Episode 46: "Teaching the Same Course as Someone Who Isn't Doing CI"
Sharing a course with a colleague who teaches nothing like you do is one of the more awkward realities of a language department, and this episode of Comprehend THIS! tackles it directly. Pamela and I are joined by guest host Adam Brown to talk about what happens when a comprehensible input classroom sits right next to one that isn't, and how to navigate a shared assessment or pacing guide without it becoming a fight.
Adam Brown, known to his students as "Señor Café," has taught Spanish and French for twelve years. He studied in Colombia, which still shapes the Spanish he brings to class. Adam is a committed Comprehensible Input/ADI practitioner who traded grammar drills for acquisition grounded in Krashen's research, so his classes run on rich, understandable input: guided conversation, shared writing and reading, and quick comprehension checks. Much of his career has been spent practicing CI in schools where grammar-first instruction is the norm, which has made him skilled at adapting acquisition-driven teaching to established curricula and showing, through student results, what CI can do.
Most CI teachers aren't working in isolation. There's usually a colleague down the hall, a co-teacher, or another section of the same course being taught in a completely different way. In this episode, we talk through the first time we each realized just how different our classrooms actually were, the moment a common final or a student's comparison made that difference impossible to ignore, and where we've compromised versus held firm on a shared curriculum.
We also get into what's actually helped us coexist with differently-teaching colleagues, how to advocate for a comprehensible input approach without turning it into a department conflict, how to fit CI into a curriculum you didn't write, and what we wish more departments understood about running multiple methodologies under one roof. This one's for anyone quietly navigating a hallway split between two very different classrooms.
Not sure where your comprehensible input skills actually stand right now? Take the free CI Proficiency Quiz and find out in a few minutes: https://imim.us/ciquiz
If you want a done-for-you way to keep your CI instruction strong even while sharing a course with a different methodology, check out the CI Survival Kit - monthly, ready-to-teach materials built for real departments: https://imim.us/kit
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Transcript
Hello and welcome to episode 46.
Speaker:I can't believe November's already almost
Speaker:going through so fast. I can't
Speaker:believe
Speaker:October went fast. Before we know it
Speaker:we're gonna be on winter break.
Speaker:But you are not teaching in a vacuum
Speaker:somewhere down the hall or right across
Speaker:the shared curriculum document.
Speaker:There's a colleague teaching
Speaker:the exact same course as you
Speaker:in a way that looks
Speaker:nothing like your classroom.
Speaker:And at some point a common final
Speaker:student comparing notes, a department
Speaker:meeting that goes sideways,
Speaker:that difference stops being theoretical.
Speaker:This week, Pamela and I
Speaker:are talking about what to do when your
Speaker:counterparts are not teaching with CI.
Speaker:So when it comes to being
Speaker:the one CI room in a
Speaker:hallway full of verb charts,
Speaker:we're not just speculating. We're
Speaker:living it because I know I've
Speaker:got that going on right now.
Speaker:We're talking about the moment the
Speaker:difference became impossible to ignore,
Speaker:the trickiest parts of compromising on a
Speaker:shared pacing guide,
Speaker:and how to fit
Speaker:acquisition driven teaching
Speaker:to establish curricula and let student
Speaker:results do the arguing
Speaker:for us. Not a take down
Speaker:of anyone's methodology.
Speaker:A real conversation
Speaker:about what it's actually like
Speaker:if you've ever sat in a department
Speaker:meeting doing math on how differently
Speaker:your rooms are running.
Speaker:This one's for you. And we'll be right
Speaker:back after these short messages.
Speaker:Love teaching but hate the part where
Speaker:you're the classroom bouncer?
Speaker:Yeah, saying enter dynamic discipline.
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Speaker:who are tired of saying
Speaker:stop looking the
Speaker:whiteboard for the 500th time.
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Speaker:realistic relationship based strategies
Speaker:that actually work without turning into
Speaker:the teacher who yells
Speaker:or gives up and plays
Speaker:Netflix. Watch them on your time.
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Speaker:start handling behavior
Speaker:without losing your soul.
Speaker:Sign up now at mm.us discipline. Your
Speaker:sanity will thank you.
Speaker:Welcome to comprehend this real talk for
Speaker:real language teachers.
Speaker:No drills, no dry theory, just honest
Speaker:stories, practical ideas,
Speaker:and a reminder you're not alone in the CI
Speaker:trenches. Let's dive in.
Speaker:And welcome Pamela. How
Speaker:are we doing this weekend?
Speaker:Hello Scott. I'm doing great. It's my
Speaker:youngest son's birthday today.
Speaker:So we got birthday
Speaker:celebrations after we're done here.
Speaker:Awesome, awesome. How
Speaker:old is he going to be?
Speaker:Oh my god, he's 21. My
Speaker:little baby is 21. Oh yikes.
Speaker:21. I remember that age. I
Speaker:remember that age. I was so mad.
Speaker:You know, I have the beard only because
Speaker:it makes me look older
Speaker:because when I was younger,
Speaker:I went, I was what, 20 something and I
Speaker:went to go see a Batman
Speaker:movie and they carded me because
Speaker:for a PG-13 movie, they didn't think I
Speaker:was old enough to go to
Speaker:see a movie by myself.
Speaker:I was like, what the heck? I think I was
Speaker:older than the kid taking the tickets.
Speaker:So when I turned 21, you know, when
Speaker:you're 21, you're like, I
Speaker:don't drink, but you're proud to
Speaker:go buy your first, you know, alcohol
Speaker:drink. So I went to the
Speaker:grocery store, I bought a bottle of
Speaker:vodka just to sit because I liked, well,
Speaker:I liked absolute the
Speaker:advertisement back in the 90s.
Speaker:That was why I bought it. I never drank
Speaker:it. But I go in there
Speaker:and I see the sign says,
Speaker:"We card everybody under 40." Right? So
Speaker:I'm all excited. I got
Speaker:my driver's license ready.
Speaker:I'm ready to show them. I go in there and
Speaker:they don't card me.
Speaker:And I said, "Excuse me,
Speaker:do I look over 40 to you?" Because that's
Speaker:when you want to be carded, right?
Speaker:That's funny. So I was like, what the
Speaker:heck? What the heck? I just
Speaker:did a week. I got carded for
Speaker:not being 13. And then you think I'm over
Speaker:40. That is too funny.
Speaker:Yeah, I've had a lot of friends
Speaker:who grew beards. Heck, my husband has a
Speaker:beard, probably because he
Speaker:thought he looked too young.
Speaker:So that's the reason I keep the dang
Speaker:thing. Yeah. All the maintenance. But so
Speaker:today we are talking
Speaker:about our colleagues. And I want to
Speaker:preface this. This is not against any
Speaker:particular person. And
Speaker:although we're talking about our
Speaker:colleagues, it's not that
Speaker:they're not effective teachers.
Speaker:It's not that they aren't effective
Speaker:colleagues. They just
Speaker:think differently than we do.
Speaker:Absolutely. And this is the struggle I'm
Speaker:going through right now,
Speaker:is I'll talk about a lot.
Speaker:My next door neighbor, whom I love to
Speaker:pieces, this is his 40th
Speaker:year teaching. And he uses the
Speaker:audio-lingual method and he teaches out
Speaker:of the book. And that's
Speaker:what he's done for 40 years.
Speaker:I am not about to tell him he's not doing
Speaker:it right. He is doing it
Speaker:fine. He knows what he's doing.
Speaker:He knows his pedagogy. That's his
Speaker:preferred method. So yeah,
Speaker:we'll talk a lot about that.
Speaker:Exactly. I mean, for most of my career, I
Speaker:have worked in a CI
Speaker:district, or at least a CI school.
Speaker:So my first four years, when I learned
Speaker:about CI, I was all on my own. Nobody
Speaker:else did it. And they
Speaker:were like, butting heads with me. They
Speaker:did not want me to do it.
Speaker:They're like, blah, blah, blah.
Speaker:Because they were like, we're teaching to
Speaker:the AP exam. And at that
Speaker:time, the exam had grammar.
Speaker:So I had to teach the grammar. So I found
Speaker:kind of a mixed middle, a mixing of the
Speaker:CI and the textbook.
Speaker:But then I went to Vegas. And in Vegas, I
Speaker:was in a CI school. I
Speaker:worked in two schools there,
Speaker:same district, but two schools. And we
Speaker:were all CI. We all believed in the same
Speaker:thing. And it worked
Speaker:really, really well. When I moved to
Speaker:California, I back to California and I
Speaker:taught middle school.
Speaker:They wanted CI. They were only hiring CI
Speaker:teachers. So they were starting the
Speaker:program from scratch,
Speaker:they wanted to start at CI. So for 11
Speaker:years, I did that. Then
Speaker:when I decided to leave middle
Speaker:school and go back to high school, it was
Speaker:a little easier than it is
Speaker:now. But they worked off of a
Speaker:textbook. But I worked at the Career and
Speaker:Tech Academy. So I was
Speaker:literally by myself. I didn't
Speaker:they were four miles down the road at the
Speaker:main high school. So I
Speaker:didn't have that, you know,
Speaker:that conflict all the time. And we didn't
Speaker:really PLC like we were
Speaker:supposed to. What we spent our
Speaker:PLC time doing was recreating the
Speaker:midterms in the finals twice a year,
Speaker:every year for every level,
Speaker:even though what we taught was the same.
Speaker:And then we did not end up
Speaker:with a midterm or a final until
Speaker:the week before we had to give it. It was
Speaker:stressful. Oh my gosh. And
Speaker:here I am now. And I have a
Speaker:colleague like you. He's not been
Speaker:teaching that long, but at least in the
Speaker:public schools, he's
Speaker:retired military. But he did teach in the
Speaker:military language
Speaker:Spanish. Right. And that's
Speaker:audio lingual. Yeah. And he is in, you
Speaker:know, his 60s, he's got to be
Speaker:in his 60s, because he says,
Speaker:it's time for me to retire now again,
Speaker:because the kids are starting to get to
Speaker:him. He's a great guy,
Speaker:really a great guy. And he has an
Speaker:enthusiasm for his language. He's, you
Speaker:know, but he teaches very
Speaker:differently. Now he's open to the way
Speaker:that I that, you know, using CI is, but
Speaker:his experience was it
Speaker:maybe 15 years ago, with very little
Speaker:training, he goes, it was
Speaker:way much harder than using
Speaker:the textbook. And our district is going a
Speaker:little bit differently
Speaker:because, and this is where our
Speaker:conflict came. It's not on the
Speaker:methodology to start. The conflict came
Speaker:because we're a weird
Speaker:school. Let me start off with that way.
Speaker:So the high school I teach
Speaker:at, we don't give D's and F's.
Speaker:We're a college prep high school. So
Speaker:since colleges don't
Speaker:accept anything lower than a C,
Speaker:we don't give anything lower than a C. If
Speaker:they earn lower than a
Speaker:C, it's called no credit,
Speaker:they get no credit for it. It's not a D,
Speaker:it's not an F, it's just no
Speaker:credit. And they have to repeat
Speaker:the course. But then we have something
Speaker:else called a grad grade. So if the
Speaker:counselor or the parents
Speaker:request, they are not college bound. They
Speaker:can get credit for the
Speaker:class at a 60%, 60 to 69,
Speaker:but they can't move on to the next level.
Speaker:And they can't, they have
Speaker:to sign a document saying
Speaker:that they know that this does not meet
Speaker:the California
Speaker:requirements for being college ready.
