#14 - What Level is My Student? Novice Low - ACTFL Levels Deep Dive

The new ACTFL Proficiency guidelines for 2024 are HERE! Our new series comes from a common listener question - what level should my students be in and how do I know that?  Let's talk about what Novice Low actually looks like and what it means for your world language program. 

Check the ACTFL 2024 Proficiency Guidelines here 

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What's up, kelo k e. Salut, world language teachers. Welcome to the Practical Proficiency podcast, where we make the transition to proficiency oriented instruction in your world language class in a way that works for you, your unique context and teaching style, and doesn't sacrifice your well being along the way. I'm your host, Devin Gunning, the teacher author, conference host, curriculum creator, and consultant behind La Libre language learning. This podcast is for the creative world language teacher like you, who's ready to ditch the overwhelming pressure of switching to acquisition driven instruction and CI overnight, you're ready to discover how using more target language in class can actually bring you and your students more joy. Instead of adding to your plate with practical, authentic, and down to earth strategies that don't require reinventing the wheel or more training, we'll work together towards the magic of a community based, target language rich classroom rooted in the power of community and comprehensible input. Let's go. OMG. The new 2024 at full performance indicators are here and they are so helpful. Here is what we are doing today on the practical proficiency podcast. Welcome, y'all. Thank you so much for being here. I'm very grateful to have you as a part of this La libre community, especially as I'm recording this during teacher appreciation week. So it may come out a little bit later, but y'all are especially on my heart, thank you so much for everything that you do for students. And what we're gonna be diving into is gonna be the first part of a new series. Y'all know I love a good series about levels, proficiency levels. And we're going to be using the new guidelines from the performance indicators to help us in this wonderful new navigation. Now with, of course, the baseline statement that, you know, these are the, these are of course, copyright act fault and all of that good stuff, and that we're just going to use these to guide our conversation. But since all of us have to use novice low, novice mid, novice high, intermediate low intermediate mid, and intermediate, well, none of us in the k twelve realm, but intermediate high. In order to evaluate our students, create assessments, and create our programs, we need to understand these performance indicators. So this material is solely for the purpose of understanding our levels better so that we can create better programs together. But of course, please do refer back to these. I will be leaving a link in the description of this podcast below so that you can see exactly where all the source material is. But I am a curriculum consultant and the number one thing that I get asked is how do I know that I'm putting the right material in the right part of my program. So in order to answer that question for you today, let's dive into that a little bit. Today we're going to focus on my favorite level, though, and that is the first part of level one. Like when you've got those sweet babies who are freshy fresh to language, the one that you're teaching at least. And there's. It's like a beautiful, fresh slate. So what does that. What's actually going on in the language acquisition process? What is that? What are they able to understand? What does their skill and language function look like and feel like in real terms? Not just actually, you know, the. The teacher speak. So let's get into it. Okay. First of all, in your level one program, this could be a lot of different things. This is just anything where this is the first experience that your students have with your language. So whether you're teaching second grade immersion or whether you are teaching a 10th grade, level one russian class or a level one french class, this is where everybody starts, right? Novice low with ACTFL. And for my friends who are using the other system, CeFR, that comes from the european organization, then you're going to be at pre a one or a one. Many of the indications are the same. I will say that the a one, the actual descriptors of what students can do at that performance level is much more specific. So check those out. But for today's purpose, today's conversation, we are going to focus on ACTFL. All right, so let's get into this. For novice low. For novice low, here's what your, your students should be. That this is where they are in the realm of their acquisition and use this to help guide. Okay, this is how I can best support them. They're all about those introductions. They're all about being able to appropriately greet and hold simple one phrase answer conversations with these familiar topics. So everything about novice low is in the realm of my absolute, everyday familiar, familiar, familiar. And when I mean familiar, I'm talking about I see or interact or think this thing or am with this person, place or thing at least three or four times a day. Like that familiar to the novice learner. It is like in your first immediate sphere. So those are the things that need to be in your level one curriculum. It could be anything because there are lots of things that fall into that sphere. But if you're starting with things that are after that sphere first, that's where I would say the mistakes really start. So think first of talking about things in the sphere of immediacy, what is in the immediate environment, their immediate interests here are the common, familiar topics to go with school. Duh. Like school needs to happen because you are in a communicative environment with them. So school needs to happen. anything and everything that has to do with the school environment and ways that you talk about school with the them and anything that's happening in your classroom, for sure. Family, of course. Cause that's where they spend all their time, who they live with, who their people is found. Family is also a part of that. And their immediate interest, the things that they do every day outside of school, things that your novice lows will be noted for, is they're all about identifying and list lists. So your novice lows will be all up in that listing game. And of course they will be able to understand far more that they can produce. So the name of the game will be for them to give them quite a lot of language in a question form that they can answer with either yes, no or a name. That's how we work with novice lows is the more language that you can give them, the better. And what they should be giving back to you is nothing more than yes, no or a one word answer for a very long