TPRS year 2 - Commercials

I took a webinar with Kristy Placido on January 19.  It was a great investment.  She provided this amazing handout with all sorts of ideas on how to make authentic texts come alive more in your classroom.

One of the things I had always thought about was incorporating commercials into class.  I had yet to do it though.  So I decided to do it because she showed us an example of one she did as well as the cloze activity.

So I found one and I went ahead and transcribed it and offered my students a cloze (fill in the blank) activity.  Then we went over more or less what it was talking about.  They did an awesome job of figuring MOST of it out.  And they loved the commercial since it was silly.  It also gave me an opportunity to talk about novelas (soap operas) in Spanish since it's a parody of one.

Here's the activity sheet.  I've had students requesting more!  So I should really do one this week sometime just to do something a little different in class.

Plus it establishes connections with the culture as well as helps us to make connections.  We might also be able to see a brand or a cultural idea in the commercials which can help us to understand the way of thinking of people in a different culture.

TPRS year 2 - Weekend chat

Well so I guess this weekend as well draws to a close.  I thought I would share and think around a PowerPoint I made for last Monday.  I decided that sometimes my information about my weekend is boring.

Here's an explanation of how I tend to do my weekend activity.  It involves me coming up with a few phrases I can circle with my students.  But then I can shift those things onto my students.

This year I have realized that my students might have something completely unrelated to talk about.  So I try to ask the question, "¿Qué hizo?" (What did s/he do?) after circling with another person and finding out they didn't do what I did.

But I've been finding my weekends consist of the same structures OVER and OVER again.   So last weekend, I was reading some different news stories and decided to start off my weekend with...

• leí (I read)

I circled around it with the class and then they didn't know what I read.  I finally pointed out that it was obvious and I had read the news!  I knew they wouldn't like talking about the news.  But I then had made a PowerPoint of a few news stories I had read.  I explained a little about the news story and then asked them to guess something about the news story.  Then we moved onto the following one (or maybe we chatted a little longer about one).  I thought it would be good to introduce some words we haven't really seen much and also just to do something a little different.  For the most part, they were interested in it.  I would like to turn it into an activity next year almost as the first activity leading into our weekend chat.  Or using something I had read to then circle the structures using students in class.  I think there is a lot of potential!

TPRS year 2 - I should have known six years ago

As I slipped in and out of consciousness today with what turned out to be strep throat I thought of my first year teaching how I had the silliest things happening to me. One such occurrence was how I thought that I had contracted rabies and the other entailed a limp I developed after a skateboard incident.

I remember that I decided to tell my Spanish two students the stories behind my ailments in Spanish because they were dying to know. And to see how they had to figure out what I was talking about and yet they didn't give up because it was what I know now to be a compelling story. I'm so glad I switched over to storytelling almost every day so my students can work their brains and work on decoding the message I give them.

TPRS year 2 - using PowerPoint to tell stories

A few weeks ago, I found a song on Martina Bex's website that she had created activities for: El chico del apartamento 512.  It's a song back from the 90's by Selena.  The interesting thing is that it tells a story about how she keeps getting hit on by guys in her apartment building.  But there is this one guy that she wishes she could talk to.  Finally she does, but a girl answers the door. To her surprise she asks, "Were you looking for my brother?"

Martina actually made a TPRS story-line that was parallel to the song.  So I decided to do the story-line.  But I wasn't going to be able to do the written story before going over the song since my students had made oral stories that didn't even resemble the song's story-line.  So I decided to teach the story-line via a PowerPoint.  See: el chico del apartamento 512 powerpoint.

My students really enjoyed as I spoke the language and told them a story to what is basically an animated storybook.  It was a great activity for the brain.  The funny thing is I did something similar back before I even knew about TPRS to help teach some vocabulary about clothing.  See: Pablito compro ropa nueva.

After the PowerPoint, we listened to the song and it was much more comprehensible.

So this week, I was going over the written story 4.1 from the Look I can Talk series by Blaine Ray.  The story is about a tiger that wants to buy tiger clothes, but he only finds plastic elephants.

The spoken story structures were:
quería comprar (s/he wanted to buy)
el dependiente sólo tenía (the store clerk only had)

I decided to make a PowerPoint for the written story and tell it to my students.  I adapted Blaine's story to accommodate other vocabulary and structures my students knew.  So it ended up a little more complicated.
See: Tiger looks for clothing powerpoint.

Then I printed out the story and cut it up into pieces so after telling my students the story, I had them get into groups of two and put the story into order.  I thought it would help them read without realizing they were reading.  They would have to remember what went first in the story and use critical thinking.  I also gave them five minutes or so (most needed a little more).  They did awesome though and I think they felt smart because they were able to do it.

Definitely something I would like to do every once in awhile to spice up the monotony in class.

