World Language Workshops

 Can students workshop in their target language?

An experiment...

For 18 years I taught both French and English (as well as many other subjects quite frankly). While I am so much happier teaching French all day long, there were certain things about English that I loved. I loved reading books like Notice and Note by Kylene Beers and Robert E. Probst. I love reading research by Stephen Krashen.  The thinking in English classrooms is to give students some freedom and choice in what they are learning but not to the extent that there is no structure at all. While world language classrooms have come a long way in creativity, there are still some things I would like to see more often. I mean, maybe it is going on and I just haven't seen it yet.

One of my favorite teaching strategies is workshopping. To workshop is basically a two-step process, which can be broken down further as needed.

Step 1: Learn how to do something.

Step 2: Work independently or in groups to try it out. 

The teacher is available for help but students can also help each other.

So, I have decided that I want to try this in French. We are going to have Workshop Fridays. I will give students some strategies that I learn from some very successful polyglots and then students will pick a strategy and begin working on it. They will think about about their thinking...metacognition...and what works for them. Then they can journal about their process. 

We will workshop reading, writing, listening, and speaking. I will start by giving some ideas for strategies and some places where they can find opportunities to practice. Then we all work. Yep! Me, too!

Check out this video: Lýdia Machová - Ten things polyglots do differently [EN] - PG 2017 to see where I started with my research on polyglots. She gives names of other polyglots and their strategies. I like to share this with students as way to jump start the process.

So, do you workshop in your classroom? If so, tell me your subject and how you run your workshop.