Practical Proficiency Podcast

What If You Had a Planning Partner in Your Pocket? UNIT IDEAS SERIES: Adverbs of Frequency

• Devon Gunning | La Libre Language Learning • Season 3 • Episode 32

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Planning a world language unit doesn't have to be a solo mission - this episode offers a detailed walkthrough of teaching adverbs of frequency with a proficiency-oriented approach. I share my exact five-day plan for introducing, practicing, and assessing this grammar concept in a way that follows the natural language acquisition process.

• Following the gradual release model from input to output
• Day 1: Introducing adverbs of frequency through personalized teacher examples
• Day 2: Contextualizing input through categorization and notebook activities
• Day 3: Incorporating games, songs, and authentic texts with techniques like running dictation
• Day 4: Beginning scaffolded production with information gap activities
• Day 5: Extensive practice through "speed dating" activities followed by assessment
• Designed for block scheduling but adaptable to different contexts
• Perfect for novice high and intermediate low proficiency levels
• Opportunities to recycle previously learned vocabulary while introducing new concepts


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Speaker 1:

What's up, keloke Et 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, devon 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. Today we're going to be jumping into one of our mini series, which is all about planning and planning with the idea in mind of what if you had with you somebody that you could bounce ideas off of when you're jumping into your next unit or topic. So that's what we're going to be doing today on the podcast, because I know that there are so many of you out there who are Department of One, or maybe even you're in a department, but it's hard for you to find people that you can plan with in this way, so I'm hoping that this can be a soundboard for you. What we're going to do today is you're going to plan with me a unit on adverbs of frequency so in any language, talking about how often you do something or don't do something and I'm going to tell you exactly. If I were in your shoes and this was something that I'm trying to work on with my students how would I tackle it? So let's dive in. Here are some lesson ideas for you.

Speaker 1:

With adverbs of frequency, if you're talking about how often you do something or don't do something, then it's not really that many new words to use. However, placement is tricky in a new language, which is why it's often something that we see more on the novice high spectrum or maybe even into the beginning of intermediate low. This is the time when your student's language is yes, they can use their own phrases, and they might be short and they might be inaccurate, but your students are starting to combine some individual thoughts into maybe multi-step thoughts or maybe a multi-phrase sentence. For example, if you're talking about like daily routines. That's something that often goes with adverbs of frequency. Your students are comfortable saying things like I wash my hands, and then you can easily show them ways to add on like frequently or 10 times a day, you know, especially with younger ones, if you want to encourage them to do it more. So here's what I would do with this idea for adverbs of frequency. How am I going to work with this with my students? Well, I'm going to show you right now a five-day sample plan of what it would look like in my high school block classes with either my French twos or my Spanish twos. Now your schedule may be different, and so you might need more or less time or more touch points if you don't see your students quite as often, which means that they're just going to need more exposure to this language, because there are many days in between where they might forget it. So keep that in mind for timing.

Speaker 1:

But let's jump into what would this lesson look like for me? First of all, I'm going to follow that gradual release model of input. There's another podcast all about this, of how I structure my units and what a well-organized, proficiency-oriented new introduction of topics, often called a unit looks like, so you can jump into that for more deep dive info into that. But what it in summary will involve is that there's an input phase and then there is I mean, input is throughout. But this is like the main chunk input phase where you're doing input introduction. Then phase two you have students work with the input without using any output and then you introduce the input in a new way, so it's in a new context. Then we're going to start giving some scaffolded responses and opportunities for meaningful output at their level and it's going to be in the presentational mode. Then we're going to dive further with doing some interpersonal work.

Speaker 1:

So this lesson plan follows that same trajectory. So in these five days, the first day, day one, is going to be me introducing these new functional chunks as adverbs of frequency. So I'm going to do something where my students are listening and I am speaking or signing. Day two is when we're going to do a lot of that contextualized input practice. And then day three, we're going to do games and songs and activities where students can work with the input in new ways, and that's also a great day to do authentic documents and text and all that good stuff where they're seeing the input in a new context, seeing the input in a new context. Then on day four, that's when we're going to start getting into some speaking and writing practice where they're going to start adding adverbs of frequency to the language they're already comfortable with. And then finally, on day five again this is of a block schedule, so if you teach middle school, it's going to be day 10 for you, or maybe day nine to 10. That's where I'm going to do a speaking quiz and we're going to spend a lot of time in class reviewing, which is also teaching time for how to do this speaking quiz, and then we're going to do the speaking quiz at the end. So here are these in detail.

Speaker 1:

On day one, I would list the activities that I do often and not so often and have a class conversation about it. Whichever way that you are used to doing this, it could be anything from a card talk to a picture, talk to you just writing and drawing on the board, without any real structure, just you talking, students interpreting, and you're giving examples of things that you do every day. Not at all. Sometimes, once in a while, that kind of thing. Times once in a while, that kind of thing.

