Simple story - Plays

Someone asked on the facebook group recently about a story involving plays and sports or activities due to constraints they are in. Here were some ideas I gave:

Idea 1: (3 problems model)

Guide words:

1. wants to play (with)
2. goes to talk to
3. says, "I don't want to play that."

modify guide words as needed

Script:
[Student] wants to play something. They play it really well. They play it [embellish]. There is a problem. They don't want to play alone. They go to talk to [character]. The character isn't playing [sport]. They character is playing [sport 2].

How I assess with exit quizzes

This blog post will be broken up into the following sections for quick reference:

1. My go-to classroom jobs 
2. How I might set up a story 
3. How I assess with the exit slips

Part 1: My go-to classroom jobs

I’ve learned to use classroom jobs over the years to enhance engagement from students, add a bit of buy-in for others and help class run more smoothly so I can… well… teach more effectively. I longer listes of things poorly and shorter lists of things well. I haven’t invented the idea of classroom jobs. They’ve been around for quite some time, and here are some of my essential ones each day:

Scribe: I generally have a classroom notebook for each class where a scribe will write down in Spanish what we have discussed.

Quiz writer: Depending on the class, there might be one student who is a faster processor who enjoys having control over the questions for the quiz. They will write them based on constraints outlined below for me so when I get to the end of class, I don’t have to think as hard.

Some ways to tweak this job are:

1. to draw straws or have random picker pick a student. 
2. Have them write on little slips of paper that you can scramble 
3. Have them write 10 and you choose the best 8 
4. Obviously there would be times I would have to change their questions if they weren’t well worded or if they weren’t good questions 
5. I would normally tell them to write most of the questions about the words on the board that we were practicing (if we were telling a story) 
6. Some might do comprehension quizzes in English. I’d rather do it in Spanish since it’s not really a “gotcha” type of thing. I have translations in English on the board. And if I have been going slow enough and repetitive enough, they’ll be fine and many won’t even look at that point. 
7. You could have a few kids each write a question to spread out the participation 
8. If I don’t get to the quiz at the end of class I might start with it as the warm up (but now multiple choice) and with the structures still up on the board.

Quiz alphabetizer: I also would have in some classes a student whose job would be to alphabetize the quizzes. This was great. Especially for grading and entering in grade book. Saved me so much time! And extra bonus if I had students check their own quizzes with a collection of colored pens I had before turning them in.

Quiz passer: Other job if the class was ok with it, was for a student to pass them back out once they were graded. It’s all about saving me time and getting them involved!

If you’re interested in using classroom jobs, I recently helped TPRS Books design some new handouts. Here is one on classroom jobs for FREE. Also be thinking about what are things that would make class run more smoothly if you didn’t have to deal with it and a student could handle it for you.

Story script - wants to impress

This sort of reminds me from an old LICT script I used. Add any additional language you would like. Perhaps, throw in some transition words, or embellish the details to give more language in other ways.

• Wants to impress
• Buys a — for him/her
• Gives it to him/her

My general idea for the story might be:

• Part 1:
• [Character] wants to impress ___. 
• [During time 1], S/he buys a __ for __. 
• S/he buys a __ for __ to impress __. 
• S/he goes to visit __. 
• S/he tells __, “Hello. I bought a __ for you. Are you impressed?”
•  __ is not impressed.
• Part 2:
• [Character] is sad because __ is not impressed with __. 
• So, [character] goes and buys a __ for __. 
• [During time 2], S/he buys a __ for __ to impress __. 
• S/he goes to visit __ again. 
• S/he tells __, “Hello. I bought a __ for you but you weren’t impressed. This time, I bought a __ for you. Are you impressed?” 
• __ is not impressed.
• Part 3:
• [Character] is sad because __ is not impressed with __. 
• So, [character] goes and buys a __ for __. 
• [During time 3], S/he buys a __ for __ to impress __. 
• S/he goes to visit __ again. 
• S/he tells __, “Hello. First, I bought a __ for you but you weren’t impressed. Second, I bought a __ for you but you weren’t impressed. This time, I bought a __ for you. Are you impressed?” 
• __ is impressed.
• (and character’s reaction to the gift. Class can decide if s/he gives a hug or a kiss or destroys it or throws it in the pool, etc.)