Speaker:And so all they're looking for is a
Speaker:diploma. Well, we had this
Speaker:document and it was too vague.
Speaker:So the assistant principal in charge of
Speaker:that was saying ours is too
Speaker:vague, and it can't be tied to
Speaker:a percentage because it's always been
Speaker:tied to a percentage. And it
Speaker:needs to be tied to a standard.
Speaker:And so the guy, this we've had a couple
Speaker:meetings and the meeting,
Speaker:we're supposed to be 10 minute
Speaker:meetings about this document that we had
Speaker:to recreate and they
Speaker:turned into hour and a half,
Speaker:meetings every time because he didn't
Speaker:want to change. And he
Speaker:didn't understand why the change
Speaker:was there. And he didn't understand why
Speaker:percentages were bad. And it's like,
Speaker:because it's communication
Speaker:to the parents, you have to be able to
Speaker:tell them where are they falling down?
Speaker:You can't say, well,
Speaker:they're falling down on tests. What does
Speaker:that mean? What part of
Speaker:the test? And although he
Speaker:teaches all the standards, he didn't
Speaker:think he did. He goes, I
Speaker:don't do that. I don't do that.
Speaker:I don't do that. Like you do it. You just
Speaker:don't separate it out. We haven't
Speaker:separated out. Yeah,
Speaker:we haven't separate out. So it's easier.
Speaker:So you would have to go back
Speaker:to your test and see, okay,
Speaker:which of these are listening questions?
Speaker:Which of these are reading
Speaker:questions? Which of these are
Speaker:speaking type questions? And you have to
Speaker:go back to the test and then
Speaker:do the math retroactively to
Speaker:find out what percentage of each part did
Speaker:he get? Where I set my
Speaker:grade book from the beginning,
Speaker:where I just look at my grade book and
Speaker:see all that defined. Oh,
Speaker:doing the math retroactively.
Speaker:What a headache that is. And I learned a
Speaker:years ago, I mean,
Speaker:technically, if you think about it,
Speaker:our textbook books already do this. We
Speaker:just put the whole test as
Speaker:one grade. But if you look at
Speaker:the final, it's got a listening part, a
Speaker:reading part, a grammar
Speaker:part, a culture part, you know,
Speaker:it's got them all broken down. It's just
Speaker:we put it all together and
Speaker:say there's 100 questions.
Speaker:It's out of 100. And you give your
Speaker:percentage when you could
Speaker:just give your percentages based
Speaker:on each little section. And I always say,
Speaker:here's the difference. This
Speaker:is why I set mine up this way.
Speaker:I use Play-Doh as a good metaphor. Like
Speaker:you got your different colors of
Speaker:Play-Doh, and they're
Speaker:all separate. And you can say, oh, this
Speaker:is a green Play-Doh. This is a yellow
Speaker:Play-Doh. This is red
Speaker:Play-Doh. This is blue Play-Doh. But once
Speaker:you give it to a two year
Speaker:old, they miss it all together.
Speaker:And you get this gray ball of gray
Speaker:Play-Doh. And you have no idea what
Speaker:colors actually became part of
Speaker:that. Well, that's that overall score
Speaker:when you put all the
Speaker:standards and you measure them all
Speaker:together at the same time. When we really
Speaker:need to know what
Speaker:percentage of blue Play-Doh went into
Speaker:this ball, what percentage of green
Speaker:Play-Doh went into this ball, and it's
Speaker:just easier keeping them
Speaker:separate than it is to. Absolutely. Oh,
Speaker:this is very similar to an
Speaker:argument I just have in my
Speaker:department. So yeah. And he's like, when
Speaker:I was telling, I had
Speaker:another parent, and they were
Speaker:questioning the grades in my department,
Speaker:not my department chair,
Speaker:my AP was going through with
Speaker:them. And she goes, I really like how you
Speaker:once you've explained
Speaker:how it's broken down to me.
Speaker:I like this because I can see right away,
Speaker:I don't know your standards,
Speaker:but I can see right away the
Speaker:gradebook. And I was telling that at
Speaker:lunch, and the guy was
Speaker:sitting next to me, he's like,
Speaker:don't be saying it out loud too many
Speaker:times, because they're
Speaker:going to make all of us do it.
Speaker:Because he is a straight percentage. And
Speaker:being his age group, we
Speaker:were all raised with straight
Speaker:percentages. And you know, 70 was passed,
Speaker:60 was passing, and
Speaker:anything lower than 60 wasn't.
Speaker:And that's what it was. It was all that
Speaker:type of grading. Yeah. And
Speaker:so that was the big conflict
Speaker:that we're having right now. And we
Speaker:talked last week also about how the
Speaker:gradebook is set up for
Speaker:that traditional way of looking at
Speaker:grading. And you have to be really
Speaker:clever. If you want to show
Speaker:your standards and meeting the standards
Speaker:and the students growth,
Speaker:you've got to be really clever
Speaker:gradebook because they are dinosaurs. And
Speaker:that's where the first
Speaker:conflict comes from me because
Speaker:up until, let's see, my first four years,
Speaker:I could do my gradebook
Speaker:anyway I wanted. Nobody cared
Speaker:because we weren't in sync back in the
Speaker:early 2000s. They didn't
Speaker:require us to all have the same
Speaker:gradebook. Right? Yeah. And then from
Speaker:2005 until 2020, I don't know, 23,
Speaker:somewhere around there.
Speaker:I was at various schools, but all CI
Speaker:departments. And we came up
Speaker:with kind of my system that I've
Speaker:been using all the time to come up with
Speaker:grades. So it's worked fine.
Speaker:Coming from my school before
Speaker:they had a defined amount of grades. So
Speaker:much had to be assessment. So
Speaker:much had to be the final. So
Speaker:much had to be practice, etc. And then I
Speaker:had to find a way to make my
Speaker:system work within that. So
Speaker:I would just break up the assessments
Speaker:into listening,
Speaker:reading, speaking, and writing,
Speaker:break up the homework and listening,
Speaker:reading, speaking, writing,
Speaker:and break up the final into
Speaker:listening, reading, speaking, and
Speaker:writing. It's easier at this school
Speaker:because they went with just
Speaker:a straight 70-30, 70 assessments, 30
Speaker:homework. And so I broke
Speaker:mine down just the same way.
Speaker:But I do have one category. It's worth
Speaker:5%. Is it 5%? I don't think it's that
Speaker:high. Maybe it's 3% or
Speaker:4%. It's whatever the leftover was. That
Speaker:is for stuff that I'm just
Speaker:checking. Did they do it or not?
Speaker:Right, right. That really doesn't inform.
Speaker:Because they need that contact.
Speaker:They need that contact with the language.
Speaker:Yeah. Yeah. So they inform
Speaker:me. They don't inform me at
Speaker:all about the language skills that they
Speaker:have. But it's usually
Speaker:low-level practice that I don't want
Speaker:to ding them for just starting out with
Speaker:something. So I just give
Speaker:them completion grades for it.
Speaker:But I've got, I had to work within that.
Speaker:So like my writing is 20%.
Speaker:My writing assessments are 20%
Speaker:of my 70% that's allotted for
Speaker:assessments. And that's quizzes and
Speaker:tests, whatever goes in there.
Speaker:So I've had, that's kind of what I'm
Speaker:fighting with. And then we'll talk more
Speaker:about the CI part. But
Speaker:it starts with that grade book. When you
Speaker:have, we all have to, like
Speaker:you said, we all have to be
Speaker:graded the same way on the same test at
Speaker:the same time. And we are not
Speaker:robots. And they always say,
Speaker:"But the kid could switch from one school
Speaker:to the other." Or they
Speaker:could switch from one class.
Speaker:And I'm like, "How often does that
Speaker:happen?" And guess what? I
Speaker:mean, it does happen. It does
Speaker:happen that at the semester, I'll get a
Speaker:kid who moves into the
Speaker:district. And if generally they're
Speaker:behind where I am. But it's okay. Because
Speaker:you know what? I like to
Speaker:think I'm a good teacher.
Speaker:I think I could catch him up.
Speaker:It's not a big deal. You know?
Speaker:But it doesn't happen very often. And
Speaker:guess what? It happened in
Speaker:the 80s too. And nobody worried
Speaker:about it. We all survived. We all
Speaker:survived. And he's reminding me, I had a
Speaker:kid who came in in Vegas,
Speaker:maybe a month, month and a half into
Speaker:Spanish one. And he comes to me at the
Speaker:end of the class. He's
Speaker:like, "I'm in the wrong class." He's
Speaker:like, "What are you saying?" He goes,
Speaker:"I'm thinking, are you
Speaker:supposed to be in Japanese? Are you
Speaker:supposed to be in German or
Speaker:French?" He's like, "I'm supposed
Speaker:to be in Spanish one." I'm like, "And
Speaker:this is AP Spanish." And I'm like, "No,
Speaker:this is Spanish one."
Speaker:He goes, "But you're speaking all in
Speaker:Spanish." And I'm like,
Speaker:"Yeah, that's what we're doing in
Speaker:class. We're learning Spanish." He was
Speaker:like, "Oh my God, because
Speaker:we didn't do that." You know,
Speaker:it is old school. Yeah. And you know,
Speaker:I've had that so many times,
Speaker:but it's fine because I feel
Speaker:like I can catch them up. Yeah. I feel
Speaker:like it's not a difficult thing. I'm
Speaker:using comprehensible
Speaker:techniques. You'll be able to figure it
Speaker:out. I've got scaffolds for you. I know
Speaker:how to differentiate.
Speaker:Don't panic. Just don't drop my class.
Speaker:Yeah. It'll take a little
Speaker:while, but you will get to where
Speaker:you need to be. As long as you do your
Speaker:work, your end of the
Speaker:work. Yep. That's it exactly.
Speaker:That's it exactly. Exactly. So go ahead
Speaker:and tell us your situation
Speaker:and then we can go. Okay. So my
Speaker:situation is absolutely crazy. I'm the
Speaker:only French teacher in the
Speaker:whole district for miles around,
Speaker:probably. I don't even think the other
Speaker:districts have French. I love
Speaker:it. I get to do whatever the
Speaker:heck I want. If I want to have a fake
Speaker:Tour de France around the
Speaker:school and call it my final exam,
Speaker:I can do that. So whatever the heck it's
Speaker:great. Okay. I'm the only
Speaker:Japanese teacher four miles
Speaker:around. Okay. My Japanese class, we do
Speaker:all sorts of crazy stuff. I
Speaker:love it. I'm one of five Spanish
Speaker:teachers in the district and we've got
Speaker:the PLT mandate right now
Speaker:and it is driving me bonkers.
Speaker:We never argued before. We always worked
Speaker:out of the same textbook.
Speaker:Okay. We're using this textbook
Speaker:fine. I can pace my EPRS stories with
Speaker:that textbook. I can pace my
Speaker:projects with that textbook.
Speaker:I will do exactly what you guys are doing
Speaker:on basically the same
Speaker:day. But now that we have to
Speaker:do common formative assessments and I'm
Speaker:like, I'm a language teacher. I'm doing
Speaker:formative assessments
Speaker:every 10 minutes. Okay. It's not a big
Speaker:deal to do a formative assessment. You
Speaker:should be doing that.
Speaker:If we sit down and say, Oh, we're going
Speaker:to have a formative assessment about this
Speaker:in two weeks on block, it's no longer a
Speaker:formative assessment. That's not what
Speaker:formative assessment
Speaker:means. Formative assessment informs me,
Speaker:do I speed up? Do I slow down? Are my
Speaker:students getting it?
