TPRS year 2 - JH story - afraid

A week or two ago, I was looking on the kid's questionnaires and I decided to tell a story using the following structures simply from the mere possibilities of PQA (personalized questions and answers).  Especially with Junior High students, things tend to be over the top so I figured let's find a strong emotion that can make the story interesting and in this case, I chose: fear.

So my three structures were:

• tiene miedo de - s/he is afraid of
• llama - s/he calls
• llega - s/he arrives

 Here's a possible reading for the following day (It's in Spanish, sorry if you can't read Spanish!)

cuento posible:
     Hay un chico que se llama James Bond.  James Bond tiene miedo de las chicas.  James Bond está en un restaurante.  En el restaurante, una chica mira a James Bond.  James Bond tiene miedo de la chica.  James Bond dice: “Tengo miedo de las chicas.”
     La chica le dice: “Hola, James.”
     James Bond no está contento.  James Bond tiene mucho miedo de la chica.
     James Bond llama a su mamá.  Su mamá está en el restaurante.  Su mamá llega. 
     James Bond le dice, “Mamá, tengo un problema. Tengo miedo de las chicas y una chica me mira.”
     La mamá le dice, “James, estás loco.  ¿Por qué tienes miedo de la chica?”
     La chica mira a James Bond más.  James Bond tiene miedo.  Saca su teléfono y llama a [un estudiante]. Le dice al estudiante: “Soy James Bond.  Estoy en el restuarante.  Una chica me mira.  Tengo miedo de la chica.  ¡Socorro!”
     [El estudiante] llega al restaurante y mira a la chica.  Le dice a la chica: “Hola chica.  ¿Cómo estás?”
     La chica le responde, “Estoy bien.”
     [El estudiante] le pregunta, “¿Quieres salir conmigo?
     La chica le dice, “Sí!”  Y los dos se van.
     James Bond está contento porque la chica ya no está mirándolo.

*[el estudiante] could be a name of a student in class that is known as the expert in girls.

TPRS year 2 - Junior High problems

This entire year it seems like I have had the hardest time reaching a group of my students.  Said group consists of 8th graders.  Now last year, I loved my 8th grade class (they were an improvement over my 7th grade class).  But I also had known the kids and their older siblings from previous years and had a rapport at the school.

Since I started over this year, I have a different group of 8th graders every quarter.  These 8th graders really can do amazing things with language because they haven't quite become self-aware yet to realize that they might look like a fool in front of the rest of the class.

Nevertheless, my first group of students all followed one student.  About halfway through the first quarter, he decided he didn't like Spanish class (in conjunction with some big personal stuff going on in his life I found out about).  I was counting the weeks until that class was over so I could start over with a fresh group.  They actually did pretty well.  They responded well to my rules.

I have another group who has been wonderful with the language and I felt like I was getting even better with my storytelling abilities and simply allowing a story to happen with them.  But two of the students in there are a little unruly.  One of them bought into class for awhile and she was behaved.  She's a little bit of a firecracker. But for the most part she does what's needed to be done.  The other student is the leader of the pack.  He's the cool guy and everyone knows it.  I actually think he's a really neat kid.  I had to hold him after one day and I asked him to help me out with the class because the other kids look up to him.  He has (to his credit) been pretty awesome since (except Kindergarten day).  I think he enjoys class but he still has to be "cool."

The firecracker though today was upset at me for not letting her sit in a different chair from the seating chart.  I have come to the conclusion that there is no reason or argument good enough for a teenage girl.  This is most likely why Fred Jones talks about the blank stare.  If you give the student nothing to fire back at you with, you will most likely eventually get cooperation.  So note to self, don't attempt to reason with the firecracker anymore.

I thought maybe my kids are just getting bored with what we're talking about in class.  So I need to actually get to the storytelling and personalizing the stories to them instead of more One-word images.  I did the one-word images for about three weeks now, so it's probably time for something new.

Día 161 - story - s/he remembered

So I've been coming up with some of my own stories with structures I think might be fun.  I was thinking about a silly story that I could do with my Junior High kids.  The neat thing is how different my original idea (written story) and their story (oral story) came up.  They loved their story so much though and it was a magical class that day.  You could feel the energy and excitement.

