April: Celebrating Neurodiversity!

Your language-teaching mission, should you choose to accept it, is to celebrate neurodiversity in your classroom during April (and all year long!).

Image: https://today.uconn.edu/2020/01/engineering-new-learning-environment-neurodiversity/#

DID YOU KNOW? In the 1990s a journalist named Harvey Blume and an autism advocate named Judy Singer wanted to create a new political category so that they could fight for the rights of those whose brains worked differently. They also wanted to celebrate the strengths that many neurodiverse people have. For example, people with ADHD are often creative problem-solvers, and people with dyslexia will often have great visual thinking abilities. Now in the 2020s there is a better understanding that there is no ‘normal’ brain, and that everyone’s brain is unique and works ‘differently’. However, many people with conditions like autism choose to continue using the term ‘neurodiverse’ because, according to an article by Howard Timberlake, “it is a useful and positive way of defining their identity and community.” Now, the United Nations has a World Autism Awareness Day every April 2, and many countries use April as the month to raise awareness and celebrate the contributions of neurodiverse people.

How can you celebrate neurodiversity in your ELL or language classroom this April?

• Talk explicitly about neurodiversity and how it helps us create a tapestry of different minds in our society that can contribute different perspectives. For example, Billie Eilish recently won an Oscar for her song “No Time to Die”. In class, you can mention that Billie is neurodiverse: she has Tourette syndrome, which means that she has involuntary tics, and she is synesthetic, which means her senses, like vision and hearing, can blend together.

  • RESOURCE: Neurodiversity Read-Aloud Links (great to send home to elementary parents)

  • RESOURCE: What is Neurodiversity? (info poster for the classroom, adapted from Neurodiversity Celebration Weeks’ excellent powerpoints)

• Share resources with your colleagues on ways to celebrate and support neurodiverse students. Shameless plug: On the Lesson: Impossible site, there are two podcast episodes that you can listen to with Michael Weingarth and Drew Thompson and a blog post (with a PDF you can share, below) about “5 Minute Differentiation Strategies”. That is the tip of the iceberg for podcasts and posts about neurodiversity!

  • RESOURCE: 5 Minute Differentiation Strategies

• Highlight neurodiverse individuals in your classroom while making connections to the content. I have a few activities that I created originally for the Edmonds School District to celebrate neurodiversity within various content areas which you can check out here. For example, I drew connections to Alan Turing for a cryptography math lesson and Dr. Maggie Aderin-Pocock for a science lesson on making a spectroscope.

  • RESOURCE: Greta Thunburg Reading Comprehension Activity

• Listen to neurodiverse people about their experiences, and avoid organizations that center anyone other than the neurodiverse person themselves. Beware of resources from organizations like Autism Speaks, which according to the Autistic Self Advocacy Network, “uses damaging and offensive fundraising tactics which rely on fear, stereotypes and devaluing the lives of people on the autism spectrum”. Both Michael and Drew, the two people I’ve interviewed about neurodiversity, identify as neurodiverse, and you can follow Michael on Twitter!

 How do you celebrate neurodiversity in the classroom? Feel free to share in the comments!

Women's History Month Activities

Your language-teaching mission, should you choose to accept it, is to celebrate women’s history month with your students using engaging resources.

Image source: www.ssf.net/Home/Components/News/News/8573/1809

March is Women’s History Month. Although it is not the only month in which we can celebrate the contributions of women, it’s a great time to remind ourselves to make sure that our curriculum is inclusive of all genders! In the United States, Women’s History Month began as Women’s History Week in March 1978.  Educators in Santa Rosa, California wanted to increase awareness of women’s contributions to society and chose a week in March because International Women’s Day falls on March 8. In 1980, President Jimmy Carter made this a week of celebration for the entire country, saying “the achievements, leadership, courage, strength, and love of the women who built America was as vital as that of the men whose names we know so well." In 1987 Congress expanded this celebration to the entire month of March.

Each month I create a booklet for the Edmonds School District to celebrate that month’s equity themes. These “diversity booklets”, which you can check out here, are designed for parents and teachers to use to supplement the existing curricular learning, or to do a fun craft or art project together while celebrating women, Arab-Americans, LGBTQ+ people, etc. Usually, I curate a selection of resources created by other educators, but this month I ended up designing quite a few of my own, and wanted to put them on the blog to share with other language teachers and provide the answer keys for those using the booklets. All of the resources below are in English, but feel free to adapt them to any language for your students!

