See newer explanation
Now I could be wrong on the title of this activity, but I got it from another teacher in my department.
So I am an advocate of input. But there are times in the year when you need to get your students to read. And I am "pushed" in my district to do group work and things that to me aren't necessarily providing input.
But with a block schedule, we have to do something to break it up every now and again (aside from just brain breaks).
So here's what I tried today.
Students stood in two lines, facing the person opposite them (their current partner). They all had their novels. They had one minute to translate sentence by sentence, taking turns. They were encouraged to look up words they didn't know and I didn't want just one person translating it all. Once the minute timer went off, they were to mark their place in the book and one line moved one person to the right (with the last person going to the beginning of their line).
Students were to start with their new partner where the person farthest behind was. This way, no information is skipped and at times, multiple passes of parts of the chapter can occur.
Once students finished (and their partner(s) had too), they were to summarize what they had read in English or Spanish.
Once everyone had been able to summarize once, we sat down.
Definitely not something to do every day. But students seemed to enjoy the novelty. I could probably do it once/twice per novel.
I could also do it on blah days with embedded readings maybe. It definitely helped the students get into the reading more, but of course, it always helps that the reading is super simple and the glossary in the back has the words they don't know.
Know of any other reading activities for classes?
Showing posts with label readings. Show all posts
Showing posts with label readings. Show all posts
Tuesday, February 25, 2014
Monday, May 27, 2013
TPRS year 3 - Piratas(book) - assessment and reflection
My Spanish 1 classes and I read through Piratas del Caribe y el mapa secreto by Mira Canion this last quarter for our final book of the year.
Each week we would read a chapter (or two). As needed we would do a spoken story that might practice some of the structures that we would later find in the chapter. The driving force behind reading the books this year in class was to make sure that the students could find success. While I could have chosen books that would have been much more challenging to them, I think it was crucial to make sure that the books were mostly comprehensible by the time we read them with maybe a few words or things that weren't. I find this important because when I first started reading in Spanish, it was way too difficult in classes because my teachers had an inflated sense of "the students should know this by this point." I was one of the better students and found reading way too difficult in Spanish 4. As teachers we should be helping our kids to find success so they might find more fulfillment in the future.
In addition to pre-teaching the necessary structures and vocabulary, I also would create animated PowerPoints of certain scenes in the book while we were reading it. I also created backgrounds and we would act out the chapters a day or so after reading them. This was also to create an additional pass of the material, and to make sure students would be able to visualize some of the action in the book.
By the time we finished the book, I wanted to assess my kids. The test that Joe and I came up with was a bit of a beast. I think we jokingly referred to it as the "Kraken" at some point while writing it. When my kids took it, although they told me it was reasonable and not necessarily difficult, it was simply longer than many could do within one class.
What I liked about it was we tried to incorporate many different types of questions on the test to make sure our students understood it.
In my favorite section, I made animated slides of scenes from the book and the students had to write a sentence or more explaining the scene in Spanish. It was neat. It also helped me see deficiencies in their acquisition of certain structures.
Another section was multiple choice of the basic plot points of the book (all in Spanish). There was a section of quotes from the book from the main characters, true / false, and some short answer questions.
The neatest part about the whole test (and the previous test about the book Agentes Secretos y el mural de Picasso) was that the questions were in Spanish. My students had to understand enough Spanish to be able to perform on the test and answer the questions. Most kids did quite well! Maybe two of all of my students did very poorly (60%). There were many interruptions during this book though due to track, baseball, field trips, etc.
Reflection
The Good (went well)
Each week we would read a chapter (or two). As needed we would do a spoken story that might practice some of the structures that we would later find in the chapter. The driving force behind reading the books this year in class was to make sure that the students could find success. While I could have chosen books that would have been much more challenging to them, I think it was crucial to make sure that the books were mostly comprehensible by the time we read them with maybe a few words or things that weren't. I find this important because when I first started reading in Spanish, it was way too difficult in classes because my teachers had an inflated sense of "the students should know this by this point." I was one of the better students and found reading way too difficult in Spanish 4. As teachers we should be helping our kids to find success so they might find more fulfillment in the future.
