Following my post in part one and this week's Language Show, this second post is all about Modelling activities and how we can ensure that students start learning the vocabulary/structures/chunks they need, to start communicating. This stage is extremely important and traditionally rushed by practitioners as the perfect lesson, in the past, had to include Presentation (similar to modelling), Practice (structured practice) and Production (fluency activities) ALL happening in the same lesson! As if it was that easy.
By modelling I understand, following, Rosenshine's principles, to introduce the language in small steps/chunks, orally, so we set good pronunciation patterns, choral repetition from students, I still believe this is so important and fun and, finally, lots of activities, based on receptive skills: listening/reading to help students to start embedding the language into their long-term memories.
This stage, in my lessons, last roughly, two lessons. I personally introduce the language with my interactive Sentence Builder, created in Sentence Builders.com. I like it this way as students can see the written form while listening to the Spanish pronunciation (dual coding) AND the English translation, so it is absolutely clear what each chunk/expression means. I also like using pictures for games, but not initially when I introduce the vocabulary so I don't get interrupted with the typical: what does that suppose to mean?
Modelling is about, what I like calling, passive retrieval, meaning that students get lots of exposure to the language but they don't need to produce anything themselves, yet. It is all about recognition of sounds, meanings, phonics, grapheme-sound correspondence and good pronunciation habits.
My typical Modelling activities are DICTATION and READING ALOUD, taking into account that dictation will be intrinsically linked to LISTENING FOR LEARNING NOT TESTING activities. These are my favourite activities.
SOME DICTATION ACTIVITIES FOR PASSIVE RETRIEVAL PRACTICE
Classic dictation
This involves the dictation of small sentences/paragraphs after language has been introduced to students via chorus repetition. I start slowly, making clear pauses between words, to quickly increase speed and start joining words via liaison. Students just write in the TL what they hear and show me after I count 1,2,3. I use Mini Whiteboards when I do this as I can check for understanding immediately, which also allows me to adapt my dictations to the students' responses.
Filling the gaps or Fill in the no gaps dictation
This is a classical fill in the gaps activity where a short paragraph or sentences are presented to students with gaps. I then dictate the sentences and students just need to write the words which are missing in the gaps. This is a nice activity to do before a full on Dictation activity. To make the activity more challenging, as suggested by Dylan Viñales, I like presenting the sentences with the missing words but without the gaps. Students now really have to listen hard to identify first, where the missing word is located and then transcribe the word. I love this activity as, before we do the listening activity, students can actually predict where the missing words will be, leading to nice retrieval practice itself!
Mistaken dictation
This is a classical dictation activity but with deliberate grammatical or phonetic mistakes which the students must spot. This is a great activity, again, to test whether students have assimilated a particular grammatical/phonetic rule.
Delayed dictation
This type of dictation which I heard first from Gianfranco Conti, is great for students with processing difficulties and poor working memory. The idea is to dictate an utterance, like in the classic dictation, but students are not allowed to write the heard material until after 7-10 seconds. During these seconds, students need to try to memorise the heard utterance by mentally repeating it to themselves in their heads. Students keep their hands in their heads while they do this and when I say "now", they write the sentence.
Random dictation
This involves dictating random sentences that if put in order will make up a paragraph. After dictating the sentences, students, in pairs, rearrange the sentences in order to form the original paragraph. I love this activity because it can lead to translating the paragraph, improving it or just using as a model to create a new one.
Running dictation
A classic that works every time! Students work in pairs. Several texts are displayed around the room, one for each pair. One student, the scriber, remains sitting while their partner runs to one of the texts, memorises a sentence, runs back to their partner and dictates the memorised sentence, which the scriber writes down. The fastest couple to rewrite the text on the wall, is the winner! After they dictate the text, students can then translate it into English, improve it, use it as a model etc..
Dictogloss
Dictogloss is a dictation activity where learners are required to reconstruct a short text by listening and noting down key words, which are then used as a base for reconstruction. I love this activity because it is a multiple skills and systems activity. Learners practise listening, writing and speaking (by working in groups) and use vocabulary, grammar and discourse systems in order to complete the task.
I sometimes carry out the activity doing the dictation myself but my favourite mode is when students work in small groups or pairs as follows:
1. One student reads a text prepared by me based on the Sentence Builders we are working on and will take notes in English (not literal translation)
2. Working in pairs, student one, using their English notes, will reconstruct/dictate the text in Spanish to student two. Student two will write in Spanish the text they hear. As a final task, both students will look at the original text and compare both versions.
I do use this at all levels by adapting a given text. An example on the topic of Jobs is below for a Y11 class. I tend to prepare two texts so all students have the chance to be speakers! Students then exchange information, this way Dictogloss becomes an information gap activity.
Buzzed dictation
You will need a buzzer for this activity. The teacher dictates sentences or a paragraph to the students, which they write in MWBs, every so often the teacher presses the buzzer (or claps) and the students need to write a word that makes sense in the given context, to replace the buzz. At the end of the activity, we look at the different options that students have written.
Information Gap dictation in pairs
This dictation is to be done by the students in pairs. Students have a list of 10 sentences. However, student A, has sentences 1,3,5,7,9 while student B has sentences 2,4,6,8,10. student A starts by dictating sentence 1 while student B listens and writes down the sentence. Then student B reads sentence 2 while student A listens and writes down the sentence. Then student A will read sentence 2 etc.. Basically the classical Information Gap activity turned into a dictation and read aloud task!