Speaker:Okay. But all right. So fine. We agreed
Speaker:on our common formative
Speaker:assessments, which was a fairly
Speaker:good because we just said, let's use
Speaker:BlueKit. There's all that
Speaker:data there. The district can't
Speaker:argue with us. We can keep our meetings
Speaker:to 10 minutes because we
Speaker:can look at the data and say,
Speaker:yeah, okay, the data is the data. Fine.
Speaker:But now the district's
Speaker:doing this bait and switch thing
Speaker:where we have to do common summative
Speaker:assessments. And I was not expecting to
Speaker:fight with my department
Speaker:because I've never fought with my
Speaker:department. We always get along great,
Speaker:but I am project-based
Speaker:and they are not. And suddenly they
Speaker:wanted to present me with a
Speaker:fill in the blank multiple
Speaker:choice. And Scott, you taught out of Paso
Speaker:a Paso, you told me, and now it's
Speaker:Otentico. And that first
Speaker:pade empasar is all over the place. I'm
Speaker:probably lagging, I think. I
Speaker:see my, I'm off. Anyway, so
Speaker:it is all over the place. And they wanted
Speaker:to give this like long 10
Speaker:page, fill in the blank multiple
Speaker:choice on the weather, on school
Speaker:supplies, on the date, on the time. And
Speaker:there was no connection
Speaker:between them. And I was like, whoa, whoa,
Speaker:hold on, hold on. We don't
Speaker:have to give a final exam
Speaker:on all of these things at once. We can
Speaker:give a weather exam on this
Speaker:day. We can give us a time
Speaker:exam on this day. We don't have to put it
Speaker:all in one thing and have
Speaker:the students sitting at their
Speaker:desk, eyes glazing over. That's number
Speaker:one. Number two, multiple
Speaker:choice and fill in the blanks.
Speaker:All right, if you want to do that as a
Speaker:common formative assessment,
Speaker:I can do that because that's
Speaker:a five minute thing, you know, like fill
Speaker:in these, bubble in these three things,
Speaker:you know. But this is
Speaker:not a transferable skill. The students
Speaker:are not applying what they
Speaker:learned. They just know how
Speaker:to fill in the blank or bubble in
Speaker:something. And so I was like, no,
Speaker:absolutely no, no, no, no, no,
Speaker:we're going to do this. I'm going to go
Speaker:rogue because that I, I
Speaker:did that my very first year
Speaker:teaching. I did the stupid sit down essay
Speaker:and the short answer, write
Speaker:it out in the multiple choice
Speaker:and the bubble. And it was a hundred
Speaker:points for, you know, 20 pages. I am
Speaker:never doing that again.
Speaker:Never, never, never. I did not feel like
Speaker:the students got
Speaker:anything out of it. I felt like
Speaker:it was too much work for me. Um, it
Speaker:doesn't really tell me what
Speaker:the students know. It tells me,
Speaker:can the students bubble in something? So,
Speaker:so that was our very,
Speaker:very first argument. And then
Speaker:because we had, um, two vice principals
Speaker:and a principal sitting
Speaker:in with us while we were
Speaker:having this discussion, they were
Speaker:starting to say, I'm sorry, Pamela,
Speaker:you're being outvoted.
Speaker:And I'm like, Nope, Nope, sorry. I'm not
Speaker:going to do it. Not going to do it.
Speaker:Because there's ways for
Speaker:us to, to, to measure the same thing with
Speaker:different methods.
Speaker:Okay. So my colleague who's
Speaker:been teaching for 40 years, he uses the
Speaker:audio lingual method and
Speaker:nothing else. He has his students
Speaker:memorize a skit for their summative
Speaker:assessment. Okay. So his
Speaker:students have memorized a skit.
Speaker:They're getting in front of the class.
Speaker:They're performing me. I've
Speaker:got a project going on. I'm
Speaker:walking around the class with a little
Speaker:clipboard and I'm eavesdropping on the
Speaker:students while they're
Speaker:playing a game with each other or doing
Speaker:the project with each
Speaker:other. I can hear them talking.
Speaker:Okay. So we're still measuring the same
Speaker:stuff. It's just that
Speaker:his is in a different,
Speaker:more regimented way. And mine is more
Speaker:organic, but we're still
Speaker:measuring the same stuff. And we
Speaker:still use the same rubric and we don't
Speaker:have a problem with
Speaker:that. So that's where I'm at.
Speaker:I'm lucky. In my old school, the, my, my
Speaker:comeback high school, they
Speaker:really didn't understand what
Speaker:a PTC is and a, you know, you know,
Speaker:working in that, in that
Speaker:community and what exactly was
Speaker:entailed. They were all over the place.
Speaker:So they just said, Oh,
Speaker:well, we should have one common
Speaker:formative assessment per before the
Speaker:midterm and one before the
Speaker:final. And it never happened.
Speaker:It just never happened. We had the same
Speaker:final exam that we worked
Speaker:on. And it was written at
Speaker:the last minute. This school, it's not,
Speaker:it hasn't come down from the
Speaker:admin. It's as my team, we were
Speaker:talking. And so he likes to, he likes to
Speaker:pad the grade book. He
Speaker:doesn't like to fail kids because
Speaker:they want to deal with parents. So he's
Speaker:like, just give them so much
Speaker:so they can't fail. And I'm
Speaker:like, but you're not measuring what they
Speaker:can do in the language. You're just
Speaker:padding the gradebook
Speaker:so they can't get lower than a 70%. So
Speaker:what we decided was because he
Speaker:gives like dozens of quizzes,
Speaker:dozens of them about every little minutia
Speaker:part, if they are talking
Speaker:about the definite indefinite
Speaker:article, he's got a quiz on the definite
Speaker:indefinite article. If
Speaker:they're talking about
Speaker:singular and plural, he's got a quiz on
Speaker:singular and plural. So I guess
Speaker:incorporate that into my
Speaker:other ones. And I do not have time to
Speaker:give that many quizzes
Speaker:because yes, you know, every time
Speaker:you're, you're, you're assessing, you're
Speaker:not teaching. And
Speaker:they're not learning anything.
Speaker:That's very true. Their kids are not
Speaker:getting input. Yep. And
Speaker:there's ways for them to
Speaker:demonstrate what they know, that don't
Speaker:take the full class period.
Speaker:Exactly. And Blaine used to
Speaker:always say, and I don't know if this came
Speaker:from him or if it got
Speaker:somewhere else, I don't know.
Speaker:But he said, you can weigh a pig as many
Speaker:times as you want
Speaker:assessments. But if you don't feed it,
Speaker:it ain't getting any fatter. And so I got
Speaker:to write that down. If we,
Speaker:we can assess them. It's like
Speaker:also a state and district assessments. We
Speaker:figured out when I was
Speaker:teaching middle school, English
Speaker:had nine weeks worth of assessments that
Speaker:they had to give
Speaker:throughout the school year with
Speaker:the state ones, the district ones that
Speaker:had to be done. You know, it
Speaker:takes a long time and you take
Speaker:two and a half weeks to three weeks out
Speaker:for the California
Speaker:standardized tests that we have to
Speaker:give. It's called CASP. We have to give.
Speaker:So you take that out. Plus every six
Speaker:weeks, you're supposed
Speaker:to do this district assessment, which
Speaker:takes three or four days. When
Speaker:you add it all up, they like,
Speaker:every six weeks, every six weeks, they
Speaker:had to give one. So
Speaker:they're like, what the heck?
Speaker:We're losing nine to 10 weeks, just an
Speaker:assessment. And they're not learning
Speaker:during that time. And so
Speaker:it's the same kind of thing. So you've
Speaker:got to give them that input. So we
Speaker:agreed, me and my colleague,
Speaker:that our quizzes are never going to line
Speaker:up because I'm assessing
Speaker:a listening quiz. I have
Speaker:a reading quiz, I have a writing quiz,
Speaker:and I have a speaking quiz. So
Speaker:we decided as a group as well,
Speaker:there's only two of us who work together
Speaker:on level one, that we are
Speaker:going to only give common
Speaker:summative assessments, which are the ones
Speaker:at the end of the chapters.
Speaker:So we did that. So he gave
Speaker:me his first one. When at the end of
Speaker:chapter one, we're coming to
Speaker:the end of chapter two. Now,
Speaker:he gave me the first one and I looked at
Speaker:him like, he had a reputation for giving
Speaker:extremely long tests.
Speaker:Because he had to measure the same thing,
Speaker:nine different ways to
Speaker:prove that they really knew it.
Speaker:So his test was, I think it was 46 pages.
Speaker:46? It was, it was a lot
Speaker:of trees you're killing.
Speaker:It was an online assessment. So but we
Speaker:had to print it out so I
Speaker:could see it. So and when we
Speaker:printed out it was 46 pages. I was like,
Speaker:Oh my God, it's not even a
Speaker:final exam. It was a chapter.
Speaker:That's the formatting of your online
Speaker:thing. But yeah, I understand.
Speaker:No, it was pretty closely formatted. I
Speaker:was surprised. But so I
Speaker:went through that. And I
Speaker:said, Okay, what is he measuring in all
Speaker:of these aspects? And
Speaker:then I wrote what I called a
Speaker:proficiency exam. So he had them having
Speaker:to spell their name out.
Speaker:And he had them being able to
Speaker:say their phone number and all those
Speaker:kinds of questions,
Speaker:right? So I went through and I
Speaker:reorganized the test, I rewrote some of
Speaker:the questions, I made
Speaker:them less grammar specific,
Speaker:and more holistic. And I gave them four
Speaker:sections. And it was 10 listening
Speaker:questions, 10 reading
Speaker:questions, five speaking questions, and
Speaker:five writing questions.
Speaker:Okay, he says I've never given
Speaker:a test this short in my life. It was a
Speaker:total of 30 questions. I go
Speaker:but look, it measures everything
Speaker:that we're supposed to measure. We didn't
Speaker:measure presentational writing or
Speaker:speaking yet. But it was
Speaker:the first chapter. So we were six weeks
Speaker:into school, it would
Speaker:that'd be too much. But we did
Speaker:do interpersonal speaking and writing,
Speaker:where they're answering a
Speaker:question that they hear.
Speaker:And then they answer a question, or that
Speaker:they read and then they answer a
Speaker:question. So you can
Speaker:assess the interpersonal part. Yeah, he
Speaker:was like, Oh, my God, it
Speaker:took me forever to grade because
Speaker:in the past, we've never graded speaking
Speaker:and writing in Spanish one. And I'm like,
Speaker:how it's that's half the standards. Yeah.
Speaker:So I mean, I agree with.
Speaker:So it was all like comprehension or
Speaker:there's only listening and reading and
Speaker:grammar. Okay. So um, I
Speaker:said, Well, we got to measure all
Speaker:the standards. I do believe in delaying
Speaker:the writing and the speaking assessments
Speaker:because they have to
Speaker:have their silent period in there. Right.
Speaker:I mean, it's not that we're
Speaker:not doing it. I just don't
Speaker:measure it too early. Because then the
Speaker:grades start to go down.
Speaker:Because I find in listening
Speaker:and reading, most of my kids are A's and
Speaker:B's. But when when you add
Speaker:the writing and the speaking,
Speaker:that's the differentiator. That really
Speaker:tells me where whether skill really is.
Speaker:Tell me this because I just gave a
Speaker:writing assessment. It was
Speaker:we finally came to a consensus
Speaker:my department, and we decided we were
Speaker:going to do a little comic book. And the
Speaker:students could write
Speaker:the characters talking however they
Speaker:wanted. And that would be it.
