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!

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.

How to start the year with TPRS (part 2) - PQA - day 1

*I meant to post this a long time ago. It is part two of this post*

So if you saw my part one post with TPR, then you should have an idea of what TPRS originally suggested teachers do to get the students familiar with action verbs and commands that could later be worked seamlessly into stories and help students to express themselves a little bit more in the storytelling phase.

Something I had the opportunity to play around with in my 8th grade exploratory classes the past two years was the idea of PQA.

PQA stands for Personalized Questions and Answers.  If you get a chance, I think Ben Slavic explains this the best in his blog or in any of his books!

This is how I do it:

The first day of class, I have my students draw a picture of what they like to do and then write their name in the top corner. They can write what it is in English underneath if they think I won't know what it is.

After I get attendance figured out, I start walking around and looking around.  I am developing ideas of where I can go that day in Spanish.  If I have two basketball players, I could talk about them on the same day and compare and contrast them.  Or I could talk about one on one day and the other on a different day to review the structures: "s/he plays" and "basketball".

Once I'm ready to start, I go over to the board and I write (Spanish in black and English in blue):
    el profesor toca la guitarra.
      the teacher plays the guitar.

Then I say this slowly while pointing to each word.  I move my arms down from above my head to down to my sides (this is my signal for new information).

Once my students look at me like I am crazy I tell them in English:
Me: Oh, right.  This is your first day.  Whenever I say something like this new in Spanish, you are going to pretend like it's the most interesting thing in your whole life.  To do that you'll say, "Ooooooh."
Let's try that again.  El profesor toca la guitarra.  
Class: OOOOOOH.


Then I keep talking about myself by circling the information until students get it easily and we can add more information.  Usually at that point I start talking about another student.  Maybe another student plays an instrument.  Maybe they play a sport.  I will write on the board what they do in black and the English translation underneath in blue/green.

Then I compare/contrast myself with someone else. The first day I stick to a lot of yes/no questions and occasionally a who/what question.

The first day or two I don't do a whole lot with multiple verb forms. As I go with the PQA, I might slowly let it trickle in that if a person wants to say "I [..]", that the action will end in an "o" instead.

It has only gotten better and sweeter each year. I have found more ways to get the kids exposed to the "you" and "i" forms. I should still try to add in the "they" forms a little when more than one does something. But it's really about the kids and not about the grammar, or else it wouldn't be successful.  Sometimes though, it can be hard when the kids almost have to be trained to be interested in each other's lives.

NTPRS day 3 - More Russian, Acting, Being quiet, Reading, Making a Movietalk & Russian Mafia

*this is my attempt to keep track of what happened while I was at my very first NTPRS in Reno, Nevada 

Russian - day 3
So day 3 of the conference and Russian. I think by this point, I was going in whenever possible for the Russian, but was trying to discreetly leave when it was time for coaching practice. This is nothing against the coaches or groups. I just realized that I could be doing other things (talking to other educators, just taking a break to think about my coming year and the vocab lists, etc).

So anyway, I was starting to drag by this time in the week. My roomie and I weren't averaging much of sleep a night. I was probably getting 4-5 hours a night and it was wearing on me. On breaks I was calling my family because I missed them dearly so I wasn't really getting a lot of sleep and I could slowly feel it more and more each day.

I walk into the class and Katya had chosen me the day before for acting, and I had really wanted to act on previous days because I have never been the main character in a story during a TPRS training workshop thus far.  But I figured that I had been chosen to be Lady Gaga the day before and I could just relax in the back.  For whatever reason, Katya just asks me to go up immediately and act out a story.

Friendly Disagreement

A very talented colleague and I have an ongoing friendly disagreement about the purpose of upper level Spanish classes. (I can say it's a friendly argument because I understand her goals, and don't disagree with her approach based on those. I'll explain how that's possible below).

School Background:
I teach in a school that is in a relatively Blue-collar area.  As a result, college is not a priority for all of the students, nor should many go to college due to the shifts in our workforce. There are many great vocational jobs and technical jobs that don't require a college degree and lots of debt!  And we are doing our kids a disservice by pushing college onto them when they don't necessarily need it to be a productive member of society.

My colleague's thought is that we can de-emphasize grammar in the lower levels (since it's a requirement for most kids).  But for those that really want to excel in the language, they will learn Spanish grammar in levels 3 and 4.

The belief is that if our kids from Spanish 3 go to college Spanish, they won't have an understanding of the grammar to be able to succeed in the college Spanish classes. So we need to teach them explicit grammar.

I respectfully disagree with this viewpoint for a few reasons:

Responses to Comment - Complexity #2

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)?"

Responses to Comment - Pacing and Lessons

The following is part two of a response to 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!

