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!

Une liste des ressources pour le français inclusif

Your language-teaching mission, should you choose to accept it, is to explore a variety of resources that discuss the use of Inclusive French.

Image source: https://givingbalkans.org/content/inclusive-language-principles

Below is an ever-growing list of resources that I have been collecting on the use of inclusive French. I will continue to add to this list, in alphabetical order of creator(s), as I come across more helpful or interesting articles and resources. Please feel free to share a link in the comments, which I will add to the list!

I think it is important to point out, as Kris Knisely, Julia Spiegelman, and Blase A. Provitola did in a recent presentation for the Diversity, Decolonization, and the French Curriculum virtual conference, as of 2022, there is no “right way” to use inclusive French. As with everything, context is everything, and it is our job as educators to present a variety of perspectives to our students rather than prescribing how they can be inclusive!

Alpheratz:  https://www.alpheratz.fr/linguistique/genre-neutre/

« Lexique de Genre Neutre », qui est un extrait du livre d’Alpheratz “Grammaire du Français Inclusif” (2018).

Florence Ashley: https://www.florenceashley.com/uploads/1/2/4/4/124439164/ashley_les_personnes_non-binaires_en_fran%C3%A7ais_-_une_perspective_concern%C3%A9e_et_militante.pdf

Un article académique : “Les personnes non-binaires en français : une perspective concernée et militante” par Florence Ashley de McGill University

Diver Genres: https://divergenres.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/guide-grammaireinclusive-final.pdf

Un guide pour comprendre et utiliser la grammaire neutre et inclusive par Diver Genres.

Annabelle Dolidon: https://pdxscholar.library.pdx.edu/pdxopen/40/

An open educational resource conversation tool, CITOYEN.NE.S is a French language method for the conversation class at the intermediate/ advanced level. Content and activities are built around the concepts of diversity, inclusivity and equity.

Égale: https://egale.ca/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/French-Inclusive-Language-4.0.pdf

Une glossaire pour l’usage du français inclusif, avec les liens pour les autres ressources et plus d’information.

En Inclusif: https://eninclusif.fr/

Un réécriture automatique des mots de façon inclusive avec le point médian, le point et le tiret à la fois au singulier et au pluriel et avec des options binaire et non-binaire.

En Tous Genres: https://entousgenresblog.wordpress.com/2017/04/19/quels-pronoms-neutres-en-francais-et-comment-les-utiliser/

Un post sur “Le langage neutre en français : pronoms et accords à l’écrit et à l’oral”

Hélène Frohard-Dourlent et Gabriel.le Villeneuve: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bc78UH808zg

Webinar sur le français inclusif. I made a summary of their point, which you can see here.

https://www.krisknisely.com/resources-for-educators

Kris Knisely: https://www.krisknisely.com/resources-for-educators

Beaucoup de resources formidable, y compris les info-graphiques comme “Oral Communication Strategies used by non-binary speakers of French” et “Language forms used by non-binary speakers of French”.

Dr. Kiki Kosnick and Professor Vickie R. Phipps: https://properpronouns.com/

Un guide pour l’utilisation des “proper pronouns” (une mention d’une personne en particulier dans la troisième personne). En anglais.

Le Devoir: https://www.ledevoir.com/lire/649374/litterature-un-iel-vieux-comme-les-cultures-autochtones

Un article (2021), “Un «iel» vieux comme les cultures autochtones”

Lesson: Impossible (Aviva Levin & Spencer Cook): https://www.lessonimpossible.com/blog/inclusive-pronouns-en-franais-sam-utilise-iel

Une petite histoire illustrée pour les élèves pour expliquer comment on peut utiliser le français inclusif avec un.e. ami.e non-binaire (« Sam Utilise Iel »)

Office québécois de la langue française: https://bdl.oqlf.gouv.qc.ca/bdl/gabarit_bdl.asp?id=5465

Une liste de termes épicènes ou neutres. Plutôt que de choisir entre deux mots (ex. un représentant et une représentante) on peut essayer de trouver un autre mot (ex. une porte-parole) 

https://juliaspiegelman.wordpress.com/resources/

Julia Spiegelman: https://juliaspiegelman.wordpress.com/resources/

Un google doc (A Student’s Guide to Queer and Non-Binary French) et un zine crée par un.e élève non-binare (“IEL: A Zine on Gender-Affirming Language for the French Classroom (by a trans* French student”)). Tous en anglais.

Trans Care BC: http://www.phsa.ca/transcarebc/gender-basics-education/education-resources/support-tools

French-language handouts, such as Langage inclusif du genre, Faire des erreurs et les corriger and Soutenir les jeunes trans et créatif·ve·s dans le genre.

L’Université Laval: https://divergenres.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/guide-redaction-inclusive-2020-femul-2.pdf

Un guide qui discute les définitions, l’historique, la démystification, les règles, les formes d’écriture inclusives et des exemples. 

Disability History Month Activities in the Language Classroom

Your language-teaching mission, should you choose to accept it, is to celebrate Disability History Month in your language classroom.

Image source: https://www.stcolettawi.org/2021-developmental-disability-awareness-month/

As I’ve mentioned before, each month of the school year I create a curriculum packet for the Edmonds School District for staff and/or parents to use. The goal is to focus on a different national month of celebrating diversity, with activities for a variety of core academic subject areas and some fun stuff (crafts, art, cooking). However, for my blog, I like to pull out some activities that would work well in a language classroom to share with you, as well as some additional ideas for the month!

October in both the USA and Canada is considered "National Disability Employment Awareness Month", whereas some American states, like Washington, Idaho, Texas and Missouri, celebrate a broader “Disability History Month”.  However, while October is a nice time to highlight people with disabilities (and point out the ablism that is a lot of our curriculum), this is, of course, something we can do all year long!

The following are some suggestions of how to celebrate Disability History Month in the language classroom:

Discussing Deaf culture and language:

• An aspect of ablism that I need to confront in my own teaching is referring to “language” as something that is spoken. However, there is a rich language history of sign languages that have developed around the world, such as Chinese Sign Language, French Sign Language (which is used in France and not to be confused with LSQ or Quebec Sign Language), Irish Sign Language, etc. In terms of additional language learning, as of 2016, ASL (American Sign Language) was the third most popular language to study in American colleges! Talking about the history of these languages, and their struggle for legitimacy and acceptance, is a great lesson in both the diversity of language and the importance of accessibility. While you can definitely do a deep dive into sign language and the Deaf culture of individual language groups with older/more advanced students, with younger/less advanced students there are some simple activities you can do to introduce them to the idea of sign. For example, students only need to have a grasp of numbers 1-10 in the target language for you to do a quick adding and subtracting exercise with them (PDF RESOURCE: Adding and subtracting with ASL)

Current Events through the lens of disability:

• This is a two-parter: part one could just be a one class activity that involves some reading, writing and speaking, whereas the inclusion of part two could extend this considerably! Even if you only have time for a one class activity (or a half-class activity like reading the article and having students use the discussion questions), it’s great to be considering the perspectives of people with disabilities in your classroom.

