I was feeling creative and wanted a new way to review a reading last week. I have also been running at about 100% capacity for about a month now and am beginning to tire out, so I wanted an activity that would feel fresh, new, and fun to the students, but give me a break in terms of my own energy output. 

My solution was to create an Easter Egg Hunt! It's a variation on matching sentences to pictures, but much more engaging.

Prep:

1. Start with a set of sentences and images that go together. I prefer to do this with a story I've already illustrated with stick figures.
2. Put the images around your room paired with a cup, envelope, or, if you are like me, a quickly-crafted paper pouch.
3. Print enough copies of the sentences that you have a full set for each group you plan to have. 
4. Color-code the sentences to go with the eggs: a blue mark on each for blue eggs, green for green eggs, and, if you are like me and have more groups than egg colors, some combos: blue and orange marks for blue-orange egg combos, etc. 
5. Put one sentence in each egg, making sure you align the colors with the colors of eggs.
6. Hide the eggs around your room! My rule: it must be visible from somewhere standing in the classroom. That doesn't mean you can't be creative, but it does prevent turning your room upside down during the egg hunt. 

Running the Activity:
Some of the eggs will be absolutely obvious. Students will be intrigued as they enter. It will be fun to wait to tell them.

1. Each group is assigned a color and hunts exclusively for that color. 
2. They put their sentences in the pouch with the correct image. There is only one correct sentence for each image.
3. I checked as they went and returned incorrect sentences to groups for them to try again.
4. Once I had the full rainbow in each pouch, I knew everyone had them all correct, and this can be taken as an easy comprehension grade (your choice!)

I wasn't wrong! They really enjoyed the activity and my other classes came in commenting on the pictures they saw.
Plus, the assignment was both easy to prep and easy to run.
Prep:
I put the following instructions on the board along with a list of new vocabulary words:​

Aside from being fun, the best part of this activity is the free advertising it gives your program! Other students in your school are sure to notice Latin sentences and stick figure art around campus, especially in fun chalk colors. 

So, low prep, in-context vocabulary practice, repetitions from reading other students' sentences, fun with sidewalk chalk, AND free advertising? This activity is all wins!

So I have been thinking for a while about how to make the time spent with movie shorts more meaningful without making it more repetitive. I am always all about repetition without being repetitive!

This idea came to me at the very end of last school year, and I couldn't wait to put it into action--which is why it is the first thing I did with my Latin II class this year. It's simple in premise, and only a little complicated in application, but I think the benefits are really outstanding.

The premise is: for two days in a row, do two movie talks, then on a third day, compare and contrast them in some way.

The application takes a little more finesse, I realized, as I looked at the vocabulary I needed to teach and reinforce, and realized I needed to do two things to make this work:

1. Find two movie shorts that complement the vocabulary enough that I could work it in without it being difficult
2. Find two movie shorts that complement each other enough that comparing and contrasting them makes sense

In addition, I decided to make things harder by adding this:

1. Find two movie talks that share a theme with the story we are going to be reading next week

That said, eventually I realized that I could think of two movie shorts that both shared the theme of the struggle of parent-child relationships and overprotective zeal. So I created movie talks for Bao and Far From the Tree and then a comparison activity for my students that was heavy on the input and low on the output since they are fresh from summer. The layout of my activities is below!

Day 1
Bao Movie Short 
If time permits, Vocabulary Match Cards

Day 2
Far From the Tree Movie Short
If time permits, Vocabulary Bricks

Day 3
Pairs of Shorts Activity* Please see explanation below!
Discussion in class about the characters and students' evaluations of them and their motivations.

Helpful Resources!

• My blog posts about games and activities I've created to go with Google Classroom. Specifically, this one includes Vocabulary Match Cards and this one includes Vocabulary Bricks.
• There are a lot of resources about how to do movie talks. I think this one by Keith Toda is probably the most succinct and offers two Latin demonstrations.
• The Pairs of Shorts Activity is new! The link is view-only, so to really understand how it works, you will need your own copy. I made an interactive Google slide and assigned a copy to each student in Google Classroom. There are three slides that ask questions about the three parents in the story: do they love their child, do they fear their child, does their child like them?

• Students are given the heads of the mother from Bao and the two fully grown raccoon parents from Far From the Tree to drag on a continuum of how much they agree or disagree with the question: very much, yes, no, not at all. Then, below those three slides are screen shots and statements from the movie talks that students use to choose from as "reasons" or "rationes" they answered the questions the way they did. I told them there's no right or wrong answer--as long as their reasons make sense. This compels them to read through the stories again, possibly up to three or more times, to find the right reasons to paste on each of the question slides.

