Highlights and Takeaways from iFLT 2018

Salvēte omnēs!

I'm back after a month of rejuvenation and recentering. In mid-July, I attended the iFLT Conference (International Forum on Language Teaching), which was right where I live in Cincinnati, Ohio.

The highlights:

• iFLT offers something tremendous that is rare in the conference circuit - 'lab classes'. These are classrooms with real live students (not just teachers pretending to be students) being led by talented and experienced CI teachers. Each year offers something different in terms of levels of learner, instructors, and languages available. This year featured the first-ever Latin lab class, featuring the incomparable Justin Slocum Bailey and my own students! Seriously, each morning of the conference, attendees can watch master teachers in action, and it is priceless. I was fortunate enough to see not only the Latin class but also Annabelle Allen, "La Maestra Loca". 
• Tracks & Coaching - iFLT offers attendees some options on customizing their conference experience. You can simply attend the conference and go to sessions based on your (& their) availability, or you can sign up for a particular track based on your novicity or expertise in teaching with Comprehensible Input. When you sign up for a track, you are placed into a cohort of like-ability teachers and assigned to a lead teacher as well as at least one coach. My coach was the excellent Gary DiBianca.
• Open Coaching - Coaching is available for anyone throughout the conference - they set up many of the coaches in a common area and you can work with them rather than attend a session. If you like, you can work with different coaches until you find your Mister Miyagi. 
• Vibe - There is a relentless positive energy and encouragement! 
• Twitter & Attendify - The conference has a vibrant Twitter and Instagram presence - offering a chance to connect from outside the conference and spread the love. The Attendify app provides a way for in-conference collaboration and communication. 
• Latin teachers! I can claim to have been part of a good squad of Latin teachers. We ate lunch together, mingled with other languages, and in general rocked! 

Things I learned or re-learned, in no particular order:

• A 'Map Talk' can be a nice switchup from a Picture Talk or Movie Talk.
• "Picasso of Plates" - This activity involves students holding a paper plate on their head and trying to draw something without being able to see. Can't wait to try it!
• It is so efficient and easy to follow a Movie Talk with any activity that can use screen captures.
• The Point and Pause is powerful - my cohort reminded me this again and again as I learned Spanish, Chinese, and Indonesian from their lessons!
• "If they laugh, they're listening."
• Sounds effects & choral activities can bring the room together.
• When dealing with a problem behavior, distract rather than reprimand. And keep it to a whisper! (Or break the flow with a brain break.)
• The Seven Voice Tricks to keep engagement:
• loud v. soft
• fast v. slow
• high v. low
• p - a - u - s - e
• Kahoot without technology! 
• Use colored paper / shapes to represent the four possible answers. Have students hold them in the air to answer! Will they cheat? Yes! Will they learn? Yes! I have a feeling this will turn into a longer blog post with more variants once I've used it in my classes.
• Compelling visuals are not hard to find:
• optical illusions
• https://gratisography.com

That's all for now! 

A Month of Mindfulness

Salvēte omnēs!

I'm back!! Where have I been? Well, many places, including some excellent conferences, and I will have reports from those posted soon. But for the past month I have embarked on an interesting quest, partly inspired by reading the Zen Teacher (more about it, as well as Dan Tricarico, at his blog here.) Those of you that know me personally are aware of my yoga practice as well as my being a meditator. And those things have been going on for years, with tremendous benefits. But the book got me thinking about routines and self-care in a different way - such that I decided to actually establish a daily mindfulness meditation practice for a month. In the past, I meditated, but there was no consistent habit or routine to it. I just managed to incorporate it often enough. This was going to be different!

In fact, so different that at first, I couldn't decide how I wanted to do it. I could not choose between trying to build the habit in the morning or in the evening. Both times had advantages and disadvantages. I had two tools and I could not choose between them - mindful drawing and the tremendous Headspace App. Both tools had advantages of providing reminders and 'pulling' on me to keep up the habit. I was physically carrying around my art materials and the phone app could pester me with notifications. I also had some boosts along the way - Miriam Patrick had created her #take5latin challenge, providing inspiration, and my school had paid for a subscription on Headspace, allowing me to access to many, many options for guided meditations. But in the end, there were no firm decisions made about these. It just kind of happened the way it happened.

