Student Output Without Stress!

Last week I introduced clothing items and "she puts/put on..." using the commercial Vaseline Spray and Go.  I described what the girl in the commercial was doing, Movie Talk style.  I went back and forth using both tenses, and doing a lot of comprehension checks.  I did first the one about the dress, contrasting "she puts on her dress" (se pone el vestido) and "pone las manos en el piso", "pone la crema en el piso", to contrast the reflexive and present indicative form. The second commercial that I showed was the one with the skirt, sweater and shoes.  I tried to incorporate personalized questions and answers (PQA) as much as possible, to compare and contrast what students and the girl in the commercial were wearing. I emphasized the way she puts her shoes on, (with one jump). I challenged students to try and put their shoes on that same way, and I tired to do it myself as they were narrating... that was fun!
I continued to compare the SE PONE against PONE, with lots of comprehension checks.  The last commercial that I showed was the one that included more clothing items: jeans, sweater, blouse, shoes.  I narrated it again, pausing and trying to develop conversation with my students.  We gave the girl a name, and also went on describing the room, and bathroom.
Finally, I played it again without pausing as I narrated it once more.  Then, I instructed students to work with a partner and take turns to narrate the commercial twice.  After they practiced, I took volunteers to give it a shot in front of the class. I was THRILLED to see the reaction!  They had so much fun practicing first, and the amount of volunteers to try in front of everybody was much higher than I thought!  Almost every student wanted to try!  I wasn't expecting this to be a home-run, since output is usually something that intimidates most students. The challenge was high, because this girl puts on jeans, sweater, hat, shoes and leaves so quickly that it is almost impossible to narrate every single detail.  However, many students could do it all, and what I found fascinating was to observe that they were so focused on the message, that they were not paying attention to the language itself... I don't know if I am expressing this clearly, but after hearing that phrase in many workshops I finally understood what it means... The whole group was engaged and so focused on the many MANY repetitions that we got, that even the giggling of the "se puso" went away much faster than I had observed in previous years with other groups...  Tomorrow I will continue "milking" this commercial using the activity I created in a Power Point:

Yes, Reading...

As I mentioned before, this is my first year in a new school and I am very lucky to have all of my colleagues excited and determined to transition from traditional teaching to CI / TPRS.  It has been a very hectic but fun school year so far, and I am pleased to see the other teachers very happy with the results that they have gotten so far.  Our superintendent, principal and school board are so excited with our program, that allowed us to sell all of our textbooks to get funds and buy short novels to structure our courses!  Ah, we also got a grant and added district funds to go (yes, the four of us!) to Washington this coming summer for NTPRS15!  I am VERY lucky.
Anyway, with everything that the transition entitles, we have been successful in implementing the change, and have dedicated pretty much all of the first semester to TPRS and Movie Talks.  Finally, we got our first order: "Brandon Brown quiere un perro" by Carol Gaab.  

Before we began reading the novel, students' speed-writes had been successful as far as showing fluency development.  However, I had about 90 percent of students misspelling "quiere" (wants).  Only a few students did it correctly.  We began the novel this past Monday and on Wednesday, after reading two chapters, I had them write a summary, speed-write style (7 minutes, without use of notes or any kind of help). In the past, I had students read this novel after the second week of school... this is the first time that I take so long to do it.   I knew that reading improves spelling and polishes language, I knew it... but I had not proven it so dramatically to myself until now.  The process (as we say in México) completely "flipped the tortilla!" Out of my group of 35-8th grade students only FIVE misspelled QUIERE! Unbelievable.  Somehow, I thought that the improvement would be a bit more gradually...  Also worth to mention, it was not a coincidence that the students that didn't improve spelling of that word were the ones that I had to remind every few minutes to "please, read along!".  The fact is that after almost a semester of CI, all of my students can understand the book without a problem, that is why they were not feeling the need to read along to follow the plot.  As I explained to them, reading this book will reinforce what they have learned, enhance their listening skills, help them ACQUIRE some new vocabulary, polish their sentence structure, SPELLING and grammar in general.  I am thrilled to have the budget that we got thanks to the selling of our textbooks, and we are in the process of getting all of our novels for this year.  In our order so far are "Robo en la noche", (by Kristi Placido), "Piratas del Caribe y el mapa secreto", "El Nuevo Houdini", "Felipe Alou", "Esperanza", "Vida y muerte en la Mara Salvatrucha" and "La hija del sastre", all can be found at http://tprstorytelling.com/ 

"Present & Past Tenses: Another Attempt"

After ten years of teaching for the same school, I moved to a different one this year. I am very happy with the change and my only struggle at this point is to adjust from teaching three blocks of 85 minutes to five periods of 50.  I am still trying to figure out how to use TPRS and CI without rushing, and to provide the right amoun of repetitions within that limited time frame. However, things are going great and I am extremely optimistic. I have more collaboration than I ever had, which makes me very happy.

