the joy of reading

I think it is so important that our kids read just for the sake of reading - no workbooks, no tests, just time to read something they want to read. I wrote in an earlier blog that this kind of reading in our classrooms in a key to reducing the achievement gap, and I truly believe that. Which is why it is so sad to me that both times I have been observed this year my administrators have commented on how great everything was, but I should perhaps have a follow-up activity to the SSR, so the students recognize the academic rigor of it.

How do we teach people to love something by testing it?

Free Voluntary Reading

I just spoke with one of my former students. She's still on summer break and enjoying every minute of it. She is also reading Laura Ingalls Wilder in Spanish for fun. Another student of mine is happy reading Charlie and the Chocolate Factory in Spanish.

They carefully selected books that they knew the story line to and that they enjoyed.

They said that the libraria looked at them very strangely who asked if they were *sure* they wanted the Spanish version of the books.

The girls also have mentioned that they sometimes encounter words they just don't understand, and they simply read past those words hoping the meaning "fills in" later.

speaking of reading

I was surprised to find the word embarassed translated as embarasado while I was reading Harry Potter. Ron Weasley was pregnant? Wow, that adds a whole new layer of meaning to the story.

I was also surprised to see a word I had previously taught my students was gibberish: ello. Apparently, in some regional dialects, ello can be used as the object of a preposition. Who knew?

The pure joy of reading

Well, it finally happened. I got so lost in a book that I stopped noticing what I was reading, I was caught up in all the finer points of the plot and was sad when the book finally ended.

I've been reading in Spanish for decades now, and I've read some of the most celebrated books there are: Don Quixote, Cien años de soledad, etc. But, I can't remember ever getting so caught up in a book (in Spanish that is) that I forgot I was reading and just lived in the book.

:)

The book, by the way, was Harry Potter y el cáliz del fuego.

When I began reading through my classroom library over the summer I thought perhaps I was being a tad bit nerdish. "Normal people," I told myself, don't spend their vacation reading in foreign languages. But, I have found a lot of enjoyment in these books. I also learned a lot of Spanish: roble means oak and sauce means willow. Who knew? And I have a new perspective on Free Voluntary Reading. I can't wait until my classes start reading so I can begin a new book.

final exams

I have now finished grading the essay portion of the exam for all of my 8th graders, and I see even more anecdotal evidence for the strengths of the reading program, and perhaps the dictations and free writes.

1. The essays were longer than in previous years. Even students who struggle with Spanish were easily writing more than 80 words. The minimum is 70 although I tell the students 80 so that in case they balk they have hopefully still met the minimum. I have not run across a single essay that didn't meet the 80 word limit, and most have surpassed 100. Yay!

2. Students are using complex grammatical structures and verb tenses. One student wrote "Yo nací en ______" Other students have used the hace verb structure. I am finding far fewer errors with gustar and the future tense than in previous years. The use of transitions has also improved, and the essays are flowing more smoothly.

3. Students are using impressive vocabulary words, but I can tell that the words they are using are words of high-interest to each individual student. They aren't necessarily words I have taught or used in class, but words students have latched on to through their readings. Students are writing about the patas on their pets! (That means paw, but it's a word it took me years to master, if I have yet. I just ran across a new use of the word in one of our class readings last week.)

4. The variety of the essays is impressive. They each had the same topic, but the writing is far less formulaic than I am accustomed to. Students have branched out from the typical first year essay and are including areas I had not thought would juxtapose with the topic. (I'm not allowed to talk about the topic, in case the exam is compromised, so you just have to take my word for it.)

Even the students who are struggling have been able to put twists on their essays, and to write beyond what I thought their capabilities - especially in a timed exam - were.

reading and visualizing

One more thing from the article I read yesterday is that the authors mentioned how the students felt successful when they were able to read and see the pictures in their heads. This is exactly what Jeffrey Freed was writing about, and has been mentioned on the moreTPRS listserv as well.

