As World Language teachers, one of the biggest struggles we face is how to create lessons that are full of compelling and comprehensible input. Our textbooks are SO dry and unrelatable. We spend hours in front of the computer looking for ideas and resources that help us provide comprehensible and compelling input to our classes. We look for short movies or compelling images or stories but sometimes we just don’t find the right resource that is compelling and comprehensible. It’s SO frustrating! What would you think, if I tell you that you can create a lesson full of compelling and comprehensible input using Calendar Talk? Amazing, right?
I´ve already said more than three times the words “comprehensible-input”. Understanding these two words has empowered me to create and design a curriculum for my classes. That´s why I decided to create a free CI Video Series that can help World Language teachers like you to gain that clarity. You can click here to get this series inside your inbox.
Now, let´s keep talking about Calendar Talk.
What is Calendar Talk?
Let’s start from the beginning. Calendar talk is an input-based activity where you talk to your students about the weather, the date, and important events that are happening in their lives and in the world. It’s not only compelling but also comprehensible. You can read more about the basics of Calendar Talk here! I learned this activity from Tina Hargaden.
Why do I love Calendar Talk?
Calendar talk is such a powerful activity. It’s low prep, and it meets the three most impactful elements I look for in an activity for my classes.
- It builds community because it helps us get to know each other.
- It provides compelling input. It’s compelling because we talk about ourselves and the world. We talk about real people and real events. Just as an example look at my calendar for the first week of February. We not only talked about important events in my students’ lives but also events that were happening in our community, country, and the world. It was on the TV, on social media, everywhere. Compelling! I add links to all my slides with more authentic resources related to the events so I can refer to them during class. Check out these slides here!
- It’s also comprehensible because it’s scaffolded with visuals and linguistic support. It’s also repetitive because I do it almost every day, and it’s a low stake activity. After almost 7 months of doing calendar talk almost every day, my own students are leading this activity now.
If you’re interested in my Calendar Talks slides for each month, you can find them in my TPT Store. Just click here.
- It engages students in authentic communication. The purpose of Calendar Talk is NOT to practice language. The purpose is NOT to “learn” weather expressions, dates, or anything else. The only purpose of this activity is to talk about your students and current events in the world. That’s it. When your students realize that you really want to know who is celebrating a birthday or having a game, they will share and they will engage. It will happen.
Now, if you want to know even more details about how I do this activity with all the levels and even see a demo, please click here to get my Master Class about Calendar Talk inbox.
How to create a lesson full of compelling and comprehensible input using Calendar Talk?
It’s really simple. Just three steps, and you will have the lesson for the day. How long and how deep you want to go with the lesson is up to your students and you.
I. Select one event from the calendar that seems compelling to you.
Look at the calendar for next week or next month. Which event would be the most compelling for you and for your students? Once you identify that topic, you can build your lesson around it. Why is this so compelling? Because it’s happening that week or month.
Also, you will be able to find a ton of great resources and information in social media and the Internet about that event. But, if you don’t want to go into the rabbit hole of finding authentic resources, you can create a simple text or use compelling images about the event.
Look at how simple your sequence can look like for the first quarter of the year:
January: Three King Days
February: Celebrating Black History Month: Los Carnavales
March: Celebrating Women History Month: Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz
The power of Calendar Talk is that there are many events during a month, so you can go deep with one or just spend one day talking about it. You will never run out of ideas.
II. Hook the students during Calendar Talk:
How can you introduce the event? Just tell your students: “Students, guess what! Tomorrow is International Earth Day!” “Yay” “Is this day important? Of course!” We only have one home and we need to take care of it” That’s it for your hook. You don’t need to do anything else.
The energy you have about the event will move to your students. Choose one event that speaks to you too. If you are excited, they will get excited.
III. Follow the entire cycle of instructions or just provide the input and create a model text.
I have a cycle of instruction that I follow for most of my lessons. This cycle helps me to start all my lessons or units with input and to slow down the output. This cycle is part of a framework that I use to build my bigger units. This is my third step in my unit planning framework. If you want to know more about this framework, click here to get it in your inbox.
Let’s move with the cycle:
A. Provide the input.
You can do a Picture talk using one of the compelling images you found in the web, or Movie Talk with a short clip, or just create a comprehensible text yourself. Remember, because the event is happening at the moment you’re doing your lesson, you will find great resources in social media and in the web. Keep it simple though. One image will do. If you want to know more about picture talk, click here to read a great blog post about picture talk written by Chris Stolzs.
B. Provide input-based activities:
During and after your picture talk or movie talk or any activity you choose to provide the input, do several input based activities to check for comprehension and to recycle the language. Any activity that will require students to listen to the input again is amazing. You can ask true or false questions, resequence events, find the intruder, listen and draw, and many more.
C. Co-create a model text:
Once your students have been exposed to the input for a couple of times, you can do a Write and Discuss with them to create a model text. I learned this activity from Mike Peto, and you can watch a demo here. This co-created text is a compelling and comprehensible reading passage that you can use to do more input based activities or use to play a ton of games.
For a lot of my calendar talk lessons, I stop here. We play games and have a lot of fun, and we move onto the next lesson. However, you can go deeper and continue with the next two steps.
D. Scaffolded output:
If you want to move one more step and if you’re students are ready, you can use the model text to help your students output some language. When you want your students to output language, keep in mind their proficiency level and provide a lot of scaffolds. Remember that the fact that they understand the input doesn’t mean they can produce it yet. It takes a long time for them to own the language.
E. Assessment:
Finally, you can create a short assessment for your students. My assessments for my novice learners are mainly focused on interpretation.
My most successful lessons have been inspired in events from our Calendar Talks, and I spent less than half of the time creating them. It is incredible. I hope it inspires you. If you want to get slides ready to use, click here.
I would love to hear from you and how you’re using Calendar Talk in your classes. Leave your comments below, or join the conversation in our FB COMMUNITY Growing With CI.
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