Part #2: " I'm really interested in knowing more about how you pace your content and your lessons"

So what I worked on doing (as you can probably see in my blog) is that I worked at Backwards planning through TPRS novels last year and the previous years to help my kids be successful.  The idea was to load the kids up with Comprehensible Input (via PQA, TPRS, etc) all semester so when they got to the novels, they could read most of it with ease.

Responses to Comment - Complexity

The following is part one of a response to 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!

Another Spontaneous Output experience

So one of the things that I allow my students to do from day one is:

they are allowed to insult the teacher and only the teacher (and no one else in class).

This way, they get to practice all of those negative words (ugly, stupid/dumb, smelly, big loser, etc).

While it not be your style, I have found it to make class so much more lighthearted. And I get to constantly remind them of my stupidity when i make mistakes (intentionally or unintentionally).  It has turned ME into the class buffoon so that they can relax a little more and have more fun.

Something I miss this year since I don't have any Spanish 2 classes anymore is that Spanish 2 is able to talk more and can carry on conversations a little better (due to more input).  So class is more lighthearted and laid back because they are a little older and it's a good time.

Spanish 1 is a little harder because I have to keep them going going going with different activities (in the block) and we're constantly doing something (in CI as much as possible) and lots of brain breaks (still in Spanish though: songs, TPR, movement, quick transition, joke, etc).

And so I have missed having conversations with my Spanish 2s and also letting them run the class sometimes by building off of each other's ideas.

Nevertheless, this year I have been fortunate to have some very talented individuals in some of my classes and they have really been able to figure out the first person and second person forms of the verbs better than any previous year. So the insults, as you can imagine, have been even richer. And they are getting way more creative WITH the language.

Today in one of my classes, the students refused to ask me "¿y tú?" after I asked volunteers how they were doing today because I am not important. And they did a really good job of staying in the language. I couldn't believe some of the things they were saying (and being HILARIOUS in the language).  We were all laughing.

In the following class (last class of the day), I think we were similarly just talking about how people were doing for 20 minutes because of the hilarity that ensued from my students. I accidentally gave the student the impression that he was next to be called on, but I had said "ladies first" before that and as I asked a girl how she was doing, he responded with (in spanish) "you are playing with my head". (Something I tell them sometimes, but he said it perfectly in the second person and all).

When I later asked him how he was doing, he responded with "I am annoyed". And whenever they are mad or annoyed I prod them to tell me if they are mad at a person, mineral, plant or animal. And when they say person I ask silly questions with description words (that they know or don't). And it usually is that they are annoyed with me for some reason.
But the funniest thing all day was one of the cleverer students asked (in perfect Spanish), "Is his hair falling out?"

And I lost it. I went on to joke that there was a line (which I drew) and then I explained "and you are located over here" to which he walked over to that line and then said, "no, my line is here".

I wish I could remember some of the other things from that class, but as you might guess, I was laughing with them most of class.

It was nice to see how much they have been learning this year and to see them speaking (because they want to and because the context and environment allows it).  No one is forcing them and they are the stars of the show!

Noticias (news report)

I sometimes find that on Mondays (or Monday-like Tuesdays), I have a hard time getting into storytelling and PQA.

In previous years I swore by the weekend chat.  I haven't done that as much this year.  Maybe I should resurrect it.

Once I can get into a rhythm of a 1-2 week plan, that might be easier so I know what structures to PQA for the first day of the cycle.

Currently though, I don't have a lot that I have to accomplish and we've been reading some TPRS novels and doing extension activities.  But you can only talk about a short book so much!

So today I resurrected something I did two years back once or twice about a news report.

The idea was I found 3 news stories over the weekend and then tried to put them in digestible chunks to explain to my students in differentiating language.  I had some language goals I was working to accomplish (moreso with Spanish 2).  And I was working to expose my Spanish 1's to -ndo and some present perfect and to the verb pensar (to think).

My Spanish 1 students are stronger in Comprehensible Input since it's their first year in Spanish and we are using it, while my Spanish 2 students were taught more traditionally last year and they have a harder time with the CI due to learning through a different method last year.

Here are the powerpoints, feel free to take the idea and run with it.

For the most part, it went well and I didn't have to have as much energy to tell a story, but we got our brain breaks by having them walk to different parts of the room to see which person thought what answer was right.

The activity took about 30-35 minutes.  I could have added a quiz, but I did a quiz for the chapter in the novels we read afterwards.

I might try to resurrect this more often every few weeks.

See Spanish 1 news: here
See Spanish 2 news: here

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:

• 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.

Día 11 - parallel storylines

One of the most interesting parts of TPRS is the ability to create parallel storylines.

I'll write the examples in English for you in case you want to translate them to some other language.

Let's just say that I started out the class with a student volunteering.


