Tuesday, January 5, 2016

Story idea - the monster

So if you read my last post, you can see my dilemma. I now have to start coming up with my own story scripts and picking and choosing again via books and blogs of other TPRS practitioners.

And I was wracking my brain yesterday until right before bed, I finally had a story epiphany.

Element 1:
I needed to practice sale de (leaves), compra (buys), and the other usual ones (wants, has, sees, says, gives, etc).

Element 2:
In addition, going over family members (aside from dad, mom, brother, sister) is not my strong suit. Which got me thinking about this story script from Amy Bachman Catania with a grandmother yelling after finding a monster and leaving the house and grabbing a cactus.

I loved the idea of introducing grandmother because I wanted to use the word grandfather soon in a quick movietalk about dinosaurs coming to a house and hitting Santa Claus and an grandfather (old man) hits them and runs them off. (See video on Youtube.)

Element 3:
Oh, and not to mention I need to hit, "le gusta" (likes), "vive" (lives) and "se llama" (he/she calls himself/herself) to be closer on target at this point in the year.


Storytelling:
So as this is all coming together, I came up with the following:

TPR structures:

  • abre la puerta - s/he opens the door
         (open a door)
  • la abuela - the grandmother
         (grab walker and smile)
  • se llama - he/she calls himself/herself
         (make name tag on chest)
    • this is also a review that I taught a little bit earlier on but I would like to practice "what's your name" and "my name is" more with actors.
  • vive - s/he lives
         (my 1st class decided the gesture should be a zombie/monster walking because "IT'S ALIVE")
  • le gusta - s/he likes
         (thumbs up)
See PowerPoint here.


Rough Story script:
There is a grandma. Her name is Henrietta. The grandma lives in a house in Texas.

On Monday, she opens the door and sees a monster in her house. The monster is ugly.  It has one eye and seven arms. The monster’s name is One-Eyed-Petey.  The grandma doesn't like monsters. The monster says to her, “Rawr” The grandma screams, “I don’t like monsters”! And she leaves the house really fast and goes to the police station!

On Wednesday, she opens the door and sees another monster in her house.  The second monster is fat and smelly.
It has four big bellies and a twenty little tales.  The monster’s name is Zeke.  The grandma doesn't like fat and smelly monsters.
The monster says to her, “I like bread with butter. Do you have any bread with butter?”.
She screams, “I don’t like monsters!” The grandmother leaves the house very fast and goes to Party City!

*On Friday, the grandmother opens the door and sees a boy in her house.  The boy’s name is Brad Pitt.  Brad Pitt is handsome and muscular. He has a perfect nose, eyes, and face.  She likes Brad Pitt.  Brad Pitt says, “Hi. I want your money.”  She says, “I like handsome and muscular boys!Brad Pitt says, “I don’t like grandmothers!” Brad Pitt leaves the house really fast and goes to Jennifer Lawrence's house.

*You could have your student be the super handsome one that runs away from the grandmother (to compliment the student).  You could also do three different characters with the same problem on three different days. So instead of the grandmother, maybe the grandfather has a problem with the monster the next day, or the granddaughter, or I have a problem one day (to practice first person form)). The possibilities (as I hope you can see) are endless!


Follow up:
The spoken story needs to be simple enough to not get all of the information jumbled. Since this is for Spanish 1, I want to scaffold and review old words while adding new terms in the embedded reading.

In the embedded reading I would probably have the class read a simplified version of our story and ask questions. Then we would read a slightly harder version.

Then on the third/fourth versions I would add in the following somehow if possible:
opens the door to the [bathroom, closet, bedroom, garaje, etc]
buys a bazooka, a pistol, etc.
goes / returns to the house
walks towards the monster with ___ and tells him, "I don't like monsters. Get out of my house!"
the monster goes out of the house.

see finalized version of embedded readings in later post!

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