time. And you know, there is even, you know, a silent period for many students. Now what this is described in very often in the performance indicators is they can describe things in a simple memorized phrase. Once they get to kind of like the higher point of novice low, which just means like they've started to become familiar with language a little bit, they've got some more in their head. in terms of a high school class, maybe they've been in your class for like two to three months. They can start to describe in simple memorized phrases in about two to three sentences, something like a familiar person, a familiar place or super simple object, or maybe list some things that they do every day. List, again, list. List is the name of the game in novice low. There are no connected thoughts. There are also no original thoughts. That is the marker of a different level. So a way that you can make sure that you are supporting your students is applauding them for anything that they're able to regurgitate back to you. That is the mark of a true novice progress. there's also going to be, of course, a lot of non native speech at this point. There's going to be a lot of errors. That's the name of the game. So if you're fighting against that, you're fighting a losing battle. It's just like, check the research, love you mean it? Like, check the research. but you're fighting a losing battle at this point. You can expect some degree of accuracy with simple memorized chunks and phrases that they've heard more than 50 times. But beyond that, not really. So, you know, in those first few months of class, you're not gonna get a, you're not gonna get a lot of accuracy. It's gonna be difficult to understand what they're saying to you. If they say anything at all. Like, that's what I mean, is that we should be approaching this from anything that they can say to you is a win. Anything that they can regurgitate back to you that makes sense for the context and the question that you're asking them is a total win. They can also start to express some emotions, and they can also express a want or maybe even a need in a, in a really, really simple memorized phrase. So they can, they can talk, they can get something that they need, which might be as simple as if they need to leave your classroom. They can do that. If they need to borrow something in your classroom or their immediate environment, they can do that. If they can tell you that they're hungry or they're thirsty, they're doing well and they're probably ready to move on to novice myth. Okay. Something that is very important to remember about novice low and mid learners is that they need a lot of ready to use packaged phrases in order to interact with you in order to produce any language. They are not at all ready for original language, and asking them to do so will really discourage them from progressing. So imagine you with your 6th graders who have never seen Spanish before. You are not teaching them how to put sentences together or how the language works. What your time is best spent doing with 6th graders who have never interacted with Spanish before is giving them as many ready to go packaged phrases like es mi compaero denis. Like all of those simple, ready to go packaged phrases that they will hear all the time from you and that they will find very useful in your environment. Like, my name is and this is my partner. That is what they need at this level. Don't worry. There's a time and a place for them to start using original language and helping them along that process, but it is not. Right now, novice lows and novice mids are, they have so little language in their heads that they are their language acquisition devices and, you know, their mental lexicon and everything is pretty empty right now. So they're literally clinging to everything that they hear in your class and clawing onto it for dear life, for meaning. Like, everything feels like it's new. Everything is pretty scary. So there anything that you can give them? They're like, oh, I can use that. I know how to say that. Ready to use packaged phrases as much as you can. Recycling content in your level one class is also going to be an absolute lifesaver for them when they move on to other areas. Now, how do you know that they're ready to progress? So we are hopefully going to get into the stage of life with world language teachers where we'll be ready to stop using level one, level two, level three, level four as labels and move instead into novice low. Novice mid, novice high. We're pretty far from that. But, you know, a girl can dream. but in this, in this timeframe in this teaching context that we're currently in, in North America, I would say you know, correct me if you're in another area of the world, that what you can do is assume that everybody in level one is of course, starting with novice low. And then by the end of level one, you'll start to get novice mid. Like most of your class, if you're teaching for proficiency, will start to hit novice mid. How do you know that your students are at novice? Well, they will start to display, and this is where the performance indicators, the new performance indicators have really clarified this for us. The novice mids will start to display a marked confidence in, in contrast to their novice low colleagues, if you will. So novice mids will start to get to a point where they can, they have less hesitation when they hear you. They're ready to restore. It will still be in disjointed, memorized phrases, but now they'll be able to put some things together. So it will be a like two or three disjointed memorized phrases instead of just a list. So they're starting to make sentences, they're starting to interpret things around them and use context clues and cognates like they've got enough of the language now that they're still starting to interpret a lot more. And with novice mid, you will also see that they will be able to start being able to converse with peers in short bursts. So maybe in like a one to two question basis, they'll be able to ask a question to appear and get a response. That's how you know you're getting to that novice mid level. You'll also see that they will have some degree of familiarity. There will still be, you know, some hesitations, some misunderstandings, but they'll be able to describe a person, place, or thing in their immediate environment or their everyday life with recombined memorized phrases and some degree of connection. Pretty exciting, right? That's how you know that you've moved on to novice mid. So this is our. This is our breakdown of novice lows and what it looks like to be a novice low learner and that transition into novice mids here. So our next episode is we're going to dive a little bit more into novice mids and how you can support them in the things that they need. And I'm so excited to see you for that one here. All right, y'all, bye for now. See you in the next proficiency level.