Movietalk - Peanut Butter Lips

*Used after movie talk from previous post*

Continuing with the food unit for the chapter with my school's curriculum, my goal is to hit many of the important functional food words. And then students are given the rest of the vocabulary and they can choose to work on their own via Quizlet flashcards.

There is this cute short movie called Peanut Butter Lips that is on Vimeo that I found through someone's resources (can't remember who. Sorry!).

When I saw it I thought it would be great because it deals with that normal day to day teen angst and romance. Things that all people can generally relate to. We can tap into that idea of romance existing. There's another movie I found from Costa Rica recently that would also be fun to do a movie talk about with a similar idea but a surprise ending. (See Amor de Temporada.)

Peanut Butter Lips is somewhat predictable, but I think it's ok sometimes to have predictable when speaking in a foreign language because it can be what grounds the students. And if you're always using unpredictable details in your classes, using something predictable could actually become unpredictable.

A boy wants a kiss from a girl. Some storytelling ideas, add a backstory to the characters. Why does he want a kiss from her? Sure there is the obvious reason why: he likes her. But how long has he had a crush on her. When was the first time he realized he liked her? Was it in the cafeteria when she didn't laugh at him when his tray fell. Or was it when they were in math class together and she knew all the answers and that impressed him? Or what else?

Obviously my ideas are terrible. But maybe the students would have better ideas than mine!  And why does she love peanut butter so much? What is the book about? Who recommended it to her? Why does she keep reading it?

I didn't get too much into this, but I probably should have! Oh well. I just played to my strengths: tell a story, ask a lot of questions, relate it to my students lives and then read about it the following day.  They did fine and seemed interested enough in the story (maybe because they are polite).

Regardless, I thought it fit well into my mini food unit that I have been working on due to curriculum (*cough* textbook *cough cough*) constraints.  

Here is the Google document with links to all I used!

Oh! And I made my first kahoot in the history of the world for a review game.

 Feel free to use it or adapt it for your classes and let me know if you end up using it!

Look I Can Talk (edition 2015) - review

*Disclaimer* I am very grateful for the Blaine Ray workshops that I have attended and for the TPRS method in general that he adapted from TPR.  I am indebted to him for helping me transform my classroom into a place where we can explore themes, topics, etc in the target language and where there is so much more laughter and genuine interest than ever before. The following are my opinions on his new teacher's guide: Look I Can Talk, which was published in 2015. And I continue to wish Blaine Ray and his company great success!

I recently bought the newest edition of the Blaine Ray Look I Can Talk book (May 2015) thinking that I could finally have something to follow and do a little bit of auto-piloting with my lesson planning instead of coming up with my own stories and/or scouring other people's books/blogs for storytelling.  First semester, we got through about 4 or so of the stories in addition to other activities (PQA, TPR, etc) and reading Agentes Secretos.

This semester, I looked at the up-and-coming stories and wondered where all of the funny and interesting story-lines have gone!

I'm finding myself nostalgic for the sillier story-lines from the edition I used to use (June 2006).  I guess a lot has changed in 9 years of TPRS.

I know that for some, TPRS is equated to "just telling wacky stories to students". And the discredit the method because (1) they aren't wacky or (2) the wackiness detracts from their perception of the methods professionalism and efficacy.  So maybe Blaine Ray's company has decided to put out a book that is more friendly to less goofy personality types to give more seriousness to the method. And also to align with textbooks and traditionally accepted curriculum more.

But in my experiences the wacky helps things stay compelling and unpredictable. It also helps us reduce the affective filter by creating laughter in the classroom.

For example, in the 2006 edition, one of the story-lines is that a person thinks they are a gorilla and go to various doctors. Finally one gorilla expert tells them that real gorillas have "__". Then they go to another doctor who gives them "__".  It was silly and lighthearted and dealt with high frequency stuff. In the embedded reading, a teacher could add more doctor/patient vocabulary as needed.

Granted, not every story has to be a side-splitting tale, because each class is different. Most of the stories in the new edition give very little to the imagination. They are just about kids wanting xboxs, videogames or iphones.  Each story  from what I can see so far follows the exact same formula and revolves around what technology the kids want/have, I find that materialism has tried to butt its head into my curriculum.  Whatever happened to the girl who wanted white chocolate (to practice colors and food) or the boy who wanted a bed between two animals?

I am not here to tell you whether to buy it or not, as we quite possibly have different personalities and priorities in our classrooms. But I had to ask myself the following question last night as I determined what I was going to do this semester for storytelling: If I am not excited about the story lines (because they are goofy/silly/quirky), how can I possibly get my kids excited about them?  

And with the new LICT, I personally am not finding myself very excited about teaching the stories.

*Edit* Yet upon more reflection, maybe those storylines from the new edition are what have helped my students to better than ever before use the first / second person forms of the verbs.