I have heard Jason's name a lot as a dynamic presenter and wonderful guy, so I really didn't want to miss out on his session Tuesday afternoon. And he WAS dynamic. We were all on the edge of our seats to see what he would be doing next. He had a TON of ideas and not a lot of time, so some of these tips aren't very well fleshed out, but I'm sure that if you contact him, he would share everything he has. He's that kind of guy :)
So, the main things that I took from this session are some things that I need to make part of my routine. First is to get noisemakers to call attention to myself when the kids are doing group or partner work. I've tried the silent hand in the air while counting down, but it just seems like it takes too much time and it's not really my style. I like the idea of noisemakers better (and Carol Gaab said that we should have a bunch of different ones so the kids don't start ignoring it).
He also used a lot of gestures. I haven't been using gestures very much because I don't really like them, but they added a quick brain break and got the kids moving. I think I'm going to start using them. Jason told us that we were going to all show him "says" at the same time and then he watched us and picked the most creative one and then thanked the student who came up with that and had all of us thank that student also. In this way, he is not saying no to anyone's idea...he just picks the best one.
He also broke the audience into two sides (Mexico and Spain) and would ask each side to do different things throughout the day.
These are all kind of muddled because Jason just talked so fast and was so energetic that my notes are all scrambled...sorry!
He showed us a backward planning template that he uses. He starts with a text/story and looks at the new vocabulary. He breaks the high frequency words into three columns: first, the words that can be TPRd, second, the words to put into TPRS or PQA, and third, the cognates or words that will be taught during the reading. On the far right are the low frequency words, which are pretty much ignored (translated quickly during reading and then never talked about again). I really need to get better about backward planning...maybe this year.
Finally, he showed us these shower curtain maps that he uses for TPR (land the plane on Paris. Sit on the Atlantic Ocean, etc) I'm not quite sure I'm going to do this, but I love the idea of having kids see the map and work with it.
Thursday, July 24, 2014
Wednesday, July 23, 2014
The Event with Blaine and Von Ray
For some dumb reason, I did not bring a notebook to NTPRS this year, so I am scrambling to find paper and bits of blank space to take my notes....dumb me!
So Tuesday morning, I got to spend the day with two of my favorite people: Blaine and Von Ray. They were working on how to create "an event" which used to be called a bird walk. Basically, this is the way that you take a story and then go back in time to add details that were left out of the original story. For example: the original story says that Betty was afraid of dogs, but doesn't go into much detail. You can then take the characters back in time to dramatize what happened to make Betty afraid of dogs.
This was a great session because we got the chance to brainstorm ways to make an event given a particular story. I didn't take many notes because there was a lot of chance to practice, and thus not a lot of concepts that were given. Or rather, we were SHOWN how to do it instead of just given the information. For whatever reason, I didn't take a lot of notes to share with you.
But here's the AHA...blow-your-mind moment of the day. As we were coming back from lunch, Blaine was sitting there talking to us about how we have been successful and what our kids can do, etc. I said that I hoped that Diana Noonan would sell her assessments at some point so that we could all prove what our kids can do. And Blaine said that he had a super easy assessment that we can all use in our classrooms to prove proficiency because the questions are based on the TOP MOST COMMON VERBS in the Spanish language (and I'm going to assume that they are very similar in the French language). Anyway, Blaine would really like for us to give this test to our kids to see how many are successful. Here is the test (translate to your own TL):
Answer in a complete sentence:
1. Do you have a book?
2. Are you a girl or a boy?
3. What do you study?
4. Do you go to school?
5. Where are you?
6. Do you want any chocolate?
7. Do you like to speak TL?
8. What is there in your house?
9. What do you do when you are not in school?
10. Can you speak TL?
When you are grading this, you are only looking for subject and verb correctness (except for do you like to speak...then each part of that gets a half of a point). Each correct verb is one point. Blaine wants to see what percentage gets all correct and what % gets 9/10, etc. So if you give this exam to your students...please send Blaine the results.
