So I finished La Personne Spéciale weeks early with one class and was struggling with what to do with them. I tried creating a persona and asking that person the same questions I had asked the other students...but that fell flat. My other class (the one who is still going with LPS) can talk about anything in French. They come into class each day bursting with some story they want to tell me...so we're behind. My "fast" class doesn't want to talk about anything. They are a small class and are content to sit back and watch me do my dancing dog show for them. What to do??
I decided to make life easy on myself, and, rather than create a FIFTH daily prep, we are reading Nuits Mystérieuses. Now, I have to say I have read this with a class before, but it was YEARS ago and I wasn't super thrilled with the novel because, as a former Lyonnaise, I thought the culture was a little lacking. Flash forward maybe 6 years, and I've now seen Mira Canion and Mike Coxon and Carol Gaab really explain teaching with novels. It's taken me a while for all that goodness to sink in, but I think it finally did!
I must admit, I am doing ZERO prep for this novel. We just open it up and start reading. But it's working, so I will share what I did yesterday for those of you who, like me, hate prepping for class (or don't have time to do it).
So, we started on chapter 4. This is after the infamous tennis match where Alphonse hit Kevin in the nose with a ball. In the first sentence, we learn that Kevin is in the Place Bellecour (yards from my old apartment), so of course, I had to show the kids what it looks like. Luckily, there is a recent song and video that takes place in Place Bellecour, so we watched that.
We moved on to the second sentence, of course repeating the first. My room has a squareish-shaped carpet, so I decided spur of the moment to make that Place Bellecour. I took two bean bags to use as the base and scrambled to find a horse and a person-like thing for the horse and rider. I found a giraffe for a horse and a mouse from If You Give a Mouse a Cookie for the rider. Add in a sword, and Voilà!: Place Bellecour!
Next, Dylan is eating a croque monsieur, so I scrambled to find a plastic sandwich and threw it at the student who was reading Dylan's lines. As we continued, each time one of the boys reacted, we waited until the actor reacted appropriately.
When we got to the part about Kevin's nose being red (because of the tennis incident), we did an instant replay because we hadn't had time to act out the last chapter. I didn't have tennis rackets, so one student used a broom and the other used a dustpan. I had a stress football that I used and we did a slow-motion re-enactment of the scene. I have to admit, I was very surprised that my kids were so willing to get up and act goofy. This is a class that LOVES sit and get. They complain anytime I ask them to move.
Next, Dylan and Kevin look for a Starbucks, so I was able to talk a minute about the difference that used to be huge between French and American coffee-drinking habits. And about how that is slowly changing as Starbucks arrives in France :_(
Next in the story, Dylan and Kevin go to a café, where they see a beautiful girl. I picked a girl at random and had her sit in front of my computer. The next line said that she had green eyes, so we had to go back to the drawing board and find a different girl with green eyes. All this time, all adjustments are made in French and I am repeating myself, but it's compelling because it's all in context. I say "Oh, B doesn't have green eyes...do you have green eyes? No, you don't have green eyes? Who has green eyes? Do you have green eyes? Yes! Okay, J has green eyes." Then J sat up by the computer. Next sentence we find out that she has long black hair...J didn't have black hair, so I had to improvise a wig. The kids were laughing at the strange ways I was making this all work.
Anyway, I just wanted to write it up while I was thinking of it to show a bit of success with little planning.
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