Here is the finished result of my time in mindful drawing -

As per Miriam's 'Take Five' challenge, it includes:

-arbor
-ruber
-charta
-scribere
-serpens

On the Headspace app, I worked my way through the first basic pack, a bunch of the minis and singles (the End of Day one is a favorite), plus portions of the Self-Esteem, Regret, and Stress packs.

If it seems like this post is lacking in detail, it is. It could provide statistics, or answers to questions like "when exactly did you start? are there other pieces of art? do you actually meditate every single day?" For that last one, I'm not quite sure - and I think that's the way a 'Zen Teacher' would have it be.

Monday Night Musing #8 - All You Have To Do Is Ask (A Little)

Salvēte omnēs!

Welcome back to another edition of Monday Night Musings, when I set the timer for 15 minutes and let ideas flow instead of trying to craft, construct, and edit.

The topic tonight is 'on-demand' professional development, or the really recent phenomenon of social media serving as learning communities. Like anything, there are positives and negatives, but I am here to focus on the positive in particular.

A few weeks ago I posed a 'Quomodo dicitur?' (How is it said?) question to one of the CI Latin teacher groups, in regards to using Expo brand markers in the classroom in Latin.

My question: "If you were to use 'Expo', like an Expo brand marker as a Latin noun, would you put it in the 2nd declension or 3rd? masculine or neuter? Leave it as indeclinable?"

As far as I can tell, none of us has formal training in how to handle questions like this. It's all feel. And of course, there's not really a wrong answer. If I want to discuss Expo markers in my classroom with students, I can do so with any of the options above and be just fine. But some of us want to feel like we are aligned with something, and even if you have colleagues in your school, teaching Latin with CI can feel pretty isolating at times.

So what happened after I asked the question? Did the internet expo-lode into a flame war? Not at all. I received quick, friendly, and thoughtful replies that affirmed my idea. One answer even made me laugh out loud! The consensus was to model it as a 3rd declension masculine noun with a dictionary entry expo, expōnis. The reasons for this choice were well-stated and multiple. I closed out of the internet feeling good.

In conclusion, I would encourage anyone with little questions like this one, and especially anyone feeling the need for affirmation, to use this new form of PD to its fullest. Sometimes it is easy to think of Quomodo dicitur? only as a fantastic podcast or a powerful weapon for our students in the classroom. As a community, we could use more ad hoc acknowledgement of our humanity and chances to have small, productive discussions. So let's take advantage of the best feature of social media PD and ask some more 'Quomodo dicitur?' questions.

Monday Night Musing #7 - Maps

Salvēte omnēs!

I am a huge fan of maps, yet they don't find their way into my classroom very often. Reflecting on why this is the case brings me a fairly simple answer - I used to teach Social Studies, and in order to meet geographic standards, my counterparts and I would include maps with each unit in some way. I did not develop the same habit or pattern with language teaching, so maps tend to be something to build a unit around or as a way of keeping things fresh.

So what's are some ways to use maps?

#1 - Traditional Maps - Whether on paper or on a screen, students learn about the Greco-Roman world from maps like this one:

They can color them or add in the details on a blank map, etc. There is certainly some value to be derived from this, but this is a quick post and I'd rather keep moving. But just to be sure you've heard of it, there are plenty of free quality maps from the Ancient World Mapping Center.

#2 - The Quizlet Diagram - Using Quizlet's awesome diagram feature (more on this in a future blog post), you can create a game where students identify locations within a diagram, picutre, or map. Great for formative assessment, filling a little bit of class time, and for the fast processors who enjoy trying to get the best times. Here's an example that includes the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World.

