Comprehension Checks with Leslie Davison & Barb Cartford

Leslie Davison is a K-5 Spanish teacher in a dual immersion school in Colorado. Barb Cartford teaches Spanish and Swedish in Minnesota, and does an amazing Lisbeth Salander impersonation (but that was last year...). Handout.

Leslie spoke about the importance of distinguishing immersion from submersion : we want our students to hear the target language, but we don't want them to drown in it! To make sure they are keeping their heads above water, we need to develop ways to check for comprehension. These may range from quick translation checks: What did I just say?* to a variety of subtler student feedback checks:

One-word quick check: El gato fue al cine--What does "fue" mean?*

Ask students to respond to statements in the TL with "Ahhh!" if they understand or a time-out signal (such as raised hand, T-hands, hand swooping overhead--"That went right by me!"--or fist in palm, e.g.) if they don't. Often it's the abler students who use this strategy most-- they know what they don't know more readily than slower processors. How do we serve the slower processors?

Do a quick poll of students, asking them to close their eyes and raise both hands using 1-10 fingers to show how well they understand. The teacher can see who is feeling less than 8 and focus on raising comprehension for those 'barometer students'. In older classes, students can be polled using their cell phones and texting to the website www.polleverywhere.com.

When reading a text, students can show full comprehension by translating into English, then discussing in the TL.

*Teachers wanting to use as much of the target language as possible teach their students early on how to say and understand comprehension check language such as "What did I just say?" and "Show me with 1-10 figures how much you understand.")

At the end of class, give a quick 5-question, 5-Point quiz.

Yes/no

Name

Place

When

Solution

Practice numbers by asking who got more than 80%; aim for 100%.

Barb Cartford did a fun Swedish lesson, practicing some of the comprehension checks we had heard about. She used the story of the Bilingual Mouse, based on a Cuban folktale in which a mother mouse saves her mouse children from a threatening cat by barking at the cat in Dog language, the lesson being: "It pays to be bilingual."

Vocab needed to tell and understand the story:

yes/no

and/or

there is

comes from

is a cat

not

says

eats cheese

is scared

plays baseball

walks

runs

Later in the conference I talked to a teacher who has students teach their parents this vocabulary as homework during the weeks before Parents' Night, then the teacher tells the Bilingual Mouse story to parents on Parents' Night so they can experience the wonders of TPRS! I may try it this year.