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!

Original Story Script - keeps eating

Background info:
So in my Spanish 2 class for their food unit, I need to talk about food but also hit some verbs and whatnot.

I need to go over trae (s/he brings).  But there is also a song that I want to use as a warm up soon that has the words: sigo (I continue/keep __) and aprendí - I learned.

And of course a lot of food words for the unit.

I would also like to review:
pide (s/he asks for/orders)
tiene ganas de (s/he feels like)

Last week we used the Jim Tripp script: "the soup nazi."  Thanks for the solid script and bit of nostalgia, Jim!


Story skeleton:

So the basic structures are:

• s/he brings to him/her
• while John is eating, s/he learns that there is something in his/her food
• s/he keeps eating

So the basic story skeleton as you can probably see:

John goes to a fancy restaurant. The waiter takes him to a table and John sits down. The waiter brings John a menu. John looks at the menu and feels like ordering [food].  John orders the food and says, "I feel like [food]." The waiter tells him, "Of course.  I'll be back soon." He brings John the [food]. 

John starts to eat the [food].  While John is eating, he learns that there is a [another food/animal/classroom item/anything]".  He tells the waiter, "Excuse me. There is a [noun] in my [food]."  The waiter tells him, "That's normal. [Food] always has [noun]."

John keeps eating the [food].
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Then wash, rinse repeat with two more foods, or two more characters, or two more days of the week, with different foods and things.

It might help to have food props. I bought some kids sets at a local store for pretty cheap. So maybe there is some chicken in his cake. And have a rubber chicken on his cake prop. Etc.

Another option would be to throw in some cultural foods from your target culture and have "s/he learns that [target culture food] is [ingredients]."  I was thinking of like haggis and how I would guess each country around the world might have different dishes that would be taboo to a foreigner.  Maybe this will be my embedded reading!

Anyways, feel free to use the story. Tweak it, enjoy!  And let me know how it goes!

And here is my powerpoint; class stories, & present tense story: https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B_jfUujjoeDHWG9YZ2Q4NzVIbFU

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!

Spanish 2 - Broccoli story for daily routines / reflexives

Ever get locked into silly curriculum (or what others call curriculum which is really just a textbook)?

Well if you find yourself having to teach those pesky "daily routines", how about doing it in a new and sillier way?

In my Spanish 2 classes this semester, I am supposed to cover reflexives as well as foods. So I thought, why not combine them!?

So here is what I came up with.

It's about a piece of broccoli that aspired to something more.

I want you to be able to use it in your classes ABSOLUTELY free.  But I do ask that you don't delete the slides that tell that I am the author of the story because it did take me a LONG time and it would make me very sad if someone else took the credit for all of my work.

Click here for a version for Spanish teachers:

If you teach another language or if you'd rather a wordless version to do a picture-talk of sorts with your kids (describing each slide with your own target vocab) click here.

I'd love to hear if you end up using it in a class and how it is received!

If you'd like to use it in your classes but have no idea where to even start consider the following steps:
How to do a Picture Talk:

1. Look at the pictures and look for any underlying themes or words that could be repeated.
(needs, thinks, should, wants, goes, decides, is, etc)

2. Come up with a simple written version of the story that you can tell your students while you go through the pictures.

3. Tell the story to students.

4. While telling the story, to build interest, add dialogue, add voice inflection, ask the students questions about how the character feels, what happens, something parallel in their lives (who would put on a meat dress), etc. While staying in the language in a comprehensible way.

5. Perhaps tell the story again on a different day.

Other Options:
1. tell a super simple version of the story on day 1; a slightly more difficult version day 2; etc

2. tell the story in chunks depending on the length of your classes

3. have a student act out the story

4. come up with your own similar (but different) story about a character wanting to get into a club but maybe they don't have an id or they don't look old enough. So by the time you read this story, it is similar to them and you can compare and contrast the information in this story to their story.