In addition to pre-teaching the necessary structures and vocabulary, I also would create animated PowerPoints of certain scenes in the book while we were reading it. I also created backgrounds and we would act out the chapters a day or so after reading them. This was also to create an additional pass of the material, and to make sure students would be able to visualize some of the action in the book.
By the time we finished the book, I wanted to assess my kids. The test that Joe and I came up with was a bit of a beast. I think we jokingly referred to it as the "Kraken" at some point while writing it. When my kids took it, although they told me it was reasonable and not necessarily difficult, it was simply longer than many could do within one class.
What I liked about it was we tried to incorporate many different types of questions on the test to make sure our students understood it.
In my favorite section, I made animated slides of scenes from the book and the students had to write a sentence or more explaining the scene in Spanish. It was neat. It also helped me see deficiencies in their acquisition of certain structures.
Another section was multiple choice of the basic plot points of the book (all in Spanish). There was a section of quotes from the book from the main characters, true / false, and some short answer questions.
The neatest part about the whole test (and the previous test about the book Agentes Secretos y el mural de Picasso) was that the questions were in Spanish. My students had to understand enough Spanish to be able to perform on the test and answer the questions. Most kids did quite well! Maybe two of all of my students did very poorly (60%). There were many interruptions during this book though due to track, baseball, field trips, etc.
Reflection
The Good (went well)
- I thought the book was a success for the first year trying it
- I was able to do things in this book that I didn't do with the first one; my students responded more favorably to this one
- I was very proud of the test
- the fact that many of my students came to class and were ok with reading once/twice a week IN SPANISH was great
- the Hollywood days were some of the kids favorite days (they told me later)
- my kids were learning Spanish this year to be successful enough to be able to read most of the book
- I felt like I was more creative with this unit than I have been in awhile in my teaching; I was able to use many of my talents to make the book/characters more accessible to my students
- I had the Native Speakers and Heritage Speakers read the chapters while the class translated. This was great since sometimes I have to ask my Native Speakers and Heritage speakers to not answer questions or count to 5 before answering in Spanish. I think it helped them feel more useful and special!
The Bad (needs improvement)
- the 10 week unit seemed a bit daunting at times. I am not sure how some TPRS teachers can squeeze in 3-4 books a year.
- some kids didn't like how long the book took as a result of the 10 week unit
- I would like to do some pirate-based stuff in addition like I saw from a FLAM presentation this last fall (examples were in German though)
- didn't create a lot of opportunities for higher thinking questions
- I do a lot of comprehension checks/questions. I don't do a lot of "what would you do"
- some kids hated the first pass (translation);
- could we break up in reading groups sometimes too
If you would like to see any of the activities I used for this unit, please let me know (jeremy(at)senorjordan.com)!
Wednesday, March 20, 2013
TPRS Year 3 - Piratas - Chapter 2
For my Spanish 1 & 2 classes this year, we're easing into the novels. I didn't even bother with novels last year as my second year after my paradigm shift from grammar to TPRS, but this year, I thought it would be worth a shot.
So we're in the second novel of the year for Spanish 1: Piratas del Caribe y el mapa secreto by Mira Canion. Next year, my Spanish 2 and Spanish 3 classes will read some other (increasingly difficult books). It's definitely exciting.
I noticed that Chapter two of Piratas was incredibly long though. It is around 900 words. Granted, some of my embedded readings this year in Spanish have gotten up to around 700 words or so (which is a lot to read in a class period!), but 900 is even more so. We read the chapter on Friday and went over what it was talking about. I showed some pictures of the map and explained the separation plan. But I didn't come away from the classes feeling like my students were able to digest the chapter very well. So today, I wanted to revisit chapter two so that we could move onto chapter three. I also wanted to try a different technique. The worst that could happen is they still wouldn't understand every little part of the chapter. The best is that they could understand the chapter better.
So here's what I did:
1. I prepared some backgrounds on a PowerPoint (pirate ship, captain's cabin, open sea, Cuban beach, countryside, market)
2. Then I took the mp3 chapters from audio book and cut them up into more digestible chunks of text to work with.
3. I got the actors up in the front and we acted out the chunks and they would move their mouth with the mp3 of the characters saying the lines. Then we might have to do the scene over and I'd have someone jump in and say, "Toma #, ¡Acción!" ("Take __, Action!")
