Pictees and Retells

So this year I am trying to improve on my storytelling skills by encouraging more spoken retells to a partner and also writing retells (timed write 10 minutes).  I know that a lot of input precedes output. But unfortunately, my department still wants our kids to "speak" and "write" Spanish.  So I need to get the kids ready for other classes. And this is a pretty great way to build their confidence (hopefully).

Había una chica. La chica estaba en New York.
Tenía un perro feo. Quería un elefate pequeño...

The last retell we did over our first story went fairly well.  Some of the retells kids can do blow my mind.  Others leave a lot to be desired.  I find it fascinating how two kids in the same class can absorb at such staggeringly different rates!

Today I wanted to give my students a bit of reinforcement after working for a few days on our story.

I passed out a half sheet of paper with 6 squares.  Then, I pre-wrote out descriptions from their story in chunks (thanks to their class scribe!).  I heard this called a Pictee (Pictation) instead of Dictee (Dictation) somewhere.

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. ;-)