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.

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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!

What are you doing? Improv Grammar Game

Your language teaching mission, should you choose to accept it, is to use the “What are you doing” improv game to reinforce present tense verb use. 

“What are you doing?” is a classic improv warm-up game. By that, it’s a game that’s designed to exercise your creativity, not be presented to an audience for laughs (though those usually occur!). More importantly, for our purposes, it’s a great exercise to practice the present tense of verbs!

 The way that the game works is that Person A starts miming an action, let’s say fishing. Person B walks up and asks, in the target language, “What are you doing?”. Person A responds by saying what they are doing using the present tense, but it can’t be the thing they are miming. So maybe Person A says “I’m playing hockey”. Then Person B begins miming playing hockey. Person C walks up, asking “What are you doing?”. Person B responds with anything but playing hockey, so maybe they say “I’m watching TV”. And so the game continues.

Stock image sites are great for brain-storming ideas for possible actions or for printing out pictures to help scaffold students into playing the game.

There are a few ways that this can be played. One is having a small group circle, and the person to the left always asks what the person to the right is doing. A more challenging variation is doing this in pairs, which keeps students on their toes, as they don’t have any time to preplan their answers. More advanced students might be able to do this game without any scaffolding, but novices might need a brainstorm of verbs, or even just conjugations, before playing.

This a great game for introducing students to improv, as typically there’s no audience and they only need to produce one sentence at a time. If you’re worried about students freezing up, the first time you play you can pass out slips of paper with either the sentence students should say or a picture of the action they should describe, so that they can get used to the format of the game (miming the action but saying something different). Then, in the second round, they need to generate their own verbs.

 You can also encourage students to go beyond the subject+verb structure, asking for further information. For example, maybe it’s subject+verb+adverb (or however your TL structures it) so that the student has to mime playing hockey excitedly, fishing unenthusiastically, or watching TV sadly. This can make for more challenging grammar, but also more fun for the students doing the miming! You can also encourage students to stick to themes, such as unit vocabulary or types of verbs (for example, only irregular verbs or reflexive verbs).

The beauty of the game is that there is an infinite number of responses (as many as there are verbs and qualifiers): the only wrong ones are if you describe what you’re currently doing or you assign an inappropriate action to your partner! Students can get really creative with both their answers (walking on the moon, feeding an elephant, eating a cake as big as me) and their mimes (I’m smiling just thinking about someone miming trying to eat a cake that’s the size of themselves!)

RESOURCE: Video describing how to play the game

RESOURCE: Video that goes into variations of the game and tips/tricks

RESOURCE: Florea (2011) breaks down this game into six easy-to-follow steps (presentation / practice / production / preparation / modeling / play) to add more scaffolding into playing this game, which you can read on pages 50-51 of her article.

 

Have you played this game before? Feel free to share any variations, lessons learned, or thoughts in the comments!

Using improv in the language classroom: Core Values

Your language-teaching mission, should you choose to accept it, is to incorporate improv games and activities into your language classroom.

What some view as the only rule in improv: “Yes, and…”

Image source: https://www.amindapart.org.uk/blog/the-real-meaning-of-the-improv-rule-yes-and/

This is part II of a series of posts on using improv in the language classroom. 

As I mentioned in part I, there really are no supplies needed for most improv. However, there is something that the teacher needs to do when incorporating these kinds of activities, or any activities that involve students taking risks with language: create an environment of physical and emotional safety. Once that is in place, really anything can happen!

Some teachers recommend discussing the ‘rules of improv’ with students. If you’re only planning on incorporating small games here and there, I don’t think that the rules need to be explicitly discussed. However, if you’re wanting to do more free scenes, this is a must.

Everyone has their own opinion on what the ‘rules of improv’ are. Depending on who you ask, there might just be one (usually ‘yes and’) or ten. When working with students, I like the ‘rules’ proposed by Melisa Cahnmann-Taylor and Kathleen McGovern in their fantastic (and highly recommended) book, Enlivening instruction with drama and improv: A guide for second language and world language teachers. Their four rules are:

  1. Be Present & Pay Attention

  2. Say “Yes, And”

  3. R&R (take risks and be ridiculous)

  4. Endow Scenes with Meaning

Personally, I think talking about the values of improv, especially in the context of education, is equally as important. Anja Keränen outlines what she believes to be the four main values of improvisational theatre:

  1. The first value is that improvisation is suitable for everyone, and that lack of talent is not a barrier to participation.

  2. The second value is that mistakes are not errors, but opportunities to learn and increase confidence. Trying and failing is encouraged in improv, as students are expected to learn by doing. Moreover, errors can be liberating as they are possibilities to learn new words or strategies while still staying within the frame of mind of communication.