4. The props helped make it as well to add more to the illusion and the backgrounds
5. My actors also were willing to do all that I asked, including pretending to be in a canoe all rowing together and then getting out of the canoe at the beach.
6. during the chapter I was able to ask some comprehension level questions because there was much higher energy with the actors than other reading days
7. Some students even told me we should do other chapters like that. As long as they have action, I am ok with it.
Conclusion:
Not too bad. I think we will do it for the future chapters when necessary. It saves me the time of making animations. And this gets the kids into it more and is simply more fun.
I also think that so far for the book, this is a good start. I'll keep beefing up the unit each year though (with more activities to choose from and props to get into the story with).
So we're in the second novel of the year for Spanish 1: Piratas del Caribe y el mapa secreto by Mira Canion. Next year, my Spanish 2 and Spanish 3 classes will read some other (increasingly difficult books). It's definitely exciting.
 |
| my props for the acting today (woman's scarf, cashier apron, two pistols, cardboard pirate hats, cell-phone, "silver" and fake map.) |
I noticed that Chapter two of Piratas was incredibly long though. It is around 900 words. Granted, some of my embedded readings this year in Spanish have gotten up to around 700 words or so (which is a lot to read in a class period!), but 900 is even more so. We read the chapter on Friday and went over what it was talking about. I showed some pictures of the map and explained the separation plan. But I didn't come away from the classes feeling like my students were able to digest the chapter very well. So today, I wanted to revisit chapter two so that we could move onto chapter three. I also wanted to try a different technique. The worst that could happen is they still wouldn't understand every little part of the chapter. The best is that they could understand the chapter better.
So here's what I did:
1. I prepared some backgrounds on a PowerPoint (pirate ship, captain's cabin, open sea, Cuban beach, countryside, market)
2. Then I took the mp3 chapters from audio book and cut them up into more digestible chunks of text to work with.
3. I got the actors up in the front and we acted out the chunks and they would move their mouth with the mp3 of the characters saying the lines. Then we might have to do the scene over and I'd have someone jump in and say, "Toma #, ¡Acción!" ("Take __, Action!")
4. The props helped make it as well to add more to the illusion and the backgrounds
5. My actors also were willing to do all that I asked, including pretending to be in a canoe all rowing together and then getting out of the canoe at the beach.
6. during the chapter I was able to ask some comprehension level questions because there was much higher energy with the actors than other reading days
7. Some students even told me we should do other chapters like that. As long as they have action, I am ok with it.
Conclusion:
Not too bad. I think we will do it for the future chapters when necessary. It saves me the time of making animations. And this gets the kids into it more and is simply more fun.
I also think that so far for the book, this is a good start. I'll keep beefing up the unit each year though (with more activities to choose from and props to get into the story with).
Wednesday, February 13, 2013
TPRS Year 3 - Story Idea - Hair in the nose
So I have been inspired some other teachers who have been using videos to do a Movie-talk in class. This is the idea of describing what's going on in a scene with your kids.
Having not ever seen someone do this, I decided to try it today. To give a little bit of history though, I had planned this out for this week.
So Tuesday (spoken storytelling day) I told in my Spanish two classes a story using the following structures:
I made an extended embedded reading in the yo form that was loosely based off of a different Youtube video but went along nicely with these structures above. My students in the morning did an awesome job on it. It's a lengthy read as well, but I want to build their confidence with the reading. I thought it turned out well. Here's the link.
Having not ever seen someone do this, I decided to try it today. To give a little bit of history though, I had planned this out for this week.
So Tuesday (spoken storytelling day) I told in my Spanish two classes a story using the following structures:
- Se miraba en el espejo (he looked at himself in the mirror)
- De repente un grano salió de su nariz. (suddenly a zit came out of his nose)
- Lo trató de sacar pero no pudo (he tried to pull it out but he couldn't)
We acted it out and it was entertaining. In one class a rat came out of the bellybutton and a cow came out of the mouth of the girl on a date. We used my puppets for that. Then in another class a pink beard had a pink zit come out which he later realized wasn't a problem when he remembered he was pink.