LANGUAGE ARTS/SOCIAL STUDIES: A women’s history firsts reading (written by me) with reading comprehension questions, as well as a follow-up research activity using an instagram framework. For language learners, there is a focus on synonyms, reading dates, and understanding the 5-paragraph essay frame. There is also a chance for students to speak to partners about a discussion question. If you want to extend beyond the text, you can also have students use these firsts as improv prompts.

RESOURCE: Women’s Firsts (4 pages)

RESOURCE: Women’s Firsts Answer Key

COLORING PAGE/SOCIAL STUDIES: A coloring activity that includes the real story of Sacagawea, which is not the white-washed happy narrative that has often been discussed.

RESOURCE: Sacagawea US Coin Coloring Page

MATH: US-based census data for figuring out percentages and reading an infographic.

RESOURCE: Percentages with the Census & Percentages with the Census Answer Key

RESOURCE: Reading an Infographic & Reading an Infographic Answer Key

LANGUAGE ARTS: A reading (“Who is Malala Yousafzai?”) and an activity and reading response. Designed for primary students/ELL students.

RESOURCE: Malala Reading Activity & Malala Reading Activity Answer Key

COMMUNITY CONNECTIONS: Students look at quotes about womanhood, and then find someone in their community who identifies as a woman to provide a quote as well!

RESOURCE: Womanhood Quotes Activity

READ ALOUD: For primary students, a hand-out to send home for students with links to read-alouds of picture books for Women’s History Month.

RESOURCE: Read-Aloud Handout

I’ve made an effort to be as inclusive as possible, highlighting women from a variety of backgrounds. For me, women’s history is also a great time to introduce students to the idea of intersectionality, that is, that our identities contain multiple facets. For example, women such as Mae Jemison, Aprille Ericsson-Jackson, and Katherine Johnson were important because they were both Black and female, as well as many other things, such as daughters, community members, and scientists! I love this quote from Julia Serano, who is a writer, musician and transgender activist: "So long as we refuse to accept that 'woman' is a holistic concept, one that includes all people who experience themselves as women, our concept of womanhood will remain a mere reflection of our own personal experiences and biases rather than something based in the truly diverse world that surrounds us."

How do you celebrate Women’s History Month in your classroom? These resources I’ve shared are American-centric, what are some ways you celebrate women in other countries? Share in the comments!

Leapfrog Reading

Your language-teaching mission, should you choose to accept it, is to use the leapfrog reading technique to emphasize L2 reading comprehension in small-group settings.

 When having students read difficult texts, but wanting to give them a sense of autonomy and encourage group work, I like to use leapfrog reading. Unlike popcorn reading, which has a lot of legitimate criticisms, leapfrog reading emphasizes comprehension and doesn’t subject students to whole class scrutiny.

The term comes from a physical game where children jump over each other’s backs. Fun linguistic fact, there are a lot of cultures that have a version of leapfrog, but depending on the language, the animal being leaped changes: saute-mouton (French, “leap-sheep”), haasje-over (Dutch, “over-hare”), 跳山羊 (Chinese, “leap goat”), うまとび (Japanese, "horse leap"), etc.

 Like the physical game, the reading activity involves students jumping over a text, and pausing in the same place within the text, in the L2. The way it works is:

1. Student A reads one sentence aloud in the target language

2. Student B translates aloud what Student A has read

3. Student B reads the next sentence aloud in the target language

4. Student C translates aloud what Student B has read

5. Student C reads the next sentence aloud in the target language etc.

This can work in groups of two (going back and forth between Student A and Student B), groups of three (Student A would translate what student C said aloud, and start the cycle over again) or larger (for bigger groups, I like to involve the element of tossing a koosh ball to the next student to read & translate). The important thing is that each student has the opportunity to both read in the L2 and translate into the shared L1, but not for the same sentence.

The first time you do this with a class, it may be helpful to model what it looks like in front of the class. To do this, I recommend you choose a student (or two) to model with you that you know are strong readers. To lessen the anxiety further, you could even give those students the text ahead of time (just a sentence or two) so they could feel confident in both their translation and their pronunciation.