This year I have set-up two professional goals for myself:
1) Do A LOT of Conversation with the actors (to practice other verb forms), and
2) To introduce past tenses right away, from the beginning levels.

For the first goal, I found it is easier to say as I point to the answer: "class, if I say" George, quieres tacos?"what am I asking?" (students answer). "Great! Now, if George responds "sí, quiero tacos ", what is he answering?" (class responds). "Great! Now, let's do it!" And then I proceed to directly ask the actor. Yes, it is pure modeling! This reduces the actor's anxiety, which ultimately made ME uncomfortable and anxious as well ... so in the past I tried to avoid this interaction as much as possible.  Before, I just pointed at the answers for the actor to see, and gave him the answers orally if needed. But modeling WITH THE ENTIRE GROUP'S PARTICIPATION made a gigantic difference. It is going smoother!
  

For my goal # 2 I got a great idea (again!) when I read Cynthia Hitz's post about  Class Stories Folders . I Decided to adopt her strategy and so far I have 3 stories for each class. When we are creating stories in class I use both, present and past tenses using CI with lots of comprehension checks and pop-up grammar. However, it gets messy and in an effort to alleviate That, today I decided to type both versions (present and past tenses) underlining the target structures for each. It is very Important to keep a limited amount of target structures, as usual. You can see an example below.  I am hoping this will help students make connections quicker, and better organize their thoughts. I cannot wait for that "natural order of acquisition" to take place. What are your strategies to mix tenses in class?

TIME TO CELEBRATE!

The end of the school year is finally here! Students were ready to go, and I wanted to have one more opportunity to help them realize how much they had learned.  This is only my second year teaching through Comprehensible Input, and I tend to be very hard to judge what I do... but funny enough, as I hear students converse with each other about their writings, or their speaking performances, I realize that they do the same.  We just have a very short memory! As I look back and reflect on the results that I used to get two years ago, comparing that with the results that I get now should make me feel pretty darn good!  It was my attempt to have my students do the same and appreciate their achievements before they left for the summer.  We had two different activities to wrap up the year: one speaking presentation and one final writing.  For the speaking, they had to create a story and illustrate it in a power point.  They were not to memorize, but rather tell their story to the rest of the group during our end of the year party. The intention was exactly that: to have it be a celebration of their achievement.  Since all of them were original stories, we had absolutely no behavior issues, and since all vocabulary was "in bounds" everybody enjoyed a myriad of tales, some funny, some sad, and some plain creepy!  The following example is from Spanish 1, and this student gave me his permission to post it:

 

 

After each presentation, we  -as a class- discussed more about the stories, and that way provided more repetitions.  All students were engaged in conversation! 
The next activity for our "celebration" was writing.  I had them create a story based on just a picture.  I made corrections and the following day I returned it to them.  I asked them to take their portfolios and get the very first writing that they wrote two years ago, the first of last year, then also the first one that they wrote this year.  They  read it to a partner or small group, and then compared those with the new one.  They enjoyed this activity as I did! They were laughing, and I heard many: "OMG! What did I mean here?" They were able to correct many of their old mistakes, and the fact that they saw all that progress was of a great value.  The following pictures tell more about the true celebration environment during this activity:

The goal was met! Realize that what we now consider to be "not a big deal" was something that we -students and teachers- doubted when we began our journey through CI.  What I forgot to comment, is that the very first writing in their portfolio was that of their freshmen year, when I was not yet teaching with CI.  I had them write "diary entries" every week.  It was painful! with the help of dictionaries, teacher and peers, it took about 30 minutes to write five lines of almost unintelligible messages that I returned with tons of corrections in red, many of those similar to:  "watch your verb conjugation", or "remember: ir+a+infinitive" ARGH! What was I thinking! This activity was equally eye-opening for me as it was for my students.  It was amazing to see them compare their "diary entries" to the writings that now they do in five minutes, without any help.  Pure fluency... and that is very much worthy of celebration!  Have a great summer!

 

Add Some Summer Fun to Your Reading!

As the school year comes to an end I struggle more and more to keep kids on task... it seems that these last days I have to convince them to work every day, and that we are not done yet!  We are reading Brandon Brown quiere un perro  with one group, and Piratas del Caribe y el mapa secreto with another. 
One of the activities I have students do after a class story, or after reading, is to draw sketches on paper and then retell.  This time, I got some chalk and took them outside to do the same, but on the sidewalk!  This winter was a very long one so students (and also teachers!) are ready to get out and enjoy the nice weather.  Students were very motivated and we all had a lot of fun.  It is also really nice to see other people passing by after school, trying to figure out what our Spanish students did!