So today, we first tried the MovieTalk with the video: Blind Date. It's my favorite kind of animated movie: short, silly and it has no no spoken language in it. This way, we can hear the music and talk about the movie and pause as needed and the kids can comprehend what we're talking about. After watching/talking about the movie for 10 minutes or so, I had a reading that I had tried to write around their level (plus a few words that they didn't know but we could be exposed to over the course of the rest of the year). I admit it's not the most advanced story, but please keep in mind I want my kids to acquire the language slowly over time instead of "teaching them" way too much that they'll never possibly remember.
The second hour class is a hard sell. They are quieter and slightly over half Spanish-speaking. So the Spanish speaking kids are patient with the kids who are learning, but when it comes to reading, only one person ever really translates. This is frustrating because I know how important the reading is. It's like the idea, "You can lead a horse to water but you can't make him drink." But I so want to make him drink. I want my kids to always enjoy the readings. Especially when I work on them!
The third hour class seemed to go better. There are only four students but there was more eye-contact with the reading.
I pulled a girl aside from 2nd hour and asked if there was something I could do or if my reading was horrible. She said she enjoyed it, but the other girl monopolizes the translation and she wasn't able to get anything out so she stopped. I asked her if maybe I tried to create groups where only a group could answer however many questions before I changed groups. She said that might help her. Food for thought.
Oh and here's the movie clip:
I made an extended embedded reading in the yo form that was loosely based off of a different Youtube video but went along nicely with these structures above. My students in the morning did an awesome job on it. It's a lengthy read as well, but I want to build their confidence with the reading. I thought it turned out well. Here's the link.
Saturday, February 25, 2012
TPRS year 2 - using PowerPoint to tell stories
A few weeks ago, I found a song on Martina Bex's website that she had created activities for: El chico del apartamento 512. It's a song back from the 90's by Selena. The interesting thing is that it tells a story about how she keeps getting hit on by guys in her apartment building. But there is this one guy that she wishes she could talk to. Finally she does, but a girl answers the door. To her surprise she asks, "Were you looking for my brother?"
Martina actually made a TPRS story-line that was parallel to the song. So I decided to do the story-line. But I wasn't going to be able to do the written story before going over the song since my students had made oral stories that didn't even resemble the song's story-line. So I decided to teach the story-line via a PowerPoint. See: el chico del apartamento 512 powerpoint.
My students really enjoyed as I spoke the language and told them a story to what is basically an animated storybook. It was a great activity for the brain. The funny thing is I did something similar back before I even knew about TPRS to help teach some vocabulary about clothing. See: Pablito compro ropa nueva.
After the PowerPoint, we listened to the song and it was much more comprehensible.
So this week, I was going over the written story 4.1 from the Look I can Talk series by Blaine Ray. The story is about a tiger that wants to buy tiger clothes, but he only finds plastic elephants.
The spoken story structures were:
quería comprar (s/he wanted to buy)
el dependiente sólo tenía (the store clerk only had)
I decided to make a PowerPoint for the written story and tell it to my students. I adapted Blaine's story to accommodate other vocabulary and structures my students knew. So it ended up a little more complicated.
See: Tiger looks for clothing powerpoint.
Then I printed out the story and cut it up into pieces so after telling my students the story, I had them get into groups of two and put the story into order. I thought it would help them read without realizing they were reading. They would have to remember what went first in the story and use critical thinking. I also gave them five minutes or so (most needed a little more). They did awesome though and I think they felt smart because they were able to do it.
Definitely something I would like to do every once in awhile to spice up the monotony in class.
Martina actually made a TPRS story-line that was parallel to the song. So I decided to do the story-line. But I wasn't going to be able to do the written story before going over the song since my students had made oral stories that didn't even resemble the song's story-line. So I decided to teach the story-line via a PowerPoint. See: el chico del apartamento 512 powerpoint.
My students really enjoyed as I spoke the language and told them a story to what is basically an animated storybook. It was a great activity for the brain. The funny thing is I did something similar back before I even knew about TPRS to help teach some vocabulary about clothing. See: Pablito compro ropa nueva.