He said that he would assume that most TPRS students should be able to produce 80-90 words in a 5 minute free-write by the end of French 1 and that they should be graded on a 6 point scale. 1-2 is for consistent basic errors. 3-4 is mostly right (for verbs) and 5-6 is very few errors (maybe 1 error for every 10 words or less). He says that in order to be graded, the student must have produced at least 50 words or the rubric is invalid.
So go! Give this as a pre-test to your Fr 1 and 2 students and then give it again at the end of the year and keep track of the data!!
So Tuesday morning, I got to spend the day with two of my favorite people: Blaine and Von Ray. They were working on how to create "an event" which used to be called a bird walk. Basically, this is the way that you take a story and then go back in time to add details that were left out of the original story. For example: the original story says that Betty was afraid of dogs, but doesn't go into much detail. You can then take the characters back in time to dramatize what happened to make Betty afraid of dogs.
This was a great session because we got the chance to brainstorm ways to make an event given a particular story. I didn't take many notes because there was a lot of chance to practice, and thus not a lot of concepts that were given. Or rather, we were SHOWN how to do it instead of just given the information. For whatever reason, I didn't take a lot of notes to share with you.
But here's the AHA...blow-your-mind moment of the day. As we were coming back from lunch, Blaine was sitting there talking to us about how we have been successful and what our kids can do, etc. I said that I hoped that Diana Noonan would sell her assessments at some point so that we could all prove what our kids can do. And Blaine said that he had a super easy assessment that we can all use in our classrooms to prove proficiency because the questions are based on the TOP MOST COMMON VERBS in the Spanish language (and I'm going to assume that they are very similar in the French language). Anyway, Blaine would really like for us to give this test to our kids to see how many are successful. Here is the test (translate to your own TL):
Answer in a complete sentence:
1. Do you have a book?
2. Are you a girl or a boy?
3. What do you study?
4. Do you go to school?
5. Where are you?
6. Do you want any chocolate?
7. Do you like to speak TL?
8. What is there in your house?
9. What do you do when you are not in school?
10. Can you speak TL?
When you are grading this, you are only looking for subject and verb correctness (except for do you like to speak...then each part of that gets a half of a point). Each correct verb is one point. Blaine wants to see what percentage gets all correct and what % gets 9/10, etc. So if you give this exam to your students...please send Blaine the results.
He said that he would assume that most TPRS students should be able to produce 80-90 words in a 5 minute free-write by the end of French 1 and that they should be graded on a 6 point scale. 1-2 is for consistent basic errors. 3-4 is mostly right (for verbs) and 5-6 is very few errors (maybe 1 error for every 10 words or less). He says that in order to be graded, the student must have produced at least 50 words or the rubric is invalid.
So go! Give this as a pre-test to your Fr 1 and 2 students and then give it again at the end of the year and keep track of the data!!
PDL with Michele Whaley
This session was the buzz of the conference the first day. Michele was a little nervous, I think, to present this topic because it is so "out there" to her. I didn't think it was that strange and really wish she had had three more hours to share ideas with us.
What in the heck is PDL? I don't really know what it stands for because I didn't write it down. Something about psychodramatic language or something like that. Apparently, a guy in England runs 60 hour classes using this method of language teaching. I don't quite know how it is used to TEACH language, but I think that it is great for practicing language, improving confidence, and inserting some novelty into the classroom.
In these classes, they start every day with relaxation. In the beginning, every phrase is said in TL/English/TL, making a kind of sandwich. Students close their eyes, get comfortable and take just a couple of minutes to get to a happy place. Another teacher who has tried some of these methods says that she even sprays lemon oil in the classroom to help with the relaxation.
Once the relaxation is done, they do some sort of warm-up exercise. These warm-ups are designed to help the student's muscles (particularly the mouth and tongue) get ready to speak the TL and for the ears to prepare to hear the TL. In one such warm-up, Michele had us all stand in a circle looking at an imaginary object in the middle of the room. Michele then talked to the object in Russian and we copied everything she said. We tried to copy the pronunciation, the inflection, the gestures, etc. We didn't have any idea what the heck we were saying, but that wasn't the purpose of the exercise. At the end, she would ask if anyone had any questions. You had to remember a specific word to ask what it meant...you couldn't just say "What were we saying? What did that mean?" You would have to say "What does nyet mean? I heard you say that." Then, she would give the translation and move on.
