I already posted a response to a question earlier here about complexity.
But in light of a conversation I have had with a few students I think this illustrates my point in questioning our understanding of complexity by traditional terms.
Example 1:
In my Spanish 1 classes, as recommended by Blaine Ray in his Look I can Talk books, we can teach the kids past and present in Spanish 1. The more we expose them to both, the less they will rely on just the present tense. So that's what I do. I tell oral stories in the past tense and do readings/movietalks/etc in the present tense. When we talk about their lives, we might switch between tenses and I'll occasionally do a pop-up point about "Why did I say: querías (you wanted) instead of quieres (you want)?"
Showing posts with label Personalized mini stories. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Personalized mini stories. Show all posts
Friday, February 5, 2016
Tuesday, January 26, 2016
Responses to Comment - Complexity
The following is part one of a response to a comment.
Someone recently asked on a comment:
I would like to answer in different parts because your comment is loaded with different comments/questions! :-)
I hope my response helps you visualize my classes more! If you have further questions, please let me know. I enjoyed writing for the purpose of answering a comment!
Someone recently asked on a comment:
Hola Jeremy - this is really funny and I've very impressed. I teach Spanish I and I'm in awe at the complexity and level you're introducing to students. I'm really interested in knowing more about how you pace your content and your lessons (in 90 min classes and shorter periods). Just a suggestion for a future blog post. Gracias!First and foremost, thank you for your comment! I don't get too many. And I appreciate them because I post things to reflect but also in case it could be of any encouragement/help to other educators!
I would like to answer in different parts because your comment is loaded with different comments/questions! :-)
I hope my response helps you visualize my classes more! If you have further questions, please let me know. I enjoyed writing for the purpose of answering a comment!
Monday, January 3, 2011
Día 84 - Questionnaires
So Ben Slavic discusses using a Questionnaire at the beginning of the year for your students in one of the books I am reading. In this way you can really cater the class to their interests.
I tried to start off the year with a class plan like he suggests. I had the 7th grade students draw a picture of something that they liked to do and then we talked about everyone. Throughout the week we practiced those different things and came up with some silly stories even from those phew drawings that they did.
Sadly, that's about as far as that went and then we started using materials without the personalization. I would guess that Ben Slavic's success results from a constant personalization in which he is always adding information relevant to the students' in his stories. The first week or two I had very few behavioral problems and we were learning all sorts of language. It established a really good tone for the class that I didn't follow up on unfortunately. Hopefully I can improve from my mistakes.
So now that I have the 8th graders for this semester, I plan on giving them a questionnaire today and then doing the introductory activity like last time. Then we'll have material to talk about for the whole week and I will be able to have information to talk about them.
One teacher used the questionnaires to figure out what problem to create in a story. It was genius. It can be found here.
He talks about how because a student wrote that she likes to talk, he can now create a story where she has lost her voice and really needs to talk.
Since the fundamentals of a story in TPRS are a problem and different locations while practicing the established structures, I can easily see how this story could go different places.
So my goal this semester is to make sure to personalize the class a lot more for the 8th graders and to help them realize that they really are the class and the language is what we happen to learn as a byproduct.
I tried to start off the year with a class plan like he suggests. I had the 7th grade students draw a picture of something that they liked to do and then we talked about everyone. Throughout the week we practiced those different things and came up with some silly stories even from those phew drawings that they did.
Sadly, that's about as far as that went and then we started using materials without the personalization. I would guess that Ben Slavic's success results from a constant personalization in which he is always adding information relevant to the students' in his stories. The first week or two I had very few behavioral problems and we were learning all sorts of language. It established a really good tone for the class that I didn't follow up on unfortunately. Hopefully I can improve from my mistakes.
So now that I have the 8th graders for this semester, I plan on giving them a questionnaire today and then doing the introductory activity like last time. Then we'll have material to talk about for the whole week and I will be able to have information to talk about them.
One teacher used the questionnaires to figure out what problem to create in a story. It was genius. It can be found here.
He talks about how because a student wrote that she likes to talk, he can now create a story where she has lost her voice and really needs to talk.
Since the fundamentals of a story in TPRS are a problem and different locations while practicing the established structures, I can easily see how this story could go different places.
So my goal this semester is to make sure to personalize the class a lot more for the 8th graders and to help them realize that they really are the class and the language is what we happen to learn as a byproduct.
Tuesday, August 31, 2010
Día 9 - TPRS
So I had purchased TPR Stories for Paso a Paso by Karen Rowan a year or so ago when I was wondering how to implement TPRS into my teaching. I decided to start the year off with it in my classes. Nevertheless, I just found that it didn't fit the style of TPRS that I wanted to use.
My class enjoyed the TPR portion in which we had to perform different actions. But it got to the point where my brain just wasn't able to fill the class with things for the students to do or novel commands. At that point, Rowan starts adding in Personalized Mini Stories (PMS). Nevertheless, as I pointed out yesterday, those stories are very forced. They are forcing the students to follow a storyline so that the teacher is in control of the class and they basically just insert students' names into the story.