The story involved the structures:

estaba sorprendido (he was surprised)
recordó que (he/she remembered that)
buscó (s/he looked for)

The students came up with the following story:
      There was a chameleon named Thomash.  Thomash entered his room one day and he was surprised!  He was surprised because there was a girl in the pool in his room.  Her name was Jackie.  Jackie was really sexy and she had a small bikini on.  Jackie liked to swim.  Jackie invited Thomash to swim with her.
     Oh no.  Thomas remembered that he didn't have a bathing suit.  Thomas went to "Chameleons-are-us" and looked for a bathing suit.  He looked and looked and looked.  He found one and grabbed it. It was a tight bathing suit.  He went to his room and Jackie liked the bathing suit a lot.


The written story was the following:
     There is a boy named Gregorio.  Gregorio enters his bedroom and he is surprised.  His bed isn't in his room!  He looks for his bed in his room.  It's not there.  There is a problem.  He doesn't remember where it is.
     He goes to the bathroom.  He looks for it in the bathroom.  He looks for it in the toilet.  It's not there.  He looks for it for an hour in the house.
     "Where is my bed?"  he thinks.
     He goes to his friend's house.  He enters his room and he sees his bed!  His bed is in his friend's room!  Gregorio grabs a chair and hits his friend in the head.
     "What's your problem?" his friend asks.
     "You stole my bed!" Gregory yells.
     "I didn't steal it.  Don't you remember?"  his friend asks.
     At that moment, Gregorio remembers why his friend has his bed.  On Tuesday, he lost his bed in a basketball game with his friend in the park.  

Día 158 - important structures in the language

So I teach Jr High through High School Spanish (Spanish III is the farthest but after next year I imagine we'll have Spanish IV if I stay there).

I'm really excited about what we've been able to accomplish with TPRS this year.  I'm far from perfect with the teaching style but I've seen some amazing things with more than anything my students' confidence levels in trying to communicate in the language and going for meaning versus 'grammatical correctness'.  Plus we're teaching them how to succeed more with the language by teaching it in an appropriate context.

But my Junior High Spanish classes are not required and they are only for a semester.  Still, I see that the students in Junior High are really fun to play around with and I would like to come up with a list of structures to target for the Junior High levels that I could easily use or they could bring into other storytelling in later years.  I don't want to teach them the same things.  Maybe similar things.  Sometimes I've been bringing in lessons from Blaine Ray's Look I can Talk year 1 book.  I've also taken some ideas from Amy Catania's Cuentos Fantásticos.

I find that a lot of the stories that I have acquired outside of Blaine Ray's book have to do with a lot of vocabulary and not as many structures.  For me, this makes the story much more specific than it needs to be.  I've found that it's better to have the structure focused around your action/verb because you can easily change who does that action and then in the reading use the other word you wanted them to learn like (grandmother, etc).

Maybe I'm missing the point, but it seems like the vocabulary is more easily acquired and the structures are more of what I should focus on.  I can easily throw the vocabulary in while circling

So if anyone has any ideas of structures that might be high frequency and useful to throw in for my Junior High Classes, let me know.

I'm also going to more seriously take into account the questionnaires next year and use those to really make my classes more engaging.

Día 125 - junior high Spanish

One day a few weeks ago, my storyline developed into a boy had a big zit bigger than an elephant and he was sad.  Jessica Simpson loved him and kissed his zit.  I didn't have any idea the story would go there.  When we got the actors, it of course added interest but the story started out fairly interesting to that class.

My Junior High Students filled out a questionnaire at the beginning of this semester and I wanted to get some more ideas of things to talk about in class with them using the language.  I also have seen that the more we can personalize the stories around them, the more interesting it is and silly it gets.  Of course, we must remain in the realm of not making fun of the students.

In one of Ben Slavic's books, he talks about using a student's pet as a character in the story.  Only, he starts the story with: "___ has a guinea pig." And then he talks about how they have a mean guinea pig, etc.  It develops into a character and even though that person's guinea pig isn't any of those things, it makes the story more interesting to the class.

Sometimes we want to make fun of something in Spanish but it can't be the students.  So how can we make fun to learn description words without hurting students' feelings?  That's where pets can come in.  My students learned the word "fat" pretty quickly because I always talk about my fat cat, Felipe.  Sometimes I might even teach the word "Smelly" with him.  Or "stupid" can also work because I'm not talking about a person.

So I tried this out with a student.  I wanted to practice the structure "Had." So I read their questionnaires and looked for pets that we haven't learned the names of yet.  Then I started the story out with "____ had a hamster" instead of "there was a hamster."  It worked out well.  I went along with Ben Slavic's idea of describing the hamster as mean and seeing where that is going.  Then I practiced the structure "s/he wanted to have" and it turned out the mean hamster wanted to have a car.  So he went to a competition in McDonald's where he ate 104 Bic Macs.  The purple Teletubbie only ate 103.9 Big Macs.  I got some repetitions of "s/he won" in there, which was my third structure and then they finished the story with the Purple Teletubbie eating the hamster.