There was an entire conversation on the listserv about how one of the problems poor readers may have is that they are not forming the pictures in their heads, how they may not even know that is what good readers do. And so, as teachers, part of our job is to model that skill.

I think that making comic strips, six-panel stories, or acting all help with this process. The students are then asked to take what is written and translate it into something visual, either pictures or actions which the rest of the class can then see.

Sustained Silent Reading

I'm a little behind in my reading. I just read the April edition of the Language Educator, which is the magazine published by ACTFL. In it there was an article on using sustained silent reading in the classroom. The teacher, Elba Rivas de White, began using a sustained silent reading as an option in her classroom three years ago. It was funded by a GT (gifted and talented) grant, but she was surprised to see that many of her high-performing and GT students did not opt into the program. They chose to continue with the morning warm-ups. She used the Escalofríos series (Goosebumps) because the material was fairly predictable, high interest, and most of the students were familiar with the material in English.

At the end of the year she was thinking the program was a failure, but students' comments made her rethink that. She modified the program in the second year to make it mandatory for all students. She increased the book collection going from ABCs to El Hobbit (just like my collection!) This time she made Fridays reading day and students read for the entire class period. She had required questions students had to answer including which book they read, why they picked it, what part they liked best, and predicting what would happen in the next week. She found that many students lacked confidence in the beginning and would opt for easier books, while some of her weaker students diligently worked their way through her most difficult books. She had a D level student who went from an ABC book to Harry Potter y la Piedra Filosofal. At the end of the year she found that the students had increased their use of complex grammatical structures and were using more vocabulary. 90% of her students also reported that tests and exams were now easier for them. The student who started off with a D, rose to nearly a B in the course of one semester.

The article referenced her third year with the program as well, although they were more of the same. The students began with low level books, and some of the students who jumped quickly to books she thought were too difficult for them showed the most gains. In the third year she added some current magazine subscriptions. Students were able to read according to their own interests and some students who had never paid attention or worked for their grades before showed a remarkable turn-around.

In the third year she allowed students to quietly discuss their books while they were reading, checking for meaning, oredicting, etc. She discovered that these discussions were often beneficial. She mentions that the reading program addresses all 3 of the Communication standards of the Standards for Foreign Language Learning. She mentions also that other standards can also be covered especially the Communities standard.

I enjoyed reading the article because it is confirmation again that this works. It's one thing to hear about something at a conference. It's another thing to try it in your own classroom and see it working. It's still something else to see articles about the same approach in professional literature. We have a parent at my school who is complaining in the elementary level that because time is so limited, students shouldn't waste time with watching cartoons or reading, they should solely focus on grammar. (How boring would that be?) Anyway, articles like this give us more ammunition behind us for when parents do question what we are doing.

what's the point?

In analyzing my student survey last week, I realized that I never explained to the kids why we were doing all these new activities in the beginning of class. I had set up a routine. On Monday and Friday we have Free reading, on Tuesday we have Free writing, and on Thursday we have Dictation. (We don't have normal classes on Wednesdays.) The students were doing the activities, and they had learned our new routines, but because they didn't understand the purpose behind them they were not getting the full benefit of the activities.

So, here's what I boiled down for them:

Free reading: We do this to improve our vocabulary in the language. We learn most of our vocabulary in our native tongue through reading. We also learn words much quicker through reading than through hearing them used. Another reason to read in the target language is because students begin to absorb the correct syntax and grammar as they see it in use. By reading for a set time without stopping to look words up or write anything down, we allow the brain to start absorbing the new language, without relying on the first language as that permanent crutch.