#3 - The Interactive Map - Using tools like Google Maps, which allow students to explore more in-depth than a 'traditional' map. I had students do this for a lesson this year when we had only studied three of the Seven Wonders. Honestly, it was a 'be your own sub day' so I didn't think too hard about it except that it allowed me to facilitate and guide students instead of having to perform or lead the whole group. here is an example:  Student Three Wonders Map

#4 - The Custom Map - Incorporating geography, spatial or temporal mapping into a narrative. If you are a fan of Anne Matava's Story Scripts, TPRS, or Asking A Story, then you know the value of having characters travel through space (and or time). Each year my students read a story based on ideas from Goldilocks and one of Anne's original scripts. It involves a character whose journey home from school takes her to multiple houses along the way, and because it is a script, it allows for a lot of customization of story details by the students in class. Here is an example of that story turned into a meandering 'map' using Google Drawings:

I really do enjoy this story each year, and I also like to have students create this map because their final products can be reused for so many post-reading activities. A big hit with the students is Picture Sentence Flyswatter.

Okay, there's probably more to say on maps but my time is up! Feel free to share how you use maps in the classroom. See everyone next week!

Monday Night Musing #6 - How Many Words?

Salvēte omnēs!

Welcome back to my series of short posts where I set the timer for 15 minutes and give you a little something read each week. The topic this week comes straight from the news, specifically this NPR story about the '30 Million Word Gap'. Are you familiar with the TMWG? If you are not familiar, there was a study done investigating differences within the homes of families from different socio-economic groups. The key finding reported was that there were vast differences in the words heard within these households, with the higher socio-economic class having a noted advantage not only in terms of total vocabulary words used by adults, but also the positivity and praising nature of the words. Hence the phrase "30 Million Word Gap" describing the difference between the professional income group and the poverty income group.

For more about it, see the following:

• A Freakonomics episode from 2015
• Here's a quick summary of the study
• The book by Dana Suskind (interviewed in the above episode) 
• The program at the University of Chicago seeking to prevent the gap 

Firstly, for any of us who use CI to teach a language, knowing about the Hart & Risley study is important because it has had such a strong influence not on foreign language education, but on literacy education in general as well as many people's perspectives on what factors influence student success when it comes to language learning (in the case of the study, first language learning).

Second, because of the marquee usage of the '30 Million Word Gap' phrase, the actual number that makes up the gap has been called into question. When I heard that again in the NPR piece, my CI-influenced brain said - were those repetitions comprehensible? Or just total? And then I remembered that the study just measured total words, not meaningful repetitions. As a CI teacher, I'm going for quality more than just raw quantity. Sometimes the way the Hart & Risley study has been utilized emphasizes quantity more than quality, and other times it flips the other way. So is the point here about CI? Or is it immersion? And is anyone monitoring the difference?

Third, I think the criticisms in the recent NPR story are fair to bring up. No piece of research is perfect and there is danger in relying too heavily on any single thing. However, the title "Let's Stop Talking About 'The 30 Million Word Gap" is purposefully taking it too far (clickbait, anyone?). Ending a conversation about something that has problems t is not useful or helpful. Enriching, deepening, or resetting that conversation in the interest of addressing those problems are ideas worth exploring.

And lastly, the '30 Million Word Gap' is compelling because it tugs on our desires as educators to help, to empower students through quality learning experiences, and it also seems to provide a simple and low-cost solution. CI is compelling and essential to me because it tugs on my desires as an educator to help, to empower students through quality learning experiences, and it seems to be a low-cost solution compared with textbooks, technology tools, flipped classrooms, etc. I practice  CI because it can meet the needs of all learners and allow me to provide a rich, challenging, and differentiated curriculum. In other words, I believe it can prevent gaps in learning in a way that traditional methods cannot.

Thanks for reading - time's out for this week!

Monday Night Musing #5 - Text Compare Tool

Salvēte omnēs!