Final Takeaways
I think this was a successful shakeup of the normal movie talk pattern. Students stayed engaged with the vocabulary because there was always something new to see and hear. I enjoyed the change in pattern myself and felt more excited to teach each day when there was new material, even though the words were the same. 

My eventual plan is to do something similar with less scaffolding for the discussion, but for right now, this is Latin II and we haven't even attended a full week of school, so I'll let them ease in a little!

​"Dictatio" is one of the few words my students dread in my class. I'm going to admit that it's a nice break for me--requiring only voice and repetition and pretty much no creativity--and it sometimes finds its way into my plans simply because I need a day that does not require all of my energy. Dictationes fall within my Comprehensible Input toolbox because as long as I keep the vocabulary limited, the dictated sentences provide valuable repetition.

But students rarely enjoy it. Writing down a dictation is not a compelling activity.

I have tried to spice it up by making the dictatio its own story, or even a lead in to the main story I'm working toward but missing crucial information. That has its place, and it helps. But it does not keep students from moaning "eheu!" the next time they see "Dictatio" listed on the day's schedule.

This year I have only done a traditional dictatio twice so far, and I am working to slowly replace the practice completely for myself with equally low-stress but much more compelling versions of sentence listening and writing. There is something useful for acquisition in writing something down, and auditory repetition of understandable messages is universally good for acquisition. So I don't want to give up those strengths. I just want less "eheu" and more "euge" while students acquire Latin.

Keith Toda often cites Carol Gaab's statement, "The mind craves novelty." If I simply replace dictatio with just one activity and do it every other week or so, students will grow as bored of that activity as they are of dictatio. Instead, I've been gathering dictatio options.

With the new semester coming up, I thought I'd share the dictatio options I keep on hand. I hope to continue to add new twists and ideas to this list.

1. Dictatio. This is the basic format of a dictatio, though I have seen it with a few variations (one of which is here).
2. Running dictation. This is a paired form of dictatio, with a lot more activity and can be made into a race to add some drive. The short description is that students run to sentences posted around the room (or hall), memorize them, and repeat them to their partners, who then write them down. Find a full description here, here, and an extension here.
3. Scrambled eggs. This is kind of a variation on the running dictation above; instead of posting sentences around the room they are folded in plastic easter eggs along with some duds. Find a full description here. Miriam and I have changed the dud eggs into stuffed animal interaction eggs (commands are things like: get your favorite animal, give the best animal to your teacher, etc.) and that seems to remove student frustration with the duds.
4. Micrologue. This is an image-driven dictation activity in which you tell one student a story while other students write the story down, then review the story with the student, then let the students correct their writing, and finally ask the student who didn't write to retell the story to the class. You can find a description here, a demonstration here, and the micrologue I recently used with my students here.
5. QR codes, pictures, and sub day dictations. Miriam recently posted a collection of three variants of dictation she uses in her classes here. All of them are great, but I used the QR code dictation in my class (called a "monster hunt" and linked on Miriam's post) and my students adored it. It had a purpose: gathering clues to guess the monster. More on that in a moment. That said, I think even had there been no purpose, most students were completely compelled just by the delivery. I'm doing this again next semester...once. This is a treat that I want my students to continue to be excited about.
6. Pictura an Statua? This guest post by K.C. Kless has definitely been added to my rotation of dictatio substitutions and I can't wait to try it out. Students in teams either draw or pose to represent the sentences posted, allowing both movement and creative thought.
7. Write or Wait. K.C. posted this activity on his brand new blog and I'm adding it here because it's a perfect alternative approach to dictation. Quick description: students get a certain number of sentences that they must write ahead and a certain number that they can wait and write with the teacher. Read the post here, it's really good.

I am continually looking for ways to bring variety to my classes, and I am working to make sure that every thing we do is as compelling as possible. The key to language acquisition is for students to forget that they are learning a language--that requires compelling activities and texts, ideally with a purpose. My recent summary of my ACTFL takeaways describes the importance of purpose and task-driven language teaching to student language acquisition.

One way Miriam and I were able to bring purpose to our dictation type activities last quarter was to either 

• leave out key information and ask students to use the information provided to make educated guesses about the missing information OR
• offer the description in its entirety and ask students to use the information to made educated guesses about the monster described.

Bill VanPatten encourages teachers to think in terms of purpose and tasks; Miriam and I are working on shifting our vision and ideas that direction. Another change and big idea to bring to my classroom--another reason to keep improving and making my Latin classes as effective and inclusive as possible!