Another warm-up was called Echo through the mountains or something like that. We were placed into 4 groups and she said a phrase to group 1, who repeated it pretty loudly. Group 2 repeated a bit softer, group 3 softer than that, and group 4 in an almost whisper. Again, we had no idea what we were saying, but that wasn't the purpose of this activity.
We spent the most time on a method that I think can really only be used with upper levels. This method is called The Chairs. Michele placed three chairs facing each other in the middle of the room. We took turns giving possible scenarios where those three chairs would be like that: a Dr. office, marriage counseling, support group, etc. Once we had a good list, we voted on which scenario we wanted to see. Then, we placed students in those roles. For our example, it was two parents trying to have "the talk" with their child. The rest of the class was divided into three groups to be the support for that actor. First, the teacher interviewed the three actors: What is your name? Why are you here? How do you feel? Once that was completed, they were allowed to start. AT ANY TIME, the support group could help feed the actors lines or creative ideas. The actor could turn to the support group AT ANY TIME for help and the teacher was also there to fill in any essential vocabulary that the whole class was lacking.
That's the basic idea, but Michele said that her class did one of these Chairs activities for like 3 months (not exclusively, of course). Once they had the discussion on one day, she would write up the dialogue and then they would read it. She would change the actors the next day. She would ask them to get in their support group and strategize points for the argument. She would have the students choose a character and write a letter, article, blog, from that actor's point of view. She would bring the characters back and flash forward to their lives 2 months from now.
In this case, the 3 chairs was the jumping off point. She briefly told us that another idea would be to take famous paintings from the target culture and have students imagine themselves as the people in the paintings and start acting out what happened in the scene after what we see.
I am definitely going to start using this at least with my upper levels and I like the idea of prepping the muscles for speaking in the TL. Could be a great primer for storytime to get them in the mood.
What in the heck is PDL? I don't really know what it stands for because I didn't write it down. Something about psychodramatic language or something like that. Apparently, a guy in England runs 60 hour classes using this method of language teaching. I don't quite know how it is used to TEACH language, but I think that it is great for practicing language, improving confidence, and inserting some novelty into the classroom.
In these classes, they start every day with relaxation. In the beginning, every phrase is said in TL/English/TL, making a kind of sandwich. Students close their eyes, get comfortable and take just a couple of minutes to get to a happy place. Another teacher who has tried some of these methods says that she even sprays lemon oil in the classroom to help with the relaxation.
Once the relaxation is done, they do some sort of warm-up exercise. These warm-ups are designed to help the student's muscles (particularly the mouth and tongue) get ready to speak the TL and for the ears to prepare to hear the TL. In one such warm-up, Michele had us all stand in a circle looking at an imaginary object in the middle of the room. Michele then talked to the object in Russian and we copied everything she said. We tried to copy the pronunciation, the inflection, the gestures, etc. We didn't have any idea what the heck we were saying, but that wasn't the purpose of the exercise. At the end, she would ask if anyone had any questions. You had to remember a specific word to ask what it meant...you couldn't just say "What were we saying? What did that mean?" You would have to say "What does nyet mean? I heard you say that." Then, she would give the translation and move on.
Another warm-up was called Echo through the mountains or something like that. We were placed into 4 groups and she said a phrase to group 1, who repeated it pretty loudly. Group 2 repeated a bit softer, group 3 softer than that, and group 4 in an almost whisper. Again, we had no idea what we were saying, but that wasn't the purpose of this activity.