Tonight's post looks at just one of many free online tools you can use to work with texts. Specifcally, this one highlights "Text Compare." It's pretty simple and somewhat easy to use. I know many teachers use tools like these, and they may have their favorite. If you know me outside of this blog, you might know that my favorite is Voyant Tools, which is worthy of its own full-length post. I'm sharing Text Compare because my students have found it to be useful and mostly hassle-free.

To start, it doesn't require a login. That's a plus when working with students. Sure, they can't save their work to the site. But for their purposes, a simple screen capture usually does the trick.

Speaking of screen captures, here's an example of what Text Compare can do:

As you can see, I entered two versions of a text. In this instance, I chose an embedded reading I created based on the 'Dies Natalis' story found on Keith Toda's blog. Maximas gratias, magister! The blue text highlights differences in both the words and punctuation, even getting into the spelling of the words! This is awesome for those of us teaching Latin because of the amount of inflection it has. It can help you catch little typos and can be especially instructive for students to 'see' those inflections when comparing two texts. Perhaps two students are comparing their timed writes with each other, or perhaps you've given them texts from two differing perspectives (first person v. third person). In my class recently, students were being asked to change a certain percentage of words in a story and comparing the original with their adapted text through this tool worked very well for them.

It also happens that putting this text in there showed me a mistake on my part - if you read closely in the first paragraph, you can see that the items on his wish list are different colors in the different versions! Yikes! If you adapt or customize texts with student-contributed details each year or for differing class periods, a quick pop into Text Compare can save you quite a bit.

The final thing I want to point out is the last paragraph in each version. Why are they completely highlighted in blue? Well, as best as I can tell the code thinks they are completely different even though in fact they are not. I'm guessing it has to do with the spacing I typed between the paragraphs? I quickly tried to troubleshoot it, but even when I entered just the last paragraph, it thought they were 100% different:

That just goes to show that this technology isn't perfect, and that anything you use is just a tool rather than a talisman. Perhaps a wise reader (you?) knows what is going on and can explain it to me. In any case, that's all I've got for this week. Thanks for reading!

Monday Night Musing #4 - What To Invest In Next Year

Salvēte omnēs!

I am back at the blog again - the new habit is working pretty well! And for tonight's post, I am going to veer away from CI & activities, although I promise not to totally ignore the student angle. Personally, blogging is hard for me. While I have much to share, the written format is not the best for much of it, and it is easy to hold what I publish to a high standard and therefore not publish things are not 'good enough'. So I am using this Monday Night Musings to improve on that. And so far, having a specific time and time limit to write has been helpful.

So, speaking of habits, there's this author, Gretchen Rubin, who has a book about habits and another book about what works for different people and a podcast, and other books as well. If you're not familiar with them, here's a quick rundown - Rubin writes a book about habits that people like. In the process, she discovers that what works for her does not work for everyone, because although readers like her habit book, her metohds fail them. So Rubin digs deeper and thinks some more and invents an organizational system for how people operate relative to expectations, which she calls the 'Four Tendencies'. It is not foolproof, but it is useful.

One of these tendencies is called an upholder. This person responds to both outer expectations (what others want you to do) and inner expectations (what you want yourself to do). Rubin is an upholder, and you can probably think of someone right now who just gets things done, doesn't let anyone down, but doesn't put themself last either.

Okay, let's stop a second. Why would I bring this up if I'm not an upholder? In general, school works for upholders. It is filled with rules and procedures. But having rules, procedures, and relationships in place also benefits other tendencies, specifically obligers and questioners. And that should cover most of your student population.

But it matters how you set these things up - questioners need to know why the rules and procedures are what they are. For example, I end every class with a two minute warning before dismissal- time to organize the classroom, for students to gather their own belongings, for me to have a last conversation with individual students. And because I have gone over with students in detail why I do this, even taking their questions on the subject, asking them to explain the reasons back to me, brainstorming alternate reasons why I might do this, they continue to follow through even with only days left in the school year. And because I almost always have a short, generally positive conversation with an individual student during that time, each student has throughout the year had direct experience with one of the benefits of the two minute warning - relationship-building! And in this way, even questioners like me (could you guess?) stick with the routine because they can now explain why they value it.