5. have a reading version of the story on another day with fleshed out details; backstories; anything else that will make the story more compelling. I might for my classes add that the broccoli goes to different stores to buy the parts of his wardrobe.

Hope that helps and you're able to have great success in your classes with this story!

Story idea - the monster

So if you read my last post, you can see my dilemma. I now have to start coming up with my own story scripts and picking and choosing again via books and blogs of other TPRS practitioners.

And I was wracking my brain yesterday until right before bed, I finally had a story epiphany.

Element 1:
I needed to practice sale de (leaves), compra (buys), and the other usual ones (wants, has, sees, says, gives, etc).

Element 2:
In addition, going over family members (aside from dad, mom, brother, sister) is not my strong suit. Which got me thinking about this story script from Amy Bachman Catania with a grandmother yelling after finding a monster and leaving the house and grabbing a cactus.

I loved the idea of introducing grandmother because I wanted to use the word grandfather soon in a quick movietalk about dinosaurs coming to a house and hitting Santa Claus and an grandfather (old man) hits them and runs them off. (See video on Youtube.)

Element 3:
Oh, and not to mention I need to hit, "le gusta" (likes), "vive" (lives) and "se llama" (he/she calls himself/herself) to be closer on target at this point in the year.


Storytelling:
So as this is all coming together, I came up with the following:

TPR structures:

• abre la puerta - s/he opens the door
       (open a door)
• (this is a review of a similar phrase we learned in se hace de noche)
• la abuela - the grandmother
       (grab walker and smile)
• se llama - he/she calls himself/herself
       (make name tag on chest)
• this is also a review that I taught a little bit earlier on but I would like to practice "what's your name" and "my name is" more with actors.
• vive - s/he lives
       (my 1st class decided the gesture should be a zombie/monster walking because "IT'S ALIVE")
• le gusta - s/he likes
       (thumbs up)

See PowerPoint here.

Serial storytelling - try #1

So in Spanish 1, we started reading the Pirates book.  After Agentes Secretos consuming our entire classes for about 10 weeks, I decided that it might be fun to try doing some normal classroom activities, storytelling, movietalks, songs, etc and then just do the book for the last 30 minutes of class every day or every other day, as needed.

This way I can use some of the structures from the book ahead of time to prep the students with a story or two to get them more comfortable, and hopefully also have a good time with storytelling.

So the last week or so, our story structures were loosely based around the song: Puedo ir al baño by the incredibly talented and famous Señor Wooly.  I did this story activity last year using the song as the warm up for a few days.

Spanish 1 or 2 story idea - I have an app for that!

I am preparing my Spanish 2 students for a Movietalk based on this commercial because it's so silly and I don't feel as though my students are confident with "le da" or "le dio" or other forms of that verb yet.

TPRS year 4 - Commercial ("Leche fresca")

I was thinking I could use this in Spanish 1 or Spanish 2.

Spanish 2 would go nicely with the next unit we are doing where I will need to "cover" indirect object pronouns.  This might even work as a story script if I could isolate some of the structures that we could recycle all year.  Then my students could watch the video and be amazed at their understanding!


While there aren't many indirect objects used in the language in the video, if we had an embedded reading about the video or a similar storyline using, "le pide", "le da" &/or "le dice", we can get further repetitions of them.

“Leche Fresca”

TPRS year 4 - Spanish 1 simple story

With the 90 minute block schedule, my students and I have been doing some PQA and some TPR in the same days.  This has really been kind of neat because it's almost like two different classes.  Sure they're worn out by the end of it.  But I told them at the beginning of the year that my class would be more like Spanish boot camp and if they didn't like that idea, they could transfer out of my class.

So I found this silly video clip and I was going to try it out next week with them to introduce a simple story to them to break up the monotony of PQA and show them that they have been learning for a purpose!