A student told me that she wanted to be a part of the story.  She's quiet but her eye-contact is great and I can tell she is picking up the language through quizzes and occasional comics and other things.  So I decided to incorporate her into the story.  There was only one problem, the structure I wanted to practice was "s/he lost."  Well, no big deal.  I looked at her sheet and saw she had a frog.  So we talked about her ugly weak frog with 1000 eyes who wanted to have 9 sexy girl flies.  He went to a competition in Jersey shore and jumped low.  A beautiful penguin jumped higher and won.  The frog lost.  He was sad.

The interesting thing was the class loves these things as well as the inside jokes later that are created just for us.  When I reminded them that the students' hamster was dead, we pretended to be sad for her.  I love it.

Moral:
So if I get stuck in a storytelling rut, fictionalizing pets is a good way to make a story more fun.

Día 86 - Warm ups

I would be really interested to hear how teachers in Spanish classes do warm up activities, especially with the lower levels.  I tried to do some with cultural points in English from a trivia book with a Junior High class last semester but we started the class out with way too much English for my taste.

My Junior High kids really need some sort of structure too.  So I don't mind experimenting with them.  What I started doing by the end of the semester with the 7th graders was to have 4-5 mini statements and have them fill in the blanks with the correct word.  It would be reviewing words we've gone over.

What I should maybe do is change the activity from that. Right now I have them matching the words together.  Maybe I should do 'unscramble', groupings or have them make up logical sentences with certain words.  Maybe they could remove a word from a sentence that doesn't quite fit.  I guess I have more possibilities than I realized. 

Since we use a lot of spoken language, I thought this would be a way to help them see the words and interact with them a little bit (which seems to be the purpose of the dictation activities that I haven't tried yet).

I just know that I am lacking on these kind of things for my lower level classes to get them going when the bell rings.

For the 8th graders I am going to check their notebooks once a week and look at the these warm-ups to give them points.  We'll see how it goes.

Día 25 - Reading Activity with Junior High

I had a reading activity with the Junior High students and it was a subtle joke but it was right up their alley.  I actually didn't think about it on a conscious level when writing the story but it popped out of my mouth during the talking about it and the kids became much more interested in the story when they made a connection that I hadn't thought of. (See story)

The premise is that a girl has a horn and she can't get a boyfriend.  It echoes the story that I told the class a few days ago in that there is a person with a relationship problem.  I'm just working with the present tense and some similar structures from the previous class period.  The idea is to build their confidence on reading.

The activity is to go over a sentence, have a student translate it and help with any words they don't know.  In helping them with the words, you can move on to the next part.  You may circle during the reading to ask about previous information in the story.  You can also refer to the parallel story that you told in class in the past tense to test the students' memories and remind them of the funny story that they created which happened to be similar.  You can also create spin off facts about the students.  I hadn't even thought that I would have students who would want to have horns.  But they did and then we were able to circle about how they have horns, how many, what size, what color, etc.

Then we could continue with the story after some circling about their horns and the girl's horn from the story.  I will give them a short quiz at the beginning of class later today to see how they do.  Other than that, I'm not sure what to do with them today.  Hmm....

Día 24 - Creating a story for Junior High

Yesterday I decided to experiment with the Junior High class because they were not responding well to my stories.

So I created the following as a plotline.

Now keep in mind that when you're creating a story for a class, you start with three target structures and a problem.

The idea is to either solve the problem in the story or work on solving the problem even if you don't resolve it.

The reasoning behind this is that without a problem or some sort of conflict, you have no gas for your story.  It's great to add details and funny little extra things to the story, but if the story does not have a plot, there will be no context for which the students to remember the terms.

My problem was that:
A boy wants a girlfriend but he has bad breath.

My target structures were:
Estaba triste (He/She was sad)
Quería tener (He/she wanted to have)

Le dijo (He/she said to him/to her)

I started off class with PQA asking the class how they were feeling.  I thought that I could have my stories in the future highlight an emotional condition of some sort to tie them in together.  It offers a good context for my brain at this juncture.