  • Part One: Examine a newspaper article that talks about disability. For example, I found this short English article about how “Barbie To Add More Dolls With Disabilities”* by Shaun Heasley. I paired it with two activities: first, students examine how a newspaper article is constructed (using this template from the Natural Inquirer) and then they either respond in a journal or in a class discussion to some discussion questions. (PDF RESOURCE: Barbie To Add More Dolls With Disabilities News Article Activity)

  • Part Two: Students do their own reporting in the target language about issues around disability and accessibility in their community. Maybe they take the source article about Barbie and then write an article after polling their peers about their opinions. Maybe they investigate what kind of programs are available for students with disabilities in your school or district.  Maybe they do some investigative journalism and discover how accessible your school building is for students with various disabilities? You can, of course, expand the idea of “news” to include a Buzzfeedesque listacle with what they think are the best depictions of characters with disabilities in movies or books. Either way, they engage in thinking about these issues and then organizing their ideas in a specific way (news article) in the target language.

What kind of inclusive language is used in the target language?

• In English, there has been a lot of discussion about what words are used to when talking about people with disabilities. For example, in my state of Washington**, the Respectful Language Act (RCW 44.04.280) was passed in 2010 when Washington Arc advocates with intellectual and developmental disabilities organized for its implementation. A great discussion can be had just by examining the short law as a class and observing how this grassroots movement was successful in advocating to replace offensive language (e.g., mentally retarded, disabled people) with person-first language (e.g., people with disabilities) when referring to people with disabilities in state documents (Source: www.oeo.wa.gov). However, for other languages, conventions and conversations might be very different. For example, in giving guidance for French language users, some French sites advocate for the use of terms like “Les personnes ayant un handicap” or “Personne/enfant en situation de handicap/handicapé(e)”. For a native English speaker like myself, the word “handicap” might not feel right to use, yet in French it is considered inclusive and is an example of person-first language. I would have a discussion with my students about how my own culture influences my initial reaction to using certain language in my second language. Moreover, target cultures may have different histories and attitudes around disability, which can be discussed as well.

Highlighting people with disabilities who come from the target culture/use the target language:

• There’s certainty not as much coverage of the Special Olympics as the Olympic Games, but there is quite a lot of material to explore in the target language, as many countries send athletes to the Special Olympics.  However, when discussing the Special Olympics, I think it’s worth discussing the criticisms against it, such as reinforcing negative stereotypes about people with disabilities and creating a segregated sports environment.

• While there are a lot of articles celebrating the accomplishments of people with disabilities (Stephen Hawking, Greta Thunberg, Michael J. Fox), an overwhelming characteristic of those who are celebrated is their whiteness. It’s worth trying to dig a little deeper to find examples of people with disabilities from a variety of races, gender expression, sexualities, religions, etc. It’s also great to have a conversation with older students about the idea of intersectionality (having more than one facet to one’s identity and how these facets interact). For example, the experience of double marginalization (racism and ablism) is something that can be highlighted.

Be inclusive of all students in your class

• Although students with learning disabilities are less likely to be enrolled in language classes, supports for our students with learning struggles are incredibly important (and these supports help all students!) You can check out the 5-minute differentiation strategies checklist I made to help make quick adaptations in your existing lesson. For some great examples on how to build a differentiated unit I recommend the PDF of “Differentiated Instruction in the Foreign Language Classroom: Meeting the Diverse Needs of All Learners” by T. Theisen.

*Note: I’ve found similar articles discussing the new Barbies in other World Languages, like French (“Barbie handicapée : la marque mise sur la diversité”) and Spanish (“Barbie presenta su primera muñeca con audífonos para discapacidad auditive”).

**Note: If you are a teacher in Washington State I recommend two fantastic sites: some wonderful Washington primary sources about our state’s disability history here (for older/advanced students) and a series of amazing videos through the One Out of Five: Disability History and Pride Project with worksheets aimed at younger/less advanced language learners (and includes helpful captions in both English and Spanish!).

How do you highlight disability and accessibility in your language classroom? Share in the comments!

Celebrating Hispanic/Latinx/Chicanx Heritage Month in the Non-Spanish Language Classroom

Your language-teaching mission, should you choose to accept it, is to incorporate activities that highlight Hispanic, Latinx, Chicanx, Indigenous and Afro-Latinx culture into your non-Spanish classroom.

As I’ve mentioned before, each month of the school year I create a curriculum packet for the Edmonds School District for staff and/or parents to use. The goal is to focus on a different national month of celebrating diversity, with activities for a variety of core academic subject areas and some fun stuff (crafts, art, cooking). However, for my blog, I like to pull out some activities that would work well in a language classroom to share with you!

Starting on September 15 and ending on October 15, Americans observe National Hispanic Heritage Month. You’ll notice the title of this post includes more than just Hispanic… and there’s a reason for this! Since 1988, when President Reagan began this tradition, our understanding of identity has greatly expanded. Dr. Sally Guzmán, Marina Espinoza, and Karla Reyes-Sanchez from ESD have developed this great graphic (see below) to illustrate the many ways to explain and celebrate “Hispanic” identity. I also highly recommend this PDF from Exploratorium.edu as well.

Even if you’re not a Spanish teacher, there are some fun ways to celebrate Hispanic/Latinx/Chicanx Heritage Month in the language classroom:

Using art to explore using adjectives:

• You can put up a piece of art on a projector, or have prints posted around the room for a jigsaw exercise. Students use their adjectives (great for beginners, but equally challenging for advanced learners!) For example, I would start with this painting by Los Angeles artist Gilbert "Magu" Luján, which has some great material for adjectives of color and texture, not to mention simple vocabulary of the subject. This can also be a gateway for discussing the various identities that many people inhabit and the choices they make when choosing identity markers. For example, using the above identiy graphic, I would say that Luján might have chosen to describe himself as Chicano or Indigenous, because he was born in the United States and has Mexican and Indigenous ancestry. He could also describe himself as Latino, since Mexico is part of Latin-America, or Hispanic, since Mexico is a Spanish-speaking country. In the 1960s, Luján chose Chicano as a way to identify himself, saying that by drawing attention to his community’s roots in Mexico, “it is clear to all that the Chicano culture is a real and identifiable body”. This is a great transition to talking about the power of language!

• If you want to get a bit more complex, the Smithsonian American Art Museum had a wonderful web exhibit for Latino American Art, which is no longer available on their website but can be still found in some curriculum docs. Personally, I’d love to do an activity with Cocina Jaiteca by Larry Yañez (1988), maybe even have student draw out their own kitchens in a symbolic way. I’m definitely a sucker for word play (check out page 18 of the linked document to see how clever the painting title is!)

Practicing numbers using dominos!