This is, in my opinion, the most valuable for texts that are deliberately difficult, but still within the zone of proximal development. For example, if there is an authentic resource such as a news article or short story, with supports in place for difficult vocabulary or grammatical structures. I would also use leapfrog reading for a French fairy tale that I wrote for students to understand idioms. Within the text, there are idioms incorporated, and footnotes below translate the idiom for students. Since this is a multi-step thinking process, reading it aloud (and maybe hearing the idiom for the first time) and then stopping to think about a) what was read and b) what it actually means, is helpful. Furthermore, rather than reading alone, by doing this in a group, students can support each other.

A criticism that I have of this technique is that it does not help improve pronunciation unless a group-member corrects their peers or the teacher walks around correcting students, jarring them out of their rhythm. One thing I try to do is spy on groups and if I’m overhearing a mispronunciation that is common, I’ll collect a list to go over when the activity is done. Then, when I do this activity with the same text again with a different class, I’ll go over the pronunciations before we begin the activity, assuming they will have similar issues. Ultimately, however, I recognize that you can’t do all the things all of the time, and it’s good practice to have students just read aloud, even if small mistakes are being made.

If leapfrog reading isn’t your jam, or you’re looking for other replacements for popcorn or round-robin reading in addition to leapfrogging, there’s a great list here from Edutopia.

How do you practice reading in your class? Feel free to share below in the comments!

4/3/2 Fluency Technique

Your language-teaching mission, should you choose to accept it, is to help your students become more confident and fluent speakers when talking about a chosen topic using the 4/3/2 technique.

What is the 4/3/2 technique?

 Dr. Paul Nation makes the point that “At every level of language proficiency, learners should try to be fluent with what they already know.” Therefore, he created an activity that helps students focus on meaning, speed, and volume with a familiar text. This is an activity I use with students to help increase confidence and fluency, and also encourage solid reading comprehension when it’s paired with a text.  

How does it work?

• Step One: Students become ‘experts’ in a particular topic. This can mean they are about to talk about the subject of their project, or what book they are reading, or the main idea of a small article they read. A resource I recommend for this type of activity are magazines by Rubicon Publishing. They have sets in French and English with ‘Top 10 [blank]’: Top ten spies, top ten sports showdowns, top ten outrageous hoaxes, etc. I had access to class sets of 30, so the whole class would read on the same topic. I would assign 3 students to read each article together, then they would be the ‘experts’ in their entry and would find someone not in their group to talk to for the next steps.

• Step Two: Student A pairs up with Student B and then talks about their topic for four minutes. Student B cannot interrupt, even to ask questions. Once the four minutes are up, Student B gets to speak for four minutes. This time, Student A patiently listens.

• Step Three: Student A now pairs up with Student C and repeats the process. However, this time, they only speak for three minutes.

• Step Four: Student A is now with Student D but speaking for two minutes.

There are some great videos to watch to learn more. Paul Nation delivered a presentation on developing fluency in reading and includes an explanation of his 4/3/2 method. There’s also this video by IELTS Master that explains the activity directly to students.

Image soure: https://soundpracticelanguagelearning.com/2020/04/11/whatisoralfluency/

 Why does this work?

 There are three reasons why this exercise is more valuable than a turn-and-talk and not a waste of 9 minutes:

1. Different audience: the student doesn’t feel the pressure to add new information, because the topic is new to the listener each time.

2. Repetition: each time the student repeats their talk they become more confident and have less difficulty in accessing the vocabulary needed

3. Time reduction: as the student becomes more fluent in their speech, they need less time. As the time reduces at the same rate, they don’t have any pressure to fill the rest of the time with new information.

A study of ten randomly selected ELL participants in Algeria found that “repeating the same talk three times yields positive effects on enhancing’ fluency maximizing students’ speaking speed, accuracy, and conciseness as well as reducing their hesitation and unwillingness” .

How can I change it up?

For lower-level students Christopher Redmond uses the same principles to improve the yes/no game. For higher-level students Olya Sergeeva adds mind-mapping with related English-language expressions. It can also be used to help students practice for presenting their Genius Hour projects or any other non-scripted presentations.

Have you ever done this activity with your students? It was new to me as a French teacher, but seems to be pretty popular with ELL teachers. Feel free to share in the comments!