  3. The third value is that participants must say ‘yes’ to all ideas presented.  Both teachers and students must let go to their own ideas and accept the other participants’ ideas as better than their own.

  4. Finally, the fourth value is that the improvised scene disappears and is forevermore unattainable. This puts the focus on the communicative skills being demonstrated and the learning happening within the scene, forcing teachers and learners to be in the moment. Moreover, this can be perceived as a rebellion against traditional education systems that focus on creating error-free, concrete products.

 Some claim that the rules and values of improv will make you a better person, or a better leader, or a better school. While I can’t speak to all of that, I can say that improv makes for better lessons, which I can’t wait to share with you!

Using improv in the language classroom: What is improv?

Your language-teaching mission, should you choose to accept it, is to incorporate improv games and activities into your language classroom.

Image source: https://outschool.com/classes/improv-for-beginners-zF5ESyMY

This is part I of a series of posts on using improv in the language classroom.

Did you know? Improv was invented in the 1930s when Viola Spolin, inspired by Neva Boyd’s play-based progressive educational philosophy, needed a way to engage children and immigrants in theatre. Improv, she found, was able to bridge gaps in language and culture. Despite these educationally based origins, almost a 100 years later, improv is not a major presence in most language classes.

I think that improv games and activities can be one of the most valuable tools in a teacher’s repertoire. The beauty of improv is that most activities take no time to prep, need no supplies, and involve a lot of laughter and joy. You can use improv to enhance the lesson plans you already use as a way to reinforce grammatical concepts or practice communicative strategies, or you can transition to an entirely improv-based curriculum. It’s your choice! I’m going to assume that most readers want to enhance their existing lessons, so will be basing most of my posts on simple games to add some fun to your day. However, I will eventually share some of the ways that I’ve successfully used improv as the basis for entire units.

What is improv? Improv, which is short for “improvised theater”, is when participants use language or movement in an unrehearsed manner. Improv falls into various categories: free scenes, role plays, scenarios, and games. Some improv is just playing around with language, such as playing the “What are you doing?” warm-up game.  Some improv, like asking students to present an original story that incorporates four idioms they’ve pulled from a hat, is meant to be presented and entertain others. Traditionally, improv means no preparation, but when working with language learners, I don’t always follow that rule. I discuss more about that in my post about free scenes. All in all, improv can mean a lot of things, but there are some things that I think are the most important:

Why is improv so powerful? Margaret Piccoli notes that:

  • Both language skills and creativity must be practiced often and with different degrees of difficulty, and that improv is a way to accomplish success in both areas.

  • The fundamentals of improv, such as ‘yes, and’, ‘no mistakes, only opportunities’, and ‘make everyone look good’, create collaborative and supportive environments for students to develop their L2.

  • Improv builds students’ confidence by letting them focus on the natural desire to play rather than on the possibility of embarrassment, as well as letting them focus on the process of using the L2 rather than the mechanics.

  • The “process-focused, not product-focused” nature of improv also allows students to explore an infinite number of possible scenarios, giving them the confidence to use the target language in situations not previously studied in the classroom, i.e., authentic language use.

  • The need for collaboration for improv to be successful not only creates an environment of positive feedback and an opportunity to celebrate peers’ achievements, but a chance for students from various backgrounds to work together on common ground.

  • Improv accesses multiple intelligences, allows students to explore themes that are relevant to their lives, and gives them a sense of control over their own learning.

Who ‘owns’ improv? Everybody! Although the seeds of improv can be seen in commedia dell’arte, vaudeville, and burlesque, it is Viola Spolin who is widely considered the founder of modern improv.  Viola would invent new games every time she came across a barrier in communication or understanding with the children and immigrants she was working with. She went on to found Second City Improv, and in 1986 wrote the ‘bible’ of improv in education: Theater Games for the Classroom: A Teacher's Handbook. However, Viola Spolin, or more modern improv names such as Ryan Styles and Amy Poehler, are not seen as the authority on improv. Instead, improv games, like many folk ideas, vary from person to person in regard to how they are played, what name they go by, and the purpose for which they are used.

Citation needed? Due to the elastic nature of improv, while there have been many wonderful educational article and books published outlining how one can use improv in the classroom, it is very difficult to determine who has intellectual ownership of any of them, if such a thing is possible. Like many educational techniques, such as doing a jigsaw, reading aloud, or think-pair-share, it can be difficult to determine who originated these ideas. When sharing games on my blog, I try to attribute where I can, particularly if a certain permutation is new to me in an educational context and I can share in which book or article I found it. However, I have come across many of these games in my own experience as an improv performer, which began long before I became a teacher.

For more on improv, check out: