S2: E5- How comprehensible ARE you!?

For real though!? Do you know!? Do you ask them!? Try the strategies I outline in THIS episode to find out how comprehensible you're really being for your students!

Links mentioned in the episode:
Sponge analogy on YouTube
Conference in the Cloud 2024

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Transcript

Welcome!

Welcome back to my podcast teaching la vida loca for season two. I'm Annabelle your Maestra loca, and I am ready to kick off season two with even more enthusiasm, magic, and tips and tricks for your classroom. Get set for a ride of inspiration, unapologetic, authenticity and ideas to spark more joy in your teaching journey. I'm turning up the excitement and elated to have you right here with me. I'm not just your host and your cheerleader, and I am thrilled you're tuning in, so buckle up, and let's do this. Let's tackle teaching la vida loca together. Whoa, and welcome to episode five of teacher la vida loca. I am so glad you are here.

Are you truly comprehensible?

Today, I want to talk to you about comprehensibility and how we find out whether we are truly being comprehensible enough; how we find out from our students whether what we are saying is really being understood or whether we're just talking about them, and they've grown accustomed to it. And they're not telling us whether we're being comprehensible or not. I have lots of tips for you today. So, you can take notes, you can maybe don't take notes, if you're driving, whatever you think. But I want you to try one of them today, in your classroom. If this is a weekend, what are you doing listening to a podcast about school on the weekend. I'm sorry, I shouldn't chew you out. You're allowed. But try and disconnect on your weekends. This makes you think about school and might even get you excited to try something new at school. Like that's why you're listening to this podcast, right? to feel inspired, to feel energized, and motivated and joyful. Don't do that on your weekend, you don't want to get joyful and excited about school on the weekend. You want to enjoy your weekend on the weekend. Okay? Rant over. But if you're on your way to school, I do want you to try one of these today.

First tip

The first is just stop and ask them. You could be in the middle of teaching, and if you start to see one or two faces that either are looking blankly at you, or maybe look a little confused, just stop and in English say, "Am I going too fast? Do you understand me? Now?" Okay, let me draw that. Let me draw that again. Just ask them, the more transparent you are with them about the importance of you being comprehensible, the better, because it is our job. It's our number one job. If we're teaching for acquisition, then our number one job is to make sure that we are being comprehensible. Do we want it to be a little tiny bit above their level? Like push them a little bit. Where it's just a tiny bit and ambiguous? Yes, yes, we do. However, we don't want to push it to the point that any student who is even remotely uninterested is just going to check out all the way. Because the reality is, this is a very easy class to be able to do that in, right, if we're loading them with juicy input, and the kid has learned that all they must do is look like they're engaged, and sometimes move their arms in the same way as their neighbor. If you're asking for gestures, that could be a very easy class to just get by in to make it look like they're understanding. But we want to make sure they're comprehending, they're understanding the language that we're speaking, if we want to help them to acquire, right? So, this class could be easy for them to engage in. Only if we're keeping it super-duper comprehensible.

Eyes closed

So, here's some more things than you can do other than just literally stopping and asking. I love eyes closed. My students do it all the time. When I taught middle school, and my elementary kids are really good about just listening when I say close your eyes, especially at this point in the year they know I'm serious. They know that I don't like waiting forever for everybody close their eyes. So, they know like they're going to get more class points if everybody closes their eyes all at once. Middle School, I literally used to tell them that teachers, to get our teacher's license or licensure, we have to take a point five credit course to tell if people are peeking or not. And there's tells like your right foot might jiggle, or your left eyebrow might move ever so slightly to the left, which sounds really weird, but it happens. I used to literally make this stuff up and then they would ask other people in the building. And other people in the building learned like oh, if a kid comes to you and says, "My maestra says...", just to go with it. But I literally was so tired of like the peeking. I was like y'all, it doesn't matter, just close your eyes. They learned after a few months that it's way easier to just close your eyes. And it's for the good of the class that they just do it. But the point of the eyes closed is for honesty. And for kids to feel truly comfort, comfortable answering honestly. Because if they feel like the person next to them understood 90% of the lesson, but they honestly only understood 50%. I really want to know that they only understood 50% because I'm not doing my job if they were only understanding 50% and I had their eyes the whole time and it looked like they were engaged with me. Then, I was not doing my job, I was not being comprehensible enough. So, I really like to have them close their eyes. When their eyes are closed, there are some things that you can do to check for comprehension. You can do this at the end of the lesson, you can do it right in the middle of the lesson, you can do it whenever you want, is use a thumb thermometer. That's what I call it. I learned that from a third-grade teacher that I heard using it in my building. But they just thumbs all the way up is like I understand 100% of what you're saying. Thumbs completely to the side is like 50%. And lower than that is like I really don't understand what's going on. So, I want to aim for as close to thumbs all the way up as possible for my students because if not all the way up, I want them showing me like okay, yeah, I'm right with you. You can also do fist to five while their eyes are closed fist to five. Fist means I understand 0% of what's going on. Five means I understand all of what's going on. And then the numbers in between obviously are what their understanding in between that. Then, one to 10. I like doing one to 10 with older kids because I can equate it to percentages. My little kids don't understand that as much, so I find myself doing fist to five more with littles. But with middle schoolers, I definitely used one to 10 more, because they knew I was going for 90% or 95% comprehension in the same way that I am aiming at this point in the year to be speaking 97, 98% of the time in Spanish.

Out the door…

Another thing I love to do is when my kids are on their way out the door, I have a percentage chart. It's actually not a percentage chart, it's just a chart that Viviana made me. And by Viviana, is my right-hand lady at La Familia Loca PLC, but she made me this because I was complaining that I kept on erasing my numbers because I used to have a number chart by 10s, all the way up to 100 on my whiteboard that I used all the time. And then I was trying to make another one for my door. And I got this idea from Paul, but he uses it on his board to gauge participation and to communicate to kids like what participation or what percentage of the class is participating in answering the questions that he's asking. But then I got an idea for my friend Carolyn, who is a PE coach. And she has students tap a number on their way out of class. Or if with her littles they tap like an emoji for how well they felt they did or how well the lesson was went or how much they liked the class, whatever it is. So, I have a percentage chart up by my door 10, 20, 30, 40, 50, 60, 70, 80, 90, 100. And kids just slap a number on their way out the door. And slapping a number feels like low aspect of filter. Like they feel less worried about kids seeing what they're slapping, because they're just enjoying slapping a number. And it's communicating to me how much of the lesson they understood, right? I can use it for other things too, right? Like, on a scale of one to 100, "How much did you enjoy the new reading game we played today?" Whatever it is, and they can rate it. But that also helps when it comes to comprehension for them to answer more honestly, because they don't feel like it's about that every single time.

Exit Quiz

Another thing you can do, which is super helpful is on any written thing that they're doing. Even if it's like a short exit quiz, you can ask them, "What am I doing to help you understand me? What is something that I do as your teacher that is the most helpful in helping you understand the Spanish that I'm speaking?" And it's really interesting to see what kids write there because you'll learn that kids are more kinesthetic than you realized. You'll find out who your visual learners are the kids who say, when you pause and point or when you physically touch a word or when you write up the translation, some kids will say when you draw it, some kids will say when you point to a visual, some kids will say, when you slow down, all of these things really show you what you're doing well in the class, and it can also give you a window into how students are learning best with you, how are you keeping it comprehensible for them.

Remind them

Another thing you can do is remind them how important it is to you remind them that it's your job, it's your number one job to keep things comprehensible. So, if the goal is for them to acquire, and to acquire to the point of having so much language in their brain that it starts dripping out of their mouth, if you've never seen my sponge analogy video, I can link that in the show notes. But my goal is to like for them to read and listen to so much input that eventually just starts dribbling out of their mouths like uncontrollably, right? It's just output, it just happens. If that's the goal, then I need them to be understanding me because it's a waste of time if they're not understanding. So, I just tell them that, hey, you know, remember, it's my number one job, I need to be making it comprehensible. If it's not, you need to let me know. 

Use this class job

I also in one class have a student job. He's newer to school, and he's brand new to me. And when I am going way, way, way, way, way too fast for him. He pretends like he has rains in his hand, like horse rains. And he just gently pulls them back towards him. And it reminds me Oh, slow your roll Annabelle, like slow down a little bit. You might be losing the lower kids. And obviously, this is a kiddo who, he has had a little bit of Spanish before. He's super willing to take risks and dive in. He's also joining a more novice class. But he's already catching up. He's doing a really good job. So, he's just a monitor to let me know, oh, okay, slow down just a little bit. Yeah, that was a little bit too fast. And it's in a way that he and I only know, its other neighbors don't know, he doesn't do it all the time. I'm just keeping an eye out for it. And he just makes it look like slow down, slow down horse. You know what I mean? Because I get really excited and my biggest, biggest flaw in my world language classroom is speaking too fast, because I speak too fast in English. So of course, I do in the target language. It's something we can all work on. 

Slow down

And I think that the number one best thing you can do is slow down. And that's directly related to that student job. I don't think any of us can go slow enough. When I think of models in my career who go slow enough. I think of all of which are Chinese teachers, who do an excellent job of just going slow, just really taking breaths, really going slow. And if you've never taken a language that is not like the language you teach, the most powerful thing you can do for yourself is take one with somebody who's teaching for acquisition driven instruction, in a language that's far enough away from the one that you teach that you really get the full effect of just how fast it feels right? If you'd like the opportunity to do that, this summer, the only conference that I am presenting for and working with is Conference in the Cloud. The registration is still early bird pricing through April 15. We would love to have you. I'll put a link in the show notes to that, but the biggest tip is honestly slow your roll, slow down. I promise you'll be way more comprehensible, and kids will notice. They will be so grateful for it. I guess before I go let me give you a little brain break.

Brain break

This is a fantastic brain break because you can take anything that you're used to doing whether it's Rock Paper, Scissors with your hands, Rock Paper, Scissors with your feet, hand jives, chopsticks, any of the old school brain breaks that are tried and true to your classroom. And you just do it in a circle. What I mean by this is you say, "Okay, quick everybody in a circle in 10, 9", countdown in your target language. Get everybody in a circle. Once they're in the circle, you step in the center and you very quickly pair kids. You go uno dos, uno dos, like really quickly. Power pair people. Oh, my gosh, my husband would hate that. He hates anything with too many p's. He calls them wet p's. I hope nobody is listening to me who hates wet p's is because apparently, I've really wet p's all the time. Anyways, power pair people really fast. And then you tell them face your partner. And then you say uno, dos, dale with your hands, right? So, they face that person to do that. And then they say, you give the next command which is turn around. So, I say in Spanish, they're looking at another person. And then you tell them to do the next task. Choco latte, which is the hand jive. So maybe they do the hand drive. And then they're facing that first partner again. And I say choco latte with your feet. And they do that one. And then they are facing the next partner. And I say, face off, and face off is where we do TPR gestures back and forth. So, this brain break is a little bit longer. I might make it stretch for two minutes, but it's loaded with language. It's super fun. They're playing with multiple people. And it's a great way to put a novel twist on old favorites. So that's the one I would have you try.

Next week

And that's it for this time. I hope you enjoyed this episode. I'll be back next week with a really super special episode with my friend Jess Pissarro, so you're going to love it. It's all about how we can tap into the happy chemicals in the brain to really unlock unprecedented acquisition and joy in the world language classroom, and just how important it is to tap into those. Sending you lots of love. If you enjoyed this episode, make sure you send it to somebody who you think might need to hear it. And go ahead and leave me a little review on Apple because it takes like two minutes, and it makes me smile bigger than you could possibly imagine. Just take my word for it. Sending you lots of love. Take care teacher. Until next time, I'll be teaching la vida loca and I am sure you will too. Take care, bye bye.