Word Chunk - A fun, minimal prep game/activity

I first heard about this from one of Ben Slavic's dvds that I purchased ages ago.  I have since experimented with it in my classes.

While you could simply do it as a quiz or silly assessment with your students, I prefer the group activity.

My students on Fridays have PAT. So they already have groups. You could easily have them form the groups that day for the activity. Mine have to say a group chant and have a group name already established so that we can simply play this game.

So while I could have a list of every single word we have gone over for the year (or for years if they are in Spanish 2 or another level), I prefer this on the spot activity.

Lots of Spanish 1 TPRS resources

So after the relative success of my last post about what I did with the commercial: "Me voy de casa", I decided to go ahead and share a majority of things that I did last year in my Spanish 1 classes.

Feel free to open the folder, download things to your Google Drive or to your computer and enjoy!

My hope is that you can find a new activity or a new spin on an old activity you have used. Or maybe something to inspire you as you try out more communicative-based teaching via TPRS or Comprehensible Input methods!

I tried to include a plethora of things to give you an idea of what you could do in your classes as well to push kids towards proficiency by de-emphasizing grammar in actual grammar lessons each day (Don't worry, I, Señor Jordan, still teach grammar to my kids. But it's more of a back-door approach!)

Let me know what you think and happy perusing!

So click here to see my google drive folder (minus Agentes Secretos stuff since some of that has images from the teacher's guide by the very talented Mira Canion).

*Disclaimer* Please don't judge me too much for how I might have done an activity. I am far from an expert on teaching via TPRS. But I figure the best way to get better is to share with others who might be farther back on the path to encourage them and maybe the more experienced people can offer a suggestion or two!

Mafia game - Presentation

This year I use PAT with classes to help with buy-in for being on task during class.

So this week we have a lot of accumulated PAT and since it's the end of the year, I thought we could play a simplified version of Mafia.

I got the idea from Martina Bex last year.

Changes I made:

• I decided for my Spanish 1 class to remove the doctor, because we never finish a game anyway.
• I added a point system because we never finish a game so that way it gives some more semblance of purpose

And here's the presentation I came up with for today to facilitate the game. The language for "se hace de noche" comes from an activity we do earlier in the year so it's familiar.

You could easily take away the language like "killing" to something else. I talk about how the mafia eliminates people, but might use the term "kill" if the classes are familiar with it. The people they accuse go to prison.


If you can use it in your classes, great!  The kids enjoyed the picture of their town in the presentation.

Templates for additional activities

First semester flew by and I wasn't able to get into the rhythm that I like to create until this semester since we were still using the first 10-15 minutes of class interviewing a student (very basically about one thing they like to do) until we finished talking about everyone.

But I like to establish a routine with some additional activities. I'm only doing Spanish 1 this year, but these activities worked for other levels because you can always use more language when reacting or describing whatever it may be. And these are great to get into class mode.

Often times I pick something because it relates (well or loosely) to some words we have been going over or I simply find it hilarious and need to share it but find a way to get the high frequency words in there.

Here is what I ended up on. Since we only meet every other day (due to block scheduling), I really will only do this 10 or so times each. The thing I enjoy is I can often do some different passes of old words and/or add some enrichment vocab (for those quick kids who want more vocab) and sometimes (if appropriate) I can do some pop-up grammar.

Every day: 

• Daily report (today is) - on board
• How is everyone? - Talk in Spanish about them for 5 minutes, ask follow up questions as appropriate
• Weather report (clip off weather from espanol.weather.com) TEMPLATE

Then I also will do an additional warm up activity.

TPRS year 5 - speed dating and Agentes Secretos

Something I was trying to do with my Spanish 1's to help them read Agentes Secretos y el mural de Picasso was an activity I got from a presentation at FLAM a few weeks ago.

The presenter mentioned "speed-dating".  And instead of talking about themselves, the characters talk about the topic for 1-2 minutes and then switch.  This way they can get another pass of the information from a chapter or a concept and when we change to another person, we can change the information we ask of them.

It also brings movement and interaction into the classroom, which are so necessary in a block class or for a rainy day (or chilly cloudy day in October).

I numbered my students off (1-15 twice), told them to form two lines in order.  I explained they were going to talk about Chapter 1, Chapter 2, Paula, Luis, Los agentes secretos, etc and they had two minutes.

I didn't want to hear English.  I only wanted to hear Spanish.  Their pronunciation wasn't the most important part (gasp) because they were interacting with the text, and I think for some this made them aware of their shortcomings in pronunciation of a word so maybe they will listen more for that word later.