So as we all dream of a beautiful beginning to next year, I challenge you to think deeply about what to invest in that will pay off all the way to the end of the year, and especially how you can invest in it so that it works for as many students as possible, perhaps even all students.

Okay, time's up for this week! Thanks for reading!

Monday Night Musing #3 - Text Evidence

Salvēte omnēs!

Tonight's post is a quick one about the value of having students re-read a known text to show they can do something more than summarize or give the English when required to do so. A few of my classes have been working with a version of the Little Red Hen, and today was our final day reading the 'original' version - i.e., the one where they know the plot already. A few students grumbled about doing a partner translation / volleyball reading with the text. When I asked why, they explained that they already knew what happened in the story. So I pointed them to the follow-up questions I had printed on the back of the paper.

Here are those questions (with English for blog readers who don't read Latin):

1. Why do you think the liberī non respondent ? (the children don't reply)
2. How many times did agnus respondet, “ego nōn adiuvābō”?  (the lamb replies, "I will not help)
3. List the steps the gallīna (hen) explained to be necessary:

The directions: Support your answers by using evidence from the text.

Many, many students told me they completely understood the story but could not find the answer the #1 in the text. Can you?

in Galliā est parva gallīna rubra. gallīna habet trēs līberōs et trēs amīcōs. amīcī sunt feles, agnus, et porcus. sed amīcī sunt ignavī.

---

1. ūnō diē, gallīna spectat terram et invenit grāna in terra. gallīna amīcīs dicit, “necesse est ponere grana in terram. quis adiuvābit mē?”  feles respondet, “ego nōn adiuvābō.” agnus respondet, “ego nōn adiuvābō.” porcus respondet, “ego nōn adiuvābō.”  itaque gallīna sōla in terram ponit grāna.

---

2. “nunc necesse est dare aquam grānīs sub terra,” gallīna amīcīs dicit, “quis adiuvābit mē?”  feles respondet, “ego nōn adiuvābō.” agnus respondet, “ego nōn adiuvābō.”  porcus respondet, “ego nōn adiuvābō.” itaque gallīna sōla aquam grānīs dat.

---

3. “nunc necesse est colligere frūmentum,” gallīna amīcīs dicit, “quis adiuvābit mē?”  feles respondet, “ego nōn adiuvābō.” agnus respondet, “ego nōn adiuvābō.”  porcus respondet, “ego nōn adiuvābō.” itaque gallīna sōla frūmentum collegit.

---

4. “nunc necesse est coquere panem ,” gallīna amīcīs dicit, “quis adiuvābit mē?”  feles, porcus, et agnus respondent, “nōs nōn adiuvābimus.”  itaque gallīna sōla panem coquit.

---

5. nunc necesse est devorāre panem,” gallīna amīcīs dicit, “quis adiuvābit mē?”  feles respondet, “ita - ego adiuvābō.” agnus respondet, “ita - ego adiuvābō.” porcus respondet, “ita - ego adiuvābō.”  gallīna dīcit, “minimē! vōs estis ignāvī! ego et meī liberī devōrābimus panem! nōn necesse est amīcīs adiuvāre.”

Now you may have noticed that it does not directly state the answer with a phrase like liberi non respondet quod... Of course, the text does provide the answer, in fact it provides it a whopping five times!

The children don't answer because the hen keeps speaking to the friends (gallīna amīcīs dicit, “quis adiuvābit mē?”) Approximately 85% of my students did not get this the first time, even though they knew the story.

There is a similar trick with #2 - if students aren't paying attention, they will not notice that the correct answer is 3 times instead of five. (when the bread is ready of course the lamb agrees to help, and another time all the animals answer together).

How often do you ask students these kinds of questions? I find them incredibly valuable for myself as a formative assessment. And while students may be less than pleased that the answer doesn't jump out to them right away, I do believe this type of thinking and re-reading has a benefit. Until next week!