• Playing dominos can be a great way to celebrate Hispanic/Latinx/Chicanx Heritage Month while using any target language to reinforce number vocabulary! In doing some research I learned that dominos is a very popular game in many Latinx communities. In Puerto Rico it is, as this quote by Leah Carrillo shows, a huge deal: “¡ Los dominos son para los boricuas, como los tostones y el mofongo, parte de nuestra herencia cultural ! ” (“Dominos are for Puerto Ricans, like tostones and mofongo, part of their cultural heritage!’) According to José Carrillo, for Puerto  Ricans “el domino” is more than just a game: it is also a way for a community to build relationships while sharing information, and for children to learn from their parents and grandparents. Kelly Thompson observes that dominos, which are heavy and waterproof, are perfect for windy island living! You can watch this video from the Lobby of Hobbies, where the host, Jazz, talks about his Puerto Rican heritage as well as the staple game Dominoes. Check out how Puerto Ricans play their dominoes, how it may differ in different parts of the island, and overall, just how fun and strategic it is.

Reading bilingual books

• Find books that are in your target language and Spanish for some exposure to a different language and culture! For example, “Little Maria (La Pequeña María)” is a bilingual book series written by Luz Maria Mack and illustrated by Vanessa Ballez. Victor M. Colón animates Maria’s life as little Afro-Latina girl in the Dominican Republic using illustrations from the books. ELL students or younger students can fill out this simple worksheet while watching the video. RESOURCE: Little Maria (La Pequeña María)

Playing around with gender-neutral forms of Spanish (and other languages!)

• As I’ve discussed before, there is a big movement in gendered languages to become more inclusive. The Gender in Languages Project has an amazing interactive website where  you can play around with the various forms of inclusive language in languages from English, to Irish, to Mandarin Chinese. Why not explore the Spanish page and make connections to your target language?

Share in the comments how you celebrate Hispanic/Latinx/Chicanx Heritage Month in your classroom!

The 7 Cs of Drama

Your language-teaching mission, should you choose to accept it, is to consider the 7 Cs of drama (community, communication, creativity, confidence, cultural sensitivity, carrot (not stick), and content knowledge) that are research-supported reasons to incorporate drama into the foreign language classroom.

Drama, particularly improv, is often seen as the fun reward of language classes – students are allowed some ‘play time’ as a reward for doing ‘actual learning’. In fact, I would argue that drama/improv itself is the real learning, and that the inclusion of drama into the second language classroom is incredibly important for a variety of reasons!

There is a lot of research supporting this, and below, I’ve gathered all the studies, position papers, and books that I have come across that show how amazing drama is! I’ve divided the benefits into seven categories (all conveniently starting with a C!) to make the myriad of benefits easier to see. Feel free to share this with colleagues that may doubt your pedagogical choices or to motivate your like-minded colleagues (and yourself) to include more drama activities!

To summarize, academic research shows that:

• Community – Drama/improv creates a sense of community in the language classroom

• Communication – Students are able to communicate better when using drama/improv to learn a language

• Creativity – Drama/improv lets both students and teachers be more creative

• Confidence – Students become more confident in their use of the target language when engaged in drama/improv activities

• Cultural sensitivity – Drama/improv allows students to better understand different cultures, as well as their own

• Carrot (not stick) – Students are more motivated to learn a language when engaging in drama/improv

• Content knowledge – Drama/improv improves student’s understanding of the target language (including grammar)

 To be specific: (Note: Drama is used below to refer to studies that are looking at ‘drama’ in general, and improv is used when the academic research is referring to improv activities specifically)

Community

• Students develop cooperation, social awareness, and community-building skills through drama (Angeliannawati, 2019)

• Drama creates group cohesion (Badie, 2014)

• In improv, both teachers and students must let go of their own ideas and accept the other participants’ ideas as better than their own (Keränen, 2019)

• Improv promotes inclusion of students with special needs, as “things that might be considered a disruption during other activities can be incorporated into the activity in a new way” and that “there is enough variety and flavor in improv to allow for anyone’s strengths to be made use of” (Lobman & Linquist, 2007, p. 25).

• In traditional language classrooms, students are focused on individual improvement and teachers strive to meet individual needs. However, improv performers consider their scenes as collaborations between players, and sometimes even the audience (Perone, 2011).

• The fundamentals of improv (‘yes, and’, ‘no mistakes, only opportunities’, and ‘make everyone look good’) create collaborative and supportive environments (Piccoli, 2018)

• The use of improv increases engagement, which contributes to a stronger classroom community, which in turn makes space for previously marginalized students (Smith & McKnight, 2009)

Image: https://bit.ly/3SsMyDn

Communication

• The value of improv is that students can immediately apply new language structures and that students can focus on engaging with the language rather than rules (Florea, 2011)

• Decades of research have shown that drama improves L2 speaking skills (Galante, 2018)

• The repetitive nature of drama activities helped build fluency and helped students develop strategies for all types of novel speaking tasks (Galante & Thomson, 2017)

• Improvised scenes disappear and forevermore unattainable, forcing teachers and learns to be in the moment (Keränen, 2019)

• A priori scripts, such as written dialogues found in many language textbooks, are fixed, and therefore convey to learners that there is a right and wrong way to communicate. In contrast, emergent scripts, such as improv scenes, show that communication has infinite possible iterations (Perone, 2011)

Creativity

• Student’s imaginations and capacity for independent, critical and creative thinking are developed through drama (Angeliannawati, 2019)

• Drama in L2 learning can foster imagination (Belliveau & Kim, 2013)

• A theatrical focus in the language class makes students more spontaneous and creative, as well as less inhibited by their linguistic limits (Cristea, 2019)

• Improv allows students to think and act more creatively and freely “by using their minds, bodies and voices to produce texts” (Lenters & Smith, 2018, p. 188)

• The process-focused nature of improv allows students to explore an infinite number of possible scenarios (Piccoli, 2018)

• Drama improves students’ creativity through the use of imagination, independent thinking, and risk-taking (Rojabi & Mustofa, 2021)

Confidence

• Drama improves students’ self-confidence and communication skills while lessening speaking anxiety (Atas, 2015)

• Drama in L2 learning can increase learner confidence (Belliveau & Kim, 2013)

• By allowing students to use fictional contexts, and therefore embody fictional characters, students are less anxious (Even, 2004)

• Drama activities lower foreign-language anxiety (Galante, 2018)

• Students can minimize anxiety by creating a target language-speaking persona who is able to take the risks while “mitigating the loss of one’s self” (Gillette & Perry, 2021, p. 586)

• Drama creates an “error-tolerant instructional environment, distinguishing clearly between opportunities for communicative action and opportunities for communicative reflection (including systematic error treatment and language practice)” (Kurtz, 2011, p. 150)

• In traditional language classes, learners see themselves as novices and can therefore be hindered by their own anxiety around making errors. When using improv, however, performers make the assumption that everyone is an expert and that there is no standard or expectations of perfection (Perone, 2011)

• The most improvement in confidence for students using drama activities was those who self-identified as being the most anxious at the start of the course (Piazzoli, 2011)

• Improv builds students’ self-confidence by letting them focus on their natural desire to play rather on the possibility of embarrassment (Piccoli, 2018)

• Students were more motivated and confident on speaking and writing tasks when engaged in improv-based literacy activities (Smith & McKnight, 2009)

Cultural sensitivity

• Drama furthers cross-cultural understanding (Angeliannawati, 2019)

• Drama in L2 learning can promote intercultural communicative competence (Belliveau & Kim, 2013)

• Students who learned through drama were better able to reflect critically about culture (Bournot-Trites, et al., 2007)

• Students are better able to understand the target culture (Gillette & Perry, 2021)

• In exploring, and creating dramatic texts, “students may explore their own cultures and identities rather than simply being exposed to the culture of the target language or rehearsing language in a behaviorist fashion” (McGovern, 2017, p. 10)

• Drama allows students to share their own culture with peers (Ntelioglou, 2011)

Image: https://bit.ly/3xNGvSb

Carrot (not stick)

• Students who learned through drama had more intrinsic motivation and wrote more of their own volition (Bournot-Trites, et al., 2007)

• By disrupting traditional language learning, students learning through drama are able to “negotiate and take control over their learning identities” (Cahmann-Taylor & McGovern, 2021, p. 32)

• Students and teachers have more freedom, as unlike in most outcome-based instruction, the outcomes of improv do not have to be predetermined or the same for every student (Lenters & Smith, 2018)

• Students are more motivated when using drama due to authentic texts and use of dramatic tension (Piazzoli, 2011)

• The playful nature of improv increases student engagement (Smith & McKnight, 2009)

Content knowledge

• Students acquire fully contextualized vocabulary, grammar, and a better understanding of idiomatic expressions through drama (Angeliannawati, 2019)

• Drama increases students’ engagement in, and understanding of, grammatical concepts (Even, 2004 & 2011)

• Improv is an interrelated cognitive and social activity that allows students to help each other negotiate the gaps in their individual linguistic knowledge sets (Kurtz, 2011)

• Vygotsky’s framework of the Zones of Proximal Development dovetail with improv, as both involve taking risks, making mistakes, and supporting others on their language journeys (Lobman & Lundquist, 2007)

• Drama can be used to reinforce grammar concepts if students are given appropriate activities and linguistic guidance (Mochizuki & Ortega, 2008)

• In a controlled study comparing a drama condition and a traditional instruction condition, students’ understanding of verb tenses improved when taught using drama (O’Gara, 2008)

• Drama “revealed inadequacies of language skills which had somehow remained hidden from more traditional methods of assessment” (O’Gara, 2008, p. 163)

What are your thoughts about the 7 Cs of drama/improv? Is there an eighth C that you think I missed? Share in the comments!

 Sources:

• Angelianawati, L. (2019). Using drama in EFL classroom. Journal of English Teaching, 5(2), 125-134.

• Atas, M. (2015). The reduction of speaking anxiety in EFL learners through drama techniques. Procedia, Social and Behavioral Sciences, 176, 961-969.

• Badie, G. T. (2014). Using theater concepts in the TESOL classroom. The CATESOL Journal, 26(1), 23-28.

• Belliveau, G., & Kim, W. (2013). Drama in L2 learning: A research synthesis. Scenario (Cork), VII(2), 7-27.

• Bournot-Trites, M., Belliveau, G., Spiliotopoulos, V., & Séror, J. (2007). The role of drama on cultural sensitivity, motivation and literacy in a second language context. Journal for Learning through the Arts: A Research Journal on Arts Integration in Schools and Communities, 3(1), Article 9, 1-35.

• Cahnmann-Taylor, M. & McGovern, K.R. (2021). Enlivening instruction with drama and improv: A guide for second language and world language teachers. Routledge.

• Cristea, E. (2019). Theatrical activities in the foreign language class: Activités théâtrales dans la classe de langues étrangères. Euromentor Journal, 10(2), 71-82.

• Cunico, S. (2005). Teaching language and intercultural competence through drama: Some suggestions for a neglected resource. Language Learning Journal, 31(1), 21-29.

• Dundar, S. (2013). Nine drama activities for foreign language classrooms: Benefits and challenges. Procedia, Social and Behavioral Sciences, 70, 1424-1431.

• Even, S. (2004). Dramagrammar in Theory and Practice. GFL-Journal 1: 35-51.

• Even, S. (2011). Drama grammar: Towards a performative postmethod pedagogy. The Language Learning Journal, 39:3, 299-312.

• Florea, P. (2011). Using improvisation exercises for increasing speaking and listening skills. Asian EFL Journal, 52, 46-57.

• Galante, A. (2018). Drama for L2 speaking and language anxiety: Evidence from Brazilian EFL learners. RELC Journal, 49(3), 273-289.

• Galante, A., & Thomson, R. I. (2017). The effectiveness of drama as an instructional approach for the development of second language oral fluency, comprehensibility, and accentedness. TESOL Quarterly, 51(1), 115-142.

• Gillette, C. A. R., & Perry, K. H. (2021). Performing fluency: Using improv and drama with adult English learners. Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy, 64(5), 585-588.

• Keränen, A. (2019). Finish language teaching through improvisation – Conforming the educational values within an improvisational frame. The Romanian Journal for Baltic and Nordic Studies, 11:2, 63-78.

• Kurtz, J. (2011). Breaking through the communicative cocoon: Improvisation in secondary school foreign language classrooms. In R. Sawyer (Ed.), Structure and improvisation in creative teaching (pp. 133-161). Cambridge University Press.

• Lenters, K., & Smith, C. (2018). Assembling improv and collaborative story building in language arts class. The Reading Teacher, 72(2), 179-189.

• Lobman, C., & Lundquist, M. (2007). Unscripted learning: Using improv activities across the K-8 curriculum. New York: Teachers College Press.

• McGovern, K. R. (2017). Conceptualizing drama in the second language classroom. Scenario (Cork), XI(1), 4-16.

• Mochizuki, N., & Ortega, L. (2008). Balancing communication and grammar in beginning-level foreign language classrooms: A study of guided planning and relativization. Language Teaching Research: LTR, 12(1), 11-37.

• Ntelioglou, B.Y. (2011). Insights from a drama-EAL classroom: Using drama with English language learners in a Canadian high school. In J. Winston (Ed.), Second language learning through drama (pp. 93-103). New York: Routledge.

• O'Gara, P. (2008). To be or have not been: Learning language tenses through drama. Issues In Educational Research, 18(2), 156-166.

• Perone, A. (2011). Improvising with adult English language learners. In R. Sawyer (Ed.), Structure and improvisation in creative teaching (pp. 162-183). Cambridge University Press.

• Piazzoli, E. (2011). Process drama: The use of affective space to reduce language anxiety in the additional language learning classroom. Research in Drama Education, 16(4), 557-573.

• Piccoli, M. W. (2018). Improvisation: A creative theatrical technique to engage English language learners. TESOL Journal, 9(4). doi:10.1002/tesj.390

• Rojabi, A. R., & Mustofa, A. (2021). Exploiting drama for children in EFL teaching to promote creativity, confidence, and motivation. Journal of English Education and Teaching, 5(4), 544-555.

• Smith, K., & McKnight, K. S. (2009). Remembering to laugh and explore: Improvisational activities for literacy teaching in urban classrooms. International Journal of Education and the Arts, 10(12).

