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

Comprehensible Input with the MONO

Hay un mono. (from first episode)

So I have met various educators over the last year or two who have told me how much their classes have enjoyed a little story I made about a "mono" (monkey).

Backstory:
I thought it would be fun to make a super simple TPRS like story about a character that wanted something and didn't have it and so they went to the 3 locations. And as I drew one day on my iPad, suddenly I had a monkey, an island, and Antarctica. From there the first "mono" story was born!

Since then, I have had teachers who have met me at conferences (or have told me via email) how much their classes have enjoyed the story.

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!

Black Friday story (reflection)

In a previous post, I talked about a story idea for Black Friday.  It really could be for any time of the year, but lends itself to Black Friday because of the craziness that can ensue.

The structures were:

• arrived / got there
• saw the perfect __.*
• bought it for only __.
• it was a bargain!

Here's what I tried out with the story.

It turned out not to be anything earth shattering or groundbreaking. I would chalk that up to my making up the story but not scripting it out well enough.  And my Spanish 2 students aren't always very good yet at playing around in the realm of silliness.

So I had three different people in each class and we narrated when they arrived, what they wanted to buy, and how much they payed. Then we decided if it was a deal. No one wanted to pay with anything other than dollars unfortunately. But that's ok. I'll know better for next year!

Here's what we came up with for our class story and my present tense story.  I decided it might be humorous to have the Incredible Hulk wanting to buy SpongeBob underwear.

viernes negro - Embedded readings

In the subsequent versions I added more vocabulary that we had previously gone over to review in a new context.

Simple story - Black Friday

I was thinking a lot of a Tripp Script that I saw recently on his blog. It is basically for telling after Thanksgiving.

Here are the structures:

• pounds (lbs)
• after eating
• takes a nap

And it lends itself to talking about overeating.  I thought it was nice and clever.  And it lends itself to Spanish 1 and also just a rainy day story to talk about things on these sometimes monotonous days.

But then I had an epiphany for my own storyline.

I thought about Black Friday and how much people tend to spend on that day. Since we're working on compra and some different clothing items (in stores) for vocab, this lends itself to that very easily.

• arrived / got there
• saw the perfect __.*
• bought it for only __.
• it was a bargain!

*this wouldn't be a goal for me, but might work better in your story or replace "found" for "saw"

Super simple version:

John arrived at Target Friday morning. He saw the perfect shirt. He bought it for only two pennies.

It was a bargain!

Simple version:

John went to Target for Black Friday.  John arrived at Target Friday morning at three in the morning. He saw the perfect brown shirt. He bought it for only two pennies.

It was a bargain!

Somewhat simple version:

John went to Target for Black Friday. John was at Target Friday morning at . He saw the perfect brown shirt for his little dog named Fluffinator. He bought it for only two pennies and a kiss.

It was a bargain!

Etc, etc, etc.

*Then you could do a similar reading (but with culture) involving el regateo (bargaining).  And throw that into the mix. Since it's a vocab/cultural idea I am supposed to hit this "unit".

structures:

• arrived / got there
• saw the perfect __.*
• bought it for only __.
• it was a bargain!
• it normally costs
• he haggled with the store clerk

Slightly simple version:

John went to Target for Black Friday. John was at Target Friday morning at . He saw the perfect brown shirt for his little dog named Fluffinator. It normally costs 100 dollars.  He haggled with the store clerk for one hour. He bought it for only two pennies, a kiss and his jeep.

It was a bargain!


And of course, if you're a Spanish teacher and have a Señor Wooly account, you could do a Movietalk and show the "es una ganga" music video as an extension activity in the week!

Spanish 1 or 2 - story idea - didn't know how to dance!

*Disclaimer* The beauty of storytelling is that you really could use a story in any level. The complexity of your backstory or how you go about solving the problem is really defined by each level.  For example, you might be able to have way more complex dialogue in upper levels and ask the class things like, "what would you do if he/she said that to you!?"

Here's a story idea that I used in Spanish 2 a week or two ago:

Structures:

• No sabía bailar (S/he didn't know how to dance)

• Le dijo, “Voy a regresar pronto” (S/he said to him/her, "I am going to return soon")

• Le dio lecciones (s/he gave him/her lessons)

Some previous words I wanted to review:

• s/he saw
• s/he went towards
• s/he wanted to dance
• s/he was
• s/he left (came out of)
• s/he said to him/her

It's a pretty simple one.  Someone was at a party or in a club. They wanted to dance. They saw someone, went towards them, they told them, "I want to dance with you." Or asked, "Do you want to dance with me?"