Speaker 1:

And then you're going to do follow-up activities where, with t-charts, you're going to ask students to put familiar activities that they already know and put them into categories with adverbs of frequency, like that's a great follow-up activity, and then any other CFU that or check for understanding that you think would make sense with a classroom conversation. Now you can keep this idea really low prep of using contextualized input on day two for having students work with this input in a new way, but still keep it to just understanding the input and really imprinting the input in their language acquisition devices. Then you're going to do things like ask them to draw things in their notebooks or put four different categories on the T charts for often, never, sometimes and always, and you can also do all kinds of things in their notebooks so that you don't have to make copies. You can also just make a quick slideshow on Canva or PowerPoint or Google Slides, whatever to achieve this exact same thing. The next thing that I'm going to do on day three is when we're going to start moving into some more. I expect more from you days with students where I'm going to give them scaffolding, but now I want a little bit of response from them. So we could do things like a four corners activity, where we have always, often, sometimes never as the four corners in your classroom and you just give statements that have to do with adverbs of frequency and they have to move around the room indicating which one applies to them.

Speaker 1:

I would also say, too, something that you can do is you could do something like a running dictation, which is really fun. It's when you have students moving around the room looking for clues and answers to a worksheet that you've already set up or an activity that you've already set up, where the answers are around the room and they have to go look for them. So it transforms. A simple exercise of this is Anita. This is what she does every day. These are the things that she never does. Hey, can you answer questions about what does Anita do every day? What does Anita never do? Blah, blah, blah, which is boring.

Speaker 1:

You can get students to spice it up and have some movement in there, while still working with the input, by doing something like a running dictation, where they have to go find the answers around the school or around the room, the school or around the room. You can also do something like um, there are so many ways to practice and work with input, but one of my favorite things to do as well is to take a simple, already in their textbook activity or worksheet activity that you know is a little dusty and spice it up by adding a game to it. So you can certainly do that, but one of my absolute favorite ways to deliver input in a meaningful way is to do a picture talk, which is very, very low prep. So that's what I would do on these days. The next thing is we're going to start moving into day three, moving into more games and more songs and more authentic texts and activities that will allow students to dive into this language in a more real world context outside of the classroom. You can also have them do a task based activity, which I love, but we're going to move more into how they do that, probably on like day four or day five when they're ready to ask some questions. But this is what I would do is I would do something like an info gap activity, where one student has information about how often a person does activities and the other person, partner B, has the rest of that info, maybe like the schedule for when they do it or what the activity actually is.

Speaker 1:

So they have to A and B have to communicate with each other and get answers from each other about what. Let's go back to anita. What anita does every wednesday, but never on tuesdays um, one partner b might have she does it every wednesday, but never on tuesdays and partner a might have what's one act. Um, anita does this activity on tuesday and wednesday. Here's activity, and so they have to ask each other oh okay, she has baseball practice. Oh okay, she does it every Wednesday, but never on Tuesdays, that kind of thing. That's something that I would do on day four to start getting them into more of that like speaking and writing practice, and it is even a little bit interpersonal, which is great.

Speaker 1:

But with adverbs of frequency, you can speed up the production a little bit, because it's only four or five words, so your students will be ready to start using this. However, they're not going to use it accurately, so don't expect that. But by giving them opportunities where they can start using this, it's a really great way for you to also recycle content from previous units. Then I would say this is about the time where I would start assigning some simple speaking questions. Here's what my simple speaking questions would be. I would say okay, class, we're going to have a speaking quiz on this. These are the three questions that you'll have to answer with me and I'm looking for. You might have varied answers, but I'm looking for you to appropriately use some adverbs of frequency in these. So I'm going to ask questions where they have to use adverbs of frequency by doing things like what do you do often, what do you usually do every day and what do you never do? These types of questions are open-ended questions for me, but the students aren't asking the questions, they're answering the questions and they can answer them any way that they want to. If they're ready to give me a full sentence, that's where they're going to get full credit. If they're not quite ready to give a full phrase or a sentence, but they give me something like baseball practice and I have to ask some follow-up questions, they can still get credit for that. It just might not be as much. So they're getting credit appropriate for their level of proficiency that they're demonstrating to practice for this.

Speaker 1:

Oh my gosh, there's so many fun speaking activities that you can do. One of my favorite speaking activities is something called speed dating and soul train, which are kind of the same, but they're just different ways that you ask students to interact around the class. Where speed dating is, where you move all the desks so that students are facing each other and they have to work with multiple different partners and just move from seat to seat to seat kind of like a speed dating event and ask and answer those questions. And then the other thing for soul train is the same thing. It's just that they're standing up and then one row is the one who's moving, so there's one row that stays still and the other row sends one person to go through the solo train and end up at the end. So there's always a new partner on one side and they're still going to practice all of those speaking questions with them.

Speaker 1:

And I would do a lot of review with them. If I have a block class, I would do like 60 minutes of speaking review and some writing reviews before I actually ask them to come up and do the speaking quiz, so that it is in part a very intentional learning day and practicing day. They're consolidating information at that point. So that's what adverbs of frequency would look like. In my classroom this was usually something that I did at the level two stage, especially with daily routines. But that's what it would look like.

Speaker 1:

I would, on day one, talk about my own habits, how often I did them, and then day two, I would ask students to like, sort and organize things by how often they did things. Day three, I would do games, I would do songs that included this and some authentic texts that included this, maybe like a running dictation. And then day four, I would do some speaking and writing practice to prepare them for an info gap activity and then on day five, we would do the quiz with tons of review. So I hope that that was helpful to you to get an idea of what one CI teacher does in order to transmit new input in from. I'm only input ready to output ready. Thank you so much for being here for this little mini episode on lesson ideas and unit ideas and I'm excited to see you in the next one. Bye for now.