April: Arab American Heritage Month

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

Image source: https://www.aclib.us/blog/middle-grade-books-arab-american-heritage-month

 April is National Arab American Heritage Month. This month is a great time for celebrating the history, contributions, and culture of the diverse population of Arab Americans, although we can celebrate our students’ diverse heritages any day or month of the year! People who we would today identify as Arabs (check out teachmideast.org’s article “Arab, Middle Eastern, and Muslim? What’s the Difference?”) have been coming to the United States for hundreds of years. The first wave of immigrants came between 1880 and 1924. This slowed down drastically because of restrictive immigration laws passed after World War I. Since the 1970s, the number of Arab Americans has increased rapidly due to a change in these laws, and because of wars and economic hardships in some Arab countries. Today, it is estimated that nearly 3.7 million Americans trace their roots to an Arab country.

I have a few activities that I created originally for the Edmonds School District to celebrate Arab American Heritage Month within various content areas which you can check out here. However, I wanted to highlight a couple that focus on language, and would be a fun addition to your classroom. As a language teacher I love comparing languages, and introducing students to different writing systems. Therefore, for younger students, or students that just need a calming brain-break, you can use a coloring activity that uses the Arabic alphabet to discover a hidden image. Moreover, I always love talking about how languages influence each other. Thus, I created an activity using a list of Arabic words that have made their way into English (I got the list of words from here and here) which has scrambled letters and some images for clues.

RESOURCE: Arabic Coloring Activity

RESOURCE: English Words of Arabic Origin Activity

You can also have students watch some READ-ALOUDS! In response to the COVID-19 pandemic and school closures, the Qatar Foundation International released read-alouds of various children’s books, working with authors, publishers, and writers from across the Arab world. Each read-aloud features works by Arab authors from the Arab world and Arab diaspora, in both English and Arabic. All of their exciting stories can be found on their website (www.qfi.org/read-alouds/) and on the QFI YouTube channel.

How do you celebrate Arab American Hertiage Month in your classroom? How do you introduce students to other language systems? Share in the comments!

Theatre of the Absurd: Teaching With Drama

Your language-teaching mission, should you choose to accept it, is to use a Theatre of the Absurd scene so that students can explore the Absurdist movement, comprehend when and how to use inverted questions, engage in textual analysis, and show their understanding through creating their own dialogues.

Image source: https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/beckett-s-waiting-for-godot-was-ugly-jet-of-marsh-gas-that-enraged-censors-5cr6tth6z

I do a whole comedy unit with high intermediate learners (the third or fourth year of them taking language classes) where we talk about comedy is and what forms it can take (stand-up, comics, cartoons, improv, sit-coms, mime, etc.) One of my favorite sections is to examine the Theatre of the Absurd, though this activity can be done with any other unit or as a quick one-off lesson! The Theatre of the Absurd movement is more of a “tragi-comedy”, as the humor comes from the lack of meaning the universe has to offer us (HILARIOUS!). But seriously, so much of humor is absurd, and there is a lot of word play to explore as well. I’m going to be using a French text as an example of how I teach this lesson, but the most famous Theatre of the Absurd play is “Waiting for Godot” and I’m sure you can adapt this lesson to any language!

I don’t normally teach using scripted plays, but I make an exception here, because it ultimately ends up with students creating their own! As for the activities I describe, the script I’m referring to is from En Direct 1, which was published in 1993. These textbooks are no longer in print, so I feel comfortable sharing it below. (Nelson Publishing, if I’m wrong, I’m happy to take it down!)

This text was originally a play written by Roland Dubillard in 1953 which aimed to demonstrate the tenets of the Theatre of the Absurd movement: life is meaningless and the universe is inexplicable. Then, the En Direct 1 textbook adapted an excerpt for French language learners. In comparing the text to the original, I’d say that I would much rather use the adapted text with my students, however some of you may have much more advanced learners in your class who would appreciate the original (and you could watch the video of French actors performing it). The adapted text is shorter, has simpler vocabulary, the subjunctive is removed, and any reference to smoking and alcohol are removed. Most importantly, all the questions were put in the inverted form in order to highlight that particular grammatical feature, such as transforming the original’s simple “Pourquoi?” into “Pourquoi ne supportez-vous pas la pluie?”. However, in my opinion, Dubillard’s original message remains within the modified text. For me, this is also an opportunity to practice some teacher transperancy and discuss with students why I make the choices that I do. I would be interested in their thoughts on authentic texts versus adapted texts and/or their thoughts on censoring mentions of smoking and drinking.

Potential learning objectives:

• Recognizing the inverted questioning technique (how it is constructed and when it is used)

• Listening comprehension (this can be paired with a fill-in-the-blanks activity where students listen for the questions and how they are constructed)

• Textual analysis through the genre of the Theatre of the Absurd

• Cultural competence through understanding the French historical context of the Absurdist movement

• Practicing speaking through creating an absurdist mini-scene

RESOURCE: Theatre of the Absurd Worksheet for students in .docx

RESOURCE: Theatre of the Absurd Worksheet for students in .pdf

RESOURCE: Adapted script of La Pluie (PDF)

Image source: http://50watts.com/The-Children-s-Theater-of-the-Absurd

PART I: Depending on the level of my students, I like to introduce the Theatre of the Absurd with a video in either French or English (or both!). I’ve found two videos that I recommend that are under 3 minutes: The best French video I’ve found is by Pierre Teuler and the best English video is by the BBC. Through watching the videos, we make a list of characteristics of the Theatre of the Absurd or the Absurdist movement (which we’ll come back to in Part III). I also recommend this post if you want to have stronger grounding in the Theatre of the Absurd movement yourself for context. You can also watch these videos for more information:

• TedEd video “Why should you read ‘Waiting for Godot’?” by Iseult Gillespie (5:03)

• CrashCourse video “Beckett, Ionesco, and the Theater of the Absurd: Crash Course Theater #45”

• Un plume fragile video “Mouvement littéraire : Le théâtre de l'absurde - résumé et explication”

PART II: Listen to the text. The original cassette tape is looooong gone, but this part is important since plays are meant to be performed!  You could get a fellow French teacher to record a version with you to play or perhaps you could ask some strong students to read it aloud (after giving them the script ahead of time to look it over). The worksheet I have has students filling in the blanks with the inverted questions that they hear. I have a bank of the answers that students can use, but for stronger students you can remove the bank. As we go through, I tend to pause to clarify for understand (as much as you can truly understand Theatre of the Absurd!). You can also show a video of the original text (or a short clip from it) being performed once you’re done. Although students might not understand it all, there is something special about seeing how actors are able to imbue a play about meaninglessness with so much meaning and physicality!

PART III: Go back to the list of characteristics. How does this text represent the Absurdist movement? In the worksheet I made, I left space around the script for students to annotate on the actual script. Below are some examples of what I’ve pulled from the text, but your answers may be completely different!