TPRS Year 3 - Story/Song combo - Me cortaron mal el pelo

So many moons ago I stumbled across a song that was really catchy to me in a silly way.  It's from this show 31 minutos in Chile, which is kind of like a Sesame Street type show, although I'm not as sure about the educational value of it.  After reading up on it, it seems more like some of the cartoons, like Pinky and the Brain, that were as popular with adults as they were with children.

But I digress.  So I found this song called, Me cortaron mal el pelo (they cut my hair poorly).  I wasn't ever really sure what to do with  the song until recently.

You see I've been storytelling the past few years, and it has occurred to me that ANYTHING can help us come up with our structures for storytelling in class.  I needed to talk about some of the things so my students could better understand the Piratas del Caribe y el mapa secreto (Pirates of the Caribbean and the secret map) novel we started.

And the song is fairly simple and lends itself wonderfully to creating a story with some structures I needed to get some more reps of anyways.  Feel free to adapt it as needed for your classrooms and let me know if you come up with other ideas for it or if you end up using it.

Here were my structures (since I used the phone story last week and they went well together):

• ya no podía ir a la escuela
       s/he couldn't go to school any longer
• "Puedo cortar tu pelo"
      "I can cut your hair"
• le cortó mal el pelo
    s/he cut his/her hair poorly

TPRS Year 3 - Story - telephone

So I was trying to find something to help go over some structures involving, "couldn't" or "can't" in Spanish and I came across this story script from Jim Tripp that I bought from Ben Slavic's site.  I really think there are some gems in this book.

The basic idea in Jim's version was that a person called someone and that person hung up the phone.  I adapted the story from Jim Tripp's book.  But the structures I used were the following:

• Contestó el teléfono    s/he answered the phone
• No podía entender / hablar              
      s/he couldn’t understand / speak
• colgó el teléfono     s/he hung up the phone 

* I was also trying to get more repetitions of llamó (s/he called) since that was in our weekend chat yesterday.

I tried it out in both Spanish 1 & 2.  Of course in Spanish two I could focus on some different things than with Spanish 1.  And of course the language was more complex at times and we could review more words.  But the general idea was the same.

I recently had acquired a telephone as well and I thought it would be the perfect prop.

So I asked if there was a boy or a girl.  We went over all of that.  I then asked where he/she was.  Then what was he/she doing (had to translate that... since we hadn't used it too much).  Then we had each person doing something in the place and suddenly, they heard a phone.  The phone rang, they looked for it, found it, and answered it.  Someone called them.  They couldn't understand.  They hung up.  On a different day, someone else called, they couldn't understand because they couldn't speak whatever language was being spoken and they hung up.  Most classes got to two days for sure.  A few classes got to three days.

In one of my classes, a student told me, "Thanks for making class so fun today."  To which I replied, "No.  Thanks to your class.  You guys are the ones who made it interesting."

All in all a blast of a day!  My students and I sure needed it.

*Note to self* Props can really help a story.

TPRS year 2 - Spanish 1 Story idea

So yesterday during our weekend chat activity... I had the following two structures to talk about my weekend that I thought could really turn into a riveting storyline later...

• me desperté (I woke up) 
•  sentí (I felt)

Of course these quickly switched to the third person when I started asking about a student:

• se despertó (s/he woke up)
• sintió (s/he felt [object])   vs.  se sentía (s/he felt [emotion])

And through circling, the storyline quickly developed into someone waking up being disoriented and feeling something (possibly a body or something else).

In one class, two students woke up in a prison and one was still unconscious.  In another class, a student woke up with one leg in a bathroom and a cat.  In another, a girl woke up in a the trunk of a car with 6 dead skinny people with big butts...

As you can see, the variety was interesting according to each class and we practiced the structures.  I wonder if the kids related to this becuase of movies like The Hangover.  Either way it was fun to play around with.  Also you could go backwards as well as forwards in the storyline.  Most of my students like to say, "No recuerda" (S/he doesn't remember).  So most of the questions were very unanswered, but the kids got interesting, comprehensible input as they continue to learn Spanish.

So maybe next year, this might just become one of my standard stories for Spanish 1 or maybe even for Spanish 2 with some different structures.

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.