Monday Night Musing #2 - Spring Time & OWATPS

Salvēte omnēs!

One of the great joys of teaching CI in the springtime is using OWATPS (One Word At A Time Picture Stories), a more beginner-friendly version of OWATS. I always use Google Drive to make this happen in my classroom and have recently been using Team Drives with great success. I am fortunate that my students bring their own laptops to school each day. Using these in the spring is great for many reasons:

1. It capitalizes on the classroom culture and groupwork skills that you have built throughout the year - all that work pays off!

2. It gives you a chance to be facilitator instead of performer - low energy teachers can do OWATPS!

3. It gives students a substantial amount of voice, especially because the picture component supports a greater sharing of workload within the group.

4. It covers a large swath of planning if needed. My students almost always need two days of writing to create something worth reading, and it almost always works out that two days are needed to read most (but probably not all) OWATPS.

5. It can introduce or review vocabulary or serve as a break in the middle of a unit when they crave novelty but haven't had enough repetitions to move on yet. So it fits anywhere in a unit!

6. It works great for shortened class periods, standardized testing days, etc.

7. Students use the word wall and their memories to recycle numerous old vocabulary items!

8. It provides some nice evidence of their growth through the year, especially in areas like circumlocution and complexity of sentence structure.

However, OWATPS is not all sunshine & adorable puppies. Sometimes groups have difficulty working together respectfully. Sometimes students need a lot of guidance on how to work with their peers instead of just the computer. Some of the stories aren't going to be great. But no activity is perfect.

To wrap it up, if you are unfamiliar with OWATPS and teach beginners, it would be a great time to try it out. You may want to do the tech thing if your students are familiar with that, or you may want to do it more traditionally. Only you know what's best for your classroom.

And to finish it off, here are two fun example pictures from my students' recent creations:

Until next week!!

Monday Night Musing #1: Serpens & Student Choice

Salvēte omnēs!

I'm starting up a new series with the goal of getting more posts. It's called 'Monday Night Musings' - each Monday from now until the end of June, I will set a timer for 15 minutes and write about something on my mind that day. These may not be everyone's cup of tea and they will lack much of the detail and forethought that goes into a longer post. But hey, you're here, so let's get to it!

Tonight I want to reflect on something simple - the idea of student choice. I have used the 'Serpens' assessment, first introduced by Rachel Ash on Pomegranate Beginnings, essentially since I read the original post. I have made many tweaks and adjustments and revisions to the process and tried it out with different units and levels of students. But the one reason I come back to it twice a year, even though I know it will be one of the most difficult things for me to get in the gradebook, is that it is built upon the idea of student choice, one of the elements of the innovative classroom. I try each day to incorporate many of these, knowing that you can't hit them all at once. But often when I incorporate student choice, it comes in the form of customization of stories and characters. Or in determining partners or groups. Sometimes they can choose between two parallel readings. Rarely do I give them a choice of the task they will be doing. Serpens is one of those times, and it is worth it!

My incomplete list of why it is worth using assessments that include student choice:

1. When students see their options in front of them, they engage in a way that is different than if the lesson is challenging them or simply interesting to them.
2. Students who normally feel put upon by school because of their struggles relative to their peers get an enormous sense of power than they don't usually experience.
3. You as the teacher have a great chance to teach decision-making skills - obviously if students need help making choices, or even by interviewing them about why they've made their choices after the fact.
4. Students compare themselves with others, but minus the typical level of judgment. In other words, they respect each other's choices much more easily because you are providing many good options.
5. The assessments will all look a little bit different! When you're scoring them, sometimes that can be enough to keep your interest. 
6. Students develop fond memories of work they've done on them - many students today recalled details from the last time they worked on 'Serpens' in the fall semester, and the tone was positive and light-hearted. 

Okay, the timer's telling me to stop, so that's it for now. How do you incorporate student choice in your classroom? Do you ever use it with assessments? 