• Believed life is meaningless and the universe is inexplicable = Person Two is unable to find an answer as to why Person One does not support the rain, and we are unable to understand what that even matters in the first place

• Wanted to represent a more dream-like environment of confusion and ambiguity, unlike most plays which try to represent reality on stage = Person One begins by stating “Je ne supporte pas la pluie”. This is a bewildering statement to both Person Two and the audience, and as the scene continues to confound us, we must eventually accept that understanding will always be an impossibility

• Wanted the audience to distrust language as a communication tool, as they believed that language was incapable of truly expressing the human condition = the ambiguity of language is highlighted through the use of the verb “supporter”, which like in English, can have a variety of meanings, such as to accept, to take responsibility for, to tolerate, or to root for

• Draws attention to the banality of every-day conversation = the words spoken in the dialogue are conversational and colloquial, such as the use of “Eh bien… je suppose que…” and “Hou!”

• Use of questions to represent the struggle humans have to understand an inexplicable reality = Person Two uses questions to attempt to clarify why Person One does not support various things associated with the rain. This is also how ideas are connected and flow: despite each question eliciting another illogical tangent, the questions are able to move the dialogue forward.

Image source: http://50watts.com/The-Children-s-Theater-of-the-Absurd

PART IV: Students pair-off and write their own absurdist dialogue. In the first column they have the script, in the second part they annotate how this conforms to the tenets of the Theatre of the Absurd, using La Pluie as a model. This is also an opportunity to focus on creating inverted questions! For students that might need inspiration to get started on their scenes, you could have a hat with pieces of paper with a bunch of weather phenomena (ex. the rain, the snow, a rainbow) or another theme (ex. normal activities or common objects) to give students inspiration.

PART V: Have an ‘absurdity-off’!!! A pair of students perform their absurd dialogue for another pair. Between the two groups, they decide which of the two texts were more absurd (honor system). Continue with the winners going up against a new pair (while the pair that was eliminated gets a chance to watch other pairs perform). After there are only two groups left, they perform for the class as a whole and the class votes on the ‘Most Absurd’ dialogue. (NOTE: If you have group that is strong with improv and seems to grasp the concept easily, you can skip Part IV, or at least make it less scripted, having them sketch out their basic idea rather than write out an entire script).

POTENTIAL CONTINUATION/FORMATIVE FEEDBACK: Students individually rewrite the script they made with their partner, paying attention to grammar and vocabulary (which likely has some errors since they quickly wrote it in class). However, the catch is that while they can keep the answers, they have to make completely new questions! (Or the opposite: they need to make completely new answers to the original questions! Or they exchange their scripts with another group and need to do this!) Students then hand it in for the teacher to give feedback on inverted question formation. I also usually start the next day with a warm-up game that involves absurd inverted questions.

 UPDATE: I’ve adapted this lesson for a Drama Grammar lesson template, which you can check out here.

How do you use different types of drama in your classroom? Have you ever explored the Theatre of the Absurd with students? Share in the comments!

Inclusive Textbooks

Your language teaching lesson, should you choose to accept it, is to critically examine the texts you use in your language classroom through the lens of Moore’s Taxonomy of Representational Heteronormativity.

“Part of our job as [language] teachers will always be to help our students find the language to describe the world around them” (Moore, 2020, p. 123)

Sometimes I come across academic articles that I want to share in detail, and this is one of them! Ashley Moore, a doctoral candidate at the University of British Columbia, created a taxonomy so that language teachers can examine our textbooks and figure out what kind of LGBTQ+ representation is present. Why does this matter? Well, the reality is that heterosexuality is represented as the default in all language textbooks. In a 2013 study, a review of 10 ELT textbooks found that seven made no reference to any non-heterosexual relationships or identities, and the three that did fell into the “good gays” trope (see below). While this is also true of a majority of the media that we consume (though that’s changing more and more!) heteronormativity (the assumption that the heterosexual experience is the human experience) is not healthy for our students. Once we have more inclusive resources we are not only better reflecting the real world that our students live in, but we’re sending the message to our LGBTQ+ students that their full selves are welcome in our classrooms.  

Moore’s taxonomy (which I’ve posted below with the permission of the author) looks at queer representation in language textbooks from the most to least damaging perspectives:

Basically, what he has done is given us the language to use to best describe what we find inside our textbooks in regard to inclusion of different sexualities. The way I see it, this taxonomy is a tool to pull out at department meetings when discussing old resources or new purchases, or to have on your wall to evaluate a film/reading/graphic novel that you’re about to use with your class. Most of us know to avoid anything blatantly homophobic, but how often are we pushing ourselves to go beyond that?

My challenge to you is to join me in examining your texts using Moore’s taxonomy. If you pull out your books, I’ll pull out mine and we can do it together! I’ll wait… and for those who already have your textbooks beside you, while we wait for the others, I encourage you to watch Moore’s fantastic video (21 minutes) where he explains his taxonomy in a very clear and detailed way!

Everybody’s here? Great! Let’s get started.

I’m going to be using the textbook series “Entre Nous”, which is for French learners. It has four volumes (for levels A1, A2, B1, B2), is suitable for teens and adults, and my editions say they are published in France by the Centre de Recherche et de Publications de Langues.

We’re going to run through the taxonomy from most damaging to students to least damaging:

“Entre Nous” - Example of heteronormative erasure

Explicit heterosexism: this is when heterosexuality is explicitly valorized in contrast to any other identities, which are presented as abnormal. Fortunately, I was unable to find any examples of this in my textbooks. However, Moore uses the example of an episode from Friends, a commonly used series for English-language learners, where Joey and Ross are mocked for taking naps together.

Heteronormative erasure: this is when heterosexuality is the assumed norm, which then sends the message to students that discussion of non-heterosexual identities is not appropriate in the classroom. I definitely found examples of this in the “Entre Nous” textbook family: in fact, this was (other than one example in the next category) the only category that I found. All photos of couples were heterosexual… and white (another big issue!).

“Entre Nous” - Example of heteronormative marginalization

Heteronormative marginalization: this is when non-heterosexual people are only included when talking about social justice issues (i.e., talking about HIV/AIDS or discrimination). This is well-intentioned, but actually marginalizes LGBTQ+ people further. This is the one example I found that didn’t fit into the above category.  

Heteronormative mainstreaming: this is when only the “good gays” (gay people that imitate Western heterosexual norms) are accessible. While having representation is important, Nelson (1999) notes that “Solidifying fluid sexualities into fixed sexual identities… [has] more to do with social control than with empowerment” (as cited in Moore, 2020, p. 122). While “Entre Nous” doesn’t have any examples of this, Moore points to another popular show used for teaching English, Modern Family, and the two “good gay” characters of Cam and Mitch.

Queer inclusion: this last category is when queer people are included in textbooks and are viewed not just through the lens of their sexuality, but are presented as complete people with intersectional identities. Additionally, those featured do not always fit into Western heterosexual norms. The textbooks I was looking through definitely did not do this, but Moore recommends a text made by Taylor Made English. Personally, I found a Guardian article about the “new American family” that I thought would make a good text to use with students that would fall in this category.

So, in conclusion, my textbooks don’t reflect the reality my students live in. Why is that? If your first guess is money, then you are completely correct. Textbook companies want to be able to sell their textbooks in as many markets as possible, and that means playing it safe (i.e., sticking to the hetero norm) for fear of alienating more conservative districts.  However, if we start asking questions of textbook representatives or directing our textbook budget towards more diverse resources, we can start sending the message that if they want our money, they need to be more inclusive. Moore also notes that most teachers will need to find “hacks” for our curriculum, which means supplementing what we have with resources we find elsewhere (check out the list below).