Then we went into comparing and contrasting how people were feeling in class.  Until finally I asked for a volunteer.  We established a new identity for the student because I didn't want to have any actual student to have 'bad breath' unless I clear it with the before class.  So my actor wanted a girlfriend and he had bad breath.  Throughout the story we added extra words.  If the students wanted them written on the board, I wrote them, otherwise we moved on.

We had two different locations in the story due to time constraints.  After class a student told me that it was a very interesting story.  This helped.  I also had one of my sillier boys in class act as a girl that had no nose who he ended up with at the end.

All in all a good story.  Now today I would like to do a reading activity with similar but different details or a dictation as mentioned by Ben Slavic in his book TPRS in a Year!.

Día 22 - what to do with Junior High

I really do like Junior High students on a personal level.  They have such energy and enthusiasm for things.  They are incredibly fun to talk to.  Nevertheless, teaching a group and enjoying a group on a personal level are two very different things.

One of the things about TPRS that I was excited about was the idea that I could use the energy of the Junior High students to my advantage in the storytelling.

But for some reason, they did not like my story today.  In fact, they hated it.  I was trying to use a story from Blaine Ray's Look, I can Talk! book.  The storyline is simple.  Nevertheless, the junior high students wanted to have the main character kissing and all sorts of other things.  The storyline was not as riveting for them.  One student commented that the story was boring.  I reminded him that if he was bored in the class, it was his job to suggest things when I needed them to make it interesting.

A strange thing tends to occur in my classroom where students in the Junior High class try and make suggestions before I even ask for suggestions.  Or I have to limit their suggestion to something that fits into the constraint of a very loosely scripted story.  It sounds strange that I would even have to limit it, but there are times when the kids want to throw out so many outlandish things that they get lost by their own craziness.  As a result, I can see further why it's my job to help them sort through the ideas that are able to work and which ones are not with the story.

For example, the students think that when I ask for a place that saying someone's pants is acceptable.  If I play along and have so and so go to someone's pants, the students then get lost and complain that it doesn't make sense that someone went to someone's pants.  I of course explain that everything is possible in Spanish class.  Their suggestion ends up confusing them in the long run.

Tomorrow, I have decided to take a little break from Blaine's materials for the Junior High students specifically and work on some structures that I want to teach them and some storylines that I think they will enjoy more while still acquiring the language.  Let's hope so.

Día 20 - Goofiness

I can't underestimate the importance of goofiness with Junior High students.  It's interesting teaching middle school and high school because their worlds are so incredibly different.

Middle school students have so much more energy and I am trying to use that.  Part of me tries to calm them down a little bit so that we can learn.  The high school classes often need me to encourage them and coax them into getting a little more goofy.

There is definitely something more fun about middle school students.

Yesterday we were reviewing a story and they were dying of boredom.  So I introduced a new word while we were talking about the story.  I figured it couldn't hurt to through in the word besar (to kiss) into the PQA.  The students suddenly all got really excited when I asked if the character in the story kisses someone else.  Of course he does not.  But then the students start getting really excited and I have to ask if the character in the story kisses or if a student in the class kisses.  Suddenly all of the students want to call out suggestions and contribute to the story.

And all I did was introduce the word kiss.  I need to start thinking like a middle school student again in order to better teach them.

Day 5

TPR (Day 5)
 For my TPRS students today, I have been slowly adding to the lists of words and the craziness is certainly ensuing.

I did have some students today who asked if we could stop doing the standing up all of class.  Nevertheless, most of the students seem to really enjoy having to move instead of any other sort of production.  This also helps you determine which of the students in class are going to be your actors.  If they ham up when you tell them to do something, chances are they will ham up when you give them acting parts.

Unfortunately, two of my students really want to lean against things or sit down during class.  No one else in the class appears to want to do this.  But these two students, who happen to be more athletic do not want to remain standing or are having a harder time doing this.  I hope to be more encouraging to them in the future to let them know how important they are in the class and their standing is only for a little while longer before we start storytelling.

But seriously.  I have to stand almost all day and I am not complaining!  It makes class go by much faster for me and for most of the students.

One of the most important factors so far in class has been the Novel Commands.  Blaine Ray does mention Novel Commands in his book Fluency Through TPR Storytelling.  I did not realize
 before doing the TPR how vital these are in the classroom.  It's fun enough the first day or two for students to touch a part of their body.  Later having a part of the body dance is fun.  But then when you get to more abstract ideas like 'dance the paper on the wall', they have to visualize the words and make some sort of sense out of the message in order to act it out.  These novel commands can get much more complicated.  I love how the students are able to get a majority of the commands the more we baby step with them.