Give Me A Break!

Salvēte omnēs!

Today's post won't go into a file of activities or things you can pull up when you need something for that one class. There are tons of other posts (here and elsewhere) for that. Today, I want to reflect on something that happened to me over my spring break.

To set things up, you should know that I went into spring break telling myself that I was truly taking a break - I did not make overly ambitious plans to catch up on schoolwork or forge ahead to prepare for the remainder of the year. Instead, I told myself I would treat it as a true break from school life. And that meant no working / no cheating. I did say that I could write a blog post that had been on the back burner for a while. And when I set a rule for myself like that, I'm pretty good at holding to it.

For the most part, it went great! I was able to resist doing work and ramp down into a more refreshing, relaxed pace of life. For almost the entire time I was devoted to doing less and breathing more.

Sound good to you? Break me off a piece of that!

Unfortunately, the piece I want to 'break off' is not a bite of crunchy chocolate nostalgia. Instead, it is a reflection on one of those moments of weakness. Many of us teachers use social media as part of our professional development network, much to our great benefit. But there is another side to the 'connect through technology' coin. I was taking a break from schoolwork - but social media is connected to both my personal and professional life, so I didn't stop myself from using it over break. And because social media has, by design, ways of making you do things without thinking, it was the gateway to sliding back. Fortunately for me, I was able to notice and hightail it right back out of there!

I will not use names here, but in my mindless scrolling and reading, I began reading posts within professional groups, including blog posts from some of my favorite colleagues. I came across a post asking for advice (like many do). The topic turned to homework and breaks. You see, students had requested homework over break. Why would they do that? Because they actually had downtime from extracurriculars and attending class, so they could actually do the work. The poster was seeking advice about that scenario, ex post facto. Comments and advice were given, probably more than the original poster bargained for, emotions got a bit rankled, at least as I perceived them. I'd seen that plenty of times before. I sympathized with the original poster as well as with the commenters, who were all giving of themselves and were trying their best to make good.

But what struck me swiftly and painfully was the idea that the students saw a break in their schedule where they had downtime, and rather than choose downtime, they chose work. Like our system has taught them to do. Like our system has taught us (teachers) to do. Some commenters on the post proposed the same idea that I went into my spring break clinging to - that a break could/should be a break! There's a catch, though. That only works if the humans are strong enough to insert a break in their work or life. If the humans (teachers, students, whomever) have already been broken by the work, then what?

I understand that we as teachers want to instill in our students a strong work ethic, and often we can accomplish that by modeling industrious habits and dedication. But if we, in the very human field of education, lose sight of the bigger picture of the field - people, then it is very easy to accidentally teach work without its opposite, rest. Or, as a Latinist might put it, negotium without otium. Friends, let's seek balance where we can.

Resources & Variants: Quizlet Live

Salvēte omnēs!

This blog is now one year old! I am grateful for your support and readership and am looking forward to more posts in 2018. Today we're taking a look at Quizlet Live in the 'Resources & Variants' format. Quizlet Live is probably familiar to you, so the idea is for me to offer up something to make it easier for a teacher to implement in the classroom (resources), and provide options to help fit the activity with your class or help keep things interesting when returning to the activity over and over. Today's is a little light on the resources and a little heavier on the variants. For the original R&V post, click here. And if you are not familiar with Quizlet Live, check out Quizlet's official introduction here.

Resources:

All I've got is a pre-made template to use when keeping track of times within or between class periods. Yes, you can write this on the board too. But what if a little board-erasing bad guy comes along and wipes them away while you're not looking?

Also, I've got the scoresheet set up with a larger font (for projecting), with easy number formatting, and it should automatically highlight the best time in each row and in each column so it is easy to see who is ahead.

The template will automatically highlight the best score

 N.B. - The only times I really use this template is when I'm playing '11', a more cooperative variant that was posted on Quizlet's own blog.