Also, more and more (or should I say “Moore and Moore”?... I’ll show myself out) I’ve been thinking about the author-text connection. For example, do I encourage my students to read Harry Potter in the target language? The texts themselves are not “explicit heterosexism” (though they would be “heteronormative mainstreaming”) but the author has said really damaging things about trans people. Should I instead redirect them to other great YA books that feature magical schools, but are more inclusive, like Naomi Novik’s fabulous Scholomance Trilogy or other sci-fi/fantasy trans-inclusive books? Should I also let them know about the amazing queer fandom that has grown alongside the books? Or should I just let them enjoy reading something in their L2 and make sure I’m peppering their language education with other LGBTQ+ inclusive resources? I’m sure my opinion on this will continue to evolve, but I’d love if you shared your own perspectives in the comments.

Lastly, when I reached out to Ashley Moore for permission to use his taxonomy in this post, he very generously invited any readers who want to learn more to reach out to him. You can also follow him on Twitter @AshleyRMoore.

 Some supplemental resources:

 ELL:

• National Council of Teachers of English’s “Incorporating LGBTQ+ Students and Texts in Your Classroom”

• Common Sense Media’s “Movies with LGBTQ+ Characters for Teens” (English-language films)

• Epic Read’s “62 LGBTQ+ YA Books to Read All Year Long” (I like this list because it includes some books where the character’s sexual identity is a main part of the plot, and some where there is just queer inclusion with no attention drawn to it.)

French:

• Coucou French Classes’ “The Best French LGBTQ+ French movies” (not all films would be classroom appropriate)

• French Today’s short text “Being LGBTQ+ in France” (this falls into heteronormative erasure, but is an interesting read, and frankly the only text I found that is written for language-learners)

• I have a ton of links about using inclusive language in your French class here

Spanish:

• Gary Bianca’s “Including LGBTQ Voices in Spanish Classes through Two New Amazing Readers (Lots of Good Information for All Teachers Too :)”

• British Film Institute’s “10 great LGBTQ+ films from Latin America” (not all films would be classroom appropriate)

What resources do you use in your classroom? Share below in the comments!

Listening Project

Your language-teaching mission, should you choose to accept it, is to encourage students to explore a variety of listening sources, create a database of reviews, and/or have students reflect metacognitively on their listening skills.

Image source: https://www.nytimes.com/guides/smarterliving/be-a-better-listener

Feel free to scroll to the bottom to get right to downloading this resource available in English or English/French.

There are plenty of reasons why giving students free choice in their reading is best for having them (gasp) actually enjoy reading! There are also some great ideas out there for building up reading programs that make students love reading again (my interview with Agent Kari Pitstick about reaching reluctant readers was very inspiring in this regard!) However, it got me thinking… we do a lot to encourage students to explore written resources for pleasure, why aren’t we doing the same for listening resources?

When looking at the learning outcomes for my second language courses, I found that students should be able to ‘independently locate, explore and think critically about a wide variety of texts’ and ‘recognize different purposes, degrees of formality, and cultural points of view in these texts’.  Often, we view ‘texts’ as being only written, but they can be listened to as well!  Therefore, this project is designed to encourage students to explore and evaluate a variety of listening resources.  Additionally, it is designed to dovetail with the research component of their Genius Hour projects. However, if you aren’t doing a Genius Hour project, I also have a version where they explore a topic of interest to them (i.e., sports, celebrities, fairy tales, cars, video games, etc.) 

After listening to Kari, I have to admit I’m a convert for not making students do a lot of onerous work around what they are reading (or in this case, listening to). HOWEVER, this project is designed more around metacognition and sharing, rather than deep analysis of the actual text.

Part one of the assignment is a Listening Resource Portfolio that can be shared with other classes.  The idea is that, as a department or group of classes, you can build up a list of resources on a variety of subjects with which students can use to practice their listening skills.  So, if you are doing some free listening practice and students say “but I don’t know what I want to listen to” you can point them to the resource collection, and they can browse for a topic or type of resource that interests them. This would be perfect for building up a giant google slide deck or other similar online resource that students could access at home!

I’ve created a chart of possibilities for students to choose from for exploring resources to encourage them to go outside of their confort zones (below - English on the right, French on the left). In the project I have students choose from these categories, and I also think it’s a great way to demonstrate the global nature of language!

If all you’re looking to do is get students to gather resources to share, then you can stop here! The evaluation for part one is pass/fail: did the student fulfill the criteria or not?

Part two of the assignment is a Personal Reflection, which I tell my students will not be shared. It is designed so that students can demonstrate their ability to reflect metacognitively (thinking about their thinking) about their listening experiences. There is a part for reflecting on the content itself (in a general way) and a part for reflecting on their listening skills. Because I speak the same L1 as my students, I have them do this part in our shared language of English because I want to emphasize that it’s about the thinking that they are expressing, not about language proficiency. However, I understand that not everyone follows this line of thinking, or shares the same languages as their students.

I think it’s important to note that being a good listener is not an innate skill. Like anything else, it needs to be explained and practiced. I like to use the six strategies of inferencing, elaboration, self-monitoring, summarization, self-evaluation, and toleration of uncertainty. You can download a handout developed by pbworks based on research by Young (1997) here that I like to use.

RESOURCE: Listening Project (in English with English examples, can be adapted to other languages, stands alone as a project)

RESOURCE: Listening Project (in English with English examples, can be adapted to other languages, has a connection to a genius hour project)

RESOURCE: Listening Project (instructions in English for French students, examples in French, stands alone as a project)

RESOURCE: Listening Project (instructions in English for French students, examples in French, has a connection to a genius hour project)

RESOURCE: Listening Project Evaluation (in English/French)

RESOURCE: Listening Project Evaluation (English only)

How do you engage students in listening? Feel free to share in the comments!

Teaching with Music Videos

Your language-teaching mission, should you choose to accept it, is to use music videos as a gateway for language learning.

Music, especially music videos with their creative visuals, are an amazing access point for language learning. Not only are our brains hardwired for music, most musicians are way cooler than the majority of language teachers will ever hope to be.

I’ve involved music videos in my curriculum in a lot of different ways. It can be a complement to a unit not related to music. For example, when doing a thematic unit there’s usually a music video or two that you can find that can be used as a good hook for your lesson. There’s a French song called “Cendrillon” which I only use for my oldest students during our fairy tale unit because despite the upbeat song and video, the lyrics are dark. I’ve also made music one of the focuses of the unit. For example, in my unit on natural disasters, I was able to find quite a lot of songs that talk about the weather literally and metaphorically (See: Neko Case’s English song “This Tornado Loves You” or Indila’s French song “Dernière Danse”). We focused a lot on pronunciation, literary devises, and rhyming. Then, the final project for the class was writing and performing a poem (since songs are just poems sung aloud). Moreover, I’ve used songs to illustrate certain grammatical concepts. For example, there is a song called “Si” (“If”) by Zaz that works for teaching the conditional in French or Mika’s “Elle Me Dit” for indirect pronouns.