CSI: Color, Symbol, Image

Your language-teaching mission, should you choose to accept it, is to facilitate students in showing their thinking through a Color, Symbol, Image activity.

I came across this video recently (a 4 minute French video about how technology isn’t ruining our brains, but it is changing them!) and because I cannot turn my teacher brain off for any amount of time, my first thought was “this would be great for a CSI”! Then, I decided that this would be a great time to share a simple activity for having students demonstrate what they know.

What is CSI?

 CSI is one of the many amazing activities in Making Thinking Visible (2011), which is, in my opinion, the best book to give to new teachers! This particular “thinking protocol” is perfect for language classes, in that it does not rely on written language.

Step One: Students read/watch a source text.

Step 1.5: Sometimes it’s helpful, before moving to the next step, to discuss any interesting, important, or insightful thoughts that students had while reading. Especially if it’s the first time doing this thinking protocol, generating a class list of ideas can let students focus on the next step of transforming their thoughts into CSI, instead of struggling with the text to begin with.

Step Two: Students, either individually or in a group, (or first individually, then in a group) draw one color, one symbol, and one image that describes the core idea of the source text.

• A color is… a color. The authors of the book make the point that “the connections students make are highly personal and need to be understood in terms of the individual’s explanation. For example, one student may choose black to represent an idea because to them black represents possibility and the unknown, whereas another student may associate blue with the exact same idea because blue reminds him of the openness of the sky and infinite freedom and possibility” (pp. 119-120).

• A symbol is a simple image that represents a larger idea. The way I introduce this idea to my students in talking about the apps on the home screen of an iPhone: an envelope represents the email app, a microphone represents the podcast app, the silhouette of a bird represents Twitter, etc.

• An image is a drawing of a scene. Students identify a moment or idea that they want to represent through a drawing as a way to draw attention to its importance.

Step Three: Students share out, either in pairs, or the whole class (or first in pairs, then with the whole class) what they drew and WHY.

 Step 3.5: This is an opportunity to have students moving around and practicing explaining their thoughts. For example, a group of 3 could do a CSI. Each student is assigned a number. All the 1s stay with their work (probably on a huge piece of paper) and the rest of the students wander around the room looking at the other groups’ work and asking questions of the students who are with the paper. Then it’s time for the 2s to stay with the paper, and the others wander, etc.  

Why does it work?

 Students are asked to think metaphorically and synthesize their understanding of the text. Not only are students asked to go beyond simple recall, but they need to transform their thoughts from one medium to another. Furthermore, in explaining their choices they are developing important oral communication skills.

CSI can work with all content areas, but for language especially, it’s fantastic for allowing students to express themselves in a deep way without needing a lot of vocabulary to support it. For example, lower-level students who just have a vocabulary of colors and adjectives can do the “C” part of CSI for any texts they encounter.

 CSI can also be expanded beyond responding to texts. Students can use it to respond to events, future plans, or how they feel about other people/objects/places. Basically, if you want students to be thinking about something, and want to give them enough structure to feel confident, but not too much structure that they can’t think freely, CSI is a way to do that!

Feel free to share in the comments if you use CSIs or any other visual thinking protocols! If you’re interested in more of Harvard’s Project Zero thinking protocols, you can check them out here.

Halloween Activities in the Language Classroom

Your language-teaching mission, should you choose to accept it, is to provide fun activities so that your students can celebrate Halloween and/or enjoy spooky characters and legends.

The Social Studies department was the Flinstone Family and I was Baby Pebbles!

I LOVE Halloween sooooo verrrry much. I know that there are a lot of reasons not to celebrate it in schools, though the schools I’ve taught in have gone whole hog into Halloween, with costume contests (for students and teachers!) and a big dance thrown by the Student Council. In my classes I’ve always made the activities optional, though I realize in hindsight I could’ve been more in tune with how the ‘opt-out’ formula doesn’t work when kids are afraid of being different than their peers. When I return to the classroom, I think I’ll have different stations set up with equally-as-fun options. Also, probably a lot more discussions about cultural appropriation and stereotyping when it comes to costumes!

In a language class, depending on the target-language and the cultures that speak it, Halloween can also be a rich topic of discussion about how traditions change over time (see resources for advanced learners below), as well as attitudes towards the dead. Even if Halloween isn’t your thing, there is some fun in telling spoooooky stories at any time during the dark winter months.