We spent the most time on a method that I think can really only be used with upper levels. This method is called The Chairs. Michele placed three chairs facing each other in the middle of the room. We took turns giving possible scenarios where those three chairs would be like that: a Dr. office, marriage counseling, support group, etc. Once we had a good list, we voted on which scenario we wanted to see. Then, we placed students in those roles. For our example, it was two parents trying to have "the talk" with their child. The rest of the class was divided into three groups to be the support for that actor. First, the teacher interviewed the three actors: What is your name? Why are you here? How do you feel? Once that was completed, they were allowed to start. AT ANY TIME, the support group could help feed the actors lines or creative ideas. The actor could turn to the support group AT ANY TIME for help and the teacher was also there to fill in any essential vocabulary that the whole class was lacking.
That's the basic idea, but Michele said that her class did one of these Chairs activities for like 3 months (not exclusively, of course). Once they had the discussion on one day, she would write up the dialogue and then they would read it. She would change the actors the next day. She would ask them to get in their support group and strategize points for the argument. She would have the students choose a character and write a letter, article, blog, from that actor's point of view. She would bring the characters back and flash forward to their lives 2 months from now.
In this case, the 3 chairs was the jumping off point. She briefly told us that another idea would be to take famous paintings from the target culture and have students imagine themselves as the people in the paintings and start acting out what happened in the scene after what we see.
I am definitely going to start using this at least with my upper levels and I like the idea of prepping the muscles for speaking in the TL. Could be a great primer for storytime to get them in the mood.
Betsy's music strategy
I'm back and enjoying a quiet lunch break to try and get some more blogging done. I should be downstairs talking to more people, but the introvert in me needs some quiet and processing time. Plus, I need to get all this stuff down before I forget!
I have been using songs as bellringers since I saw Lisa Reyes's presentation on using popular music in the classroom. You can find my initial notes from my blog entry from 2010. I have been using this strategy ever since and have quite a list of songs built up, with more coming all the time. So I am no stranger to using songs in class.
Betsy also uses songs in class, but she uses them with the purpose of practicing pronunciation and building appreciation for the culture. So she takes the song, types up the Japanese on one side and then the English translation on the other. If it's a high-frequency phrase, she will underline the phrase on both sides so that students can see what structure means what. It might be hard to explain without pictures...
Anyway, she has the students just try to read the song first to/with a partner...practicing the way the mouth reacts to the different vowels and sounds. Then, she plays the song with the lyrics on the board and points and sings along (the class has the option to sing along). Then, she has students pick one phrase that they like and they practice saying it to their partner. They just say it over and over and over. Then, she has students volunteer to say that phrase for the class (repetition of hearing the sounds) and she repeats it. Sometimes she will translate the phrase before she repeats it, but not always. She is constantly encouraging students to say a little bit more and repeats the partner work and add on to their phrase. Once the students have some practice with pronunciation, she sings the lines (without music) and we sing it back to her. She says that she has a horrible voice (not that bad...) and so it makes the kids feel comfortable singing in front of the class.
I'm thinking of switching up some of my songs to do some of these activities with kids instead of just the cloze activity as we listen. In this way, I would be encouraging the kids to sing along and really internalize the sounds of the language. I'll let you know (hopefully) this year how it goes.
I have been using songs as bellringers since I saw Lisa Reyes's presentation on using popular music in the classroom. You can find my initial notes from my blog entry from 2010. I have been using this strategy ever since and have quite a list of songs built up, with more coming all the time. So I am no stranger to using songs in class.
Betsy also uses songs in class, but she uses them with the purpose of practicing pronunciation and building appreciation for the culture. So she takes the song, types up the Japanese on one side and then the English translation on the other. If it's a high-frequency phrase, she will underline the phrase on both sides so that students can see what structure means what. It might be hard to explain without pictures...
Anyway, she has the students just try to read the song first to/with a partner...practicing the way the mouth reacts to the different vowels and sounds. Then, she plays the song with the lyrics on the board and points and sings along (the class has the option to sing along). Then, she has students pick one phrase that they like and they practice saying it to their partner. They just say it over and over and over. Then, she has students volunteer to say that phrase for the class (repetition of hearing the sounds) and she repeats it. Sometimes she will translate the phrase before she repeats it, but not always. She is constantly encouraging students to say a little bit more and repeats the partner work and add on to their phrase. Once the students have some practice with pronunciation, she sings the lines (without music) and we sing it back to her. She says that she has a horrible voice (not that bad...) and so it makes the kids feel comfortable singing in front of the class.
