New storytelling adventure (Fall 2016)

I've been doing another Youtube endeavor under the title of "Cuentas Conmigo".

This is the fourth story. I just wrapped up episode 6 yesterday and I am really proud of how it is turning out.

In the previous Cuentas Conmigos, there was very little emphasis on anything cultural.  And I realize that that might be seen as a weakness to the videos. If teachers use them in their classes, perhaps it would be best to add in some more little cultural tidbits. In this way, teachers could use them as springboards for discussion or as a nice little culture pop up.

The first episode you can really see this is in episode 5 where we learn that the narwhal can't do any tricks. While he is painting a familiar painting (well mural actually) should be seen. It's something I learned a lot about thanks to Mira Canion and her wonderful TPRS reader: Agentes secretos y el mural de Picasso.

And in this week's episode, the main character finds himself going to a Spanish-speaking country, where (as it was a country I visited many years ago), I threw in some different places that he could potentially have gone to!

Bathroom story (revised)

What's a storytelling Spanish class without a good bathroom story!

I'm sure you've all heard of Señor Wooly. He's fantastic. I admit that I'm incredibly envious of his talent and creativity and wish I had an ounce of all of his amazing abilities! If you haven't heard of him, he makes silly songs in Spanish with story lines that really resonate with students.

I don't personally have an account this year for his site, but he has the song: "Puedo ir al baño" on youtube.

Every year I have a bathroom story of some sort. In conjunction with the story, our warm up involves listening to the song by Señor Wooly and accomplishing various tasks (cloze, re-order lyrics, translate phrases from song, etc).  They always listen to it at least twice when class begins while completing the task, while I do necessary teacher duties (attendance, last minute prep, etc). I enjoy starting class with music whenever possible because it generally relaxes students to ease into class.

Click here to see post from last year.

In previous years, it was more like a traditional story from TPRS classes where a person goes to different people and asks them for information. Last year's structures weren't going to cut it.

Probably due to the nature of my class, it's always a fun time and I had no real reasons to change the story except the Spanish 2 teachers expect the kids to know some more information by next year that I haven't been able to really hit yet.

I need to use "to have to [do something]" and I thought that would go great with a bathroom story based more around the song: Puedo ir al baño by Señor Wooly.  And I could actually borrow the genius idea from Señor Wooly from the story within the song.

So here's what I came up with:

Some of the structures match the song more easily and/or I can use the song itself to create an embedded reading for the present tense while we tell a relatively simple story in the past. The part that I think is nice is how relate-able it can be (for some classes) or how farcical it could be for others. Also, we tell the story once we have TPR'd the phrases.

Remember that in anything it's always good to try new things and genre is always something you can play around with.  The best part about storytelling is that there are so many types of stories we can use. It's best not to limit ourselves to "character doesn't have ___. Character is sad. Character goes to so and so, etc.".

TPR (Total Physical Response):

Here's the TPR part where I have students get up and move a little bit for a brain break:

• Necesita ir al baño (hold tummy / cross legs)
• “Tienes que esperar” (point finger down at palm for have) / (hold out hand like picture for “wait”)
• Lo / la deja ir - let butterfly go free

And I always add more to it, "necesita ir al baño y se da la vuelta y sonríe" (s/he needs to use the bathroom and turns around and smiles). "Lo deja ir lentamente y grita en silencio" (S/he lets it go slowly and yells silently).

TPRS (Storytelling):

Here's my basic story skeleton. Let me know what you think!

New storytelling experiment - first and second person

So I am doing a side project this semester with anyone willing to join in.  I decided to do another storytelling experiment this semester in the past tense and also do the same story in the present tense (depending on school climate where the video is being watched).*

In my first story, it was mostly narrating in the past tense. There wasn't a lot of first/second person forms of the verbs (past or present).

In my second story, I tried to have the turtle say more, but you didn't hear him talking about it as much as I would just have the bubble with the first person form.

This time around, I wanted to really expose learners to language in context and thought the best way to get the characters to talk about themselves is similar to in the classroom itself! Interview them. So I will periodically be interviewing the actors in the story to ensure we have the correct information (and also that their voice is being heard).

Check out my attempt at this in episode 2!

Present tense - episode 2

Past tense - episode 2

*Even some teachers who like to use stories and CI find themselves locked into a textbook that predominately goes over the present tense in level 1.

Choose the story ending (Writing and Reading Idea)

If you've been doing storytelling, you've probably already thought of this activity before. I came up with it because for the life of me, I couldn't finish the last story and it was losing steam, and I wanted to do a timed write, but in a new way.

What I wanted was a conscious extra pass over the structures from our story. So I did an embedded reading of their story so far.

Here are the structures we were working on in their story.

Web Series - Check out first story!

I finished the first entire story based around a monkey wanting bananas.

The story is in the present tense and will slowly build on previous structures.  I will make more stories about the monkey and other characters as I go and each video will get increasingly more difficult.

After each story, there will be a quiz!

There are subtitles in English to offer 100% transparency or for those who want to check what it means.

http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLPD6O-TouCqQXu4LDPOnzAUGDh7r3G7TV&feature=mh_lolz

Let me know what you think!

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

Interactive Youtube Story #2!

I don't mean to turn my blog into a commercial... but I was really excited about doing some storytelling over the internet with some of my fans on Youtube.  It worked out well in April-May.  So I thought we could do another one for this semester and hopefully another one in the coming semester.

I would like to create things that even I could use for when I have to be gone for some reason.  In this way, I could use various episodes of the story and have students watch them.

Otherwise, it's just a fun hobby!  Please watch it and leave a comment!

Rules video:

Episode 1: