Mr. Fisher Says...

When do I use Choral Translation and Pop-Up Grammar?

Choral Translation and Pop-Up Grammar can be used after working with any text as a class. Students should be very comfortable with the meaning of the text, as measured through a variety of frequent comprehension checks, though they may not necessarily know what each individual word in a text means.

How do I do it? – Logistics?

Students need access to a text. This could be projected to students in some way, written on a whiteboard, or a hard copy of a text for each learner held in hand, perhaps with the teacher projecting a hard copy on a document camera. Students will be looking at the text that the teacher is pointing to.

What do I do now that we’ve finished?

These activities together function as a formative assessment, so you may move on to extension activities after working with a text in this way.

When do I use Horizontal Conjugation?

You will want to use Horizontal Conjugation with a text that students are very familiar with, and a narrative works best. These could be stories co-created out of an OWI character, or perhaps scripted stories.

What do I do with it now that we’ve finished?

You have generated a new(ish) text with this activity, so you can do any literacy activities you like with it. That being said, it is also wise to not beat a text to death for fear of boring our students to death, so it’s also okay to move on once the activity is complete.