I'm thinking of switching up some of my songs to do some of these activities with kids instead of just the cloze activity as we listen. In this way, I would be encouraging the kids to sing along and really internalize the sounds of the language. I'll let you know (hopefully) this year how it goes.
Tuesday, July 22, 2014
TPRS Strategies with Betsy Paskvan
I started out my week learning some Japanese with Betsy. I've seen Betsy present two other times, but I continue to have these AHA moments with her. She is amazing.
The first thing that I took away is not really anything new, but still a nice reminder. Betsy told us a story based on the Star Wars Saga, which is actually a connection to Japanese culture because George Lucas based Yoda's speech patterns on Japanese, Darth Vader's helmet on Samurai helmets, and the LightSaber on a Samarai stick. Very interesting stuff.
The other thing that she was constantly doing was something called SEL (social emotional learning). She didn't talk a whole lot about what this is, but rather consistently used it as we worked through the day. We were working a lot with partners, and we would "choose" who went first by figuring out things like: who has the most siblings, who traveled the farthest, who has longer hair, etc. In the classroom, this should begin to foster a sense of community as students work with other students and begin to learn a little more about them in a very low pressure situation.
As for the partner work, this is something that I lack because I was always under the impression that it is forced output, and bad forced output at that. But what I realized as I was doing it, was that it is just another way for our brains to start to figure out the language. Betsy says that this is her way to build confidence in her students because she never corrects them during partner work...she only praises. I also noticed that my brain was picking out the errors in my partner's dialogue, so I was able to avoid those same mistakes when it was my turn to produce. I am definitely planning on doing this more next year. It's a great break from sitting and listening and gets the kids to feel like they are "learning".
Betsy also talked about her pacing over a week's time. She says that she tries to vary her pace throughout the week...keeping most days at a medium pace, but allowing for one day to go REALLY SLOWLY to help pick up some of the strugglers and has one day where she goes faster to keep the high flyers excited about the language. It's a very interesting idea and I wonder if I could make it work. It would definitely take some conversation with my students so that they know what is going on.
One thing that I will definitely be trying in my classroom is what I call Betsy's verbal cloze activity. I don't even think she realizes she's doing this at this point, but it was extremely beneficial. As she was re-telling an earlier part of the story or re-phrasing, she would pause before a word that she knew we knew. We filled in the blank, thus proving comprehension and getting a little more practice on forming the words. I loved it!
When we came back from our break, we went to a reading, using the strategies I saw Betsy use last year and explained in this blog entry.
Some new things that I saw her use this year was a print-out of her story slides. She projected the written story and we worked with our partners again. One partner would read off the projected story while the other student pointed to the appropriate slide. We must have read that story a hundred times, but because the language was so interesting, we didn't mind. I have to admit that the story was actually very boring if you read it in English, but again, we didn't mind. That was pretty cool to see as well. She then did a little embedded reading of the story. Again, it wasn't anything earth-shattering or publishable, but we enjoyed being successful. When we came to the last version, she asked us to expand the story even farther, adding details and sentences. Then, she had us stand in two lines facing each other and read it to the person across from us, greeting them and thanking them in the traditional Japanese manner. One line moved down and we repeated this several times with different partners (again...SEL).
Our final activity was to use the language we had learned to write a draw a six-frame comic strip and then read it to our partner. She had some volunteers share with the whole class, and you could see brains working to spot errors, comprehend, and support. Every volunteer felt like a star, no matter their level of creativity or the amount of errors in their story.
That's another thing that Betsy is a rock star at: making kids feel successful and helping them spot their own errors. She NEVER corrects a student. NEVER. She always says "Oh that's great!" and then repeats what they should have said.