TPRS year 2 - visitors

I was reading the other day about someone having a visitor coming into their class and how it was great because it gives the students a chance to show off.  It got me thinking that I really think that would help some of my students.  Yesterday, one student (who had heard all about Spanish class) came into my 5th hour class.  They enjoyed performing for him.  He (a native speaker and friend) thought class was amazing and also confusing (because he didn't know their inside jokes).  The students in that class have interesting personalities and their inside jokes in class are unlike any other class.

Today though, a teacher had two observers who were going into teaching and they needed to do some observation hours for their undergraduate teaching class.  She passed them off to me because he kids were just taking tests.  The girls were both graduates of the school I teach at and Native Spanish speakers.  I was a little bit nervous because the morning didn't go exactly the best (the previous entry on Junior High is a result of today not going so well in that class).  And that sort of put a bad taste in my mouth the rest of the day.  But my kids know that if I am not having the best day, they just get to try a little harder to help me out.  And they almost always rise to the occasion.

So my observers came in 5th hour and stayed through 8th hour.  I think at one point of staying in Spanish for most of the class I stopped and told them, "I don't know if you realized, but this is only a Spanish one class."  And sure my kids were making grammatical mistakes, but they were understanding SO much Spanish and it was really fun to tell the story with them.  They were showing off like crazy and it was awesome.  I wish I could have observers come more often.  It really is great for my kids (and for me) to see how much they have been learning.

TPRS year 2 - Junior High problems

This entire year it seems like I have had the hardest time reaching a group of my students.  Said group consists of 8th graders.  Now last year, I loved my 8th grade class (they were an improvement over my 7th grade class).  But I also had known the kids and their older siblings from previous years and had a rapport at the school.

Since I started over this year, I have a different group of 8th graders every quarter.  These 8th graders really can do amazing things with language because they haven't quite become self-aware yet to realize that they might look like a fool in front of the rest of the class.

Nevertheless, my first group of students all followed one student.  About halfway through the first quarter, he decided he didn't like Spanish class (in conjunction with some big personal stuff going on in his life I found out about).  I was counting the weeks until that class was over so I could start over with a fresh group.  They actually did pretty well.  They responded well to my rules.

I have another group who has been wonderful with the language and I felt like I was getting even better with my storytelling abilities and simply allowing a story to happen with them.  But two of the students in there are a little unruly.  One of them bought into class for awhile and she was behaved.  She's a little bit of a firecracker. But for the most part she does what's needed to be done.  The other student is the leader of the pack.  He's the cool guy and everyone knows it.  I actually think he's a really neat kid.  I had to hold him after one day and I asked him to help me out with the class because the other kids look up to him.  He has (to his credit) been pretty awesome since (except Kindergarten day).  I think he enjoys class but he still has to be "cool."

The firecracker though today was upset at me for not letting her sit in a different chair from the seating chart.  I have come to the conclusion that there is no reason or argument good enough for a teenage girl.  This is most likely why Fred Jones talks about the blank stare.  If you give the student nothing to fire back at you with, you will most likely eventually get cooperation.  So note to self, don't attempt to reason with the firecracker anymore.

I thought maybe my kids are just getting bored with what we're talking about in class.  So I need to actually get to the storytelling and personalizing the stories to them instead of more One-word images.  I did the one-word images for about three weeks now, so it's probably time for something new.

TPRS year 2 - It's supposed to be a bad day?

In previous years, I would often find myself taking a sick day when I would feel a little "off."  There are days where I can just feel like it's going to be a bad day simply because of my attitude when I walk into school.  So I would just save everyone the grief and I would call in sick and email my sub plans to the secretary.

I thought it was a good plan and everyone won.  This year is different because I have already used up all of my sick days for visiting the doctor with my wife (prenatal visits).  Then I took a week off after she gave birth and now I am completely out.  If I miss anymore days, that comes out of my paycheck in the summer.  So I better really feel sick or it's a bit pricier.

Consequently, I have been forcing myself to go in.  Interestingly enough, this phenomenon of me not feeling good  (when it happens) occurs on Mondays.

So today is a prime example (as well as last Monday) of me feeling really not up to teaching but going in anyway.  What I found was something astounding.  My students did awesome both days.  They were enthusiastic and enjoyed the weekend chat.  They came up with interesting things to talk about and the classes pretty much ran themselves.  It's odd because it's so counter intuitive.

As I think about it, most of the days I can remember this year of me going into school grumpy have ended up being wonderful days for TPRS.  I wonder what causes this.

Either way, it's proof to me that teaching kids through stories is a heck of a lot better than teaching them the traditional way.

Today I even had a student observe a class (since he's been hearing about how awesome Spanish class is all year) and he (of course) enjoyed it.