 "Brandon está en la cama y el perrito está en el closet."

"Brandon encuentra la pipï y el popó en su dormitorio."

"Antonio tira la pistola en el piso porque no funciona.  Antonio es muy frustrado."

Kindergarten Day with a Twist

About every other Friday I have "Kindergarten Day" with my groups.  I read a children's book while students sit on the floor and enjoy the story, just like Kindergarten students do.  I have them interact and participate in the process as I pause and ask them questions about the characters, or when I ask them to predict what will happen next.  I use regular children's books, or books from the Reading A-Z website. It is a paid subscription, and it is well worth it! There are books in English, French and also Spanish.  The great thing about it is that they adjust to your needs, and also are based on high frequency words! I am lucky to have a SMART board  and the Reading A-Z books have a "projectable" version that allows me to turn the page, hide text, color and/or write on the board if I want to.  Some of the books also have worksheets that are fun to use after the reading.  Before beginning the reading, I show them the cover of the book, and we try to develop as much background information about the character as possible.  This is a great review of things that they have learned, and will not be covered in the story.  It also takes them to the highest levels of the Bloom's Taxonomy, because they are applying and creating!  I write on the board what they come up with, such as name, description, family members, where does the character live (city, house/apartment, description of it etc.), hobbies, you name it! I help them by underlining words that can lead to more detail.  For example, if a student says: "she lives in a house", I underline "house", so that the next person sees that s/he can expand on that topic and add details to the house.
This time, I brought "Goyo el Pollo" (as I named it!) which is a toy that I just bought to play the "hot potato" game.  We used ten minutes to play it, and the student that "lost" had to give me background information on the character.  This was a great variation, as I saw students more engaged in the process.
After the game, I had a lot of information about the girl in the story:  family, parents' occupation, siblings, house, grandma was a millionaire because she played baseball with Felipe Alou, etc.
Then, I read the book, and did "circle"  the target structures.
After the book was read, I asked questions about the details of it, and also about the target structures to make sure they were acquired.  Then, we moved on to the worksheet.  The worksheet was very simple as it is truly for Kindergarten students, but still helped reinforced the target in a relaxed way that I realized worked as a great brain-break too!
We all had a lot of fun, learned a lot and closed our work week in a happy note.

Promoting Student Involvement & Creativity

One of my biggest challenges in the classroom is to find innovative ways to keep my students' interest and help them develop fluency.  TPRS has been one of my favorite tools to accomplish that, but sometimes it is difficult to engage students in the creation of stories. 
During my commute home last night, I heard on the radio about the "scandal" caused by a video from a security camera inside of a hotel's elevator in NY, where Beyonce's husband was "attacked" by his sister-in-law.  It is a three minute video that you can watch here.  Since it is a video from a security camera, there is no audio and now the media is going crazy speculating reasons why this happened.  So, I decided to do the same in class... let's speculate and figure out what happened!

1) I printed out pictures of the three famous characters, placed them in plastic sheet protectors and tied yarn to them, so that student-actors could "wear them".

2) In Spanish, through Comprehensible Input I told students that we were going to be "investigators" and find out the reasons why this woman was so mad at her brother-in-law, and why Beyonce didn't do a thing to defend him.
3) We watched and described the video in Spanish, Movie-Talk style. 
4) We selected student-actors to recreate the scene, (including the bodyguard) and we added dialogues.  It was a blast!
5) After the story was finished, they did a timed-writing, and also retold the story orally using their own drawings.

I adjusted the same plan for all my levels, with Spanish I being simpler, and my Spanish 4/5 more complex.  With the higher level we talked about what they "had done" and ended up with something like:  They had danced a lot, had sung a lot, and had drunk a lot of milk.  All of them, except for Solange (Beyonce's sister) had eaten something, but she hadn't... that is why she was in a very bad mood, OBVIOUSLY! :)  In the elevator, she told Jay Z that his music was very bad, and he responded that he had hit her puppy.  Then she tried to hit him, while the bodyguard tried to stop her and JZ yelled "protect me!".  Students decided that Beyonce was sleeping in the elevator, and didn't notice a thing. 
I over-heard students as they walked out, saying that this had been the "must fun story this year!".  What made it so fun?  We do these kind of stories all the time!  It must be the so called "connection to the real-world"... they can discuss something that actually happened.