Bathroom story (revised)

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

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

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

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

Click here to see post from last year.

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

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

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

So here's what I came up with:

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

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

TPR (Total Physical Response):

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

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

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

TPRS (Storytelling):

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

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.

Movietalk - Carwash

This year, we are reading Piratas in Spanish 1 this semester (last year, we only got through Agentes secretos by the end of the year due to department paradigm shift).

And so I am revisiting some of my activities from the book, but I have realized something since I have been doing the books for a few years now, and this year, I feel like my Spanish 1 students are truly more capable than any previous year with Comprehensible Input.

Something I didn't do in my previous school was a movietalk or two in conjunction with the book to teach a few additional TPR words and a silly story to offset the book.

Here's something I came up with (and am still working on).  I think this will fit in nicely with one of our final stories for the year about el chico del apartamento 512 storyline from the very talented Martina Bex.

Here's the activity.

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 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.

Día 109 - idea for an activity

So I just had a few ideas.  We'll see how they work out.  Last year I used to give certain stories to students (pre-TPRS) and then I had them order them again to a logical order.  This kind of goes along the same lines but somehow the idea was dormant in my brain until this exact moment.

Idea 1:
So an obvious idea would be to break the students up into groups of 2-4 (depending on the class size) and then to have a reading for the day cut up into pieces.  Then I have the students order the pieces.  Once they order them, we'll go over the story and see how they did.  It would be good to help them think about the narrative while piecing it together.

Idea 2:
 Another idea would be to have the groups be given multiple stories that are the same cut up and each story is in an envelope labeled with a number or a letter.  Each group would race to put one story together.  Then we would see who came closest.  We could start out with simpler and go to more complex.

It could be a good review of vocabulary and/or structures that have been presented.

 Idea 3:

  I was thinking that something I could do with my 8th graders (or high schoolers) would be break them up into groups and give each group a different story.  Each group would then have 6 panels cut up.  They would each have to draw 1-2 different pictures from different parts in the story to illustrate it.  Then we would circle through the stories and have the groups put the pictures in order based on the story.  I thought it would be better for them to draw them since I am horrible at drawing them.

So we'll see if I'll remember to do any of these activities in the future. ;-)

Día 37 - Take that, band trip!

So I teach in this miniscule school.  Perhaps we could call it a minischool.  Sure, I'm a language nerd.  That's probably why I like teaching a language.

Often times in my minischool, there are trips that students take like the band will go somewhere.  If it is a day like today, the students miss half or the whole day and I am left with less the half of my class.  I used to think, ok, we'll do a game to review the information.  I mean, why not?  It would be great.  One problem is that there are sometimes days when I have no idea that students will even be gone.  So as a result, I am left coming up with a game at the last minute and we've wasted another day for nothing!  The kids in the class could have learned something new that we could later throw into a story that would just give them a slight advantage over the other students.

This makes more sense to me.  In previous years if half of the class showed up, I might not really do much of anything with the students because my lessons were prepared in such a way as to not do the same thing twice.  It was my flaw in thinking and possibly apathy at the lack of desire on the students' part to learn from their attitudes on the days when half of the class is gone.  But that's high school students.

They've obviously learned this from someone to come into my room when 2+ people are absent and tell me "We need a free day because we're missing a bunch of people."  Well guess what?  If I give them a  free day, they don't know what to do with their time and  they want to cause trouble.  No no no.  The best classroom management tool even when half the class is there is to continue teaching.

I think it also sets a dangerous precedent to the class when not everyone shows up and I don't continue teaching.  It gives them the message that they are only important enough to teach when the whole class is there.  I want them to learn every single day.  With TPRS I am flexible enough to even come up with a story or do PQA (Personalized Questions and Answers).

But I want to give the message to my students that every day we can continue learning Spanish.

So today I did a Toma 2 (Take 2!) of my Dinosaur story from Friday.  I had smaller class sizes and we had gotten about halfway through the short book.  So I was able to circle while telling the story.  But this time I had the students form a circle.  It was more effective.  Some students resisted a little but we were able to have comprehensible input and finish the story today.  I have decided each day to try and focus on positive things about each student when possible and to let them know.  Hopefully I can encourage them to do well from the positivity and it can spread throughout the whole school!