Cuentas Conmigo (Story 5) - Carlos Prickly

Hey everyone.

I had a yearning to do something fun that can be released to the masses since my other creative project (Súper Lápiz) is only for Voces Digital consumers..., and was inspired to do another Cuentas Conmigo story on Youtube on my storytelling channel.

The idea of Cuentas Conmigo (if you're new around here), is that it's basically a TPRS® story that is done completely through feedback via the comments section on Youtube.

There is a new episode each Monday and this requires voting on the question at the end to be done by Wednesday. I foresee this being used by classes, or learners of any kind who want to practice Spanish in context.

This is the 5th story like it so far. The most popular was probably with Juan Cena. Nevertheless, I have been proud of each and every one of them.


Here are some ways this one is new though!

• Narrator is voiced by a Native Speaker
• I wrote a theme-song
• I think my style is getting more established as I do these

Check out my Teachers Pay Teachers store for free Teacher notes on the first episode which includes some ideas on how to use the series, episode and even has a short quiz or guided notes page for students.*

And I hope you and your classes will tell the story along with me!

Check out episode 1 in the present or past tenses!

*I'm selling the other ones to hopefully eventually offset the cost of paying a native speaker narrator for each episode.

See previous Cuentas Conmigo stories on these playlists.

Siri and foreign languages

Last week on Friday I was feeling goofy (wait ME?).  So as I talked about the days of the week as part of the class warm-up I told them that it was actually Wednesday and they were insisting that it was Friday, and we had PAT (Preferred Activity Time).

I moved on and as I asked them how they were doing, some of them talked about how they were good because it was Friday and I would argue how it was Wednesday (in the TL). But finally since they insisted so much, I threw my hands up in the air (to practice a phrase from our story) and yelled "Necesito ayuda" (I need help!).

I went over and picked up my iPhone and asked Siri if she spoke Spanish. Magically it let me change it right there to Spanish. And I asked her in Spanish, "What day is today?"

She responded in the TL "Today is Friday,...".  My favorite part was the expression on my kids' faces as they saw that Siri (something many of them use) can speak Spanish!

So now I have another voice in the target language whenever I forget silly things like math to ask my kids, "What is 3 + 3 again?" (in TL).

If you haven't tried it yet, you should! It's pretty fun.

*I tried it again today (in my other classes due to Block scheduling) and they were also amazed at her ability to speak Spanish, and it just made for a fun random moment. In one class I had to ask her a match question because I couldn't figure out if there were 6 or 10 squares on a paper. Turns out Siri is good at math! :-)

Embedding google slides!?

So I just figured out I can embed a Google Slides presentation into my blog! Considering I do a lot of things in Google Slides and I just share links to my stuff, it will make each post pop out more when I have an embedded presentation right there!

This will definitely make things more fun as I share things in the future.

You can see an example in my previous post.

If you want to know how, check out this presentation I made to help!



Hooray for tech!

TPRS Year 4 - Google Voice

I'm behind the times when it comes to technology in classes.  My thoughts are that technology is no replacement for good teaching.  However, if I can find a way to use the technology to further enhance my instruction.

Something my (new) department and I are trying out this year for our snap-shots/assessments for the students is Google Voice.  I have never used this before.  This is a result of students in my previous schools not being allowed to have their cellphones.  In this case, students are able to in my new school.

So instead of speaking out in the hallway today and scrambling to figure out where they were on a scale, I had them go out into the hallway and retell some of the information from class.

This was great because it gave me the ability to see how they were doing and I can continue to listen to it.

One students recorded 9:00 worth of speaking Spanish.  He was retelling information then decided to make up new things with other words.

Another student decided not to do it at all.  He called and hung up and came back into class.  I reminded him that this was to give me an idea of where he is in my class (snap-shot) which will be recorded in the grade book and that is a 0.0 (No Evidence of Learning).  He told me he would make it up on a different day.

I'm excited about the possibilities to keep these in the students portfolios.

I also liked it because I could deal with testing issues or questions instead of being between the classroom and the hallway listening to each individual student.

What are some ways you use technology to enhance your instruction?

TPRS year 2 - using PowerPoint to tell stories

A few weeks ago, I found a song on Martina Bex's website that she had created activities for: El chico del apartamento 512.  It's a song back from the 90's by Selena.  The interesting thing is that it tells a story about how she keeps getting hit on by guys in her apartment building.  But there is this one guy that she wishes she could talk to.  Finally she does, but a girl answers the door. To her surprise she asks, "Were you looking for my brother?"

Martina actually made a TPRS story-line that was parallel to the song.  So I decided to do the story-line.  But I wasn't going to be able to do the written story before going over the song since my students had made oral stories that didn't even resemble the song's story-line.  So I decided to teach the story-line via a PowerPoint.  See: el chico del apartamento 512 powerpoint.

My students really enjoyed as I spoke the language and told them a story to what is basically an animated storybook.  It was a great activity for the brain.  The funny thing is I did something similar back before I even knew about TPRS to help teach some vocabulary about clothing.  See: Pablito compro ropa nueva.

After the PowerPoint, we listened to the song and it was much more comprehensible.

So this week, I was going over the written story 4.1 from the Look I can Talk series by Blaine Ray.  The story is about a tiger that wants to buy tiger clothes, but he only finds plastic elephants.

The spoken story structures were:
quería comprar (s/he wanted to buy)
el dependiente sólo tenía (the store clerk only had)

I decided to make a PowerPoint for the written story and tell it to my students.  I adapted Blaine's story to accommodate other vocabulary and structures my students knew.  So it ended up a little more complicated.
See: Tiger looks for clothing powerpoint.

Then I printed out the story and cut it up into pieces so after telling my students the story, I had them get into groups of two and put the story into order.  I thought it would help them read without realizing they were reading.  They would have to remember what went first in the story and use critical thinking.  I also gave them five minutes or so (most needed a little more).  They did awesome though and I think they felt smart because they were able to do it.

Definitely something I would like to do every once in awhile to spice up the monotony in class.