Free writing: Mostly, my purpose behind the free writes is to reduce anxiety and to get students in the habit of writing. There are several graded essays I have to give throughout the year. These are graded on length, grammar & conventions, verb conjugations, vocabulary usage, Organization (including using introducitons, transitions, conclusions and proper paragraphing), and content. If students are already used to writing in Spanish for a specific length of time, that is one less hurdle to jump when it comes time for these essays. Now they can focus specifically on the task at hand. Another minor point is that Free writes also give students something concrete to look at and measure their own growth. A student who began the year writing barely 13 words can look back at his or her portfolio and see that now he/she is writing 50 words in the same time frame.

Dictation: This is mostly to practice spelling, grammar and punctuation. The affective filter is low because students are not graded on what they do not know - they are graded on being able to correctly copy from the board. But because they have to first listen and write what they hear, it focuses their attention on the specifics of what they do know and what they need to learn in a very non-threatening way. I find that it is working much better than me trying to lecture students, or constantly correcting their spelling in an essay. Some of my lower students are now spelling words like "hay" correctly, even though a few months/weeks ago they may have spelled it "I."

I am taking away two points for me to learn from this activity: first I am reminded to explain my logic to the students - they need to know why we are doing something in order to fully buy into it and get the most benefit from it. Second I was forced to really look at my logic and why I was doing these activities. Yes, I had read about them on the TPRS listserv, or heard about them from colleagues, but that isn't why I was incorporating them into my class.

learn something new...

Here I am "grading" students' reading logs from last week. The logs are just to show me that students were engaged for that time, and attempting to read in Spanish. At the end of each log I ask for students to write down words they learned today while reading. They can be words they learned through context, words they had "learned" once before but never stuck, or words they got stuck on and had to look up after the reading time was over. And more than anything? I'm learning new words, just from reading their logs.

Student feedback on reading

I asked for feedback from the students on their perception of FVR. Most of the comments I got were positive. Students can see how this is helping them learn, and a few mentioned that they enjoy being responsible for their own learning.

A few comments were about how boring the activity is. And then I had a handful that mentioned how it didn't help at all because if they didn't understand the word it looked like gibberish to them, and if they did understand the word, then reading it didn't help. Some students asked for permission to write down words they don't know while reading. Two students mentioned that there is a gap in my library - the novice books are too easy for them, but the lowest intermediate books are too difficult.

Although most were positive, I don't want to completely blow off the negative comments either.

I don't know how to address the perception that it is boring.

As far as unfamiliar words looking like gibberish, I can suggest that students go back to Novice Low books which are basically picture dictionaries. One word, one picture and all are concrete words so there is no ambiguity.

As far as writing down unfamiliar words while reading, my heart says no. The idea of Free Voluntary Reading, as I understand it, is to get reading and to read right past the words you don't know. To stop at every unfamiliar word will break up the pace and flow of reading.

The last comment is perhaps the hardest one for me to address, that being that the books are either too easy or too difficult. I've tried hard to balance the books on my shelves and I don't know where to find books to bridge that gap.

one of the greatest inventions ever

I couldn't figure out how to keep my little color coded garage sale stickers on the spines of my books, but I took a hint from the school library. There are clear stickers that are designed specifically to hold the bar codes and other library stickers onto the books. I begged a roll from my friend, and my stickers have stayed ever since.

Now if only I could figure out a way to neatly redact the English out of all those really great, but bilingual books!

Reading

I was always one of those student who had to know every single word that I read. I didn't mind stretching out of my comfort zone when it came to speaking. But, I could not read a book in Spanish without having a dictionary on my lap. Reading was so very frustrating. I loved the idea of being literate in a second language, but could never really branch out past the functional literacy into the same love of reading I have in my native tongue.

One of my primary reasons to study in Chile was to break myself of the English crutch when it came to reading. I took a literature class there that just about killed me, and it worked in that I was able to read novels in Spanish when I completed the course, but I still did not love reading in Spanish.

