Movietalk - Peanut Butter Lips

*Used after movie talk from previous post*

Continuing with the food unit for the chapter with my school's curriculum, my goal is to hit many of the important functional food words. And then students are given the rest of the vocabulary and they can choose to work on their own via Quizlet flashcards.

There is this cute short movie called Peanut Butter Lips that is on Vimeo that I found through someone's resources (can't remember who. Sorry!).

When I saw it I thought it would be great because it deals with that normal day to day teen angst and romance. Things that all people can generally relate to. We can tap into that idea of romance existing. There's another movie I found from Costa Rica recently that would also be fun to do a movie talk about with a similar idea but a surprise ending. (See Amor de Temporada.)

Peanut Butter Lips is somewhat predictable, but I think it's ok sometimes to have predictable when speaking in a foreign language because it can be what grounds the students. And if you're always using unpredictable details in your classes, using something predictable could actually become unpredictable.

A boy wants a kiss from a girl. Some storytelling ideas, add a backstory to the characters. Why does he want a kiss from her? Sure there is the obvious reason why: he likes her. But how long has he had a crush on her. When was the first time he realized he liked her? Was it in the cafeteria when she didn't laugh at him when his tray fell. Or was it when they were in math class together and she knew all the answers and that impressed him? Or what else?

Obviously my ideas are terrible. But maybe the students would have better ideas than mine!  And why does she love peanut butter so much? What is the book about? Who recommended it to her? Why does she keep reading it?

I didn't get too much into this, but I probably should have! Oh well. I just played to my strengths: tell a story, ask a lot of questions, relate it to my students lives and then read about it the following day.  They did fine and seemed interested enough in the story (maybe because they are polite).

Regardless, I thought it fit well into my mini food unit that I have been working on due to curriculum (*cough* textbook *cough cough*) constraints.  

Here is the Google document with links to all I used!

Oh! And I made my first kahoot in the history of the world for a review game.

 Feel free to use it or adapt it for your classes and let me know if you end up using it!

TPRS year 3 - going back to the book!

This is my third year implementing TPRS in my classroom.  Previously I taught for about 4 years with traditional isntruction slowly moving farther and farther away from the textbook.  I find that even with teaching Spanish "traditionally", the textbook is horrible.

When I found TPRS, I had this moment of "this is it" ("This is what I have wanted to do with my students but didn't know I was allowed!").  So I tried it for two years and noticed quite a few things about my students.  To name a few, they:

1. spoke more Spanish outside of class
2. spoke more Spanish in class
3. enjoyed class (more than before)
4. could write more in Spanish
5. could create more novel (original) sentences in Spanish to express themselves

But the other day one of my Spanish one classes, the students simply weren't doing their job. Since the first week or so I've explained my expectations to them.  I borrowed them from Ben Slavic's site basically and will probably slowly hone them as time goes on.   Basically they are required to sit up straight, offer ideas in class, allow others to talk without having to raise their hands and listen to others' ideas all the while avoiding English. 

My job is to go slow, point, make gestures, use the students' ideas to make class interesting and anything else that can make what I am saying comprehensible.  

I can honestly say in one class I was doing my job.  I was going slow, pointing, even jumping up and down with a smile on my face.  The class was completely quiet.  There was no laughter, there was no one enjoying himself or herself.  They weren't making class more enjoyable.

Now you might be thinking (as my wife said to me):  Wait a minute!  You are complaining because your students were all sitting down, doing nothing to distract one another and were quiet.  That sounds like the dream class!  

If you're thinking that you're missing something vital (like my students).  They weren't engaged.  They weren't making the lesson interesting to themselves.  I (left to my own devices) will bore the class.  I need them to add things that are interesting to them.  I need them to interact with me during class so we can create something meaningful.  

I reminded them of my expectations and told them that I was very disappointed.  I need them to help me make class fun.  I do recognize retrospectively that we all have bad days, even classes.  But I wanted this class to understand how much of it was their job to make sure class was enjoyable.

The following day, I decided to have the Spanish 1 textbooks underneath every desk.  At the beginning of that class, I explained that every day with me is a new day.  If they have a bad day, I understand we all do and I can forgive them of that.  However, the previous day I was very disappointed by what happened (or didn't happen) in class and I wanted to let them know that if they didn't like how I taught, then they did have another option.  I told them to get the books from underneath their desks because we would be doing a lesson out of the book.  I then proceeded to give them a lesson about the Spanish language through the textbook  We talked about standard greetings, tú and usted with some practice pages.  I thought they might stop me but they were very well behaved during this time actually.  After about 30 minutes of lecture-style instruction, I was getting ready to give them their pages of homework practice.  As I was doing that, one student asked me if we could go back to how things were.

This prompted a discussion that the class pretty much lead about what we should do.  I explained they had both options and I would be fine with either because I used to teach via the textbook.  They unanimously chose storytelling.  They explained why they chose it with arguments like, "Class is more fun.", "We learn more in class!", "Class before was more engaging!", etc.  I explained then to them that if we were to go back to storytelling, they must remember my expectations of them.  

They listed those off for me and came to the conclusion that they would do it.  I think this was an important class period for that class because they were able to choose their learning style as a class and determine which was better for their brains and learning.

Día 41 - time flying by

Today is officially the start of a new quarter for my students.  It's crazy to think that one quarter has already gone by.  But since we only have around 180 days in a school year, it makes sense that after 40 days, we're starting another quarter.

It's still strange.  I don't feel like we have come even close to accomplishing that much yet this year.  With me learning how to use TPRS and honing my skills, I feel like I am failing my students with not giving them enough of the language.

On the plus side, I do teach in a rural school district where they don't have very high standards for Spanish teachers.  My predecessors (as I have been told) ranged from:
1. a woman who didn't know any English that would sleep DURING class while her kids sneaked1 out the window to smoke... to
2. a woman who had taken a few classes in college that didn't have the training but the school made her teach Spanish

So this is a great place to hone my skills since it's fairly low on pressuring me to make sure my kids can perform well in the Spanish language.  Naturally I want them to because of my own pressures as a perfectionist and an educator.  But I have to be realistic.  Either way, they're having a much better time than ever before in my classes and they're learning to use the language without thinking about it.  Some of the more advanced language students (who might not be who you think) are taking some risks with the language and it's neat to hear what they come up with because of our telling stories.  They are acquiring it through storytelling.

But I worry we won't get through ENOUGH.  That's my flaw.  I'm so used to the Textbook mentality, that I forget I'm teaching kids language and we're learning about it together.  We cover what we cover.  It's personalized to their interests.  One class might learn more violent words for their stories while another might use more fairytale like words.  Either way, it's the language.

1.  Did you know that the correct past form of sneak is not snuck but sneaked?  I typed snuck and it gave me a typo message.  Where did I get snuck from?