Speaker:And um, I know my colleagues
Speaker:being very by the book, they want to see
Speaker:the exact um, son las dos es
Speaker:la una. But I had some students
Speaker:who were experimenting with language. And
Speaker:this made me so happy. Like
Speaker:at the end, the last thing
Speaker:they had to do was have the characters
Speaker:say goodbye to each other. And some of
Speaker:them they were doing
Speaker:weird stuff with me that are in bed,
Speaker:because they wanted to say nos beimos,
Speaker:but they couldn't remember
Speaker:nos beimos. And it was like they were
Speaker:just doing weird stuff. But
Speaker:I was like, Yeah, you use me,
Speaker:Dar. I'm so proud of you. I'm not going
Speaker:to count you off on that.
Speaker:Because I want to see that
Speaker:experimentation. I want to see you
Speaker:working at I plus one, the zone of
Speaker:proximal development.
Speaker:And I'm not sure how my colleagues
Speaker:graded, but I was like,
Speaker:you're using vocabulary,
Speaker:you're using it wrong. The grammar is not
Speaker:there. But I don't want
Speaker:to like start dinging you
Speaker:for experimenting because
Speaker:I want to encourage that.
Speaker:Yeah, I always have my rule. I don't I'll
Speaker:make comments about
Speaker:things that you are pushing
Speaker:yourself towards, but we haven't learned
Speaker:yet. Yeah, never mark
Speaker:down for that. And one of the
Speaker:things we've been doing, I've been trying
Speaker:to get the my colleagues
Speaker:and they're all on board,
Speaker:actually, they like the rubrics. I went
Speaker:through actful rubrics,
Speaker:and made rubrics for all the
Speaker:different parts. So listening and
Speaker:reading, presentational speaking,
Speaker:interpersonal speaking,
Speaker:presentational writing and interpersonal
Speaker:writing made all those rubrics
Speaker:for levels one through three.
Speaker:And in those rubrics, because actful
Speaker:isn't mentioned anything
Speaker:about grammar, right? They're
Speaker:talking about results. That's what it
Speaker:was. It didn't say they had
Speaker:the correct verb form. It said
Speaker:minimal errors, or a lot of errors. And
Speaker:we wrote it that so first
Speaker:semester level one would be
Speaker:the goal. So our goal is the B. A is
Speaker:superstar. But our B is our goal is not
Speaker:right. Oh, for first
Speaker:semester and everything. We expect them
Speaker:by December to be novice
Speaker:low in listening, reading,
Speaker:speaking and writing. Yeah, so that would
Speaker:be the B. And then the A was
Speaker:novice mid. And then before
Speaker:underneath novice low, because there
Speaker:really isn't anything
Speaker:under novice low in act right,
Speaker:we called it emerging. Yes, emerging was
Speaker:getting a C. And so I put
Speaker:these rubrics in there. And then
Speaker:I went to I know, I'm, I always talk
Speaker:about AI, but it's assistant for me. I
Speaker:use those rubrics, I said,
Speaker:can you give me an example, a sample of
Speaker:what a student can do at
Speaker:each of these levels? So we
Speaker:actually got concrete texts. So that made
Speaker:us calibrate the rubric
Speaker:to each other. And they go,
Speaker:and it showed this emerging in writing in
Speaker:emerging and writing it
Speaker:showed that 80% of the words were
Speaker:in English. And 20% of the words were in
Speaker:Spanish. Yeah, but they just
Speaker:put them randomly in there.
Speaker:And it said it said that's emerging at
Speaker:this level, right? Because they got
Speaker:isolated words. Yeah,
Speaker:you've got the isolated words in there.
Speaker:They are learning some
Speaker:language. It's obvious,
Speaker:native speakers are going to have a lot
Speaker:of trouble understanding because it's
Speaker:been if it because it's
Speaker:always assumed that they don't speak
Speaker:English, it's they only speak
Speaker:Spanish. So they gave everybody
Speaker:including the kids, examples of what
Speaker:everything looked like on the
Speaker:page. Yeah, yeah. And so that
Speaker:was really, really helpful to come up
Speaker:with that. So we have it. So novice low
Speaker:is our goal for level
Speaker:one first semester, novice mid is our
Speaker:goal for novice for level
Speaker:one second semester, because
Speaker:you should be at intermediate mid. They
Speaker:don't even say you'll get
Speaker:to intermediate advance.
Speaker:Akhbiel says, average for person will be
Speaker:intermediate mid by the
Speaker:end of level four or AP or
Speaker:whatever you call it in your school. So
Speaker:we went with that. So in
Speaker:level two, first semester,
Speaker:looks just like second semester of level
Speaker:one. So our goal is novice mid with
Speaker:novice high being the
Speaker:goal. And then at the end of level two,
Speaker:we have novice high is
Speaker:being the goal. And then
Speaker:intermediate low is that A. And then for
Speaker:level three, because
Speaker:intermediate is really a long,
Speaker:slow process. Right, there's a like a hue
Speaker:plateau. And it just takes a it's a
Speaker:geometric progression.
Speaker:Right. Yeah. So we we said, we're not
Speaker:going to have two
Speaker:separate rubrics for level three.
Speaker:Our goal is to have intermediate low be
Speaker:their goal the whole year. So
Speaker:intermediate low is their goal.
Speaker:And then intermediate high, I mean,
Speaker:intermediate mid would be that A level,
Speaker:because there are kids
Speaker:who catch on quicker and can write more
Speaker:paragraph discourse and more connected
Speaker:sentences. But doing
Speaker:that and then having the AI give us the
Speaker:actual examples because I
Speaker:used to Google and it's harder
Speaker:to find them. I used to Google at what a
Speaker:kindergarten English paper
Speaker:looked like. Yeah, so that could
Speaker:show the kids this is what I'm expecting.
Speaker:Yeah, there's a cat. The
Speaker:cat is fat. The cat is fat
Speaker:and black. You know, very repetitive,
Speaker:very short. But it's harder
Speaker:and harder to find because of
Speaker:FERPA laws. No one's taking pictures of
Speaker:the kids work and putting it
Speaker:online. So I I'm finding it
Speaker:more and more difficult. So AI is
Speaker:actually generating these
Speaker:samples that I can talk with my
Speaker:kids and be able to see. And so kudos to
Speaker:you for sharing it with
Speaker:your kids not keeping it a big
Speaker:secret. Yeah, right. I did right. As I I
Speaker:told Pamela before we
Speaker:started, we did our first quick
Speaker:and before I did that, we went over this
Speaker:whole all the rubrics for
Speaker:level one for writing by the end
Speaker:of semester one, which we're getting to
Speaker:it in December. And they
Speaker:had the examples I printed out
Speaker:for them, I gave it to them, they have it
Speaker:in their notebooks to save
Speaker:and be able to refer back to
Speaker:as needed. And it helped them clarify
Speaker:exactly what I'm looking at. And I'll
Speaker:tell you, I had never
Speaker:doing quick writes for 25 years have ever
Speaker:had a kid start at novice
Speaker:low. Because you really look
Speaker:at novice low, it's being able to copy
Speaker:what's there. So I'm not a slow in
Speaker:Japanese. I might not
Speaker:do the strokes in the right order. But I
Speaker:can make my letters look just like the
Speaker:characters, you know,
Speaker:it'll take me a long time. But I can make
Speaker:it look like that,
Speaker:right? If I really work at it,
Speaker:and making lists. Those are the two
Speaker:things that are really
Speaker:the list things. And so I'm
Speaker:not a slow in any language that you can
Speaker:put in front of me that I can read.
Speaker:Right, right. Absolutely.
Speaker:I mean, I know what I'm saying, but I can
Speaker:copy, right? So yeah, my
Speaker:kids always start at novice
Speaker:low when they write if you wait long
Speaker:enough. So we know it's now, you know,
Speaker:beginning of November,
Speaker:we've been going since August. So they
Speaker:know more than five words at
Speaker:this point. They're past novice
Speaker:low. Exactly. And I read through all of
Speaker:the essays, 197 of them. And
Speaker:some of them were already at
Speaker:novice mid. That makes you feel so good,
Speaker:doesn't it? And then some
Speaker:were actually at novice high.
Speaker:Wow. Yeah. And so they were all scared.
Speaker:And it's really when you have these
Speaker:examples, and you can
Speaker:go back and you say, Yep, it looks just
Speaker:like that one. So you don't you have the
Speaker:rubric in your head,
Speaker:but you don't always know what that looks
Speaker:like on paper. And I
Speaker:noticed before I would go through
Speaker:and go, I graded a whole bunch of go and
Speaker:I noticed that I'm like, I'm
Speaker:giving this one this a higher
Speaker:grade than I gave it in the beginning,
Speaker:because it was harder on them in the
Speaker:beginning, and I had to
Speaker:go back because I didn't have that image
Speaker:in my head of what I was
Speaker:actually looking for. Yeah.
Speaker:My image was leftover from the year
Speaker:before. Yeah, I didn't last year where
Speaker:I'm like, I'm expecting
Speaker:my kids to be where they were at the end
Speaker:of last year for level one.
Speaker:And I forget that they're just
Speaker:starting level one. Yeah, yeah. Yeah,
Speaker:that's always that's always
Speaker:a danger. You know, you're
Speaker:reminding me that I think one of the best
Speaker:things that happened to me
Speaker:as a teacher, I was on the
Speaker:board for deciding our standards for
Speaker:Washington State. And we got stamp
Speaker:training. This is the I
Speaker:forget what stamp stands for. It's the
Speaker:Avant test. If you want to
Speaker:prove that you already speak a
Speaker:language or whatever, to get credit,
Speaker:okay. And I remember taking
Speaker:that test and it had all the
Speaker:exemplars in it. This is scored novice
Speaker:mid because blah, blah, blah, this is
Speaker:scored intermediate high
Speaker:because they've got the transition words
Speaker:they've got. You can't
Speaker:change the order of the sentences.
Speaker:They have to be in that order, you know,
Speaker:and all that stuff. And this
Speaker:was like really good for me
Speaker:to like see and understand. And the thing
Speaker:that blew me away, totally blew me away,
Speaker:is that because my colleagues are so by
Speaker:the book, it turns out,
Speaker:and of course, you know this,
Speaker:for our listeners, conjugation is not a
Speaker:novice skill. Like it
Speaker:totally blew me away that you can
Speaker:have a noun and a verb and the verb does
Speaker:not have to match the noun.
Speaker:You're still going to get rated
Speaker:fairly high if you are making something
Speaker:intelligible. And so
Speaker:I think that was like
Speaker:really important for me to learn. That
Speaker:comprehensible part is
Speaker:so important. And because
Speaker:when I had AI do this with our rubrics,
Speaker:first of all, they couldn't
Speaker:dispute the rubrics because
Speaker:they're coming from the national
Speaker:standards. So we can't say,
Speaker:well, you're gearing the rubric
Speaker:towards your class. No, I'm looking at
Speaker:the standards. I can't
Speaker:write it in there. And then
Speaker:we're just assigning the level grade. And
Speaker:what I liked about having
Speaker:the rubrics on there, first
Speaker:of all, especially for the kids is and
Speaker:that A is the next step up.
Speaker:They see where they have to
Speaker:grow to. They see what that goal is. They
Speaker:can see that example. And then it says,
Speaker:it showed the sample
Speaker:and then my the AI put in there, this
Speaker:isn't scored novice low because and it
Speaker:gave some bullet points.