Oh man...it's time for breakfast and I haven't even talked about what she did with songs...I'll just make that a separate post later I guess. So come back for that and for what I learned from Michele Whaley about PDL...definitely the buzz of the conference so far.
The first thing that I took away is not really anything new, but still a nice reminder. Betsy told us a story based on the Star Wars Saga, which is actually a connection to Japanese culture because George Lucas based Yoda's speech patterns on Japanese, Darth Vader's helmet on Samurai helmets, and the LightSaber on a Samarai stick. Very interesting stuff.
The other thing that she was constantly doing was something called SEL (social emotional learning). She didn't talk a whole lot about what this is, but rather consistently used it as we worked through the day. We were working a lot with partners, and we would "choose" who went first by figuring out things like: who has the most siblings, who traveled the farthest, who has longer hair, etc. In the classroom, this should begin to foster a sense of community as students work with other students and begin to learn a little more about them in a very low pressure situation.
As for the partner work, this is something that I lack because I was always under the impression that it is forced output, and bad forced output at that. But what I realized as I was doing it, was that it is just another way for our brains to start to figure out the language. Betsy says that this is her way to build confidence in her students because she never corrects them during partner work...she only praises. I also noticed that my brain was picking out the errors in my partner's dialogue, so I was able to avoid those same mistakes when it was my turn to produce. I am definitely planning on doing this more next year. It's a great break from sitting and listening and gets the kids to feel like they are "learning".
Betsy also talked about her pacing over a week's time. She says that she tries to vary her pace throughout the week...keeping most days at a medium pace, but allowing for one day to go REALLY SLOWLY to help pick up some of the strugglers and has one day where she goes faster to keep the high flyers excited about the language. It's a very interesting idea and I wonder if I could make it work. It would definitely take some conversation with my students so that they know what is going on.
One thing that I will definitely be trying in my classroom is what I call Betsy's verbal cloze activity. I don't even think she realizes she's doing this at this point, but it was extremely beneficial. As she was re-telling an earlier part of the story or re-phrasing, she would pause before a word that she knew we knew. We filled in the blank, thus proving comprehension and getting a little more practice on forming the words. I loved it!
When we came back from our break, we went to a reading, using the strategies I saw Betsy use last year and explained in this blog entry.
Some new things that I saw her use this year was a print-out of her story slides. She projected the written story and we worked with our partners again. One partner would read off the projected story while the other student pointed to the appropriate slide. We must have read that story a hundred times, but because the language was so interesting, we didn't mind. I have to admit that the story was actually very boring if you read it in English, but again, we didn't mind. That was pretty cool to see as well. She then did a little embedded reading of the story. Again, it wasn't anything earth-shattering or publishable, but we enjoyed being successful. When we came to the last version, she asked us to expand the story even farther, adding details and sentences. Then, she had us stand in two lines facing each other and read it to the person across from us, greeting them and thanking them in the traditional Japanese manner. One line moved down and we repeated this several times with different partners (again...SEL).
Our final activity was to use the language we had learned to write a draw a six-frame comic strip and then read it to our partner. She had some volunteers share with the whole class, and you could see brains working to spot errors, comprehend, and support. Every volunteer felt like a star, no matter their level of creativity or the amount of errors in their story.
That's another thing that Betsy is a rock star at: making kids feel successful and helping them spot their own errors. She NEVER corrects a student. NEVER. She always says "Oh that's great!" and then repeats what they should have said.
Oh man...it's time for breakfast and I haven't even talked about what she did with songs...I'll just make that a separate post later I guess. So come back for that and for what I learned from Michele Whaley about PDL...definitely the buzz of the conference so far.
Monday, July 21, 2014
Welcome back to NTPRS!
Hello you crazy readers, you! Yes, I know it's been awhile. I've been crazy and busy and trying to keep my sanity for the past year with my new job. But now it's under my belt. I have survived the year of insanity and I have KUDOS to prove it!