And now here I am, reading in Spanish again. But this time I'm taking some advice I picked up at a conference. I'm just reading, right past the words I don't know. I don't stop to try to decipher them. And it's amazing, but it really works! As I keep reading I am finding that it is easier and it is going more quickly, and my brain seems to be able to suddenly fill in the meaning with the context as I keep going.

teacher fluency

I've been teaching middle school for my entire 7 year career (one year I also taught elementary). I have found that through the years my Spanish has deteriorated to the vocabulary and grammar structures that I am expected to teach. For the last two years I have been experimenting and using TPR and TPRS in my classroom, not just as strategies, but as the foundational philosophy of my classroom. I'm finding that my fluency is improving again, not because I have native speakers to talk to or even that I have made a drastic effort to practice my Spanish outside of my classroom.

My Spanish is improving because the class is so spontaneous. Even in my best days of living in Chile and speaking Spanish exclusively I don't think I could have told you that erizo meant hedgehog. But now that I have a student who has two pet erizos, I know it. :) I'm not limited to speaking in the present tense or using regular verbs, so I get more practice all the time. I've also chosen to start reading as well. I'm not reading during the class' free reading time yet, but I did make the conscious decision that if I'm going to ask the students to read regularly in Spanish, then I should as well. Already I can see improvement in my own reading. I am reading faster, and seeing clearer images of what is happening.

library

I just received two new boxes of books. A lot of them are baby board books, which I'm happy about. My students seem to be much more comfortable reading "green" books, and I don't have many of them at all.

I went through all my books and leveled them. It would be very depressing to my students to constantly be reminded that they are reading at a first grade level, even though that's a major accomplishment in and of itself. It's funny how they expect to be equivalent in skills in their second language and their first. So, I used ACTFL's guidelines for reading proficiency, simplified the language, and tweaked it a bit. Then I put garage sale stickers on my books so that they are now color-coded by level.

Novice books are coded green. Novice-low are single words with a direct picture to word correlation. Novice-mid have phrases and short sentences that have picture to word correlation. Novice-high books have short sentences and still have a very high correlation of pictures to words.

Intermediate books are coded yellow. Intermediate-low books have one or two sentences per page. They still have pictures which help guide comprehension. Intermediate-mid books have short paragraphs and pictures help guide the comprehension of the text but do not have a direct correlation to every word. Intermediate-high books have parapgraphs and pictures can be more stylized or less frequent.

Advanced, Advanced plus and Superior books are coded red. Advanced books are basically chapter books. They have few pictures, if any. These are mostly early elementary level books such as Junie B. Jones. Advanced plus books are my novels. I have Charlie and the Chocolate Factory up through the latest Harry Potter, El Hobbit, and El Príncipe Caspian. Superior books are novels which were written by native speakers and have a high level of culture throughout which would make comprehension by a non-native speaker more difficult.

The only students who have any rules about what they read are my two native speakers. They must choose a red book.

At first I was worried that students wouldn't get enough language exposure to be worth the time if they always chose novice books, especially if they kept re-reading the same books. But I am realizing now how rich and varied the text of children's books really is. My toddlers enjoy reading the same books over and over again, and why wouldn't my students do the same as they slowly come to acquire the same things?

Free writing

I taught most of this year using TPR only in my class. Since early spring I have been trying to add elements of storytelling and other strategies I have picked up from some TPRS teachers. One of the strategies I have added is two days of free reading. I have built up my classroom library with some left over classroom budget and from my own pocket. (Gotta love ebay!)

The students select any book they wish to read from the library, and they read for 7 minutes. We started at 5 and are working our way up. After they finish reading, I ask them to fill out a brief reading log, mostly so that I can have some documentation that this thing actually works.


Another strategy I have just started adding is a free write. Students have 10 minutes to write as much as they can in the target language on a topic of their choosing. I was just sitting here reading some of their papers, and I noticed that some of the students were using the preterit! (And they were using it correctly!)


I am assuming that this is coming from the free reading they do twice a week because I have not taught the past tense at all this year, and it has not spontaneously shown up in any student work (aside from my two native speakers) until now.


I am impressed.