Speaker:So kids could actually see it. And one of
Speaker:the activities I'm going
Speaker:to do is I'm going to have
Speaker:AI write some quick writes that are
Speaker:different samples. I used to
Speaker:use kids ones and I used to
Speaker:retype them, but it took a long time
Speaker:because I would fix the errors as I'm
Speaker:typing with subconsciously.
Speaker:I just scan them and I cover over the
Speaker:student's name. Well,
Speaker:because sometimes you know the
Speaker:handwriting or the handwriting is pretty
Speaker:bad nowadays. Yeah. And
Speaker:the handwriting, they can
Speaker:either they recognize it or they can't
Speaker:read it. So I always would
Speaker:because I did this my first year,
Speaker:then I just keep using those same ones.
Speaker:And so they have some
Speaker:that are like that too. Yeah,
Speaker:I have some that are like that too. But
Speaker:I'm going to have AI do it.
Speaker:And then I what I do is I give
Speaker:the kids the samples, put them in small
Speaker:groups. I have them let them score it.
Speaker:Yeah, let them score.
Speaker:And then I go how many gave it a C? How
Speaker:many gave that's a Dylan
Speaker:Williams technique? Yeah.
Speaker:And then we talk about it and we discuss
Speaker:why we did it. And I go, I
Speaker:would have given it here. And
Speaker:I find out that 90% of the kids would
Speaker:have graded it harder than I
Speaker:do. Which is typical. I think
Speaker:that's typical. But what's nice about
Speaker:that is they really get an
Speaker:idea for what I'm looking for,
Speaker:and why I'm looking for that. So it helps
Speaker:them to own that rubric,
Speaker:which is really, really important.
Speaker:Which is really, really important. So I
Speaker:rewrote that proficiency, we
Speaker:got to do it again for level
Speaker:for chapter two, because we're coming to
Speaker:the end of the chapter two. He just
Speaker:complained it took a
Speaker:long time because he had a grade the
Speaker:writing and the speaking. And it does
Speaker:take longer when it's
Speaker:recorded and you're listening to it. It
Speaker:does. He's like, can I just
Speaker:have him talk to me? I'm like,
Speaker:you can, but you are so afraid of
Speaker:parents. And now I know him too, at this
Speaker:school, that you need to
Speaker:record as a backup. You've got to record
Speaker:it. Oh, yeah, yeah, you've
Speaker:got your, because if they
Speaker:question you, you've got to be able to go
Speaker:back and say, you can't say,
Speaker:well, I took these notes and
Speaker:this is what I saw. I'd be like, how do
Speaker:you, I don't know. I didn't hear it.
Speaker:Right along the way.
Speaker:So I like having that concrete. So, and I
Speaker:tried it one year where I
Speaker:would just hit the record
Speaker:button on my computer every time a kid
Speaker:came up to me. But I was
Speaker:going to say, oh, yeah, I would
Speaker:always forget or something like that. So
Speaker:this I found just as
Speaker:easier where I can record the
Speaker:questions. The kid listens to them at
Speaker:their own pace and then they
Speaker:answer the questions right in
Speaker:there. I do the video so that I can see
Speaker:if they're reading off something or if
Speaker:someone's whispering
Speaker:in their ear. So I like the video
Speaker:component there. But yeah.
Speaker:Do you give them think time
Speaker:between when they read the question and
Speaker:when they answer? It's on
Speaker:their own. So they do get that.
Speaker:So it's completely on their own. On
Speaker:practices, I give them
Speaker:hints. On the actual assessments,
Speaker:I take those hints away. So like the hint
Speaker:might say, if it says,
Speaker:how old are you? It'll say,
Speaker:remember in Spanish, we don't use is with
Speaker:age. We use has. And I get
Speaker:two hints for every question.
Speaker:And I go saying, I have is Tangle. And so
Speaker:it doesn't show them the
Speaker:hints unless they look,
Speaker:they have to actually click the button.
Speaker:They have to click on it. Okay. So it
Speaker:doesn't show them right
Speaker:off the bat. So they can start select
Speaker:what level of scaffolding
Speaker:they need. And just because you
Speaker:click the hint button, it only shows you
Speaker:the first hint first. Then you have to
Speaker:click it again to see
Speaker:it. And I can add more hints if I wanted
Speaker:in there. I just don't
Speaker:have the time to put hints
Speaker:on for every single one. But that
Speaker:scaffolding for those kids
Speaker:who need it. And so during the
Speaker:practice, that's completely okay. As we
Speaker:get into the test part, I don't want to
Speaker:give that scaffolding
Speaker:anymore. But they should have already had
Speaker:that scaffolding because
Speaker:the practices. Hopefully,
Speaker:they did their practice. Right. Well,
Speaker:it's graded in our school
Speaker:because we have 30% homework,
Speaker:which kills me that's so high. Because
Speaker:it's practice and they're supposed to be,
Speaker:when it's worth 30%, they're afraid to
Speaker:fail it. They're afraid
Speaker:to make mistakes on it.
Speaker:Right. So they're more apt to cheat on it
Speaker:because they want that higher grade.
Speaker:That's the problem. It's yeah. So it's if
Speaker:it's low level practice, I
Speaker:just grade it for completion.
Speaker:And it's worth less than 5% of my grade.
Speaker:But for everything else,
Speaker:where it's listening practice,
Speaker:reading practice, they actually get a
Speaker:grade for it in there.
Speaker:And so they do do it because
Speaker:of that particular case. And what I like
Speaker:is it's just like then they
Speaker:say it to that it's just like
Speaker:the test is going to be it's just that
Speaker:it's labeled practice. So they're not
Speaker:seeing in a different
Speaker:format or a different way. It's a
Speaker:recording, they know it's recording, they
Speaker:have to listen to it.
Speaker:And with practices, I provide the
Speaker:recording in the actual practice for
Speaker:listening. So they can
Speaker:listen to I only record it once they can
Speaker:play as many times they
Speaker:need. But on a test, it's only
Speaker:played twice just to standardize around
Speaker:the nation because
Speaker:that's generally the style.
Speaker:That's true. That's true.
Speaker:Of hearing it only twice. But yeah, I
Speaker:allow them to go through and listen to it
Speaker:as many times during
Speaker:practice. They get that. And I try to
Speaker:tell them, see if you can
Speaker:do it in only two listens.
Speaker:Try not to go to the third or fourth. And
Speaker:I had a girl tell me she
Speaker:does so well in the practice
Speaker:because she can pause
Speaker:when she's trying to process.
Speaker:Right. Because a lot of problems I think
Speaker:is that everything's in
Speaker:short term working memory. And
Speaker:they hear a word and they're like, I know
Speaker:what that is. And then
Speaker:they hear the next word and
Speaker:they're like, I know what that is. And
Speaker:the first word tumbles out of their head.
Speaker:Yeah. And what I've been doing to help
Speaker:that because I always tell them to
Speaker:picture what's going on in
Speaker:your head like it were a movie. Because
Speaker:after the movie, yeah,
Speaker:because after a movie, you can tell
Speaker:what happened in the movie. You don't
Speaker:have to go back and pause and
Speaker:play. And so what I do a lot
Speaker:of times is I will do a listening and
Speaker:I'll have them draw a picture
Speaker:about what I'm talking about,
Speaker:make a comic strip so that that helps
Speaker:them develop that inner eye to picture
Speaker:what's going on in their
Speaker:head. I do that with my English class
Speaker:too. Yeah. It works really,
Speaker:really well. Yeah. Yeah. Okay.
Speaker:Let's move on. We talked a whole 45
Speaker:minutes about grading. The other
Speaker:component working with a
Speaker:textbook. Yeah. So what's your experience
Speaker:with working with a
Speaker:textbook or the parameters of the
Speaker:textbook and still being. I don't have
Speaker:problems with this at all
Speaker:because to me, a textbook is a
Speaker:roadmap. Okay. It's, you're going to
Speaker:start here. You're going to,
Speaker:this is one stop along the way.
Speaker:This is another stop along the way. This
Speaker:is where you end. I, that,
Speaker:that to me is just fine. Okay.
Speaker:The textbook often gives either too much
Speaker:vocabulary or not
Speaker:enough vocabulary that's
Speaker:relevant to the kids. So I look at it and
Speaker:I say, okay, yeah, the
Speaker:students really need to know.
Speaker:Like, I don't know, we were doing school
Speaker:supplies, so they need to
Speaker:know pencil. They need to know
Speaker:eraser. They need to know a ruler. They
Speaker:don't need to know DVD
Speaker:recorder, which one of my textbooks
Speaker:had for a long time. Mine still does.
Speaker:Mine still does. And a CD player. CD
Speaker:player. They don't need
Speaker:to know that, you know, so nobody, my
Speaker:colleagues, when I send them on to
Speaker:Español Dos, they are not
Speaker:going to notice that my students don't
Speaker:remember CBR Cafe. They're
Speaker:not going to remember, they're
Speaker:not going to notice that, you know. But
Speaker:so, you know, what are the essential
Speaker:things and then what's
Speaker:important to the students, because I know
Speaker:that if something's important to the
Speaker:students, like we've
Speaker:got, we're working out of Oten Tico, and
Speaker:we've got Montar in
Speaker:Monopatine and Montar in Bicicletta.
Speaker:I have a lot of horseback riders. So by
Speaker:golly, I'm going to teach
Speaker:him Montar in Caballo. Okay.
Speaker:I might as well. And they want to know
Speaker:how to say, I like to ride a
Speaker:horse. I ride my horse every
Speaker:Saturday. They want to be able to say
Speaker:that they're going to remember it better
Speaker:because it's something
Speaker:that they're interested in. So I do add a
Speaker:little bit extra. There
Speaker:are times that I front load
Speaker:things. Okay. Now, Oten Tico, I do like
Speaker:it, but some of the stuff to
Speaker:me is like, why do you wait
Speaker:until Capitulo Dos to teach the subject
Speaker:pronouns? The students want
Speaker:to talk about themselves. They
Speaker:want to talk about their friends. They
Speaker:want to talk about, they
Speaker:want to say things already. Why
Speaker:do I have to wait four months before I
Speaker:can introduce that? So I front load that.
Speaker:And then I've also found
Speaker:15 years teaching that the students are
Speaker:bright eyed and bushy tailed at the
Speaker:beginning of the year.
Speaker:They don't know anything. So now's the
Speaker:time to say, okay, I know
Speaker:that I'm not supposed to teach
Speaker:the difference between Serra and Estad
Speaker:until six months into the
Speaker:school year. By that point,
Speaker:the students are going to be confused
Speaker:because by that point they're jaded, you
Speaker:know? But if I teach
Speaker:them Serra and Estad early on that first
Speaker:week of school, hey guys,
Speaker:English is crazy. We have a
Speaker:camera of a verb to be because we had two
Speaker:verbs that got smacked
Speaker:into one. And in Spanish, it's
Speaker:still two separate verbs. Like I can jump
Speaker:on that at the beginning of
Speaker:the year. The students don't
Speaker:know any better. So they'll remember it.
