’s book! I like the idea of doing daily topical event readings in the upper levels as well. Year 4 isn’t currently considered AP, or at least none of our students have ever taken the AP test and they aren’t encouraged to do so, haha. So, there’s more flexibility there as far as what I can do — though potentially trying to adopt the AP themes, as per Sabrina’s suggestion, would be a nice idea. That or IB. I’ll have to think on it. Thanks for your input! If you think of anything else, please let me know :).
Nathan,
Sounds like you have some great opportunities ahead of you.
The idea of you heading the WL department in your school next year is GREAT for 2 reasons:
1) You’ll be able to teach as you see fit and
2) You will be able to impact the rest of the teachers in your department. I know you mentioned you are a small one, but by implementing CI you will grow in size over the years, that s almost a given. You will advance the cause of CI, because the only way we can do it is one person, one department, one school, one region, one state, one country at a time.
As for your curriculum design question , I think you are heading in the right direction by thinking high frequency lists and readers. After all Krashen tells us that reading is the fastest way to fluency in any language.
I would definitely do backward planning, starting with your 4th year and moving down to 1st, and not the other way around. I would also look at the AP and IB themes. For AP French, the themes are ( they may be different for Spanish) :
• Global Challenges
• Science and technology
• Contemporary life
• Personal and Public Identities
• Families and Communities
• Beauty and Aesthetics
I would look at these themes so that you can pick stories and readings that can somehow have some connections with the above themes, even if loosely. This way you are also playing the school game by showing that CI is a mean to an end, a tool and not a separate entity, so you do not alienate other people who may think differently than we do.
Let me know if you need the IB themes, I m thinking there is probably some redundancy there. I teach IB so I have those resources handy at school if you are interested.
Lastly, I really like your idea of using the three modes of Communication in the CI classroom for the Saint Louis Conference. That is very à propos and a perfect fit for the overall theme of the conference. I think there is a lot that you could potentially do with it but no time now do dig into this idea.
Have a great weekend!
Sabrina,
Thanks so much for your kind words and suggestions! I completely agree that it takes us going teacher by teacher, department by department, school by school, etc. Since I’ll be given a lot of freedom, I really want to dig deep and come up with a program that really allows kids to acquire Spanish. In some ways it’s very simple (i.e. provide CI) and in other ways it seems complex (standards, backwards-planning, acquisition research, daily planning, assessment, etc).
I think the AP themes are the same for Spanish, though I would also have to double check that. Our school isn’t associated with taking the AP test (maybe our students have never really felt up to it or it was never offered… I really don’t know why there isn’t any type of focus on the AP test…), so I have more flexibility as far as Spanish 4 goes. Any information you have on the IB program would be wonderful — I can also do some googling, haha :).
In thinking about planning from Spanish 4 to 1, I was thinking about going from a more Global Perspective (Spanish 4) to a Personal Perspective (Spanish 1). So, in Spanish 4 we would focus more on global issues and the cultures surrounding those issues, how they relate to issues in the US, etc. (i.e. a widening of perspective, potentially). And then Spanish 1 would be ALL about the students and their lives, so there would be a lot of PQA all revolving around their worlds. Then, I would make sure that any readers / readings fit the general tenor of each level. And Spanish 2 and 3 would be a progression from Personal to Global. Of course, without losing focus on providing students with copious amounts of CI. Any thoughts on this?
Also, thanks for the boost of confidence as far as the STL Conference goes! I think I am going to submit a proposal — I wanted to make it broader (i.e. encompassing all three modes of communication) because 60 minutes seems like a lot of time to fill haha! Of course I’d want to make it interactive and not just talking because that would get so boring… I’ve never done a presentation at a conference, so I’m not sure what to expect. I’ll be at NTPRS this year, so that could be some nice experience, observing how others present, etc.
Anyway, thanks again and please let me know if you have any further thoughts / insights :).
