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?"

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.

TPRS year 4 - Story - la mafia de las vacas

So I have to share this, it went well with a few classes who appreciate my goofiness.  I wrote this story lastnight. Maybe I haven't slept as much this week.  I didn't realize there were meme's with the cow mafia until looking for one after the fact for this post!

(See possible pics for classes:
The Cow Mafia   &    Al Cowpone)

So I can use these pics next time!

Here's what I did in Spanish 1 this week.  I like the idea of starting out with past at the first few places and then transitioning into present in the last place.  Haven't quite gotten to it yet, but that's why my story was written that way.

TPRS year 4 - Commercial ("¿Me lo compras?")

Going along with indirect objects, I just loved this commercial that caught me off guard.  Pretty simple language.  Could use it later in the year for Spanish 1 or sometime soon for Spanish 2.  

Could be fun to have kids peruse the COMER website as well (link below).

“Me lo compras”

TPRS year 4 - Spanish 2 story + Indirect Objects

So if you're teaching in a Department, you might find that you need to throw in those Indirect Object pronouns as soon as possible to get your kids hearing them as much as possible in context so by the time your department "covers" them, your kids are more comfortable with them and can use them without realizing them.

The following is a story idea I had after seeing a video.  I think it would work well in Spanish 1 or Spanish 2.

TPRS year 4 - Spanish 1 simple story

With the 90 minute block schedule, my students and I have been doing some PQA and some TPR in the same days.  This has really been kind of neat because it's almost like two different classes.  Sure they're worn out by the end of it.  But I told them at the beginning of the year that my class would be more like Spanish boot camp and if they didn't like that idea, they could transfer out of my class.

So I found this silly video clip and I was going to try it out next week with them to introduce a simple story to them to break up the monotony of PQA and show them that they have been learning for a purpose!

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 3 - Story - telephone

So I was trying to find something to help go over some structures involving, "couldn't" or "can't" in Spanish and I came across this story script from Jim Tripp that I bought from Ben Slavic's site.  I really think there are some gems in this book.

The basic idea in Jim's version was that a person called someone and that person hung up the phone.  I adapted the story from Jim Tripp's book.  But the structures I used were the following:

• Contestó el teléfono    s/he answered the phone
• No podía entender / hablar              
      s/he couldn’t understand / speak
• colgó el teléfono     s/he hung up the phone 

* I was also trying to get more repetitions of llamó (s/he called) since that was in our weekend chat yesterday.

I tried it out in both Spanish 1 & 2.  Of course in Spanish two I could focus on some different things than with Spanish 1.  And of course the language was more complex at times and we could review more words.  But the general idea was the same.

I recently had acquired a telephone as well and I thought it would be the perfect prop.

So I asked if there was a boy or a girl.  We went over all of that.  I then asked where he/she was.  Then what was he/she doing (had to translate that... since we hadn't used it too much).  Then we had each person doing something in the place and suddenly, they heard a phone.  The phone rang, they looked for it, found it, and answered it.  Someone called them.  They couldn't understand.  They hung up.  On a different day, someone else called, they couldn't understand because they couldn't speak whatever language was being spoken and they hung up.  Most classes got to two days for sure.  A few classes got to three days.

In one of my classes, a student told me, "Thanks for making class so fun today."  To which I replied, "No.  Thanks to your class.  You guys are the ones who made it interesting."

All in all a blast of a day!  My students and I sure needed it.

*Note to self* Props can really help a story.

TPRS year 2 - Spanish 1 Story idea

So yesterday during our weekend chat activity... I had the following two structures to talk about my weekend that I thought could really turn into a riveting storyline later...

• me desperté (I woke up) 
•  sentí (I felt)

Of course these quickly switched to the third person when I started asking about a student:

• se despertó (s/he woke up)
• sintió (s/he felt [object])   vs.  se sentía (s/he felt [emotion])

And through circling, the storyline quickly developed into someone waking up being disoriented and feeling something (possibly a body or something else).

In one class, two students woke up in a prison and one was still unconscious.  In another class, a student woke up with one leg in a bathroom and a cat.  In another, a girl woke up in a the trunk of a car with 6 dead skinny people with big butts...

As you can see, the variety was interesting according to each class and we practiced the structures.  I wonder if the kids related to this becuase of movies like The Hangover.  Either way it was fun to play around with.  Also you could go backwards as well as forwards in the storyline.  Most of my students like to say, "No recuerda" (S/he doesn't remember).  So most of the questions were very unanswered, but the kids got interesting, comprehensible input as they continue to learn Spanish.

So maybe next year, this might just become one of my standard stories for Spanish 1 or maybe even for Spanish 2 with some different structures.

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 161 - story - s/he remembered

So I've been coming up with some of my own stories with structures I think might be fun.  I was thinking about a silly story that I could do with my Junior High kids.  The neat thing is how different my original idea (written story) and their story (oral story) came up.  They loved their story so much though and it was a magical class that day.  You could feel the energy and excitement.

The story involved the structures:

estaba sorprendido (he was surprised)
recordó que (he/she remembered that)
buscó (s/he looked for)

The students came up with the following story:
      There was a chameleon named Thomash.  Thomash entered his room one day and he was surprised!  He was surprised because there was a girl in the pool in his room.  Her name was Jackie.  Jackie was really sexy and she had a small bikini on.  Jackie liked to swim.  Jackie invited Thomash to swim with her.
     Oh no.  Thomas remembered that he didn't have a bathing suit.  Thomas went to "Chameleons-are-us" and looked for a bathing suit.  He looked and looked and looked.  He found one and grabbed it. It was a tight bathing suit.  He went to his room and Jackie liked the bathing suit a lot.


The written story was the following:
     There is a boy named Gregorio.  Gregorio enters his bedroom and he is surprised.  His bed isn't in his room!  He looks for his bed in his room.  It's not there.  There is a problem.  He doesn't remember where it is.
     He goes to the bathroom.  He looks for it in the bathroom.  He looks for it in the toilet.  It's not there.  He looks for it for an hour in the house.
     "Where is my bed?"  he thinks.
     He goes to his friend's house.  He enters his room and he sees his bed!  His bed is in his friend's room!  Gregorio grabs a chair and hits his friend in the head.
     "What's your problem?" his friend asks.
     "You stole my bed!" Gregory yells.
     "I didn't steal it.  Don't you remember?"  his friend asks.
     At that moment, Gregorio remembers why his friend has his bed.  On Tuesday, he lost his bed in a basketball game with his friend in the park.