When I learned TPRS from the workshop this summer, we learned that it's about teaching certain structures. A teacher can throw in all sorts of vocabulary into the class as long as they keep in mind that the purpose is to give the students comprehensible input. The stories that Rowan had created were too detail driven to make sure students acquired the vocabulary. Instead, it is important to focus on the structures and the vocabulary will come more naturally. Today, I decided to start over (in a way of speaking) by starting to tell stories from the book Look I can Talk! by Blaine Ray.
The beauty of the stories in the teacher edition is that you can really open up the stories to whatever. Not all of the classes have to be the same.
For example, in three different classes I decided to teach the same structures. The levels of Spanish are 1-3 and I can tell already that the level of stories will be different because the students in the higher levels will have more words that we can play with.
The basic structure storyline is that:
It's pretty basic. With just that storyline, we went for almost the entire class talking about what the boy wanted and adding details. In each class the storyline differed greatly.
First hour:
There was a boy. The boy's name was Jesús. Jesús liked dogs. Jesús liked blue dogs. Jesús wanted 100 blue dogs. Santiago wanted a new television. Nacho wanted 50 dark-haired girls. Marcos wanted lots of money. Marcos wanted one dollar. Jesús was in the the mountains in Japan. Nacho was in the White House. Marcos was in a big box. There were no blue dogs in Japan. Jesús went to Marcos' big box. Nacho went to Marcos' big box. There were 900 girls in Marcos' big box. There was a party in Marcos' big box.
Second hour:
There was a boy. The boy's name was Pedro. Pedro liked cats. Pedro liked pink cats. Ana liked penguins. Rosa liked to play baseball. Pedro wanted to have 100 pink cats. Pedro was in the Colorado Mountains. There were no pink cats in the Colorado Mountains. Pedro went to Six Flags.
Third hour:
There was a boy. The boy's name was Burrito. Burrito liked cats. Burrito liked green cats. Burrito wanted to have 900 green cats. The professor didn't like cats. Catalina liked yellow penguins. Eva liked blue horses. Catalina wanted one incredibly small yellow penguin. Eva wanted small blue horses. Burrito was in Diana's house. There were no cats in Diana's house. There was one dog in Diana's house. Burrito went to Brazil slowly on a penguin.
fifth hour:
There was a boy. His name was Diego. Diego liked cats. Diego liked green cats. Carlos liked gigantic squirrels. Ana liked tall African American boys. Diego wanted to have 307 green cats. Carlos wanted to have 11 gigantic squirrels. Ana wanted to have 16 tall African American boys. Diego was in the bathroom. There were no green cats in the bathroom. There were yellow cats.
So as you can see, each class had very different details that they added and they personalized the story to fit their needs. I tried to help them learn to play the game. Hopefully we'll get better about playing the game as we go.
Tomorrow I think we'll continue the story. Some students seem to just shut off for a moment and they do not signal me as we rehearsed. I need to be better about making sure I talk slowly enough for the students and to point slowly.
For assessment during class, I did try the 'show me your fingers' activity where the students are supposed to show their comprehension to you. If they show all 10 fingers, they did not understand. If they show you 9 fingers, they understood 90 percent, etc. You want to shoot for about 80% comprehension or more from the entire class. If there is less, review and make sure that the students understand the material. I also had the students write 15 words in the last few minutes of class of some of the parts of the story. This was to build their confidence that they could understand what we were talking about in class.
This method is much more entertaining than traditional teaching because the class can be so different based on their ideas and the story can still be compelling.
My class enjoyed the TPR portion in which we had to perform different actions. But it got to the point where my brain just wasn't able to fill the class with things for the students to do or novel commands. At that point, Rowan starts adding in Personalized Mini Stories (PMS). Nevertheless, as I pointed out yesterday, those stories are very forced. They are forcing the students to follow a storyline so that the teacher is in control of the class and they basically just insert students' names into the story.
When I learned TPRS from the workshop this summer, we learned that it's about teaching certain structures. A teacher can throw in all sorts of vocabulary into the class as long as they keep in mind that the purpose is to give the students comprehensible input. The stories that Rowan had created were too detail driven to make sure students acquired the vocabulary. Instead, it is important to focus on the structures and the vocabulary will come more naturally. Today, I decided to start over (in a way of speaking) by starting to tell stories from the book Look I can Talk! by Blaine Ray.
The beauty of the stories in the teacher edition is that you can really open up the stories to whatever. Not all of the classes have to be the same.
For example, in three different classes I decided to teach the same structures. The levels of Spanish are 1-3 and I can tell already that the level of stories will be different because the students in the higher levels will have more words that we can play with.
The basic structure storyline is that:
There was a boy.
The boy's name was [Student's name].
The boy liked ____.
The boy wanted to have ____.
The boy was in ___.
There wasn't any ___ in ___.
The boy went to ___.