If you’re feeling really brave, you could present on the relationship between the interpersonal modality and holding students academically responsible for behaviors that support language acquisition. Might raise quite a few eyebrows, but would also be a way to test out this important concept in a “trial by fire” atmosphere.
I think that would be an excellent thing to mention in a presentation. So far I’m getting all positives about using jGR with Interpersonal Communication, even from department members who are not CI. The drama teacher wanted to adapt it for her classes. Anything with a strong performance aspect to it — makes sense to me.
I like that idea! I can definitely see the merits in bringing that up when talking about the Interpersonal Mode, sharing the rubric if possible. I think I’m starting to envision a nice progression as far as information goes…
1. Brief Overview of the Three Modes and ACTFL’s 90% use statement
2. Description of Comprehensible-Input and its role in Language Acquisition / Brief overview of the difference between acquisition (unconscious) and learning (conscious) of a language, focus should be on acquisition in the classroom, etc
3. Description of the Affective Filter and how it affects learning
4. Discussion of each modality in turn and how we accomplish that in the TCI classroom — though this doesn’t really seem that interesting to me as it may just end up being a description / list of activities that fall within each mode? Maybe, as you suggest John, focusing more heavily on the Interpersonal Mode and how to hold students academically accountable so as they can more fully acquire language (or, at least, have more opportunity to do so since they’re having to actively negotiate meaning and pay close attention).
Then, if that was the focus, I would, instead of focusing on all three modes, focus on (maybe) the following:
1. The nature of interpersonal communication
2. The importance of negotiating meaning as a means to acquire more language from the input (there’re studies that talk about this, I think…)
3. Talk about the importance of preparing our students for both college and career (buzz words!! woo! haha) where interpersonal communication / self-advocacy is so important.
3. The problem: how to get students to really interact in an interpersonal way in the CI classroom?
4. Solution: jGR rubric, also focus on the self-evaluation aspect of it, etc
Maybe make the presentation titled: “Effectively Implementing the Interpersonal Mode in the Comprehensible-Input Classroom”.
Thoughts on all of this? Thanks so much for your input! I really appreciate it 🙂
Hi Nathan,
I think that traditional instruction lacks quality practice with the Interpersonal Mode in class, too, but Interpretive is ok and they major on Presentational. All the partner practice exercises from a book aren’t Interpersonal to me. Since they’re scripted, or almost completely scripted, I think it’s Presentational. So I think Interpersonal Communication is a place of perhaps realized weakness under the 3 modes. At least it was to me teaching a few years ago when I got more familiar with national standards.
I think that’s in your favor in a presentation.
Nathan you may wish to share with your teachers a little gesturing idea I thought of to help me remember the three modes, since often words with more than two syllables throw my right brain into a tizzy. I bring my hands in like I’m one of those people at the airport who bring planes in – that is the interpretive skill, and then I cross my arms from left to right back and forth – the interpersonal skill, and then I reverse direction of my arms from in to point out for the presentational skill. It helps me remember and might help some of your teachers in St. Louis remember.
And also, I remember being challenged on jGR and that work last summer – specifically how it may not be a bonafide assessment instrument. I think that challenge was from Henry Hall in Japan. I remember it because it was the last challenge we’ve had from anyone in this group since then. Some pretty high quality teachers have embraced jGR as a fully valid academic assessment instrument bc it in fact language acquisition is different from other subjects and a kid’s observable non-verbal behaviors are academic in nature. So go for it and include it in St. Louis. Like you said, it may raise a few eyebrows. Hey, that’s what we do!
Nathan, another thing that I have found helpful for upper levels is novels. Jim Tripp, while we were waiting for Krashen to speak at Breckenridge this summer, told me to get a bunch of TPRS novels for my Spanish 3 and have them read on their own. They have read one each quarter and then filled out Bryce H’s reading report sheet. Parents are impressed, students not taking Spanish are impressed, kids get their swag on because they can read whole novels on their own. (Even if it is Las aventuras de isabela 🙂
Jim, if your are reading this, thanks.
david