Speaker:And especially because
Speaker:they're getting all that
Speaker:repetition, repetition, repetition that
Speaker:they need. They understand it
Speaker:by the time the textbook says
Speaker:I should introduce it. And so there are
Speaker:some things I front load,
Speaker:like the subject pronouns,
Speaker:difference between, that there are Serra
Speaker:and Estad and the difference between
Speaker:them. And I go ahead
Speaker:and teach them the conjugations for them
Speaker:early too, because my
Speaker:colleagues are so heavy into
Speaker:conjugations. And if I don't start now,
Speaker:the students are going
Speaker:to struggle in second year
Speaker:with them. So yeah, so there's some front
Speaker:loading that goes on,
Speaker:but I do follow it as
Speaker:I'm not jumping around. Okay. I'm not
Speaker:saying, Oh, we'll come back
Speaker:to this whole chapter later.
Speaker:I'm saying, I'm going to front load it.
Speaker:You're hearing this stuff
Speaker:in our TPRS stories. Anyway,
Speaker:you're hearing it in our PQA anyway. You
Speaker:might as well understand it
Speaker:so that by the time we get
Speaker:to it, it's all solid for you. Yeah. And
Speaker:I do that without
Speaker:intention. Cause I just noticed I'm
Speaker:preparing chapter three, um, for my going
Speaker:through and figuring out what
Speaker:I'm doing. And it's all about
Speaker:adjectives. So it's using Serra and Estad
Speaker:with those people who don't
Speaker:know, don't speak Spanish.
Speaker:We have two verbs to be, and they're not
Speaker:interchangeable. Um, and so it's listing
Speaker:the adjectives that you can use with
Speaker:Estad and adjectives you can use with
Speaker:Serra. And I'm like,
Speaker:I've already been doing this. We've
Speaker:already been doing it. Cause I
Speaker:can't tell a story about this.
Speaker:So, um, I've been front loading, but
Speaker:here's my big issues with
Speaker:textbook. I've got three of them.
Speaker:One, the vocab lists are way too damn
Speaker:big. They are just way too
Speaker:big. I mean, there are some,
Speaker:they differentiated between in my
Speaker:textbook that I currently have in both
Speaker:days between a eraser on
Speaker:the top of a pencil and a regular eraser.
Speaker:Yeah. And I'm like, I have
Speaker:never had a textbook ever teach
Speaker:the Goma ever. And then all of a sudden
Speaker:now it's in there. I tend to
Speaker:use Goma. Yeah. Yeah. I tend
Speaker:to use Boradora. So, um, and then at the
Speaker:same time, they're also teaching as
Speaker:required vocabulary,
Speaker:two different words for the same thing.
Speaker:So they're teaching aula, which is
Speaker:classroom and salón de
Speaker:clase, which is also one pick one. Why
Speaker:can we just pick one? Why do
Speaker:we have to add more vocabulary
Speaker:already on top of a huge list? Yeah. They
Speaker:don't need the synonyms until they're at
Speaker:intermediate low, you know? Yeah. So
Speaker:don't even bother. Then, so they got too
Speaker:big of a vocabulary.
Speaker:Then they've got outdated vocabulary.
Speaker:Yeah. Some of my kids
Speaker:know what a DVD player is,
Speaker:but they don't know what a CD player is.
Speaker:But they're not using
Speaker:that word constantly. So it's
Speaker:not going to stick in there. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker:That's my point. Can we
Speaker:actually use words that they're
Speaker:going to actually, and to be truthfully
Speaker:and honest, all the
Speaker:school supplies, they probably
Speaker:ain't going to use once they get out of
Speaker:class. Because how many
Speaker:times they ask about a ruler
Speaker:or an eraser, unless they become an
Speaker:office worker, it's probably not high
Speaker:frequency vocabulary.
Speaker:So those two things. And then my third
Speaker:thing is, and I never
Speaker:understood it subconsciously,
Speaker:but never consciously until Bill Van
Speaker:Patten said, textbooks organize grammar
Speaker:by what's easiest to
Speaker:teach, not what's easiest to learn. So
Speaker:they teach gender.
Speaker:Absolutely. And gender and that right at
Speaker:the beginning and adjective agreement,
Speaker:which is late acquired
Speaker:grammar. Yeah. And they keep
Speaker:subjunctive all the way to level three or
Speaker:four before they start
Speaker:teaching it. Because subjunctive
Speaker:is hard to explain because we're getting
Speaker:rid of it in English.
Speaker:Because we don't, I always say to
Speaker:my students, I'm like, if I was going to
Speaker:talk to you about
Speaker:subjunctive, I would say if I were going
Speaker:to talk to you about subjunctive, because
Speaker:that's what it should be. I
Speaker:was just an example. If I was
Speaker:president, you never were president. So
Speaker:you can't say was because was
Speaker:is the past tense. So I always
Speaker:put that in there too. But it's not easy
Speaker:to do to make or to be able
Speaker:to use if you just teach it in
Speaker:context, because subjunctive is pretty
Speaker:early acquired in Spanish.
Speaker:Yeah, for little kids. It's
Speaker:not a very difficult because it's just
Speaker:obvious how you use it. If you don't
Speaker:explain it from the rules
Speaker:point of view. Right. So they teach the
Speaker:things out of order. And
Speaker:so for me, a textbook is too
Speaker:confining. They it tells me I've got to
Speaker:teach this. And they're supposed to know
Speaker:it at the end of the
Speaker:chapter. And my kids are not going to get
Speaker:adjective agreement. Consciously, they
Speaker:know it. But it's not
Speaker:been internalized. So right, right.
Speaker:Coming out of their mouths
Speaker:or coming out of their hands.
Speaker:It's going to be wrong. So I didn't even
Speaker:grade it. Exposure. I
Speaker:don't. Yeah, true. True. There's
Speaker:a fourth problem with textbooks that we
Speaker:didn't talk about yet. That
Speaker:is after the chapter. Hey,
Speaker:we're done. We don't have to talk about
Speaker:this anymore. That's true.
Speaker:And the other thing I was
Speaker:going to say, we never need to talk about
Speaker:it again. You've got it
Speaker:permanently forever. There's no
Speaker:reason to revisit this. I know. Level
Speaker:two, they go what happened to the
Speaker:president tense because
Speaker:level two is all about the past. And
Speaker:they're like, it's still
Speaker:there. But they assume you mastered
Speaker:it already. The other thing about book,
Speaker:our tech like this, this
Speaker:kind of drives me crazy too, is
Speaker:the textbook doesn't teach past tense
Speaker:until second year. It was like, gosh, how
Speaker:are we going to talk
Speaker:about the weekend chat, you know? Well,
Speaker:guys, you know what? Shh,
Speaker:don't tell the other teachers,
Speaker:you're going to accidentally pick it up
Speaker:in my class. Okay. You
Speaker:know, it was funny, we did our
Speaker:quick writes. And I have my sweet 16 in
Speaker:present, past and future up on
Speaker:the board. And I had to tell,
Speaker:I didn't tell my first class that did the
Speaker:right not to write in past tense. I
Speaker:didn't tell them that
Speaker:I just because we had learned. So they
Speaker:looked up on the board for
Speaker:all the past tense verbs.
Speaker:That's scaffolding. So I told the rest of
Speaker:the classes stick to
Speaker:present tense, we haven't really
Speaker:learned past tense yet. So we've used it.
Speaker:But we haven't really, you
Speaker:know, worked on it. So stick
Speaker:with president so you can show me what
Speaker:you really know. Yeah, but it was funny
Speaker:that that one period
Speaker:went through and use the board and wrote,
Speaker:I had a BS in there and
Speaker:fways in there. And it was,
Speaker:it was kind of interesting. The other
Speaker:thing that vocab was going
Speaker:to say with the textbook is,
Speaker:nobody goes through life and learns all
Speaker:the fruits and vegetables at once.
Speaker:That's true. All the reflexive verbs at
Speaker:once. Can we not sprinkle them around?
Speaker:Because I don't know
Speaker:about you, but I always noticed when I
Speaker:taught and I had to teach
Speaker:all the reflexive verbs,
Speaker:which is usually like in chapter one of
Speaker:level two, there's 30
Speaker:reflexive verbs there. Right.
Speaker:Every verb that never was reflexive
Speaker:before has now
Speaker:automatically turned reflexive.
Speaker:Right. That's over-correction. It's
Speaker:completely, completely
Speaker:normal. Yep. And I would much rather
Speaker:just sprinkle the reflexive verbs
Speaker:throughout. So my thing with my textbook
Speaker:is, and okay, let me tell
Speaker:you my two different ways of doing this.
Speaker:Last year and the year before, I went
Speaker:through, looked at what
Speaker:textbook had to teach grammar, culture,
Speaker:vocab wise, and wrote my
Speaker:CI lesson based off that.
Speaker:Never opened the book. The kids never
Speaker:opened the book. They never did the next
Speaker:activity of the book.
Speaker:Yep. Uh-huh. I did it. I wrote culture
Speaker:readings that were
Speaker:actually in the target language,
Speaker:but at their level. In the target
Speaker:language. Yes. Why is all
Speaker:the culture stuff in English?
Speaker:You could write embedded readings,
Speaker:describing it, explaining
Speaker:it, you know? The kids go,
Speaker:I wrote one for the day of the dead last
Speaker:week for them to do, right?
Speaker:Uh-huh. And it was about 150
Speaker:words. And any word that we had not
Speaker:covered right next to it
Speaker:was in English in parentheses.
Speaker:Okay. So that's because sometimes you
Speaker:can't, it's just a reading,
Speaker:there's no pictures in it. And
Speaker:there are words that are specific to that
Speaker:culture that just aren't
Speaker:going to come up. True. True.
Speaker:So I just put them in parentheses right
Speaker:next to it. So I don't get the kids
Speaker:having to look at the
Speaker:glossary and then forget where they were.
Speaker:And they go, it was, they
Speaker:understood it. And they said it
Speaker:was relatively easy. So I just write them
Speaker:at the right level for them
Speaker:and have them in the target
Speaker:language. Now in this textbook, I got in
Speaker:trouble. I kind of got out
Speaker:of getting in trouble though.
Speaker:But the district went to my principal or
Speaker:my AP principal and said, he hasn't
Speaker:opened the textbook.
Speaker:The kids don't have accounts in the
Speaker:textbook because it's
Speaker:digital. And I'm like,
Speaker:I'm teaching from the textbook and I'll
Speaker:show like a video, but I
Speaker:showed on the whole screen.
Speaker:Yeah. You showed on the classroom screen.
Speaker:Yeah. And since we do, we
Speaker:use formative for all of our,
Speaker:you know, work. I just took the questions
Speaker:from the textbook and I put them in
Speaker:there. Right. So I have
Speaker:one consistent place. I teach kids, okay,
Speaker:we're going to be going in the
Speaker:textbook, go to the textbook.
Speaker:Now go to the textbook. Yeah. So
Speaker:sometimes the online stuff isn't
Speaker:organized very well.
Speaker:So students to be able to find it. Yeah.
Speaker:So this is what happened. So
Speaker:they called me on it and then
Speaker:I go, okay. She goes, work with the other
Speaker:teacher about how to
Speaker:get the counselor. Well,
Speaker:ha ha ha. You just set up your counselor.
Speaker:I couldn't set up the
Speaker:accounts because they hadn't
Speaker:turned that feature on for me yet. Oh
Speaker:yeah. So I kind of got out of
Speaker:that. So now in chapter two,
Speaker:what I did is I went through manually
Speaker:through every activity and
Speaker:picked five out of the textbook
Speaker:that I could do that would not derail
Speaker:comprehensible input.
