Cuentas Conmigo (Story 5) - Carlos Prickly

Hey everyone.

I had a yearning to do something fun that can be released to the masses since my other creative project (Súper Lápiz) is only for Voces Digital consumers..., and was inspired to do another Cuentas Conmigo story on Youtube on my storytelling channel.

The idea of Cuentas Conmigo (if you're new around here), is that it's basically a TPRS® story that is done completely through feedback via the comments section on Youtube.

There is a new episode each Monday and this requires voting on the question at the end to be done by Wednesday. I foresee this being used by classes, or learners of any kind who want to practice Spanish in context.

This is the 5th story like it so far. The most popular was probably with Juan Cena. Nevertheless, I have been proud of each and every one of them.


Here are some ways this one is new though!

• Narrator is voiced by a Native Speaker
• I wrote a theme-song
• I think my style is getting more established as I do these

Check out my Teachers Pay Teachers store for free Teacher notes on the first episode which includes some ideas on how to use the series, episode and even has a short quiz or guided notes page for students.*

And I hope you and your classes will tell the story along with me!

Check out episode 1 in the present or past tenses!

*I'm selling the other ones to hopefully eventually offset the cost of paying a native speaker narrator for each episode.

See previous Cuentas Conmigo stories on these playlists.

All my Spanish 2016-17 resources

Ok, so I like to be transparent with my teaching.

I am not perfect and don't claim to be. For me it's about the journey and wonder of learning the language in pieces with my students.

This year went well considering the following challenges:

• Spanish 2 students were all over the place in ability when they got to my class
• Spanish 1 students were those who
• transferred into school system
• didn't get good enough grades to take Spanish 1 in middle school
• students who had previously failed Spanish 1
• my going back to 50 minute periods after 3 years of 90 minute every other day block
• being at a new school (zero street cred)
• new district mandated curriculum ("cough textbook chapters cough")

Don't get me wrong, there were also SO many positives.

• supportive school department (TPRS lovers)
• lots of collaboration
• administrative support and faith in my abilities
• students slowly being won over
• trying a lot of new things
• not HAVING to teach curriculum based on a weekly map
• teach towards final

Sufficed to say, I think I got my students to buy into the method and to learn about one another and Spanish at the same time. There were ups and downs (like every year). But in general I thought my students rose to the occasion and many of them couldn't believe how much they were speaking in Spanish by the end of the year in both levels! 

• Here's what I did in Spanish 1 + hyperlinks galore.
• NOW available in FRENCH (translated by Bess Hayles for her classes).
• And here's what I did for Spanish 2 + hyperlinks galore.

Feel free to look, copy things into your own google drive to use,  let me know if you have further questions. My finals were district mandated so I have not included those.

Selena - el chico del apto 512 - revised

So this is a mini-unit I like to use each year in Spanish 1. I originally got it from Martina Bex years ago as I mention here (from 5 years ago!) and it has evolved over the years to use whatever words I have needed at the moment.

I love how I can incorporate music and also tell a story. This story by Martina actually has inspired me to use other songs to make into storylines. Of course one of my all time favorites each year in Spanish 1 is: Fanny Lu - Celos.  I've also done the same with Sr. Wooly's awesome song: Puedo ir al baño (this year's version).

See this year's activities here for Spanish 1 for "Celos".

So back to "el chico del apartamento 512". It's a song by Selena that has a cute little story about a girl who keeps having guys want to talk to her and she isn't interested. Finally she sees a guy come out of the elevator and he's the man of her dreams!

We listen to the song for a few days as a warm up with different activities to interact with the song in different ways, which preps them for the second week and the actual story that is adapted from the song, thanks to Martina.  I made a powerpoint of it and this year pushed way more language.

I made an embedded reading of about 3 versions or so. If you see phrases in there that aren't in my structures, it's because I had previously used those at some point and was recycling them back in to remind my students of them for additional help binding them to long-term memory.

Here's my basic plan that took about 2 weeks!  Of course remember I also a few other activities in class so we might do the TPR / storytelling part for 25-30 minutes a period. Best of luck if you use it!

It's usually a pretty big hit with my students since there is the music component as well as the compelling story of love and mystery. I am excited that this will build up nicely towards the last story of the year. I am going to adapt Kara Jacob's AWESOME song choice from first semester this year: "Soy Yo" by Bomba Estéreo.

And here's the Selena song if you've somehow never heard it!

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!

Story Script - the fake id (Spanish 2)

So as you might know if you've been doing storytelling for any length of time, ANYthing can be fodder for a story provided you can find ways to get reps in there and have your class help make it compelling.

When I was in high school, I remember making a movie for Spanish 3 in a group project where a guy (me) tried to get into a club/rave and had to eventually buy a fake id. If I remember, it was a commercial for fake ids.