After the PowerPoint, we listened to the song and it was much more comprehensible.
So this week, I was going over the written story 4.1 from the Look I can Talk series by Blaine Ray. The story is about a tiger that wants to buy tiger clothes, but he only finds plastic elephants.
The spoken story structures were:
quería comprar (s/he wanted to buy)
el dependiente sólo tenía (the store clerk only had)
I decided to make a PowerPoint for the written story and tell it to my students. I adapted Blaine's story to accommodate other vocabulary and structures my students knew. So it ended up a little more complicated.
See: Tiger looks for clothing powerpoint.
Then I printed out the story and cut it up into pieces so after telling my students the story, I had them get into groups of two and put the story into order. I thought it would help them read without realizing they were reading. They would have to remember what went first in the story and use critical thinking. I also gave them five minutes or so (most needed a little more). They did awesome though and I think they felt smart because they were able to do it.
Definitely something I would like to do every once in awhile to spice up the monotony in class.
Friday, December 3, 2010
Día 73 - structures
I sometimes forget how impressive things can be with TPRS for the typical students. Let me first share my experiences with learning Spanish as well as teaching Spanish.
In my experience, the Spanish classroom is a place where a few people try to talk and the rest of the people don't really care no matter how hard the teacher tries. The students can learn vocabulary very easily. When it comes to anything else though, they don't get much farther in production than saying things like cavemen. Many do not even try and a majority of the class looks incredibly bored.
In my first 4 years I tried this traditional teaching method. I worked for hours and hours designing lessons and often times would lose sleep trying. My students wouldn't even use the language very much. They were too nervous because they learned the language through vocabulary and conjugating. I gave them all the rules and then let them try to sort out the mess. It wasn't very effective.
Then I found TPRS and discovered that I do not have to kill myself with planning.
So we've been focusing on the structures of the language this year as TPRS suggests. Through circling the information and focusing on the structures and the meaning without worrying about grammar, the students are actually much more comfortable with the language because you start teaching them how it is used from the very beginning.
The other day my students were doing a reading and they were having a hard time with remembering the structure lleva (he/she takes).
This resulted in a beautiful thing the other day. My students had a reading activity and I asked about if a character in the reading takes a boy to her favorite street or to her favorite bathroom. Then I asked who had a favorite bathroom. A student told me that their favorite bathroom belonged to someone in class. From that point on, in Spanish it turned into a discussion on if they would take me to this special bathroom. She also talked about how she played baseball alone in the bathroom and she fished in the toilet. It was incredibly entertaining. I practiced lleva or llevas (you take) multiple times as I asked if she would take different students in the class to the bathroom. Basically she decided to take the whole world to the bathroom except for me! Even my fat cat was invited. The best part... we practiced lleva so many times, it was used naturally by the end of the class.
Not only that, we spoke in Spanish about a bathroom for about half of the class. It turned out that a student in the class taught how to speak 'butterfly' in the bathroom. Another was a dance instructor. This all came out so naturally in the language and was incredibly entertaining.
It helps me to believe in the TPRS method because the students are so ready to converse in the language with you unlike the traditional method.
In my experience, the Spanish classroom is a place where a few people try to talk and the rest of the people don't really care no matter how hard the teacher tries. The students can learn vocabulary very easily. When it comes to anything else though, they don't get much farther in production than saying things like cavemen. Many do not even try and a majority of the class looks incredibly bored.
In my first 4 years I tried this traditional teaching method. I worked for hours and hours designing lessons and often times would lose sleep trying. My students wouldn't even use the language very much. They were too nervous because they learned the language through vocabulary and conjugating. I gave them all the rules and then let them try to sort out the mess. It wasn't very effective.
Then I found TPRS and discovered that I do not have to kill myself with planning.
So we've been focusing on the structures of the language this year as TPRS suggests. Through circling the information and focusing on the structures and the meaning without worrying about grammar, the students are actually much more comfortable with the language because you start teaching them how it is used from the very beginning.
The other day my students were doing a reading and they were having a hard time with remembering the structure lleva (he/she takes).
