Another great session! This answered soooooo many problems I've had (real or imagined) with my classes. It also showed me, yet again, just how much I have to learn before I can be truly awesome and super effective.
The first point Carol made that I think I need to remind myself of 25 times a day is that the kids aren't (usually) the ones who are bored; it's us! We get so bored saying the same phrase fifty gajillion times that we assume we must be boring the students too. As I can assure you all after being in "classes" of Russian, Chinese and German this week so far, our students NEED that repetition. Most of them aren't bored, they are tuning out because we are going to fast and trying to further the story...
The next tip was to bring in props. But, like every tip that Carol gave us, it should be used sparingly for optimum response and excitement. Carol brings in a few props each week and rotates them so students are excited by the new props.
The next tip is to vary our techniques. Instead of having all choral responses, we should be calling on individuals, have them write it on their hand, bark for yes, etc. I really like this idea and hope to use it once the novelty starts to wear off.
The next tip is also a technique of our storytelling. It is using actors for dialogue. Right from day one! If they can't produce, speak for them and have them open their mouths as your puppets.
Use technology to excite students! No, that doesn't mean a snazzy PowerPoint (although it probably could...). Use Jibjab to explain a story point. Use blabberize. I had never heard of this service. Apparently, you can take a digital photo, center it over a mouth, and then record something for the mouth to say as it moves. Carol suggested using a celebrity crush and then record the story saying something romantic to a student!
We can also vary the types of stories we use. It doesn't always have to be based off PQA. It doesn't always have to come from asking a story. How about using a current event? I thought immediately of using Casey Anthony as a story starter. Carol also uses historical events to teach a story, but she often uses PQA situations the previous day to introduce vocabulary and increase interest in boring old history.
She suggest using music or TV theme songs or sound effects to create pizzazz in the classroom. Again, this is not something to be used every day.
Carol said again and again that not every story is going to be a homerun. We need to realize that our classroom is going to have some fizzles. We just have to learn how to deal with those in a positive matter and keep going in the future!
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