Movietalk - worst date ever

*Last year, I used this movietalk in Spanish 1 at my previous school. Another great example how you can use things at any level; just vary the complexity of your language/vocabulary.*

This year, here is a movietalk that I did with Spanish 2 because while I am supposed to do a food unit, I find that verbs and meaning are what drive any good story, not senseless lists of words!

So I did add a food word or two: jamón. You could easily add in other words and discuss the banquet that he has prepared for his date.

But you might notice in the embedded reading, I am reminding students of clothing words and other verbs that appear are things from previous units in the year. I always try to bring those words back in in new contexts whenever possible to remind students to help with long-term retention.

I wanted to reuse some of the words from the previous "keeps eating" story (see previous post) in a new context as well with s/he brings,  s/he keeps [doing something], & while... s/he learns that.

I also broke it up into a few days. And I really didn't do much with it. Just told the story, had a few readings, did some exit ticket quizzes, etc.  You could expand it to do more with technology if you so desire and review games. But this is the basic stuff!

So without further adieu, enjoy!

https://docs.google.com/document/d/12_NNN22Vns-aoaYWd08B3cyU6es2RBU7NB-oR4vhRR8/edit?usp=sharing

And here is a link for quizlet flash cards you could use for Quizlet live: https://quizlet.com/_3ddczg

Black Friday story (reflection)

In a previous post, I talked about a story idea for Black Friday.  It really could be for any time of the year, but lends itself to Black Friday because of the craziness that can ensue.

The structures were:

• arrived / got there
• saw the perfect __.*
• bought it for only __.
• it was a bargain!

Here's what I tried out with the story.

It turned out not to be anything earth shattering or groundbreaking. I would chalk that up to my making up the story but not scripting it out well enough.  And my Spanish 2 students aren't always very good yet at playing around in the realm of silliness.

So I had three different people in each class and we narrated when they arrived, what they wanted to buy, and how much they payed. Then we decided if it was a deal. No one wanted to pay with anything other than dollars unfortunately. But that's ok. I'll know better for next year!

Here's what we came up with for our class story and my present tense story.  I decided it might be humorous to have the Incredible Hulk wanting to buy SpongeBob underwear.

viernes negro - Embedded readings

In the subsequent versions I added more vocabulary that we had previously gone over to review in a new context.

Spanish 1 or 2 - story idea - didn't know how to dance!

*Disclaimer* The beauty of storytelling is that you really could use a story in any level. The complexity of your backstory or how you go about solving the problem is really defined by each level.  For example, you might be able to have way more complex dialogue in upper levels and ask the class things like, "what would you do if he/she said that to you!?"

Here's a story idea that I used in Spanish 2 a week or two ago:

Structures:

• No sabía bailar (S/he didn't know how to dance)

• Le dijo, “Voy a regresar pronto” (S/he said to him/her, "I am going to return soon")

• Le dio lecciones (s/he gave him/her lessons)

Some previous words I wanted to review:

• s/he saw
• s/he went towards
• s/he wanted to dance
• s/he was
• s/he left (came out of)
• s/he said to him/her

It's a pretty simple one.  Someone was at a party or in a club. They wanted to dance. They saw someone, went towards them, they told them, "I want to dance with you." Or asked, "Do you want to dance with me?"

Comercial - Me voy de casa

So this year in Spanish two, I have certain vocabulary points I need to hit for a unit and I have wanted to use this commercial for years.

I decided to do a lot of TPR first with my classes to build up their understanding of some words for sure.

So this folder gives you all of the things that I used with the Argentine commercial: Personal - Me voy de casa. (Folder Contains: screenshots from movie, TPR, warm ups, readings, Movietalk slides, instructions & reflection)

Commercial:

Here is more or less what I did.

NTPRS - day 5 - Embedded Reading, Closing Ceremony, Tahoe, In & Out, & Videogames,

*this is my attempt to keep track of what happened while I was at my very first NTPRS in Reno, Nevada 

Embedded reading presentation
In the morning I went to Michele Whaley's presentation on "Embedded reading: A Literacy Tool".

It was really neat to see! I have been using embedded reading now (or trying) for three years.

If you aren't familiar with it, it's simply creating a simple version of a text and then a harder (bottom-up) or using a hard version of a reading and making it more accessible in different versions (top-down).

Michele Whaley did a good job breaking it down and I could see how important it really can be to help kids be successful. So thankfully it reinforced what I did for my classes.

NTPRS - Day 4 - Movietalk in Russian, culture in reading, Open mic

*this is my attempt to keep track of what happened while I was at my very first NTPRS in Reno, Nevada 

I think I woke up kind of late. As I mentioned in the previous post, I was starting to drag as my lack of sleep caught up to me!

Movietalk in Russian:
I missed the first part of the Russian class and either we did the embedded reading during this day or we did it the previous day as mentioned.  I went to the part where Katya did a Movietalk in Russian and I think the best part about Katya, that I want to start paying attention to, is her intentional inflection to sound really interested in what she is saying.

That is something that so many of us, as we start out in TPRS (or get bogged down in what we have to accomplish in class), forget to be intentional with.  But when she would sound really interested in what she was saying, it just drew us more into the fantasy of the class.  She just described a video about a little puppy that got lost from his owner and eventually found him.

Something that I forgot to blog about that I really enjoyed seeing was how quickly she introduced the phrase "s/he thinks" into the class so that she could ask higher level thinking questions while we read in Russian such as "what is the character thinking here?"