This resulted in a beautiful thing the other day. My students had a reading activity and I asked about if a character in the reading takes a boy to her favorite street or to her favorite bathroom. Then I asked who had a favorite bathroom. A student told me that their favorite bathroom belonged to someone in class. From that point on, in Spanish it turned into a discussion on if they would take me to this special bathroom. She also talked about how she played baseball alone in the bathroom and she fished in the toilet. It was incredibly entertaining. I practiced lleva or llevas (you take) multiple times as I asked if she would take different students in the class to the bathroom. Basically she decided to take the whole world to the bathroom except for me! Even my fat cat was invited. The best part... we practiced lleva so many times, it was used naturally by the end of the class.
Not only that, we spoke in Spanish about a bathroom for about half of the class. It turned out that a student in the class taught how to speak 'butterfly' in the bathroom. Another was a dance instructor. This all came out so naturally in the language and was incredibly entertaining.
It helps me to believe in the TPRS method because the students are so ready to converse in the language with you unlike the traditional method.
Wednesday, September 15, 2010
Día 19 - Lack of Enthusiasm
The neat thing about TPRS is that I can see my students really responding more to the material because it's all about teaching comprehensible input in a meaningful (albeit silly) context.
Nevertheless, students will still have "off days." It's frustrating for me because I need my students to help pump me up. What I have noticed generally is that days in which I am not incredibly pumped up are the worst days for the students too. I really must show a desire to be there and to start class on time. Today I was running a little behind. As a result, I started class a few minutes later than usual and I could sense the lack of energy in the students because I didn't greet them with energy when they came into the room. They can sense the energy I have and that determines how they'll respond to the class. As a result, I failed that class this morning. For the second hour, I made a mental note to start as close to the beginning as possible. It was more successful. For the most part, the majority of the students were trying and I had to coach a couple of them into paying attention. But hey, that's what the participation grade reflects. I'll encourage them to participate and pay attention, but ultimately, it is still up to them to run with that.
I did explain that I need them look at me and to answer questions with the rest of the class (in a choral response) so that I know that they understand. If they don't answer, I will assume that they do not understand and I will keep repeating the same things over and over again.
This seemed to encourage the ones who weren't answering to chime in because I needed them to as well. When one or two students don't, they send a message to the others that it's ok to not pay attention. I need to make sure I am constantly offering them positive reinforcement to pay attention when possible to remind them that they have to give their 100%.
I think that what I need to do in the future is to start giving the students a quiz each day and as the last question they should rate their own participation out of 5 points based on how they did. I think this self-evaluation will help them to want to do better since they can see what their effort is worth.
Nevertheless, students will still have "off days." It's frustrating for me because I need my students to help pump me up. What I have noticed generally is that days in which I am not incredibly pumped up are the worst days for the students too. I really must show a desire to be there and to start class on time. Today I was running a little behind. As a result, I started class a few minutes later than usual and I could sense the lack of energy in the students because I didn't greet them with energy when they came into the room. They can sense the energy I have and that determines how they'll respond to the class. As a result, I failed that class this morning. For the second hour, I made a mental note to start as close to the beginning as possible. It was more successful. For the most part, the majority of the students were trying and I had to coach a couple of them into paying attention. But hey, that's what the participation grade reflects. I'll encourage them to participate and pay attention, but ultimately, it is still up to them to run with that.
I did explain that I need them look at me and to answer questions with the rest of the class (in a choral response) so that I know that they understand. If they don't answer, I will assume that they do not understand and I will keep repeating the same things over and over again.
This seemed to encourage the ones who weren't answering to chime in because I needed them to as well. When one or two students don't, they send a message to the others that it's ok to not pay attention. I need to make sure I am constantly offering them positive reinforcement to pay attention when possible to remind them that they have to give their 100%.
I think that what I need to do in the future is to start giving the students a quiz each day and as the last question they should rate their own participation out of 5 points based on how they did. I think this self-evaluation will help them to want to do better since they can see what their effort is worth.
Tuesday, September 14, 2010
Día 18 - Reading activity 2
So one of the hardest things for me is to get excited about reading in Spanish class. I think it's because a majority of my college classes in Spanish were about reading way too much literature in Spanish. In my opinion, teachers can easily overkill the reading portion in classes.
