How to Stay Comprehensible Even Behind the Screen? My 3 Strategies.

How to stay comprehensible in our classes with so many barriers? That’s a great and very difficult question to answer. We have masks, screens, bad internet connections, and desks with shields. But, we know that we have to stay comprehensible so our students can acquire language, even behind those screens. At the end, comprehensible input is the essential ingredient for language acquisition.

If you want to know more about what comprehensible is and isn´t, you can click here to sign up for my free CI Series so you gain clarity of this important concept for us as World Language teachers.

So, now let´s talk about how to stay comprehensible? Before I go into detail with my strategies, let’s make sure we have the foundation of staying comprehensible in place. To stay comprehensible and comprehended, we have to:

• Go slow
• Point, pause, and repeat
• Stay in bounds: establish meaning. 
• Make it concrete 
• Make it personal and related to our students.

These principles have not changed, so the question is how to do it when we are behind screens or masks. Let’s start with these 3 strategies. 

A. Add scaffolds and linguistic support to your slides to stay comprehensible:

One of the first things I did when I understood the role of comprehensible input in my class was to make my classroom CI friendly. I added frequency words to all my walls to help me stay comprehensible. However, now that I teach one class 100% virtual and two hybrids, my students at home cannot see my walls. So, how can I stay comprehensible behind the screens? Bring the walls to my slides.

Virtual Backgrounds:

If you use Zoom or any other platform that allows you to have virtual backgrounds, you can create slides with your high-frequency words, question words, and any other relevant vocabulary around. Then, you save those slides as JPEGs, and you have your virtual backgrounds. I created some basic ones in August that I shared with my FB Community Growing with CI. They are inside of my Back To School folder. Click here to get the folder in your inbox.

Scaffolds on your slides:

One of the most common concerns that we have in our classes is the lack of engagement and the limited use of the target language. We can add scaffolds to our slides that intentionally support us to stay comprehensible in the target language, and support our students to respond and engage in the target language. 

I love to do guided conversations in my class regularly. I use Social-Emotional Learning checks, Calendar Talk, and the Star Student Interview to ignite these conversations. However, every time I do those activities I support my language with tons of scaffolds and visuals added to my slides. Otherwise, I wouldn’t be able to say in the target language. I also add sentence starters, expressions, and rejoinders that my students can use to engage and participate in those conversations in the target language. 

Since I do some of these activities regularly, I create my own templates in advance. Then I copy and paste those slides into my daily lesson plans. It helps a lot. Some of my SEL slides are included in the Back To School folder. I also have very supported visual slides for Calendar Talk and Start Student Interview in my TPT store that are perfect for this season.

B. Create Your Own Videos to Stay Comprehensible at distance:

For my hybrid classes and even for my virtual class the two biggest challenges are internet connections and home distractions. I cannot do anything about internet connection, and for the house distractions a lot of times my students cannot help it. It’s their reality. 

With all those challenges this semester I decided to record my own videos to stay comprehensible at distance. My students can listen to those at their own pace, and they can rewatch them. These are VERY short videos with scaffolds too. I add text, images, captions, or illustrations to the videos to make them comprehensible, and I always have my face and voice so we can keep building those connections. 

These are my favorite tools to create short videos with scaffolds :

CLIPS:

It’s a free iPhone App. It allows you to create videos using your pictures and video clips inside your phone. You record your voice on top of the images and clips and the app generates the captions for you!!! It’s amazing. You can edit the captions but they are pretty accurate.

FLIPGRID SHORTS:

It may be my favorite way to create videos because it’s so easy and fast. With shorts, you can add text and images to your videos. I like to point to the text while I talk so it’s more comprehensible. 

PREZI VIDEO:

I just discovered this a week ago while listening to Jennifer Gonzales’s episode with her 6 tech tools of the year. I tried it, and I loved it. Why? I can bring the slides with me in the video, but I am at the center of the presentation. I can also bring images and point at them! It’s pretty cool. I’ll blog about it after I play more with that. 

SCREEN RECORDING USING A WHITEBOARD:  

There are many screen recordings available for free. Some of the most popular are Loom, Screencastify, and Screencast O Matic. Flipgrid Shorts can also be used to record your screen. When I use a screen recording to create videos, I usually use an online whiteboard so I can draw, write, and add images while I talk. It’s AMAZING! 

Using the whiteboard helps me so much to stay comprehensible, and there are so many available. I mainly use the Whiteboard App for Windows and One Note but there are tons. Check out this post with more about whiteboards.

C. Push content to your students and make it interactive:

Bill VanPatten said:

“Instructors can’t just “throw input” at learners; they must structure activities and tasks such that learners constantly indicate comprehension and react to messages they hear”. 

While We´re On The Topic, Bill VanPatten.

In class, we always stop and ask questions to our students. We speak with them and not at them. In virtual class, we do the same. But the reality is that some students will not engage with us using their mics or cameras. How can we stay comprehensible and foster that type of interaction behind the screens? 

We can push our content and make it interactive. My favorite tools are Nearpod, Goformative, and Edpuzzle. I also like to create note catchers with my slides. All these tools not only let students see the content on their devices (without me sharing my screen) but also I get to see their progress. Recently I learned from Annabelle Williamson, aka la Maestra Loca, how to push content and add interactivity using Whiteboard.fi, and I love it. 

There are many more tools to accomplish the same goal. You pick one and go with it. The goal is that our students can access the content easier, and they can interact with the content even behind the screens.

Check out my FB Live session that I did inside my FB community Growing With CI about this topic. It is so essential for us as World Language teachers to stay comprehensible but it’s not easy under these circumstances so hopefully, these strategies will help. Click here to watch the video.