Tuesday Afternoon Advanced with Alina and Jason

I missed the first part of this because I was prepping for the TPRS books booth.  So I came at the end of a post-story re-tell.  Jason had a blank comic strip on the document camera and was writing as Alina re-told (with the class) our story.  She would let him know when she wanted him to write a sentence (very skeleton version of the story...I think like 9-12 sentences?) and then EVERY student wrote that sentence (I think Alina said she would never ask a student to do this because accuracy is so important in this step...if the kids are copying, that is) and sketched a little visual of the sentence.  She could still do PQA, comprehension checks, and look at papers to make sure that everyone was on the same page.  I love this idea because the kids are reading and writing and thinking and listening all at the same time.  Sometimes, to add novelty, Alina will add in details or change the ending of the story during this time.

Then, when everyone has their paper finished, you can project a few for REPETITION, but the kids don't realize how much repetition they're getting because they are focused on the work of their classmates and friends.  LOVE IT!  At this point, Alina will take pictures of a couple of them and post them to the class website for students who were absent.

Then, kids read a fuller version of their story.  Alina has a trick for this so that she's not typing up 6 versions of the story to go with each class.  Type up your skeleton story, but use a random name and object to fill in the skeleton.  For example, for our story (Lance wants to drink vodka at the castle with Dracula), she would type up "Johnny wants to drink water at the beach with Stephanie."  She can then change the story easily by using Find and Replace to substitute Lance for each time Johnny is used in the story.  She can change the rest of the details to reflect the class story or leave the differences and have students "spot the differences".  She says that she always prints off a copy for each student to give them ownership of the story.  I like this idea...

The purpose of this afternoon session was to get us away from choral translation or volleyball reading and into activities that make reading more pleasurable for kids.

I have a note for Active Inspire....but I honestly don't remember what that means.  Feel free to fill in my blank if you know what that is...

Alina said that she uses Gesture Reading (and has even before TPRS).  Here's a video of Alina doing this in class.

The key to getting kids to pay attention is to make sure that they always know your expectations.  In my class, I do this by saying EVERY TIME "As I read aloud, I want you to follow along with your eyes like you did back in kindergarten.  That way, your brain is making the connection between the way the words sound and the way they work, which is important for French."  Alina has a poster with 3 visual representations of her expectations.  1. (an eye) LOOK 2. (a pointer finger) FOLLOW 3. (a question mark) RESPOND

Some options for reading (students should do more than one per reading, IMO, and I think that's what Alina and Jason would recommend as well): read it alone silently, read it aloud with a partner, popcorn reading (students pick on each other to read the next sentence), read silently and draw two pictures (one true, one false) and then it becomes a game to pick which one is true and false.

And then I was off again!  I'm bummed I missed a lot of these sessions, but I got so much from what I did see.