They were allowed to have their books as a security blanket.  Some kids read the information from the chapter (but they had to find the important information about the characters or plot).

Not a bad activity!  I might have to bring it in every once in awhile.  Definitely not bad for a 10 minute chunk in the middle of class or for another pass of the chapter in a completely different way.

For some 2:00 was an eternity.  But for others, it was about right.  They usually opted after the first round to do 1:30.

My mind is thinking about the other possibilities for this type of activity...

TPRS year 5 - Movietalk/Song - Celos

There is a song I discovered years ago and always found a way to tie it into storytelling because of the themes in it of romance and betrayal.  It also has a lot of good solid TPR words like body parts and concrete actions (kiss, look, walk, dance).  It is seriously the best song.

I just found out it's a remake, but either way, it's the only version I ever knew and it's called Celos.  Fanny Lu (Colombian singer) sings the remake and the video is even fun.

In previous years we did a cloze activity and watched the video.  This year, I have some targets I want to hit on structures (busca, encuentra, quiere hablar con, se cae, camina, sobre/hacia) and thought this would be the perfect way to introduce those before we read Agentes Secretos y el mural de Picasso.

So here's the activity I came up with.  Let me know what you think!

TPRS year 5 - Movietalk - Simon's cat - Scary Legs

I am trying to do storytelling this year, but also to add in another component after every story or two: an extension (commercial, song, video, movietalk, cultural connection, etc).  This way I can further recycle the structures from our stories, but bind them in a new way for better acquisition.

Our Spanish 2 students will be reading Noches misteriosas en Granada 2nd quarter this year and we are pre-teaching them structures from the book to be successful.

One of our first stories was:

• sigue ___ndo (s/he keeps __ing)
• se va para (s/he leaves for [place])
• "tienes que ayudarme" (you have to help me)

Then I had done Total Physical Response (TPR) during brain breaks for some other words:

• aplasta (s/he squishes)
• [se] sube (s/he climbs/goes up)
• muere (s/he dies)

And for fun, I also went over the song: la araña pequeñita

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.

Día 109 - idea for an activity

So I just had a few ideas.  We'll see how they work out.  Last year I used to give certain stories to students (pre-TPRS) and then I had them order them again to a logical order.  This kind of goes along the same lines but somehow the idea was dormant in my brain until this exact moment.

Idea 1:
So an obvious idea would be to break the students up into groups of 2-4 (depending on the class size) and then to have a reading for the day cut up into pieces.  Then I have the students order the pieces.  Once they order them, we'll go over the story and see how they did.  It would be good to help them think about the narrative while piecing it together.

Idea 2:
 Another idea would be to have the groups be given multiple stories that are the same cut up and each story is in an envelope labeled with a number or a letter.  Each group would race to put one story together.  Then we would see who came closest.  We could start out with simpler and go to more complex.

It could be a good review of vocabulary and/or structures that have been presented.

 Idea 3:

  I was thinking that something I could do with my 8th graders (or high schoolers) would be break them up into groups and give each group a different story.  Each group would then have 6 panels cut up.  They would each have to draw 1-2 different pictures from different parts in the story to illustrate it.  Then we would circle through the stories and have the groups put the pictures in order based on the story.  I thought it would be better for them to draw them since I am horrible at drawing them.

So we'll see if I'll remember to do any of these activities in the future. ;-)

Día 96 - music day

So you've probably figured out by now due to my numerous entries on music that my students have been enjoying it this year.  Part of it might be that it's a different activity from the norm and we aren't telling stories but I still require them to do something with the language and then we treat it as a reading a little bit when possible.

And yesterday was supposed to be Music Day (Thursday), but I had a student from Truman State University come in to practice TPRS.  I had to explain to my students that we would shift music day to Friday and I almost had a mutiny.  Another teacher told me today that yesterday she saw on students' facebook status' that they were excited for what song Señor Jordan had picked out for music day.  So I guess it's been a little successful?

Something that I've noticed though is that I don't usually do much to introduce the song.  We go into it, then maybe after the first time or second time I tell them where the artist is from so they don't think they're from Mexico (for speaking Spanish).  But I don't do much with the song ahead of time.

So today I decided that the song would be Celos by Fanny Lú and I wanted to practice the idea of 'tiene celos' (He/she has jealousy ("is jealous").  I thought it would be a good way to prep the song and if we had extra time after the song we could continue a storyline or talk about the video and the story that we can infer from it.  So I wrote that one the board and asked "¿Quién tiene celos?" (Who has jealousy?).  I was met with confusion because I had promised a song and they knew THIS wasn't a song... oops.  I told them "un momento" and continued.  We got to develop little silly stories and associations so by that time I got to passing out the song, they understood as soon as they saw the title.  I think this enriched the song more than before because now they had a context for the phrase and they also had personalized it into their class so we could talk about the crazy jealous woman and also talk about people in the class.