Speaker:Right. So I did that. And then
Speaker:I organized it in a lesson, but this time
Speaker:I did not want to, it took
Speaker:me way too long to go through
Speaker:all the activities and find out which
Speaker:ones. I went to my Claude, my AI, and I
Speaker:said, are you familiar
Speaker:with VOSUS? And he goes, yes, I'm very
Speaker:familiar, but I will need you
Speaker:to log into your account so I
Speaker:can see it. Oh, interesting. Interesting.
Speaker:Because it can control
Speaker:your browser. If you give it
Speaker:permission, it will, you give it one time
Speaker:permission for that session
Speaker:only. It's not always. Okay.
Speaker:And it opens its own browser and it
Speaker:clicks around and you can watch it click
Speaker:around and move around.
Speaker:And it goes through. I said, I need you
Speaker:to find five activities that
Speaker:are CI based that kids actually
Speaker:have to turn in in the textbook because I
Speaker:didn't have that last part
Speaker:in there and it gave me some
Speaker:good CI activities from the book, but the
Speaker:kids didn't turn anything
Speaker:in. So when the district
Speaker:looks, they're not going to see that I
Speaker:did anything. Right. You
Speaker:want the evidence. Yeah.
Speaker:The evidence. So it found them. It picked
Speaker:the activities and I
Speaker:said, these are the five best
Speaker:activities, told me where to find them,
Speaker:what page and why they were
Speaker:good and what to do with them.
Speaker:So I got perfect. I added in all my other
Speaker:activities that I normally would do for,
Speaker:that I had already created for chapter
Speaker:three, my stories, my
Speaker:assessments, and I put all of that
Speaker:and I said, okay, now I need a 15 day
Speaker:plan. I need you to organize
Speaker:when I give this, this, this,
Speaker:this. When do I give this exit ticket?
Speaker:When do I give this warm up? When do I
Speaker:give this assessment?
Speaker:All that. And I said, I got 90 minute
Speaker:sessions. I got 15 days to do
Speaker:it. Give it to me. And it did.
Speaker:And it told me exactly where to put. Oh,
Speaker:I also put in there. I want
Speaker:all the textbook activities
Speaker:to take less than 10 minutes. Oh yeah.
Speaker:Yeah. So I put, so it even
Speaker:found, it even found those
Speaker:in there. So it saved me a heck of a time
Speaker:planning. How many did
Speaker:it come up with out of,
Speaker:just out of curiosity, like did it come
Speaker:up with 10 per unit? Did it
Speaker:come up with five per unit?
Speaker:I told it, no, I just did it for one
Speaker:chapter and I said, I only want five.
Speaker:Okay. So it went through.
Speaker:So you gave it the parameter of how many?
Speaker:Okay. Of how many? You
Speaker:can go, you can also do,
Speaker:you could say, give me 10 or give me 15.
Speaker:And then you can read
Speaker:through there and pick which ones,
Speaker:but I don't want to spend that kind of
Speaker:time because I don't
Speaker:want to spend that much time
Speaker:in the damn textbook on the textbook.
Speaker:Yes, absolutely. So it
Speaker:did that. And so we haven't
Speaker:started chapter three yet. Chapter three
Speaker:will be starting
Speaker:right after Thanksgiving.
Speaker:But it's all planned. I just got to make
Speaker:my PowerPoints, all my
Speaker:slide decks in there. Yeah.
Speaker:That's all I've got to do. I already have
Speaker:everything else already
Speaker:organized. I know exactly
Speaker:what to do on block one, block two, block
Speaker:three, block four, up to
Speaker:block 15. So it works really,
Speaker:really well. And that's how I kind of
Speaker:integrated that textbook in without
Speaker:actually having the kids
Speaker:crack open the textbook on a regular
Speaker:basis. Am I covering
Speaker:everything in the textbook? Yes.
Speaker:Because I looked at what the grammar was.
Speaker:I looked at what the vocab
Speaker:was. The vocab is still way too
Speaker:big. I think it's like 150 words. I'm
Speaker:telling you when they go on
Speaker:to second year, third year,
Speaker:fourth year, nobody's going to notice
Speaker:that they didn't remember.
Speaker:Gisantes. Nobody's going to
Speaker:remember those. Nobody, they're just
Speaker:going to assume it was the
Speaker:summer slide and that's why
Speaker:students don't know it. It's okay.
Speaker:Exactly. If they're solid on just the
Speaker:core stuff and they can
Speaker:communicate, that's all your colleagues
Speaker:are going to notice. And it's funny
Speaker:because we've been doing
Speaker:the estar verb with feelings and the ones
Speaker:that my kids know
Speaker:already are happy, sad. Feliz,
Speaker:I don't teach Feliz. I always teach
Speaker:contento because it's a
Speaker:car. Okay. That sounds like
Speaker:content. Yeah. But the book has both of
Speaker:them to make them
Speaker:confused. But so we've got, I teach
Speaker:contento. They know, they know because we
Speaker:said that the, in my
Speaker:story about the kid who
Speaker:isn't prepared for the test. He's near
Speaker:the also. Okay. So he's
Speaker:nervous because the teacher says
Speaker:I own pro I own exam in Hawaii and he
Speaker:gets nervous. So he starts off being very
Speaker:happy because math is
Speaker:his favorite class. So that he's my
Speaker:little pictures showing him very happy.
Speaker:And then the next scene,
Speaker:he says, Oh no, there's an exam. And he's
Speaker:like, ah, and he's really
Speaker:nervous. So then I asked,
Speaker:how is he now? He is nervous. And then he
Speaker:goes and looks in his
Speaker:backpack for his calculator and
Speaker:his other supplies. He doesn't have them.
Speaker:And so now he's sad. He's
Speaker:got a sad face on there.
Speaker:But my kids know nervous, happy, sad, and
Speaker:angry because I do this.
Speaker:So I do that and they always mimic me
Speaker:when I do it in Ojado style. I go,
Speaker:he's not prepared for class. Esta la
Speaker:profezora en Ojada. Oh no. And so, um,
Speaker:and I look in the textbook
Speaker:those are some of the big adjectives that
Speaker:they put in there. So they already are
Speaker:knowing some of them.
Speaker:Yeah. But I mean, like, what else are
Speaker:they, if they need to
Speaker:describe, okay, you know,
Speaker:maybe at some point you tell them a
Speaker:little story about the word for
Speaker:embarrassed so they don't
Speaker:accidentally say they're pregnant. You
Speaker:know, what else do they need?
Speaker:You know, the other one is a
Speaker:good one is sick. We haven't talked about
Speaker:that one sick. Yeah. But
Speaker:some of the adjectives I look
Speaker:at are like, really? Do we need to go
Speaker:down this road? So I really
Speaker:would like to do, but I have to
Speaker:get my cohort to agree is to go through
Speaker:all of the vocab and see he couldn't
Speaker:agree to this because
Speaker:he uses the textbook exclusively every
Speaker:activity in the textbook he
Speaker:assigns. But can we agree on
Speaker:the top 20 vocabulary, the most frequent
Speaker:vocabulary from the textbook
Speaker:and that's what we assess on.
Speaker:You can go ahead and teach all the rest.
Speaker:Yeah, but I would really like
Speaker:to be able to do that. We used
Speaker:to do that with a CI, even though we use
Speaker:a CI textbook, um, at the
Speaker:time, what was it called?
Speaker:It was the wolf one. It used to be Carol
Speaker:Gob and they don't make it anymore. I
Speaker:can't remember what it was called.
Speaker:So we went through the every unit and as
Speaker:a team, we go, let's strike
Speaker:this word out. Let's strike
Speaker:this word out because some words like
Speaker:that's too Mexican. Only
Speaker:Mexicans use that word. And then
Speaker:they had Lobo and they had, um, like
Speaker:those are too close of an animal. Do we
Speaker:need to have both of them?
Speaker:One dog like animals enough. So we went
Speaker:with Lobo and then they
Speaker:had another one, a Querbal.
Speaker:And I'm like, do they really need to know
Speaker:Crow before they know Bird?
Speaker:And we were in Vegas. I go,
Speaker:so this is where I get with my stuff.
Speaker:It's like, if you can
Speaker:circumlocate, you don't need to know
Speaker:every single word in the whole language.
Speaker:You know? So like, like if
Speaker:I'm going to tell a story about
Speaker:Coyote and I just say black bird, I think
Speaker:that's fine. You know?
Speaker:Yeah. Yeah. So it had the
Speaker:Querbal in there and then my kids all
Speaker:knew it because it's
Speaker:the name of the liquor.
Speaker:It's a brand name. So, um, so they
Speaker:already knew that. So we
Speaker:just said, we just changed it to
Speaker:instead because it's more useful of a
Speaker:word. So we'd go through
Speaker:every chapter before we taught it
Speaker:and we cut out. And this was already
Speaker:pretty whittled down because it was a CI
Speaker:textbook to begin with.
Speaker:But we're just like, that is too
Speaker:specific. And I think they didn't use
Speaker:Toro. I think they used
Speaker:Coyote in that book. And we don't want
Speaker:to, Coyote and Lobo in the same thing.
Speaker:And Lobo, yeah, those are
Speaker:too similar. Yeah, they're too similar.
Speaker:And then we took out. They might know
Speaker:because of the superhero,
Speaker:so they already know it or if it's
Speaker:cognate, I'll go ahead and throw it in
Speaker:there. But if it's a brand
Speaker:new word, then. Well, they had to talk
Speaker:about pictures and you
Speaker:couldn't even tell the difference
Speaker:in the picture between a coyote and a
Speaker:Lobo. Oh, yeah. It wasn't differentiated
Speaker:enough in the pictures.
Speaker:So I'm like, we just didn't. So I would
Speaker:love to be able to whittle down and I
Speaker:would love all textbook
Speaker:out there in the world. Can you please
Speaker:stop putting in so much
Speaker:vocabulary? There is something
Speaker:called a frequency dictionary. When you
Speaker:have number word number 2700
Speaker:on there, it is not a useful
Speaker:word. Do not put it in there. I'm like,
Speaker:know the language. 1800 words. The
Speaker:average fluent speaker
Speaker:has 1800 words that come out of their
Speaker:mouth regularly. So if
Speaker:it ain't in the first 1800
Speaker:words in the frequency dictionary, it
Speaker:should be supplemental
Speaker:vocabulary and never assessed.
Speaker:Yeah, never assessed. I mean, to be fair,
Speaker:sometimes my students take our TPRS
Speaker:stories off the rail
Speaker:and I wind up introducing a very esoteric
Speaker:word. But the students
Speaker:remember it because it's part
Speaker:and again, I don't assess on that word.
Speaker:And that's my exception.
Speaker:My exception is truthful.
Speaker:It either has to be a hilariously funny
Speaker:word like lemous is a funny word.
Speaker:My Spanish students love el poopy tray.
Speaker:Yeah. Love el poopy tray.
Speaker:Yep. So, yeah. And I showed them
Speaker:it's not a poopy tray. So I drew a
Speaker:picture of a tray with a
Speaker:stinking pile of poop on it.
Speaker:And I put a big X through it. It's not a
Speaker:poopy tray. It's a poopy
Speaker:tray. But also look at,
Speaker:and you can have, okay, my first section
Speaker:was the funny words. The other one is
Speaker:words that are extremely important to
Speaker:your kids. Like you were
Speaker:talking about horseback riding,
Speaker:or someone, some of the teachers said, my
Speaker:kids are rural. They like to hunt fish
Speaker:and do that kind of stuff. So hook on a
Speaker:line is important to her
Speaker:kids. Great. Add that in. That's
Speaker:perfectly fine. But they should know it
Speaker:should be there. And so
Speaker:the same thing with textbooks
Speaker:and the frequencies I use also have
Speaker:thematic vocabulary.
