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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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?