Methodology

The following is a list of some of the “pieces” of Comprehensible Input (CI), tools, and strategies that I use in my classroom.  N.B. These explanations are MY explanations of how implement each strategy in my own classroom. Every teacher can teach using this methodology, and each one of us is going to approach it differently with our own style. 

Curriculum and “Structures”

One of the most common hesitations for people who are interested in switching to Teaching with Comprehensible Input (TCI)  for their classroom is that there is no set “curriculum” or text book to follow.  Well, in recent years there is SO much out there for CI teachers! There are TONS of brilliant mini novels which can guide your class all year, and other teachers have created lesson plans and guides to help teachers new to the method, start to integrate it into their classes.  The structures we use to guide curriculum are usually verbs found on the Dickinson Core Vocabulary List.  In 6th and 7th grade where I see my students every other day per for 40 minutes per class, I can usually do 3-5 structures, over two weeks. What does “do” mean? It means I can teach two of these frequently used verbs, through CI and OWL strategies over those class periods and at the end of the two weeks most of the students should’ve acquired them. Sometimes I can accomplish more, sometimes less. In a CI classroom, TIME with students is the most valuable thing since that is their only exposure to spoken Latin. 

Dickinson Classical Commentaries Core Vocabulary

The DCC Core Vocabulary lists represent the thousand most common words in Latin and the 500 most common words in ancient Greek. They were originally composed in 2012–13 by a team at Dickinson College led by Christopher Francese.  The main point of core vocabulary lists such as these is to help prioritize the learning of vocabulary. Assuming the goal is to read extant Latin texts, one should learn these words first. The lists can be used to distinguish which words in a given text are very common, and which are not, and students can be held responsible for only the most common ones, and gradually build to a mastery of the whole core.  The databases of scanned texts from which the core vocabulary list was created includes more than 200 authors "from Ennius to Erasmus."  A full list of the authors and works in his sample can be found here. To name a few, Latin texts were including from Catullus, Caesar, some speeches of Cicero, Horace's Odes, Juvenal, Tacitus, Seneca, Vergil, Ovid, Tibullus, along with some less commonly read authors such as Persius, Quintus Curtius, and Vitruvius.  Experts in vocabulary acquisition in Latin agree that second year college level Latin students should have knowledge of about 1500 words to have success. To help students towards those standards, we focus on acquiring (NOT learning) 100 words a year. By the end of middle school, SRMS Latin students will have acquired 300-500 Latin words or roughly 50% of the core list. 

TPR- Total Physical Response

TPR is my favorite for introducing language, so I use it a lot with 6th graders.  I have found that it doesn’t matter what age my students are, they ALL need movement.  I establish the “structures” I am using with a gesture, for example, "Sedite" means sit, so when I say the word, I also make a motion down.  The gesture is linked to that structure, and at least initially, if students can’t recall the word, as soon as they see or DO the gesture, it instantly ignites their memory and helps with the acquisition process.  TPR is also a great way to check for comprehension. I often ask students to close their eyes and “do the gesture” for a certain structure, to show me how/if they’ve acquired that structure during the class. 

TPRS- Teaching Proficiency through Reading and Storytelling

My first introduction to CI was through TPRS. I had the pleasure of watching  Michelle Kindt tell a story in FRENCH about boy who doesn't not have a belly button and has to go to the moon to find one. I thought it was the most bizarre thing that I had EVER heard. But it was the funniest thing ever and the craziness of the story and acting helped all the learning stick. Similarly, Martina Bex has a story about Will Smith having a bad odor. His odor was bad because he eats garlic all the time due to his irrational fear of vampires. That is a student favorite!  The important piece of TPRS is the “story-ASKING” part of it.  Students participate in the story creation process - you are ASKING the students the details of the story AS the story is being told.  Engagement is the highest when I allow students to star as actors. 

FVR – Free Voluntary Reading

This is my newest adventure in pedagogy.  Stephen Krashen is a leading expert in linguists and language acquisition. He is most know for his Input Hypothesis. "Input" refers to the learning (in this case foreign language) that teachers give their students. Students don’t only get input from listening, they also get it from READING. In fact,  reading is a very important piece - more important than one would thing. In reading, students pick up meaning 10X faster than by direct instruction.  FVR in my classroom  happens at the very beginning of class, and students have the opportunity to choose a Latin Novella. Students can acquire by listening to my "input" (me speaking Latin), but they can ALSO acquire "input" on their own through reading Latin. They use bookmarks that teach them how to read in a foreign language - which include strategies such as using pictures and context clues, to establish meaning. While I do have some children’s books, I also have a classroom library of stories that my students have written and illustrated for the SCRIBO Latin writing contest. I find that these are the books that children gravitate to. This is because, 1. Their peers wrote them and 2. They are much more comprehensible than some of the  other Latin books.

Brain Breaks

Being in a language class is HARD work. Our brains need literal “breaks” from the Latin to make sure we can stay focused and continue acquiring the language. I use brain breaks in my class for just this. They are usually quick movement games, rock paper scissors, dancing, tongue twisters, yoga, zumba, or ball tossing. They help refocus our brains and center us for more language acquisition. With middles students, I tend to do a brain break every 20 minutes or so.

Movie Talks

This is my kids favorite favorite that we do in class. We take a short animated video and I play it in class. HOWEVER, I only play it 1-2 seconds at a time. Then I talk about what's happening for a few minutes in the video in Latin…. So essentially a movie that is 60 seconds long can EASILY stretch out for a whole class period.  Kids like watching Sketchy Ice Cream and the Carrot Craze. Afterwards,  the kids get to watch the whole thing, the whole way through, WITHOUT interruptions.

Gamified Learning

Video games have become part of the fabric of the 21st century.  There are over half a billion people worldwide playing online games at least an hour a day — and 183 million in the US alone. The average young person racks up 10,000 hours of gaming by the age of 21.  With perfect attendance, this would match the  time they spend in a classroom during all of middle school and high school.  What's more astonishing is the amount of TIME that young people are playing games. Over 5 million gamers in the U.S are spending more than 40 hours a week playing games — the same hours as a full time job!  Gamification can be defined as taking elements of game play and incorporating that into non-game context, such as classroom learning. The benefits of gamification include:  rise in level of student engagement and motivation, emphasis on continual learning, importance of challenging one's self,  instant access to formative data, and a largely improved rate of retention among students.  Better yet, the power of play is UNMATCHED! Dr. Karen Purvis, the leading expert on Child Development,  offers that it takes 400 repetitions to create a new synapse in the brain - unless it is done with play, in which case, it ONLY takes between 10-20 repetitions.