I think future implementation of this kind of TPRS introduction to a song will only further reinforce music day to make it better.

Día 55 - Games

When I first started, I would do games all the time!  I mean, seriously.  We played games two times a week.  Sometimes if we could get through a book lesson quickly enough we would play games more often.  The most popular was always Matamoscas.  Then I learned about other games and have slowly been adding them in here and there.

The following is a list of games I compiled for someone on moretprs.net in a way to catalog some of the games that I've done in the past.  I would love to attribute them to people who came up with them. But I don't really remember where I got some of them from.

Here are a couple I have used over the years:

A. Caramba
Here's a brief explanation... if you have technology it makes it a little easier and you don't waste paper but I did it back before I had a projector. (download ppt)

• You make cards (slides) of different vocab.
• Then you insert some cards that say "Caramba" on them and scramble it all up. ( I usually do 10 Caramba cards/slides)
• you have students in teams
• have teams elect a representative (this is the person you will listen to)
• you show the vocab word (or show English word) or even something from a TPRS story and have them translate or finish or true or false... anything
• if they get it right, they get a point and they may continue or stop
• if they stop, they keep all the points they have accumulated for that round and never lose them for the duration of the game
• if they continue they keep going until they: 1) stop, 2) miss one 3) get a 'Caramba'
• if they get one wrong or a 'Caramba'; their turn is over and they lose any points from that round
• my kids have a love/hate relationship with this game.

B. Conecta 4

• I made a powerpoint and it's a tad tricky but it plays like the game 'Connect 4" with two teams
• instructions are included in powerpoint (slide 1)
• (download template ppt)

C. ¿Dónde está Wally?

• in previous years I used this to practice place vocab
• if you have tech, I have a PowerPoint template (download ppt)
• if you don't have any tech, you can print out pictures of places and glue them onto a piece of heavier paper with a small pocket at the bottom and then insert some different waldos into the pockets randomly. Have those pictures taped on the board and have the students guess.
• they write down their answers and if they are right, they get a point
• to build suspense I go person to person and ask "¿Dónde está Wally?" and they have to tell me a guess... then as a class we see if they were right or not

D. Jeopardy

• I have a powerpoint template (download ppt)
• if you don't have tech in your classroom, you can always write number values on the board with the categories and have a notecard with the questions and answers. I've done both and either one is successful with the students.

E. Sentence scramble

• I've come up with sentences and the cut them all up and had the students try to put them back together beforehand timed
• the group that gets the most wins

F. Crossword puzzle w/ clues

• I projected a crossword on the board w/ an overhead and then had each team with a different marker color. They were given clues for the words (in Spanish) on a piece of paper and then they had to figure out what the word was. One person could come up to the board from each team at a time to write a word in there.
• the winning team had the most words filled in correctly
• you can make free crossword puzzles at http://www.armoredpenguin.com and then project the pdf file saved to your computer without the clues on the board

G. Scrabble

• I made my own little scrabble sets on cut up card stock paper/notecards
• I made sure there were plenty of letters as well
• students drew like 15 letters at the beginning and always got 2-3 blanks at the beginning as well.
• first student would place a word down
• students would build off of that word (like in Scrabble)
• they would keep building off the of the words
• the winners had: 1) most words or 2) longest word

H. ¿Dónde está mi _?

• last year I had a student walk out of the class and stay in the hall... when they came back the other students had hidden one of their items... students then had to describe the person who took it.
• this could be adapted to describe body characteristics, clothing, locations like 'near' 'far' 'above' 'below' etc

I. steal the bacon

• if you're covering vocabulary... I liked printing out pictures last year when first introducing vocab. 
• After introducing it on the first day or second day, we had the students compete to grab the vocabulary word on a piece of paper before the other... this is an incredibly fun thing for them even at the high school age.... I just had them keep score...
• seriously, even though it's simple... students LOVE the competition

J. Memoria

• cards of things with pictures and spanish words or translation and spanish words
• students play memory with the cards
• take turns flipping them over; looking for matches
• if they get matches they may continue looking

K. pesca ("go fish")

• play 'go fish' with cards... I usually had the object and the picture or just the picture of the object
• rules of 'go fish' apply
• "tienes _? (do you have)
• Sí... o pesca

