Wednesday, February 13, 2013

TPRS Year 3 - Story Idea - Hair in the nose

So I have been inspired some other teachers who have been using videos to do a Movie-talk in class.  This is the idea of describing what's going on in a scene with your kids.

Having not ever seen someone do this, I decided to try it today.  To give a little bit of history though, I had planned this out for this week.

So Tuesday (spoken storytelling day) I told in my Spanish two classes a story using the following structures:
  • Se miraba en el espejo (he looked at himself in the mirror)
  • De repente un grano salió de su nariz. (suddenly a zit came out of his nose)
  • Lo trató de sacar pero no pudo (he tried to pull it out but he couldn't)
We acted it out and it was entertaining.  In one class a rat came out of the bellybutton and a cow came out of  the mouth of the girl on a date.  We used my puppets for that.  Then in another class a pink beard had a pink zit come out which he later realized wasn't a problem when he remembered he was pink.

So today, we first tried the MovieTalk with the video: Blind Date.  It's my favorite kind of animated movie: short, silly and it has no no spoken language in it.  This way, we can hear the music and talk about the movie and pause as needed and the kids can comprehend what we're talking about.  After watching/talking about the movie for 10 minutes or so, I had a reading that I had tried to write around their level (plus a few words that they didn't know but we could be exposed to over the course of the rest of the year).  I admit it's not the most advanced story, but please keep in mind I want my kids to acquire the language slowly over time instead of "teaching them" way too much that they'll never possibly remember.

The second hour class is a hard sell.  They are quieter and slightly over half Spanish-speaking.  So the Spanish speaking kids are patient with the kids who are learning, but when it comes to reading, only one person ever really translates.  This is frustrating because I know how important the reading is.  It's like the idea, "You can lead a horse to water but you can't make him drink."  But I so want to make him drink.  I want my kids to always enjoy the readings.  Especially when I work on them!  

The third hour class seemed to go better.  There are only four students but there was more eye-contact with the reading.  

I pulled a girl aside from 2nd hour and asked if there was something I could do or if my reading was horrible.  She said she enjoyed it, but the other girl monopolizes the translation and she wasn't able to get anything out so she stopped.  I asked her if maybe I tried to create groups where only a group could answer however many questions before I changed groups.  She said that might help her.  Food for thought.  

Oh and here's the movie clip:


I made an extended embedded reading in the yo form that was loosely based off of a different Youtube video but went along nicely with these structures above.  My students in the morning did an awesome job on it.  It's a lengthy read as well, but I want to build their confidence with the reading.  I thought it turned out well.  Here's the link.

2 comments:

  1. I am also a Spanish teacher. I use a lot of songs with my students that I write myself. Check them out they might be helpful!

    https://soundcloud.com/stream

    Cesar

    ReplyDelete
  2. ups, worg link before!

    https://soundcloud.com/cesarachinchilla

    ReplyDelete