TPRS
So in my 7th grade class yesterday, we had a wonderful time with TPRS.  I continued the activity I mentioned yesterday from Ben Slavic's book that involved having each student draw something about him or herself.  Then I would slowly talk about each student in Spanish and learn with the rest of the class about the students.  For me it is interesting because I learn personalized information about my students lives.  For the students it is interesting because the class is almost entirely in Spanish.

I have been so incredibly nervous about TPRS since the workshop I took with Donna Tatum-Johns this June.  It just seemed like so much to be cognizant of when teaching.  But once you start doing it, it works so easily.

For example, yesterday I continued reviewing information with the class.  We went over how many students hunt deer.  Another student hunts the professor (AY AY AY!).  Two students play drums.  One student plays "Mushroom Head" on the drums while another plays "We Will Rock You."  One student plays electric guitar.  Another student hunts giant orange elephants.  Finally another students likes to ride four wheelers.

The most entertaining moments in class were when a student joked about hunting 'el profesor' instead of 'los venados' (deer).  I played along with the student and this could actually be an interesting storyline later.  Granted that might be something teachers could avoid depending on the student but the class was playful.  I asked a student before class if he could hunt elephants.  He told me he would like to.  So we said instead of 'deer' like everyone else, that he hunted elephants.  I decided to milk this one for all it was worth and I started probing for details.  I found out that the elephants that he hunted were very big and they were orange.

Somehow when I asked a student if he rode elephants or fourwheelers, the students realized that the 'profesor' actually rides giant orange elephants in [local town].  They loved it.

This just helped me realize how easy TPRS can be.  If we start off learning about our students through PQA, we could have ideas for material to last us the rest of the year personalized to the class!

I'm incredibly excited to see what we come up with this afternoon.

One negative thing is that it is hard to plan for class right now since I am relying on the students and I tend to do better in the moment.  As a result, I find myself (just as when I used to perform) incredibly nervous before my last class.  I hope this wears off.

On the plus side, I don't have to do hours upon hours of prep like I used to.

Day 2, 3 and 4 TPR

TPR
Well, I am continuing with Total Physical Response (TPR) probably for the next week or two.  So far the students have really responded positively to it and they can remember the words very well.

I am also glad that I can come to class with minimal planning and rely on my understanding of the language and creativity to make the students point to things and act out different things in their head that I say so that they can perform them.

If done correctly, it is stimulating for them as well as entertaining.  I like to offer fun and goofy things for the students to do.  For example, today we went over 'señala el libro' (point at the book) and I later added 'señala al profesor con la lengua' (point at the teacher with your tongue).

When the entire class did that, it looked like they were spitting their tongues out at me and I said with an offended expression: "¡Clase por favor!" (class please!).  To which many of them laughed.

It's incredibly engaging too.  Certainly students have been complaining here and there because they want to sit down and they claim to be tired.  I caught a few trying to lean up against their desks or the wall.  I try to keep them pretty active though so this doesn't happen.  In addition, I make sure to model the behavior that I expect.  I point out to them that if I stand, they can too.

I think that this teaching style really fits my personality better than others I have tried because I can be a positive person as well as goofy and teach the students.  I am also not worried if students try to complain because I will just respond by telling them that instead of complaining or sighing, I want them to say "yippee skippee" or something to that effect with enthusiasm so that we can build on the positiveness.

TPRS
In my last hour class, I decided to start trying out a little TPRS with my 7th grade students because they need a less traditional style class at that age.  The junior high class has always offered me something to be desired regarding classroom management. I've been reading "TPRS in a Year" by Ben Slavic which can be found on his website.  In it he mentioned used Personalized Questions and Answers (PQA).  Long story short, yesterday I tried it for the first time with my 7th graders.  It was their first day of class due to assemblies during the first week.  I challenged them to learn with me and I started an activity that Ben did in his class.  I wrote down a sentence about myself on the board "El profesor toca la guitarra." Then I circled and asked questions with "Who plays guitar?" or "What does the professor play?" in Spanish.  Then I had the class draw a picture about something they like to do.  When I went around the class, I started teaching things about the students based on their drawings and Spanish.

It was incredibly effective!  A para-professional in the classroom told me later that it helped keep her awake and was fun.  Not only was  the adult in class enjoying it, the kids were all paying attention!  They might have drifted once in awhile but I could get their attention back pretty easily.  I am nervous and excited to try it again in an hour to continue learning about them.