Input Activities

We world language teachers always hear about the power of input and how it is the backbone of language acquisition. What this means is that the students need to see/hear the language enough before they can be asked to produce it.

I have to confess now that I totally stunk at this in the past. This is the first year that I am finally realizing the importance of CONSTANT input. Last year, I would do one input day--maybe two--and then move on to output. Totally not enough.

Part of the problem for me was that I was not taking the time to think of new, creative ways to provide my students with input. This year, I have tried my best to come up with creative input activities that are still communicative. It's not easy, so I figured I would share some of my ideas and hopefully get some ideas back! 

I usually start by talking about myself. My eighth graders are discussing things that they recently did, so here is the link to an input activity I did with them to get them seeing the language and focusing on meaning without having to produce any language. I made this activity early in the morning because it had to be things that I recently did. So, for example, the students saw the first statement "I just took the train this morning," and they have to decide if I did, indeed, take the train that morning or not. Once everyone is finished, I go through and tell them which statements are true and which are false. They get group points for every one that they guess correctly. This way, we are focusing on meaning.

Opening Activities:

A HUGE mistake that I used to make last year was doing input days, but always having an output based opening activity. That makes no sense. If my lesson is designed based on the fact that they have not seen the language enough to be able to produce it, then I need to design my opening activity that way, too! 

Google Classroom has been amazing for me for opening activities. I ask a quick question or two to get the class going before the bell rings, and then we jump right into things after that. With my opening activities, I have discovered a few things that seem to work as input pretty well. 

One is, as you saw above, the true or false statements. I will write something about myself, and they have to guess if it is true or false. 

This is a screenshot of an opening activity of mine. This means "True or False: I am going to dance this weekend." So, all the students had to do was decide if they thought I was going to dance that weekend or not. If they guessed correctly, then they got group points. 

Here is another true or false one. This is a statement about a bioluminescent bay in Puerto Rico. The students had to state if it was true or false and rewrite the sentence. This is not language production because all they had to do was copy what I had written.

Another possibility is the "either/or" questions. This is especially useful with vocabulary. It can be as simple as "is this an apple or an orange?" Here is an example I used this year:

I did a lot of either/or questions when I was working with my sixth graders on weather. This means "Is it foggy or sunny out today?" The students would then have to write the correct one. This is still not considered output because the students are just copying "está neblinoso" or "hace sol" from the question.

In the past, I have been so against multiple choice. I still am when it comes to output assessments, but multiple choice is great for input. Here is an example from this year:

What this question is asking my students to do is decide which activity they think my mom likes. I gave them a few options, and they just had to click on the correct one. "She likes to play the guitar/play the tuba/play sports/watch Netflix." Once everyone has submitted a response, I tell them the correct answer, and they receive points if they guessed correctly. It's all about the points for them! Haha!

Another possibility is make this statement true. What this entails is some type of statement about the student, and they have to make the statement true. I don't do this one very often because it's hard for me to explain to the students in the target language. One thing I did this year, though, that was very helpful was teaching the students the phrases "sobre mí" "about me" and "sobre ti" "about you."

This phrase means "I just took the bus to school this morning." If that statement were true for a student, all the student had to do was copy it as is. If it were false, the student had to make it true by either adding a "no" or changing "el autobús" to "un carro" or something of the sort.

Classroom/Homework Input Activities

Everything above is just a quick warm-up to get the class started. However, there are also MANY input activities that occur during the remainder of the class period. This might mean playing Simon Says, drawing pictures to show comprehension, etc. A great resource for me this year has been peardeck.com.  I've found some creative ways to use this site to have students draw things that I mention or survey them, etc. 

Here is the link to an activity that I did to provide my students with input on describing themselves and another person/other people. "We are..." So what they had to do was find a partner and then figure out all the things that they had in common and all the things that they did not have in common. On the last part, you will see 4      3     2      1. The students had to rate how similar they were. At the end, we calculate the class average to see if they are all similar or different. The last section is my biggest weakness. I know that, in order for something to be fully communicative, there has to be some type of goal at the end, but my goals tend to be things like "rate your partner as sedentary or active" or "rate how similar you two are." 

Here is the link to another task similar to the one above. I find it hard to get students to use the word "you all" in Spanish (ustedes/vosotros). So, I thought of this activity. At the bottom, there is a list of descriptions like "you guys are pianists" "you guys are short" etc. I asked the students to think of me and the music teacher at our school. They had to write what we had in common and what we did not have in common. Although there was no task at the end of this activity, it was funny for the students to describe us. 

In this weather activity, the students had to look out the window and check off the statements that were true about the weather outside. This ultimately led to students to pick a Spanish-speaking country and do reports on the weather. The thing that is great about activities like these is that they can be reused because the weather is different every day. It was funny because I am always cold, so the students and I were often arguing in Spanish about if it were cold or not! 

In this activity, I wanted the students to start to be able to recognize when someone says "we are going to...," so I developed this. What the students had to do was think of me and my best friend and guess what we were going to do over the weekend. At the end, they rated themselves on how well they knew me.

Target Language Use

Another extremely important aspect of input is using the target language as often as possible in the classroom. We need to give our students WAY more credit than we tend to; they CAN comprehend way more than we tend to think. 

The target language use by the students is imperative, as well. This year, if you check out my previous posts on target language use, you will see that I have developed some strategies for getting my students to use the target language as often as possible. 

I have noticed that we teachers tend to complain about certain things but then tend to shut down opportunities to possibly solve those problems. "Oh, that won't work in my classroom" or "my students are different." I urge you to just try it. With the right tools in place, the students find AMAZING ways to communicate in the target language. 

One concern with this is that we won't get to know our students if we expect them to speak the target language. In my experience, this is not true. If your classroom is communicative, you will be learning about your students all day every day. This is also just another example of not giving the students enough credit. I am shocked at the things that students are able to tell me using circumlocution, drawings and gestures. The idea behind 90% target language use is not to discourage students, and--at least for me--it does not mean that there is zero English in the classroom.  The idea is to create a culture where the target language comes first. If a student has tried explaining something to me in Spanish, has tried using gestures and has tried drawing, and I STILL don't understand, I will let them tell me in English. However, I can tell you that this has only happened a few times because they almost always find a way to communicate and tell me stories. Trust them and trust yourself to give them the tools they need! It is so worth it!!

Conclusion

I know that this post is long, but I struggled and still struggle with developing input activities, so I think it is important to share these things with each other. I am writing this blog post in the hope that others will share their input activities with me, too. I am ALWAYS looking for new ideas--especially if it is a task with a communicative goal at the end. I am still working on that. And just a reminder, one step at a time. Communicative language teaching does not tend to happen overnight. 

Thanks for reading,

Timothy