In the interest of my target language, did you know that there is a France connection to the origin of Halloween? France and Belgium have traditionally celebrated All Saints Day, but have adopted more and more of the North American Halloween. There are many Halloween traditions in Quebec, much like the rest of Canada. Haiti has La fête des Guédé, a voodoo Day of the Dead, though I’ve read that many Haitian Christians participate as well.

Halloween Activities for Beginners:

Truly one of the best pumpkins I’ve ever carved… Jacques O’Lantern!

 For beginners, vocabulary is really the name of the game. Usually I start off with a ‘vocabulary scramble’ where I post pictures around the room with numbers on them. Students then walk around the room and write the number (and translation if they need it) on the lines. It gets everyone up and walking around, and if I have a particularly competitive class I’ll make it a race to the finish with a prize.

RESOURCE: Halloween vocabulary scramble

Vocabulary can then be reinforced with a vocabulary sudoku. This can be adapted to any language: just “search, find, replace” the vocabulary words so that “la lune” becomes whatever a moon is in your target language and then the whole thing works!

RESOURCE: Halloween Sudoku

I then add grammar practice to the newly gained vocabulary through a Halloween graphic. Again, this can be adapted to any new language if that language uses comparisons, superlatives, and/or prepositions. It’s just a Halloween-based image that has students making relationships between things (the bat is smaller than the witch; the bat is to the right of the witch). There’s a blank space in the middle for students to draw whatever vocab they want to add to the picture.  

I found this example in a book, took a picture, and wish I could attribute it to the original author. Does anyone recognize this? I think it was by the same publisher that does “Les 10”

RESOURCE: Halloween Prepositions & Halloween Prepositions Key

RESOURCE: Halloween Comparisons and Superlatives (this one I ended up hand drawing horns on the bald guy to be ‘the devil’)

I’ve always wanted to do this activity, but never got around to it, but having students create “wanted posters” for spooky characters would be, I think, a lot of fun. It’s especially helpful to reinforce descriptive vocabulary.

RESOURCE: Strange Creatures Wanted Poster

This is only for the ELL teachers out there, though the discussion question part could be modified for any language, and perhaps even the listening part if you were very keen, but I really enjoy discussions with students about UFOs! I feel like I learn a lot about them from how they would react to strange beings appearing on Earth. And if you really want to further the lesson, there’s a lot of interesting discussions to be had around modern immigration attitudes.

RESOURCE: ELL Aliens Activity

This is only for the French teachers out there, but I couldn’t let this list be without mentioning that the classic “C’est l’Halloween” by Matt Maxwell is on YouTube. It’s great for beginners as it has simple vocabulary, clear voice, and a chance to practice counting 1-18!

RESOURCE: C’est l’Halloween PPT (made by eTools for Teachers) & C’est l’Halloween lyrics 

Halloween Activities for more advanced learners:

Campfire stories with an iPad fire

Speaking: CAMPFIRE STORIES! Obviously, you can’t light a fire in a school, but my solution to that has been to borrow an iPad cart, put all the iPads to a campfire video, and we sit around them and tell stories! I’ve done this with legends and ghost stories I’ve given to students to read as a group, and then adapt into a quick skit to share the legends with the rest of the class. You could also do vocabulary improv prompts and have students present. Or a one-word-story… see how long you can keep the story going around the campfire!

Reading/Speaking: The history of Halloween is very interesting. As mentioned above, there’s also some interesting debate topics for students to hash out: should Halloween be banned from schools? What costumes are and are not appropriate to wear? What’s scarier: killer clowns or giant spiders?

RESOURCE: French history of Halloween

Listening comprehension: watch a video in the target language about the history of Halloween or particularly spooky stories in the target-language

Specifically for French teachers, did you know that TV5Monde has an amazing collection of Quebecois, Acadian and Indigenous legends? For a spooky vibe, you can use two of their ghosty legends: La Dame Blanch or Le beau fantôme du capitaine Craig.