L. Matamoscas (Flyswatter game) 
this is my favorite game of all time

• write vocabulary words on transparency
• divide group into two teams
• each team gets a flyswatter
• one person from each team goes up to the board and stands on opposite sides of the board
• instructor calls out a a word (opposite of the language on the board) and students race to hit it with the flyswatter
• student who hits the word first gets a point for their team
• students get two misses... if they miss twice, the instructor counts backwards from 15... if they do not get the word, no point awarded
• if students do not know the words, their teammates can call out directions in Spanish (which are written on the board)
• really good directions can get another team points as well
• usually students stay up for two different rounds

Día 43 - Current Class Schedule

There will be off days.  Today I could tell that a lot of my students were tired.  Or at least they were showing it.  They probably didn't like the idea that I had an extended reading for us to do today.  But hey, they need to get over it!  That's part of the system that I am trying to follow this year while I learn and hone my TPRS skills.

I like worksheets about as much as the next guy.  The stories are obviously supposed to be springboards for conversations.  But sometimes as a TPRS teacher, our ideas bomb a lot because we just can't tell what will be funny on a certain day.  It all depends on the classroom energy.

Today in the classes, student had a really strange energy.  They had a desire to be goofy but it wasn't working well with the reading.  I didn't scrap the reading because I thought it was necessary to go through with it.  But I noticed through reading Ben Slavic's materials that he usually has a story one day, a reading the next.  Then on Friday there is another sort of activity.  I like the way that sounds.

But if I want to substantially change the format I'll just wait until after Christmas.  For what I have right now, I think it's working well enough.  The students are getting used to the format.  Currently the format is something like this with the weeks alternating:

week 1:
M- weekend activity
T- new story
W- finish story
Th- song + finish story or story retells
F- story re-tell and writing story or game

week 2
M- weekend activity
T- reading
W- extended reading
Th- song + finish extended reading

F- reading, game, children's book, freewrite, etc

But I do like the idea of reading the day after the story.  I also like the idea of sticking to a story for one day and not trying to resurrect it.  The reason we tend to stay on a story for two days sometimes two and a half days is because of scheduling problems with early out days or because I might do a lot of circling and we throw in some silly details that help the kids feel more like it's there story


Food for thought.

Día 34 - Incentive for Junior High students

I've been noticing that my passion is not with Junior High students.  I messed up by not knowing enough about TPRS this year when starting with the Junior High.  I've tried some different things but if I try to start with some materials now like Amy Catania's Cuentos Fantásticos, I am met with such resistance by the class.

Classroom management is something that is hardest for me to accomplish with the middle school kids.  Yelling is not something I like and it is not incredibly effective.  Yelling is basically a bluff and could be equated with nagging except for the fact that it might be louder.  Kids probably realize by middle school if not before that yelling isn't the way to get them to do things.  They fear punishment.  Well some do.  Others don't fear much.

I have some repeat offenders who want to distract the class and I tried being positive and told them to write me a letter of apology during class because they were being very disrespectful of me and I could not believe that they would treat me that way.  They wrote me nice letters but the next day the problem persisted.  Writing obviously is not a genuine representation of feelings and/or intentions at that age.  It's understandable.  I was simply trying it to see what would happen.

Sometimes I show them goofy things at the end of class or at the beginning.  At that age, they love anything silly or weird.  It's great fun.  So I showed them a text-to-speech program and I blabberized a photo of myself.  Then I let them draw on the faces of famous people with my Smartboard-like setup involving a Wii-remote and a projector.  Yesterday the kids wanted something at the end of class and I was unable to finish my lesson because a few were being too distracting.  So I told them at the end of class that there was no excuse for that type of behavior and I would not reward bad behavior with some incentive.  I thought doing that would be effective to help them self-regulate but the other kids cannot peer pressure two of the students enough to stop talking and pay attention.  Any attention is attention for these two students and they will simply act up.

A fellow teacher suggested that I try to offer something at the end of class and give it to those students who do what they are supposed to do in class and have the students who did not do what I asked to watch the activity.

So today I will give them 5 Señor Bucks at the beginning of class and if they do well in class they will cash that in at the end of class to do the activity.  If they do not follow the expectations that I point out to them during class, I will take away their Señor Bucks during the infraction and they will no longer be able to participate at the end.  I think the activity will be where I have the students draw on the face of a famous person at the end of class and the students who do not follow my instructions will not get to participate in the activity.

Vamos a ver... (we'll see)

Día 13 - Weekend Activity

In my free time, I've been trying to read more about TPRS and different strategies other teachers implement to find success in their classroom.

Last week, I remember either reading in some random site or on moretprs.net about an activity with the weekend for class.