 Gameplay Variants:

'11' - As I mentioned, I did not create this variant. If your students already know how to play Quizlet Live, it can take some retraining to get it right. The basic idea is that the goal of the class (not individual teams) is to get every team to have '11' questions correct in as fast a time as possible. You can frame it as either a competition against other sections of the same course (if you have them) or a challenge to keep improving. I love this twist for four major reasons: 

• It removes the sting of competing against all the students in the room and replaces it with cheering for everyone to do well. 
• It fosters the quality conversation and teachable moments that make this kind of cooperative gaming (like what Bob Patrick calls 'The Word Chunk Game"), so fruitful. 
• It keeps the replay value high for a Quizlet set because the class is excited to play again and demonstrate their growth rather than craving the novelty of a different challenge or activity.
• It models a Growth Mindset for students. 

'Silent Round' - The '11' Quizlet blog post showed this too on its version of the scoresheet. I don't play Quizlet Live this way often, but when I do, I provide students with scrap paper or sticky notes so that they do something to process. We then use those 'cheat sheets' of notes in other rounds. 

'Magic Word' - This begins similarly to a 'Silent Round.' However, before the game, there is a 'magic word' posted on the board. Once a team correctly answers that word, they may begin speaking. 

'Only Captain Can' - This is a variant on 'Magic Word'. The difference is that whomever clicks the 'Magic Word' becomes the team captain and that student is the only one who can speak, others must remain silent. This works at altering the dynamics of teams without having to reshuffle students around the room into new teams. 

'Story Sequence' - This variant also requires a scrap paper or sticky note - teams must write down the sequence of words they answer. If they miss, they start the whole sequence again. The winning sequence gets put on the board and becomes a prompt to write a story. Some quick suggestions:

• Of course the words can appear multiple times in the story, but their first appearance must match the prompted sequence. 
• I have found this works the fastest and best with partners writing the stories instead of groups of 3 or 4 as Quizlet Live requires. 
• You can play this as a race to finish as well, just know that the quality of the stories in that case will probably suffer.
• In essence, this is a variation on One Word At A Time Stories and works well with the picture version too.

'Double Up' - This one can be very fun, but you need the right numbers in a class (something divisible by 4). I have done this successfully with 8 students and 16 students. You also need students with two browsers on their laptops or with two separate devices. Why? Because each student is two players! Caveat Temptor! So here's the steps:

1. Students login as normally, putting L (short for left) after their name
2. Students open second browser and login normally, putting R (short for right) after their name
3. You the teacher assign teams in advance, putting students in pairs.
4. You the teacher give each team a number. 
5. You the teacher select the option that allows you to customize teams so students can login to the correct team together. Randomized teams won't work! 
6. Allow students time to set up their screens so that they can see both their 'players' at the same time. 
7. Start the game!

Here are some helpful images to guide you through, just in case:

Each student logs in as two players, left and right

Teacher selects 'custom teams'

students enter their team numbers so that their name appears twice on a single team

students set up their screens to show both players at the same time

Each student plays as two players in each round!

Option: You can also have them put S (short for sinister) and D (short for dexter) once students understand how to play this way.

Naming Variants:

Whenever my class plays Quizlet Live or Kahoot, they know that I will give them a formula to create an interesting name. I do this to encourage creativity, connect class to other topics, add some whimsy, and build search and thinking skills. Here is the format I almost always use: 

• Their name must start with the first letter of their first name
• It must fit into a topic, like the name of a mountain or a type of candy

So a student named Freddie Jones might be named 'Fuji' in our mountain game or 'Fifth Avenue' in our candy game. Using the first letter helps me figure out who is who without using their real names, while using the topic helps students have a bit more fun with the sign-in process and gives them an outlet for expression so they don't try to do the 'naughty name' thing. If they find something they like, they immediately have great pride in it and most students enjoy their temporary name because of the Name-letter Effect. Occasionally, and depending on a little advance research on the topic, I may switch it to the first letter of their Latin name or the last letter of their last name.

Well that wraps this one up for now.