Speaker:They'll go the top 20 food words.
Speaker:And if you look at them, almost all of
Speaker:them are never in a
Speaker:textbook, the actual top 20.
Speaker:Because it's funny that they're not like,
Speaker:the most common food
Speaker:words are not in the textbook,
Speaker:that they teach them. So I love, I wish
Speaker:they would use that and think about it,
Speaker:that anything over that 2000 mark should
Speaker:be supplementary,
Speaker:recognize only vocabulary.
Speaker:Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker:I should recognize it because it's not
Speaker:actual active vocabulary
Speaker:that we are assessing for.
Speaker:Yeah. I'm thinking about now, like
Speaker:Rialidades Otenico, their
Speaker:food unit, I think they were
Speaker:trying to prove a point. And they like
Speaker:leaned heavily on the is
Speaker:this healthy, or is this not
Speaker:healthy. And so they started teaching all
Speaker:these words like, unless
Speaker:my students are training to
Speaker:be chefs, they don't need to know some of
Speaker:this stuff. My kids don't
Speaker:like peas. They do not know
Speaker:gi sante. They don't never use that word.
Speaker:Yeah. It's like, they
Speaker:don't use it. I found one comic
Speaker:strip that used it as a joke. Like I, as
Speaker:a punchline of a joke, they
Speaker:had gi santes in it. So I put up
Speaker:that comic strip. But that's the only
Speaker:time I've ever like seen it
Speaker:in the wild that my students
Speaker:will appreciate. You know, I love
Speaker:asparagus, but my kids don't like
Speaker:asparagus. Yeah. So they don't
Speaker:need no aspergos. They just don't need to
Speaker:know that. Like, like,
Speaker:I've got to teach las gracias.
Speaker:And it's like, well, that's fine. But
Speaker:like, for, for novice, high
Speaker:communication, I want to get them,
Speaker:I want to get them to novice high at the
Speaker:end of the year. Okay. For
Speaker:novice high communication,
Speaker:they don't need to be talking about las
Speaker:gracias. You know, they
Speaker:don't need to be talking about
Speaker:lirialis in the tense of in the aspect of
Speaker:the grains, you know,
Speaker:they don't, they need to say,
Speaker:I want pizza for lunch. That's what they
Speaker:want to say. And that
Speaker:stuff's going to be context aware
Speaker:when they look at the back of a label,
Speaker:and that they need to look
Speaker:and figure it out. They'll be
Speaker:able to that's like I tell, I only teach
Speaker:Vosotros as recognition. I
Speaker:only teach recognition because
Speaker:the odds are you are not going to be in
Speaker:Spain long enough to know
Speaker:enough people to be able to use
Speaker:that. And they will say that's true. And
Speaker:perfectly they're going to the
Speaker:Argentinian version. Oh,
Speaker:yes. Yeah. And the thing is, they're
Speaker:going to understand you've
Speaker:used Eustetus. And then if you
Speaker:do stay in Spain long enough, guess what?
Speaker:Pick it up. You'll pick
Speaker:it up naturally in context.
Speaker:So I'm not going to touch, you know, all
Speaker:those outliers. I don't
Speaker:teach a kill either. It comes
Speaker:up. Yes. Yes. We have it's a hard
Speaker:concept. And it's also fluctuates
Speaker:depending on who's speaking,
Speaker:because some people think is the other
Speaker:end of the room. Something
Speaker:gets the other end of the street.
Speaker:And something gets the other end of town.
Speaker:That's way the heck over there. Yeah. So
Speaker:I always translate it as way over there.
Speaker:Yeah, me too. And then I read the book.
Speaker:What's book? It's Green Eggs and Ham in
Speaker:Spanish. Oh, they use it.
Speaker:Okay. It's used in there. Okay.
Speaker:I'll read that just for fun. But I just
Speaker:want to know this and that.
Speaker:Yeah. They can, they'll pick
Speaker:a kale when it's used, but it's not used
Speaker:that often to where it's
Speaker:key vocabulary. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker:So I just want them to get this and that.
Speaker:So we are over one hour and 17 minutes.
Speaker:Even with just the two of us, we go over.
Speaker:We do. We do. We do. But I
Speaker:think it was a good discussion.
Speaker:And I think that for many of us who live
Speaker:in a hybrid, because in
Speaker:California, they can tell you
Speaker:what to teach. They can't tell you how to
Speaker:teach it. Yes. And so many of
Speaker:us are in hybrid departments,
Speaker:and we do need to find a way to work with
Speaker:our colleagues and make
Speaker:those compromises. And I
Speaker:will give my recommendation fall back to
Speaker:ACTFUL and your state standards to
Speaker:justify. So he wants
Speaker:grammar tests. I'm like, show me in the
Speaker:standards where we assess grammar. If
Speaker:it's in the standards,
Speaker:I'll do it. And he can't because it's not
Speaker:there. Right. So it helps
Speaker:you reframe. Is it okay that
Speaker:he gives grammar quizzes? Absolutely. He
Speaker:can do it to his heart
Speaker:content. But don't make me do it.
Speaker:He might be really good at teaching
Speaker:grammar. Yeah. Because it's
Speaker:not in the standards. I mean,
Speaker:I love grammar, but my kids don't. And
Speaker:they don't need it. My kids
Speaker:were asking me the difference
Speaker:between a noun and an adjective and an
Speaker:adverb the other day. They
Speaker:don't even know it in English.
Speaker:They don't. Yeah, that's a problem. But
Speaker:they're fluent English speakers.
Speaker:Yeah. But they're fluent English
Speaker:speakers. Do you need to know the parts
Speaker:of a car to be able to
Speaker:drive it? No, you do not. And you don't
Speaker:need to know the parts of the
Speaker:language to be able to speak
Speaker:so an act will finally recognize this and
Speaker:the AP College Board has finally
Speaker:recognized this and took
Speaker:those finally out. Yep. So that's kind of
Speaker:my defense is always
Speaker:going back to act full
Speaker:and using that even though I don't like
Speaker:the actual groupings. I like
Speaker:the European framework much.
Speaker:I like the C for a better the CEFR. Yeah.
Speaker:The ABC. It's much easier
Speaker:to understand. There's only
Speaker:two. It's much easier. Yeah. I don't know
Speaker:why actful goes all
Speaker:the way to distinguished
Speaker:because many native speakers are
Speaker:distinguished. When I when
Speaker:I took my Japanese test way,
Speaker:way back a hundred million years ago, I
Speaker:deliberately sat down
Speaker:and learned words for the
Speaker:general theory of relativity, which I
Speaker:can't describe in English,
Speaker:but I just sprinkled them in
Speaker:and got like really high ratings.
Speaker:Oh, that's so funny. Yeah. But that just
Speaker:shows also the
Speaker:fallacy of the exam itself.
Speaker:Yeah. If you can do that by just
Speaker:sprinkling in some high
Speaker:words in there, that doesn't that
Speaker:does. It doesn't tell you anything. Yeah.
Speaker:This is something else that
Speaker:I like. And I talked about
Speaker:with Bill Van Patten. It's your it should
Speaker:be your sustained level of
Speaker:ability, what you can sustain.
Speaker:Having a great AP word used right up
Speaker:here, but then going back
Speaker:down to this level of words,
Speaker:that's not a sustained level. And I'll
Speaker:say one last thing
Speaker:about grading that I do.
Speaker:I don't like retakes. I don't like them.
Speaker:But I look for trends. So I look for
Speaker:where their sustained
Speaker:ability is. So that takes out the top
Speaker:outliers that are high or
Speaker:low. I want to see where they're
Speaker:consistently performing at over a period
Speaker:of time. And it obviously
Speaker:should be an upward trend.
Speaker:But I want to see where they are able to
Speaker:sustain that. Not where they can have
Speaker:peak little moments, kind of like the
Speaker:opposite of sundowning
Speaker:for people with Alzheimer's,
Speaker:where they can have peaks of clarity and
Speaker:all of a sudden go right back down again.
Speaker:This burst of brilliance and then they're
Speaker:back to normal. Yeah.
Speaker:It needs to be a consistent level. And so
Speaker:and I think Actful has way
Speaker:too many levels. And I think
Speaker:the the intermediate, it's too long for
Speaker:them. Kids don't realize
Speaker:that they're growing in the
Speaker:intermediate because it takes a long time
Speaker:to get out of there. Yeah,
Speaker:they feel like they've hit a
Speaker:plateau. Yeah. And it's not
Speaker:differentiated enough within
Speaker:intermediate, low, mid and high
Speaker:to where they can really see that growth
Speaker:where I think A1, A2, B1,
Speaker:B2, C1, C2 really does hit it
Speaker:a lot better. Yeah, I agree. I agree. Any
Speaker:parting thoughts? Yeah,
Speaker:I've got two parting thoughts.
Speaker:First of all, because my district is
Speaker:like, we can see where it's going.
Speaker:They're going to be saying
Speaker:everybody's got a March lockstep. Look,
Speaker:when I have two Spanish one
Speaker:classes, I don't this year
Speaker:because I had to take on an English
Speaker:class. So all my classes
Speaker:are like 35 students and more.
Speaker:When I have two Spanish classes, they're
Speaker:not on the same level. When
Speaker:I have two French classes,
Speaker:they're not on the same level. When I
Speaker:have two Japanese class, they're like,
Speaker:classroom dynamics are going to dictate
Speaker:how fast or how slow you go.
Speaker:Absolutely. I think it's wrong
Speaker:for us to say everybody has to be at
Speaker:exactly the same pace across teachers,
Speaker:because even with one
Speaker:teacher, they're not going to be at the
Speaker:same pace. And the second
Speaker:thing I'll say is when you're
Speaker:in the department, you all have the same
Speaker:goal. Just keep focusing on
Speaker:that goal. Nobody's right.
Speaker:Nobody's wrong. You have your way of
Speaker:doing things and you're
Speaker:really good at the way you do it.
Speaker:Your colleague who's been teaching for 40
Speaker:years is probably really
Speaker:good at what he does. So just
Speaker:keep focusing on the goal. What do you
Speaker:want your students to be able
Speaker:to do with the language when
Speaker:all is said and done? And then you'll be
Speaker:able to come up with lots
Speaker:of agreement. Yeah, I agree.
Speaker:100%. So with that, everybody, we have
Speaker:just finished episode 46.
Speaker:Thanks for spending your
Speaker:Sunday thinking through department
Speaker:dynamics with two people
Speaker:who have absolutely had that
Speaker:awkward common final conversation.
Speaker:Pamela, thank you as always for keeping
Speaker:this conversation honest.
Speaker:And for never letting either of us get
Speaker:too comfortable on our soapboxes.
Speaker:So if you need a language for advocating
Speaker:for your approach
Speaker:without starting a fight,
Speaker:a few ideas for making CI fit the
Speaker:curriculum you've been handed, or just
Speaker:proof that you're not the
Speaker:only one navigating this, you got it
Speaker:today. Subscribe, leave a
Speaker:review, and share this with
Speaker:a CI teacher in your department who's
Speaker:currently tiptoeing around a
Speaker:colleague teaching the same
Speaker:course a completely different way. Catch
Speaker:us live on YouTube or find
Speaker:the replay on your favorite
Speaker:podcast app. Ditch the drills, trust the
Speaker:process, and we'll see you
Speaker:next time on Comprehend This.
Speaker:Bye-bye, everybody. Bye.
Speaker:[MUSIC]
