Día 17 - Weekend Activity 2

Today I started off class with one of the warm ups.  We looked at a piropo (pick up line) in Spanish.

Then in class, the following was my "lesson plan":
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Durante el fin de semana....

     During the weekend

Fui al cine
   I went to the movie theatre.
Hablé por teléfono.
     I talked on the phone
Comí en un restaurante.   
     I ate in a restaurant.
No bailé
     I didn’t dance.
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Now I saw "lesson plan" loosely because we were able to focus on one sentence for a majority of the class.  Each class was different.  It is seriously crazy how good my kids are getting at playing the game.

Every story, as usual came out completely different.  I started off telling the class: Durante el fin de semana, fui al cine, while pointing to the board and the individual words.  The students responded as they were supposed to: oooOOOOooooh!  And from there I asked: ¿Con quién fui al cine?  (With whom did I go to the movie theatre?)  Some remembered the word from previous lessons and said: la esposa (wife).  It is neat to see that simply by conversing in the language how quickly the kids can pick up words.  It's important to assess them, but it is getting to the point where it feels like we're hanging out every day.

What surprises me more is the desire from most of the students in class to add the output.  Now in previous years, my students were forced to respond to a question in Spanish usually by various methods.  The end result was most of them were not comfortable enough with the language yet to produce the output.  With TPRS, each day the students help more and more in the stories to add different details.  It is so true that adding in the details is really easy when you tell the story.  Each class' personality will shape the vocabulary that we learn.  But since we're practicing structures, the vocabulary is like the icing on the cake.  But as my fifth year of teaching, I have never had so many students wanting to blurt out answers to questions.  I think part of it is the desire for them to help me in keeping the story moving.  If they don't answer, I will assume they don't understand.  If they don't understand, I'll have to stay on the same things over and over again without adding much additional information.  So these past few weeks have trained them very well.

I'm so excited for each day of teaching.  I remember that a teacher once told me that you should try to do at least one thing each day in your class that you enjoy.  With TPRS, I've found an entire class period of something that I enjoy.  It makes the classroom come alive with the language so much more than I had ever imagined.

Today based on my "lesson plan," I had students going on dates with one another, going to other's houses with 10 ugly fat smelly girls.  A lot of the suggestions are coming from the students...

It all started in one class like this...  keep in mind there is some additional circling that I do in here but I have tried to abridge the story for you to see the progression.

Clase, ¿o el profesor fue al cine o Agustín fue al cine?

     (Class, did the professor go to the movies or did Agustín go to the movies?)

Bien clase.  El profesor fue al cine.

     (Good class.  The professor went to the movies)

¿Agustín fue al cine?

     (Did Agustín go to the movies?)

No.  Agustín no fue al cine...

     (No. Agustín didn't go to the movies.)

¿Adónde fue?, clase.

     (Where did he go, class?) ---- take suggestion

Oooooh clase, Agustín fue a la casa de Chinchilla.

     (Oh class.  Agustín went to Chinchilla's house)

¿Fue a la casa de Chinchilla con una chica?

     (Did he go to Chinchilla's house with a girl?) -- Class said "¡Sí! "

Clase, ¿con cuántas chicas fue Agustín a la casa de Chinchilla?

     (Class, with how many girls did Agustín go to Chinchilla's house?)-- suggestions--> 10 girls

OOOOOH.... Agustín fue con 10 chicas.

     (Ooooh. Agustín went with 10 girls)

Clase, ¿las chicas eran muy bonitas o muy feas?

     (Class, were the girls really pretty or really ugly?)

And from there, the class started adding more details and poor Agustín (who was a great sport) went to Chinchilla's house with 10 ugly, fat, smelly girls.  Chinchilla played right along and said "¡Muy bien!" as if to say that's what he wanted all along.