Nevertheless, an integral part of storytelling are the readings. Blaine Ray's Look I can Talk text includes readings and extended readings.
My understanding (which could be wrong) is that readings can be used in class and also for homework with a few simple questions. When we have a reading in class, as I learned in the conference, we should go over it as a class. We go through the reading and have the students translate one sentence at a time while we go through them. If there is something they don't know, I should just tell them.
Problem 1: Pacing
I tend to miss the point when it comes to a reading. I understand that they throw in new words to the stories to help students learn the present tense in conjunction with the past tense and also to reinforce important vocabulary. There also should be a similar storyline from the story told during class.
It makes sense that these readings serve multiple purposes. They are a springboard for conversations about students while developing literacy in Spanish. Nevertheless, I want to make sure that we get through the text in a class period. Perhaps that is where I'm wrong. My approach has been to force them after we tell the story and to make us talk about them during class making sure to finish them during that class.
Instead, we should just see where the story leads us and the different questions. As long as we're learning Spanish, it is ok if it takes us a day or even two to finish reading a story within a paragraph. This would probably keep it more enjoyable.
Problem 2: Overteaching vs. Underteaching
I guess I get the fact that we're supposed to just tell students what something means when they don't get it. But I also don't want to help foster those students who have "learned helplessness." I need them to own their learning in my class. If I get the impression that they aren't trying, that's where I get frustrated. But the language is still new to them and they have other things on their mind. So I am not sure at what point I should be quiet and not help them in the story translation.
Problem 3: Homework
I often wonder how to successfully implement homework in my classes because giving additional readings with a slightly higher level of literacy is how we can increase our students' understanding of the language. Today in one of the classes, I assigned a longer reading after we went over the one in class and a few questions about the story. Once the students saw the reading, they already assumed it was too hard. I guess I haven't been building them up enough yet.
Tomorrow, I am not sure how to handle this. The idea was to talk about the extended reading in class after they did it as homework. I guess we'll see what happens. I encouraged them to do their best and to just try and understand the story based on what they already knew. There were only a few new words. I need to find a more effective way to do homework assignments.
Nevertheless, an integral part of storytelling are the readings. Blaine Ray's Look I can Talk text includes readings and extended readings.
My understanding (which could be wrong) is that readings can be used in class and also for homework with a few simple questions. When we have a reading in class, as I learned in the conference, we should go over it as a class. We go through the reading and have the students translate one sentence at a time while we go through them. If there is something they don't know, I should just tell them.
Problem 1: Pacing
I tend to miss the point when it comes to a reading. I understand that they throw in new words to the stories to help students learn the present tense in conjunction with the past tense and also to reinforce important vocabulary. There also should be a similar storyline from the story told during class.
It makes sense that these readings serve multiple purposes. They are a springboard for conversations about students while developing literacy in Spanish. Nevertheless, I want to make sure that we get through the text in a class period. Perhaps that is where I'm wrong. My approach has been to force them after we tell the story and to make us talk about them during class making sure to finish them during that class.
Instead, we should just see where the story leads us and the different questions. As long as we're learning Spanish, it is ok if it takes us a day or even two to finish reading a story within a paragraph. This would probably keep it more enjoyable.
Problem 2: Overteaching vs. Underteaching
I guess I get the fact that we're supposed to just tell students what something means when they don't get it. But I also don't want to help foster those students who have "learned helplessness." I need them to own their learning in my class. If I get the impression that they aren't trying, that's where I get frustrated. But the language is still new to them and they have other things on their mind. So I am not sure at what point I should be quiet and not help them in the story translation.
Problem 3: Homework
I often wonder how to successfully implement homework in my classes because giving additional readings with a slightly higher level of literacy is how we can increase our students' understanding of the language. Today in one of the classes, I assigned a longer reading after we went over the one in class and a few questions about the story. Once the students saw the reading, they already assumed it was too hard. I guess I haven't been building them up enough yet.
Tomorrow, I am not sure how to handle this. The idea was to talk about the extended reading in class after they did it as homework. I guess we'll see what happens. I encouraged them to do their best and to just try and understand the story based on what they already knew. There were only a few new words. I need to find a more effective way to do homework assignments.
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