Statement 1:
Class, there was a boy.  (Class: "Ooooooooooh")
Class, was there a boy or an elephant?  ("A boy")
Class, was there an elephant? ("no!!!")
No class, there was not an elephant.  There was a boy. ("Yes!")

Statement 2:
Class, the boy's name was Jim.  ("Oooooooh")
Was the boy's name Jim or Trevor? ("The boy's name was Jim")
Was the boy's or the elephant's name Jim? ("the boy's / the boy")
Was the elephant's name Jim? ("no")

Possible parallel storyline:
Now, because I've already mentioned an elephant AND a name of a person, I could already start a parallel story with the elephant or with a student named Trevor.  Or I could make up a parallel story about an elephant named Trevor.

Statement 3:
Class, Jim liked penguins. ("Ooooh")
Did Jim or Trevor like penguins?  ("Jim")
Did an elephant or Jim like penguins? ("Jim")
Did Jim like elephants? ("no")
No.  Jim did not like elephants.  Jim liked penguins. ("Yes")

Possible parallel storyline:

Since we're talking about liking something, I could now have my elephant named Trevor that likes something else to compare and contrast.  Or I could have Trevor like elephants.  Or I could ask another student if they like elephants.  Or I could ask the open ended question to the class to let a volunteer answer the question: "Who likes elephants?"

Then as you add details to the story, you can add more people with other details about them.  Sometimes, you will find that through fishing for details about people that are being added to the story, you can use that later as fuel for a different story.  This also helps learn about things that the students might find funny or lame.

I'll now give two examples of parallel storylines in from the last few days. 

Example 1:
In one of my examples, a class did not have the other half of the class and one of the people that we had made a silly storyline with was still in class.  Because we are practicing structures and not worrying as much about the vocabulary, I decided that we could use a little more practice on the same structures that day so that it wouldn't be a wasted day.  I used to just give free days.  But if you do TPRS, you're playing around with your students anyway and it's a lot like hanging out with them when you do it right.

So as far as classroom management, if your class is helping you make a story instead of whatever else they might do on a free day, you've already taken care of any classroom management problems and they're more than likely excited that they're still working on something in class.  We had established the day before that the girl liked tall African American boys.  The main character of our story (who was absent) liked green cats.  Thanks to the parallel story we had fished for the day before, we had a new story to work with until our hero was back to resolve his dilemma.  The students had their heroine leave where she was (Sonic) because there were giant squirrels there.  She went to St. Louis in search of tall African American boys.  Sadly, she only found the president of cats in St. Louis and ended up going to Church's Chicken.  In Church's Chicken she came across President Barack Obama and he was accompanied by African American boys for our heroine to be with.

*Side note* Depending on your school environment, this storyline might not be as politically correct for some students as others.  I teach in a rural school in Missouri where the students were suggesting these things.  But the purpose of these things was to help the students learn the language.  Every class will look different.  Yesterday, I noticed some students loosing interest and when I asked where the hero went, someone suggested "Hooter's".  I looked at him with a sly grin and asked "How did you know?!"  Then I said, "Yes class.  He went to Hooter's."  And all of their eyes lit up and they were back in the story.  Sometimes we have to throw in details but we're doing it to teach the language.  I am not addressing what goes on at Hooter's.  He just went  there to look for some cats.  Sadly, there were no cats in Hooters.

Example 2:
The second example occurred today in my Spanish classes who are the farthest.  Once we finished our first story this week, I gave the first reading from the book Look I Can Talk by Blaine Ray.  The first Mini-Story is about a boy who lives in California that wants cats and not elephants.  The story is in the present tense.  In order to get the students to talk a little in the present tense, (or past) you use the story and translate the story as a class and offer any words they don't understand.  You can do five-second grammar* explanations if there are any problems.  The story on the paper is really a springboard for more storytelling.  You want to work a little bit on their reading abilities as well as introduce the present tense to the students after you've gone over things in the past.

It makes things easier because since the boy liked cats in the story, I was able to start asking my class about who likes elephants (because the boy in the story does not like elephants).  Then you can start getting your students to tell you how many elephants they have or how many they want to have.  You can talk about size, color, actions the elephants do.  It's always good to compare and contrast with the students.  It's up to the teacher to help this happen.  So one student had an ginormous (huge) pink elephant that was in 'Toilet Town'.  Another student had a microscopic purple and brown elephant that was in his house.  Another student had a giant black cat that was in the teacher's pants!

The idea is to start the students off with reading and then you can start making up stories.  As long as it is in the language and they are getting comprehensible input, you're doing great.

*five-second grammar explanations are just that.  Keep it simple and don't over-complicate answers to questions when the student most likely is not a grammar nerd like most language classes try to prepare us to be.  Stick to five seconds or less when explaining something about the grammar of the foreign language.  Sometimes, it's also just ok to say "I don't know!" , "It just is!", or "You know, Spanish is just different than English."