Now, I canNOT take credit for this, because I only had this student for one year, but he emailed me to congratulate me, so I'll copy it here:
I had a French 5/IB student who emailed me during the summer to tell me about his experiences in Paris talking with the native speakers. He told me that they all were amazed at his accent, which he attributed to his year with me!! Now, I am not insane enough to give his words any real credence, but it does feel good. And, at the very least, I gave him the confidence to be able to speak to native speakers. AND he got a 6 on the IB exam.
I've really loved my year in this high school environment...and my biggest KUDOS for the year are that I've increased the enrollment by 50% for next year!
Anyway...enough about me and the awesomeness that is teaching with TPRS. I am in Chicago for NTPRS and surrounded by my kind of folks and sucking up all the knowledge I possibly can.
I have to admit (and don't ever tell my husband this) that I am always a little cynical when I show up to NTPRS, thinking that I've heard everything and that everything that I need to do in the classroom I know about and am just sucking at, but I am learning a TON and it's only day 1.
So, if you are interested in hearing what I'm learning this week, follow along!
Now, I canNOT take credit for this, because I only had this student for one year, but he emailed me to congratulate me, so I'll copy it here:
I had a French 5/IB student who emailed me during the summer to tell me about his experiences in Paris talking with the native speakers. He told me that they all were amazed at his accent, which he attributed to his year with me!! Now, I am not insane enough to give his words any real credence, but it does feel good. And, at the very least, I gave him the confidence to be able to speak to native speakers. AND he got a 6 on the IB exam.
I've really loved my year in this high school environment...and my biggest KUDOS for the year are that I've increased the enrollment by 50% for next year!
Anyway...enough about me and the awesomeness that is teaching with TPRS. I am in Chicago for NTPRS and surrounded by my kind of folks and sucking up all the knowledge I possibly can.
I have to admit (and don't ever tell my husband this) that I am always a little cynical when I show up to NTPRS, thinking that I've heard everything and that everything that I need to do in the classroom I know about and am just sucking at, but I am learning a TON and it's only day 1.
So, if you are interested in hearing what I'm learning this week, follow along!
Wednesday, February 26, 2014
Movie Talk Revelation!
Today I decided to do a movie talk. I try to do about one a month, because the students really enjoy them, and I don't want to bore them by doing it too many times. I like the novelty of doing it infrequently...
So today, I didn't have time to pre-view the movie clip (I had already seen it, but I didn't have time to make a list of vocabulary). I decided to show the whole clip to the students without talking/pausing and have them brainstorm vocabulary by making two lists: one list of words they know that they saw in the clip and one list of words that are necessary, but that they don't know yet.
It worked REALLY well. We watched the film Alma, so the students came up with words like snow, girl, writes, plays, door, window, etc that they already know in French. For words they need to know, they said doll, twin, locked, store, etc. I gave them the words in French and then starred two or three as "essential" for the story. I added those words into the story as I narrated and used circumlocution to talk around words like locked and twin.
At then end, I asked the class if they liked this new way of doing Movie Talk, and they said yes. I stopped a couple of my lower-level kids and asked if they understood more this way, and they emphatically agreed that it was easier.
I don't know why I never thought of this before...it's a great way to predict vocabulary and to get their minds thinking in French before I start spouting it.
So today, I didn't have time to pre-view the movie clip (I had already seen it, but I didn't have time to make a list of vocabulary). I decided to show the whole clip to the students without talking/pausing and have them brainstorm vocabulary by making two lists: one list of words they know that they saw in the clip and one list of words that are necessary, but that they don't know yet.
It worked REALLY well. We watched the film Alma, so the students came up with words like snow, girl, writes, plays, door, window, etc that they already know in French. For words they need to know, they said doll, twin, locked, store, etc. I gave them the words in French and then starred two or three as "essential" for the story. I added those words into the story as I narrated and used circumlocution to talk around words like locked and twin.
At then end, I asked the class if they liked this new way of doing Movie Talk, and they said yes. I stopped a couple of my lower-level kids and asked if they understood more this way, and they emphatically agreed that it was easier.
I don't know why I never thought of this before...it's a great way to predict vocabulary and to get their minds thinking in French before I start spouting it.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)