Music Wednesdays:

There is one way I like use music videos throughout the entire year, which is the focus of today’s post: Music Wednesday (or “Musique Mercredi”)! Each Wednesday (I chose the day both for the alliteration and the fact that half-way through the week it’s nice to have a musical pick-me-up) a student or two presents a music video in the target language.    

A student picks a song that is primarily in the target language and has either an engaging (but appropriate) video or lyrics video. The student then makes a presentation (powerpoint, googleslides, prezzi, etc.) that includes the following:

1. the title of the song

2. the name of the artist (with a photo)

3. the musical genre of the song

4. the artist’s country of origin

5. three interesting facts about the song and/or the artist

6. five words found in the song lyrics

7. a quick summary of the song’s meaning

Something that I tend to harp on about in my classroom is that there are a lot of strategies that one can rely on if you don’t know a word beyond translating into the L1. Therefore, for the ‘five words found in the song lyrics’ part of the presentation, students need to put up words from the lyrics that was new to them and have the class guess the definition using inference. To get full marks they need to use a variety of ways to give clues to their classmates, such as:

1. Gestures

2. Sounds

3. Synonyms

4. Antonyms

5. Related words

6. Roots of the word

7. Images

As the presentations progress I have students keep a list of vocabulary in their journals. Then, at the end of the year, they need to use the musique mercredi vocabulary in their final projects (see: genius hour post). The vocab words also make great improv or quickwrite prompts!

I make my own presentation for when I explain the assignment, modeling what I am looking for them to do. Students then sign up for when they will present throughout the semester. If they want to ‘claim’ a song, they must write it down on the list. I don’t let students re-use the same song, artist, or vocabulary words of another student. I also want students to expand their musical repetoire and search out more diverse artists. Personally, I know that my musical tastes are very North-American/Euro-centric and I want to encourage my students to find artists with a variety of styles and origins.

RESOURCE: Musique Mercredi rubric (rubric is in English)

RESOURCE: The presentation I use to model (French)

RESOURCE: Sign-up list

RESOURCE: A student example (since this ppt is in pdf format, the definition of the word is not obscured, as it would be while the class guesses).

RESOURCE: Manie Musicale is a competition where students vote on their favorite French songs from a field of sixteen. The songs are chosen from french-speaking artists from around the world.

RESOURCE: My amazing friend Vanessa Drew has created a powerpoint with a variety of francophone artists from around the world.

RESOURCE: My other amazing friend Mariève has a folder of French songs with lyrics as well as song analysis activities

What are ways you use music videos in your classroom? Feel free to share in the comments!

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!

La revitalisation des langues

Your language teaching mission, should you choose to accept it, is to reflect on how language revitalization impacts your own language teaching practices.

Today’s post is in French, but if you’re interested in an English language revitalization resource that can be adapted into any language, you can find it here.

Je suis fascinée par les efforts de revitalisation des langues. Je comprends que la morte d’une langue est naturelle : comme les animaux, les langues évoluent. Cependant, je comprends aussi que, comme les animaux, la globalisation tue les langues plus vite que serait naturelle. En fait, par la fin du 21 siècle, la moitié des langues du monde sera éteintes ! Je pense que c’est important que nous préservions ces langues en voie d’extinction pour beaucoup de raisons, mais de toutes les raisons, celle que me touche la plus, c’est comment les langues traditionnelles tiennent la clé pour accéder à chaque culture unique et permettent des voix uniques à être entendues. Comme Claxton Baker, un locuteur de la langue hul’q’umi’num’, l’a dit : « For myself, I feel that it’s very important as a First Nations person to be able to express myself, my identity and my land in my own language ». ·Les langues traditionnelles peuvent être un moyen d’interpréter le comportement humain et les émotions qui ne peuvent pas être exprimées par une langue dominante, comme l’anglais. Par exemple, la langue cherokee a un mot, « oo-kah-huh-sdee », qui représente le plaisir qu’une personne ressent en voyant un adorable bébé ou un chaton. De plus, des informations culturelles importantes peuvent être trouvées dans les langues elles-mêmes. Ainsi, la perte de la langue peut signifier la perte d’histoires et de lignées ancestrales connues uniquement par la narration orale, ainsi que la connaissance des plantes et des pratiques médicinales. Les locuteurs du lulamogi en Ouganda, en fait, craignent que leur peuple oublie la pratique culturelle importante de manger des fourmis blanches, et avec elle une dizaine de termes spécifiques au lulamongi. Ou, dans les mots de Richard Littlebear, un linguiste et une citoyen Cheyenne qui a rencontré la dernière locatrice de la langue Eyak d’Alaska, Chief Marie Smith Jones : « I felt like I was sitting in the presence of a whole universe of knowledge that could be gone in one last breath ». Malheureusement, cet univers a disparu quand Marie est morte en 2008. Alors, le plus je me penche sur les langues en voie d’extinction, le plus je me demande si j’ai le droit d’avoir une opinion. Je me sens mal à l’aise, en tant que locatrice de la langue majoritaire, de dire aux autres qu’ils DOIVENT préserver leur langue. Il y a beaucoup de raisons qu’une langue n’est pas parlée : la honte ou la peur, un manque de temps ou de ressources, ou peut-être un véritable désir pour l’assimilation. J’écoute un excellent podcast (« Stuff the British Stole ») et une citation de cet épisode m’a vraiment marqué : « It’s an important dynamic within imperialism, that you have a constant nostalgia for the thing that you are in the act of destroying. So at the same time as you disrupt local cultures, and seek in fact to destroy them in order to dominate, you are mourning the loss of those cultures and trying to act in ways to preserve them » (à 20:50). En tant qu’une personne fascinée par la préservation de la langue et qui pense que c’est un objectif incroyablement important, je me demande dans quelle mesure, pour moi, c’est de l’empathie et dans quelle mesure c’est la nostalgie d’une colonisatrice ?

Quelles sont vos pensées? N’hésitez pas à les ajouter dans les commentaires.

Les sources:

Baker, C., & Wright, W. E. (2017). Foundations of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism (6th ed.). Multilingual Matters.

Fennel, M. (Executive Producer). (2020-present). Stuff the British Stole [Audio podcast]. ABC Radio National. https://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/stuff-the-british-stole/best-named-dog-ever/12867932

Nuwer, R. (2014, June 5). Languages: Why we must save dying tongues. BBC Future.  https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20140606-why-we-must-save-dying-languages

Ouellet-Dumont, C. (2018, February 22). Les langues menacées de disparition. Quel mot t’a piqué? https://quelmottapique.com/2018/02/22/les-langues-menacees-de-disparition/

Paetkau, J. (2019, December 16). Elders and great-grandchildren share the legacy of learning  Hul’q’umi’num’. CBC. https://www.cbc.ca/originalvoices/language/halkomelem/

Riehl, A. (2019, November 8). Why Are Languages Worth Preserving? SAPIENS.  https://www.sapiens.org/language/endangered-languages/ 

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!