With the Broccoli story I had made for reflexive verb practice, I thought it would be fun to have a story script beforehand to preteach some other words that might come up in a unit on Food or just have fun with.

I needed to introduce: "le pide" (s/he asks for / s/he orders). This works in Spanish for ordering food as well as asking for something. So I had my main structure for the storyline. Now all I needed was a few other structures.

What I came up with was:

Structures:

• era más bonita que (she was prettier than)
• le pide su identificación (s/he asks him/her for his/her identification)
• odiaba (s/he hated)

*Could have used "se enamoró de ella inmediatamente" (s/he fell in love immediately)


General story skeleton:

There was a [girl] who was prettier than [someone].  She wanted to dance in [name], a club in/on [place].  There was a [person/animal] that was working in front of the door of the club.  His/her name was [name].   The girl went towards [bouncer] and he asked her for her ID. She showed/gave him her id and he didn't hate pretty girls. He loved them. He told her, "You are prettier than ___.  I love pretty girls. You can go on in." He returned/gave her her id.  And she went in. 

Someone saw her enter. It was a wet waffle. He thought she was prettier than [same person or different person/thing from earlier]. He was in love.  He immediately fell in love with her.  He wanted to dance with her. He went towards the bouncer. The bouncer asked him for his id. He gave him his id. The bouncer looked at the id but there was a problem. The bouncer hated wet waffles. He told the wet waffle, "Sorry, you can't go in. You are a wet waffle and I HATE wet waffles." (Optional: Maybe add backstory as to why he hated wet waffles). He gave the wet waffle back his id and the wet waffle needed a fake id.  

He left [place[ and went to [store]. In the store, he looked for a fake id and found one. The fake id cost [quantity] and it was for a Fat Pancake. The wet waffle hated fat pancakes so he went to another store. 

In another store, he looked for a fake id and found one. It cost [quantity] and it was for a strong chicken named Bruce.  The wet waffle thought it was a deal and bought it. He went back to the club and walked towards the bouncer. The bouncer asked him for his id.  But he didn't give him his id. He gave him his fake id.  The bouncer looked at the id and told him, "You look like a wet waffle but it says here you are a strong chicken. I don't hate strong chickens. I LOVE strong chickens. You can go in." He didn't hate strong chickens and the wet waffle could enter the club! 

The wet waffle went in and looked for the girl who was prettier than [person].  He found her and walked towards her. He asked her, "Want to dance?" She asked for his identification.  He gave her his id. She looked at it and said, "Sorry, I hate strong chickens. I prefer wet waffles. I wish you were a wet waffle." 

That's terrible!  She thought he was a strong chicken and she hated strong chickens!

*In one class, the bouncer liked what the id was of (pancake or something) and ate the character instead of letting him in. The ending doesn't matter if you have delivered enough repetitive, compelling, comprehensible input.

**Some structures used in the story were from previous stories in our class stories. I always try to recycle things from previous stories.

And here's a worksheet with the present tense reading that I was quite proud of with some routine reflexives and additional activities if you need them!

Let me know if you end up using it or tweaking it!

TPRS resources

Just found this! Looks like a goldmine! Looks like I'll have a lot of reading this summer!

https://tprsteacher.wordpress.com/tprs-handouts/

Music - using songs more than once

I got this idea from Kristy Placido in an online conference through tprspublishing a few years back.

Basically I used to just show a song for one day of the week and we would listen to it and do a cloze activity. It was the favorite day of a lot of my students.  We would go over the lyrics and listen to it various times. But there was never really much of an extension activity.

I don't see a huge problem since my most important goal was to expose them to new things. The songs could have similar and/or different perspectives and we could have a quick talk in L1 or TL about them as needed. Since storytelling revolves around high frequency structures, this is a great activity since many songs will have some part with comprehensible language that we can see later creep up in stories.

I also noticed many of the kids downloaded the songs that year.

New Web Series - Learning Spanish through Stories

Hello everyone!

So I found myself over Thanksgiving relaxing and drawing on my Ipad, only to realize that I could make sub-par drawings and narrate them in Spanish, after some tweaking on the computer.  And Voila!  I have my very own Comprehensible Input videos that will slowly get more complicated each video to help learners acquire the language versus working on the grammar out-rightly.

The best part, they'll be short and each will cover a structure as we tell a story.  I'll then recycle that structure in future videos.

Each story will be about 10 episodes long and then we'll move on to a different story.  The structures will get increasingly more difficult as we go and eventually I would imagine some pretty intense storylines.

Here's the first video & second video starting from scratch!  I think I'll do a version in English as well.

Let me know what you think!  I'm excited and I think it turned out kind of neat!

Read about my first storytelling venture from a few years back:
http://profesoranonimo.blogspot.com/2012/07/tprs-year-2-online-storytelling.html

or see my first and second interactive storytelling attempts on Youtube:
story 1 & story 2