After the weekend, the teacher writes up a few options on the board of what they did.  Then they can talk about students and what they did on the weekend with yes/no questions.  Each week you could slowly introduce more terms and vocabulary catered to what your kids might do.  But even if they don't do the things, you can still have them "play the game" of storytelling through lying about what they've done.

Today I decided to try it.  With TPRS, you should be able to turn anything into a story if your class participates.  But it REALLY depends on the class.  It doesn't matter what the teacher does, if the students don't want to participate, class drags on and on.

I started off my classes with some of the question words and the following on the board:
--------------------------------------

Durante el fin de semana

   During the weekend...
     1.  Fui a San Luis
           I went to St. Louis
     2. Vi la televisión
           I watched tv

     3. Comí en Macaroni Grill

           I ate in Macaroni Grill.
-------------------------------------
From that, I introduced the information and then started straight into asking questions about other people.  If you're not sure how I did that, see the previous entry on circling.

By the time I got to the last statement, a few other people in class should have been able to include themselves.

Successes:
Third hour did a fantastic job today.  I reminded my students that it was their job to make the class fun before we started.  I then proceeded to start class. By the end of the class, a student had gone to Mcdonald's in Texas with Dora the Explorer to eat overweight, ugly and smelly children.  Another student went to Narnia with Gary the snail to Mr. Tumnus' house to eat Mr. Tumnus.  Another student ate brownies in the gas station bathroom with Justin Bebier.

Fifth hour also made the class incredibly fun.  The hilarious thing about TPRS is that you never quite know where it's going to go during class.  You can always have an outline of things that you'll be doing.  But each class can take such interesting turns with the structures and make it their own.  During fifth hour, two students showed up late and it turned into a romantic situation later in class.  One student went to Texas with Dale Earnheardt Jr.  Another student went to Japan with Peter Parker.  I evidently went to St Louis with Samuel L. Jackson.  One student watched Pokemon while another student watched Spongebob.  The teacher watched Dr. Phil.  The teacher went to Macaroni Grill.  Another student went to Subway with the student she arrived late with to class.  Suddenly, we had a romantic situation in class that I hadn't foreseen!  I took advantage of it and asked what she ate her food with.  She ate her food with his hand.  Finally, he kissed her on her hair.  The students were yelling out suggestions but I wanted to go with a less obvious choice.  He was a good sport and kissed his hand then touched the girl's hair.

Did I show up to class today knowing that a student ate fat, ugly, smelly children at McDonald's with Dora the Explorer or that two of my other students enjoyed a romantic dinner at Subway?  You never quite know what will happen in TPRS when the class does their part.

Room for improvement:
It's funny because I was doubting the usefulness of my approach to the weekend activity this morning because it flopped in the first two classes.

The students acted as if they had not slept at all during the weekend.  No matter how much I tried to get them to enjoy class and to wake up, they didn't try as hard.  I tried to remind them that I could only do my half and the class was only as interesting as they made it.  Nevertheless, by the time I got to third hour, I just found myself kind of drained of energy.

This just helps me realize that I need to help the first two hours to get a little more goofy with their stories because they don't quite have it mastered on their own like 3rd hour and 5th hour.

Día 7 - Three-Ring Circus

Today in class I wanted to spice things up a little bit.

In the book TPR Stories for Paso a Paso by Karen Rowan, she mentions an activity called: Three Ring Circus.

The idea is that you have three students doing completely different things while you try to talk to the class about it.

So in my classes today for the last 10 minutes, we tried this.  I had three volunteers.  I told the volunteers the following directions and made sure they continued performing them until we finished talking about them.

Volunteer 1: Walk to the wall. Hit the wall with your foot.  Walk to the desk.  Hug the desk.  (don't stop!)
Volunteer 2: Dance to the board.  Kiss the board.  Dance to the table.  Eat the table. (don't stop!)
Volunteer 3: Sit on the book.  Stand up.  Play guitar.  Yell. (don't stop!)

Then you ask the rest of the class questions about the students performing the actions.  You can start out with yes/no questions about them like:

• Does V1 walk?  (yes)
• Does V2 yell? (no)
• Does V1 play guitar (no)
• Does V3 yell? (yes)

Then you can ask different questions with one-word answers like:

• Who yells?
• Who plays the guitar?
• Who kisses the board?
• Does V1 hit the wall with his/her hand or his/her foot?
• Does V2 hug or kiss?
• What does V2 hug?

My class really enjoyed the fact that three people were constantly performing these things simultaneously.  It spiced up class and helped to narrate a little.