It's pretty basic. With just that storyline, we went for almost the entire class talking about what the boy wanted and adding details. In each class the storyline differed greatly.
First hour:
There was a boy. The boy's name was Jesús. Jesús liked dogs. Jesús liked blue dogs. Jesús wanted 100 blue dogs. Santiago wanted a new television. Nacho wanted 50 dark-haired girls. Marcos wanted lots of money. Marcos wanted one dollar. Jesús was in the the mountains in Japan. Nacho was in the White House. Marcos was in a big box. There were no blue dogs in Japan. Jesús went to Marcos' big box. Nacho went to Marcos' big box. There were 900 girls in Marcos' big box. There was a party in Marcos' big box.
Second hour:
There was a boy. The boy's name was Pedro. Pedro liked cats. Pedro liked pink cats. Ana liked penguins. Rosa liked to play baseball. Pedro wanted to have 100 pink cats. Pedro was in the Colorado Mountains. There were no pink cats in the Colorado Mountains. Pedro went to Six Flags.
Third hour:
There was a boy. The boy's name was Burrito. Burrito liked cats. Burrito liked green cats. Burrito wanted to have 900 green cats. The professor didn't like cats. Catalina liked yellow penguins. Eva liked blue horses. Catalina wanted one incredibly small yellow penguin. Eva wanted small blue horses. Burrito was in Diana's house. There were no cats in Diana's house. There was one dog in Diana's house. Burrito went to Brazil slowly on a penguin.
fifth hour:
There was a boy. His name was Diego. Diego liked cats. Diego liked green cats. Carlos liked gigantic squirrels. Ana liked tall African American boys. Diego wanted to have 307 green cats. Carlos wanted to have 11 gigantic squirrels. Ana wanted to have 16 tall African American boys. Diego was in the bathroom. There were no green cats in the bathroom. There were yellow cats.
So as you can see, each class had very different details that they added and they personalized the story to fit their needs. I tried to help them learn to play the game. Hopefully we'll get better about playing the game as we go.
Tomorrow I think we'll continue the story. Some students seem to just shut off for a moment and they do not signal me as we rehearsed. I need to be better about making sure I talk slowly enough for the students and to point slowly.
For assessment during class, I did try the 'show me your fingers' activity where the students are supposed to show their comprehension to you. If they show all 10 fingers, they did not understand. If they show you 9 fingers, they understood 90 percent, etc. You want to shoot for about 80% comprehension or more from the entire class. If there is less, review and make sure that the students understand the material. I also had the students write 15 words in the last few minutes of class of some of the parts of the story. This was to build their confidence that they could understand what we were talking about in class.
This method is much more entertaining than traditional teaching because the class can be so different based on their ideas and the story can still be compelling.
Monday, August 30, 2010
Día 8 - Storytelling in Class
It seems a tad premature, but in the book TPR Stories for Paso a Paso, Karen Rowan already has introduced Personalized Mini-Stories (PMS).
Today I thought that my students and I could probably get along without them but it seemed like they needed to spice things up. This Monday they were dragging more than ever and the year just started.
I decided to do a little TPR to warm them up. Then we went into the story.
They did a pretty good job with the story. I did like the story for the most part. However, the teacher was trying to force too many vocabulary words into the story instead of allowing it to be more natural. I saw TPRS modeled in such a way that you are constantly fishing from details from your students and circling. So it seemed strange to tell an entire story basically without the help of the class. I decided to make the story more bare-bones and try with the class. This allowed more circling of the important parts of the language and the structures I chose from the mini-story were important ones in storytelling.
I did also tell the story in the past tense instead of the present tense because in the workshop I took this summer, Donna Tatum-Johns taught us that in her classes, she teaches past and present simultaneously. Since she is focused on meaning instead of grammar, this is highly successful with her students.
This thought intrigues me since for as long as I can remember, students tend to default to the present tense even though you teach other tenses because the present tense is one of the first things they are exposed to in the language.
Today I thought that my students and I could probably get along without them but it seemed like they needed to spice things up. This Monday they were dragging more than ever and the year just started.
I decided to do a little TPR to warm them up. Then we went into the story.
They did a pretty good job with the story. I did like the story for the most part. However, the teacher was trying to force too many vocabulary words into the story instead of allowing it to be more natural. I saw TPRS modeled in such a way that you are constantly fishing from details from your students and circling. So it seemed strange to tell an entire story basically without the help of the class. I decided to make the story more bare-bones and try with the class. This allowed more circling of the important parts of the language and the structures I chose from the mini-story were important ones in storytelling.
I did also tell the story in the past tense instead of the present tense because in the workshop I took this summer, Donna Tatum-Johns taught us that in her classes, she teaches past and present simultaneously. Since she is focused on meaning instead of grammar, this is highly successful with her students.
This thought intrigues me since for as long as I can remember, students tend to default to the present tense even though you teach other tenses because the present tense is one of the first things they are exposed to in the language.
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