RESOURCE: TV5Monde’s teacher’s guide or the worksheet I’ve adapted from those resources (Dame Blanche)

RESOURCE: TV5Monde’s teacher’s guide or the worksheet I’ve adapted from those resources (Capitaine Craig)

Writing: This is more spooky than directly related to Halloween, but I personally am a big fan of urban legends such as Big Foot, little green men, Loch Ness monster, weird crop circles, haunted dolls, etc. One assignment I’ve done with more advanced students is have them read newspaper and blog articles and then analyse them for style. Their assignment is then to write an article (EXAMPLE: Big Foot Article written by a student).

RESOURCE: Information sheet about the structure of an article in French (not my resource, created by Marie-France Rachédi)

RESOURCE: Urban Legends article assignment explanation and rubric (I will caution and say that this is an ooooollllldddddd assessment, so I do not assess exactly like this anymore, but it might be a helpful starting point if you want one)

RESOURCE: A list of blog sites (again, this is old, so they might not all exist anymore) of various urban legend phenomenon

Let me know in the comments what resources you like using around this time of year! Do you avoid Halloween, embrace it, or put your twist on it? Feel free to share!

Idioms: A Dime A Dozen

Your language-teaching mission, should you choose to accept it, is to teach students idioms to expand their knowledge of the target language and culture.

Teaching idioms is an absolute gong show. How so? Well, if you are not a native speaker of English, I would have to explain to you that the first sentence was expressing the chaotic nature of idiom instruction. Then I would have to explain that the Gong Show was a game-show in the 1970s, and that idiomatically, in Canada and the United States, something described as a "gong show" is something that is disastrous, but in a charming way.

Yet, why do we persist in teaching idioms? Partly, it is because it is a marker of fluency, to understand not just the translation of a sentence, but the idiomatic sense of a sentence. It is also seen as intercultural proficiency: to understand a culture is to understand its idioms. What "there's more than one way to skin a cat" or "let the cat out of the bag" tells foreigners about English's treatment of felines is probably best left unexamined, but idioms are a great way to examine cultural mores. And lastly, idioms are fun! It's the best of language: playing with sound and meaning to create vivid images that stick around, sometimes for centuries.

Teaching idioms is one of my favorite things to do, though I think it's important to be careful that we don't "otherize" or make broad assumptions about the target culture (as in "what weirdos: all English-speakers mistreat cats"). In French, I've got some go-to resources that I've created, which can definitely be recreated for other languages!

Word of the Day:

I would start each day with an idiom from the below powerpoint. Students would guess the meaning, and then I would reveal its use. When I started having students keep a journal in the class at all times, a routine would be to find your journal, and write the mot du jour inside on a special page. Then, with a partner, write an example sentence. Prior to that, I would have a big sheet of paper on which I would write all the idioms of the day. Idioms are, by the way, a great improv prompt for inspiring a scene!

RESOURCE: Mot Du Jour (Most recent update: October 2021)

Idiomatic Fairy Tales:

it's a fairy tale that uses 40 idioms (which are explained in the footnotes with both their literal and figurative meanings). The final project for my fairy tale unit is a twisted fairy tale (Idiomatic Expressions Fairytale), and one variation has students needing to include idioms (either from the unit vocabulary or found on their own).

I created two versions for you to use if you’d like: I have one version using passé simple (the literary past) and one version that is less 'correct' but easier to use for students who have not yet learned passé simple (or you can use the two versions to compare passé composé to passé simple):

RESOURCE: Le Roi et Le Pêcheur - Passé Simple

RESOURCE: Le Roi et Le Pêcheur - Passé Composé

Matching idioms:

This is a fairly simple guessing activity where students try to match the idioms to their meanings. It’s a lot of fun to have students guessing the idiom’s meanings, and making connections to idioms in their L1. A great followup can be an improv scene or writing their own stories that incorporate these idioms. I also have a worksheet where they can practice inverting questions while using the idioms from the matching activity.

RESOURCE: Matching French Idioms Worksheet & Matching French Idioms KEY

RESOURCE: Inverting French questions using idioms worksheet & Inverting French questions using idioms KEY

I do need to note that most of the idioms that I use/teach are from France or Quebec (there's a significant overlap). It's a goal of mine to expand my idiomatic repetoire to include idioms from other Francophone countries. As I make my French courses more culturally inclusive of all the varied French speaking nations and cultures, I hope to update this page.

Please feel free to share how you incorporate idioms into your language classes!