"Brain Breaks"

I just finished storytelling a major story today in my level one classes.  It wasn't the easiest story, but because they were interested we were able to power through it.  It's parent-teacher conference week so I only see each of my Spanish I classes twice this week.  I was hesitant to start a new story on a short week, but in each class we were able to successfully tell and even ask the story.  I think it was possible because of the fact I gave the students "brain breaks."

TPRS is an intense learning process.  It's input, input, input.  I've found that my students desperately need breaks scattered through the storytelling to get through a longer story.  Usually I only story tell or story ask in fifteen to twenty minute intervals, but this week I was able to sustain up to thirty five minutes.  During natural breaks or transitions in the story I asked the students to do a few things to help them review the story and give their brain a break.

The best thing about these activities is they take zero prep, zero copying.  All your students need is a piece of scratch paper and pencil.

1) Music Walk

I play a song we recently have listened to and do a "music walk."  When the music is playing, students are walking.  When I hit pause, the students grab their nearest partner and share three facts about the story in Spanish.  I always have the students write them down first so they for sure have something to read when the music stops.  Today, I modified this activity by having them write down events individually and during the music walk they shared their facts and with their partner decided the order of their facts when combined with their partners.  I saw a lot of good conversation about the story and vocabulary taking place during this activity.  I let it go for about eight minutes.  By then, the students had reviewed a lot of the story and we ready to taking a listening quiz on the story.

2) Partner Talk

The students turn to their table partner and re-tell the story in English.  I don't love this activity since they aren't speaking in TL, but students that are struggling comprehension get a good confidence boost from this.  Since the goal of these activities is a "brain break" I'm okay with it.

3) Read and Act

After the story has been told I will sometimes re-read the entire script slowly and have the students act out every vocabulary term as they hear it.  Since our terms always have gestures to help learn them, the students listen for the vocabulary term and do the appropriate gesture when they hear it read.

4) True/False Quizzes

I will have the students write a series of statements about the story (usually three to five) and make some of them purposefully false.  Students read the statements to their table partner and take mini-quizzes with each other.

5) Scene swap

Students draw one scene from the story and then trade with a partner.  The partner must write in a complete sentence in the target language what is going on.

How I Use Simultaneous Presenting

This year my classes are huge and it makes it really difficult to assess their speaking one-on-one.  I hardly ever get to do one-on-one assessments because:

1) it takes too long to hear each student speak and

 2) the rest of the class has to be working independently and with minimal supervision while I am grading one-on-ones.

Sadly, I don't have any classes this year that work well independently and I always end up extremely frustrated that the class wastes time.  I've applied deadlines, marked down their participation, threatened them, even given a few of them detention - it doesn't seem to matter.  If I'm not watching them and directly engaged with them, at least half of them will be wasting class time.

Enter simultaneous presenting and cooperative learning structures.  I have found that students learn more by listening to one another's presentations, speak more than they would during a one-on-one, and I am much less stressed because every student is doing something in the target language.

There are several cooperative learning structures that organize the students to present simultaneously.  The ones I use the most are:

1) Inside-Outside Circle
This is my favorite way to simultaneously present.  I usually take my students out into the hallway (perfect for a long block day to get them out of their seats) for this activity.  To minimize confusion, as students walk out the door I put them in pairs of A and B.  B is the little circle inside the big circle.  A, the big circle, faces B, the little circle.  Either circle can rotate after a set amount of time to the left or right to create a new partnership.  To keep things less confusing I designate one circle as the "moving circle" and one as the "stationary circle."  But if you are very organized and good at keep of track of where the students have moved you could have both circles rotating in different directions.

Students usually are presenting murals they have drawn or visuals.  I try to mix it up, have them rotate 1, 2, or 3 spaces, have them do their presentation backwards, etc. to keep them thinking about what they are presenting.  I always encourage them to give each other a high five as they say goodbye.  This can also be done in two lines facing one another.

I've also had the students use this structure as a conversational activity with cards with personalized questions on them for discussion.  Questions about a story would also be good to chop up and hand to the students as a story or chapter of a novel review activity.

2) Stand up, Hand up, Pair Up
This website includes instructions for Stand up, Hand up, Pair up:
http://www.newton.k12.ks.us/sch/ch/Structures.pdf

I always tell the students they need to be aggressive about looking for a partner and put their hands up high.  This activity generally works for about five shares before I start to notice students clumping together and getting off-task

There are lots of other great structures like One Stay, Two Stray but due to the lack of space in my classroom I typically stick with these two structures.

How do you all use simultaneous presenting in your classroom?  Better yet, how do you address one-on-one assessments?

Simultaneous presentation - fun twist

I love assessing my students formative speaking skills using simultaneous presentation.  I am guilty of probably over-using this activity simply because my classes this year are enormous and it's very difficult to to get them speaking in a controlled, easy to assess manner.  At least once a week (probably overusing) I read either a chapter of our current novel or our current story script out loud to the students.  The students draw the events as I read out loud to them.  I always read something after we have worked  and practiced extensively with the vocabulary, so this activity typically falls on a Thursday or Friday.  Lately I've been rotating - one week we draw a chapter of a story, the next week we draw a the events of a story script.  So far they haven't gotten tired of it.

I usually have the students present with their murals in the inside-outside circle format.

Today I had an interesting thought.  By about the fifth rotation the students were starting to sound like robots, so I had them switch papers with their partner.  They had to present their partners mural.  I didn't expect it to have such wonderful results!

1) The students had to rethink the story with different images = more authentic on the spot language production!

2) The illustrator assumed the role of coach, helping their partner navigate their drawings (I didn't even ask them to do this - they just started nodding, encouraging, or restating with the picture was supposed to be IN SPANISH!)

3) The students were SMILING.  They loved looking at eachother's silly little stick people drawings and my artists got a lot of "Wows!" from their peers.

Simple idea, so much fun :)

Happy Thursday!

El día terrible de Julia

Some days I want my students to "freewrite" and just show me what they can do.  This activity worked well to span across a couple days as a filler activity.

1) First I showed students a picture of a girl screaming.  I just google imaged searched "girl screaming."  I told them, "Hoy Julia está muy frustrada porque muchas cosas malas pasaron ayer.  ¿Qué piensan ustedes? ¿Qué pasó ayer?

The students had to invent a terrible day.  First, we brainstormed different bad things that can happen at school, at home, and in your social life.  We wrote the different activities on the board.

2) I gave the students fifteen minutes to write and create a terrible day for Julia.  They wrote in past tense since the terrible day was yesterday.

3) I compiled their stories to create the story attached below.  They students were more engaged because Julia's terrible day was a combination of all of their evil ideas.  Students read the story in pairs, discussed the questions in English, and organized Julia's problems.

4) After the students finished the reading activity, we played "would you rather" with the problems Julia faced.  For example: ¿Prefieres vomitar en la escuela o llorar en la escuela?"  The results were funny, interesting, and got my usually hesitant level twos talking in Spanish!

Download the reading here:


http://www.scribd.com/doc/124036892/el-dia-terrible-de-Julia

Sub plan "las hermanas malas"

Below is a sub plan for these high-frequency vocab structures: toma, quiere ser, el novio, no tiene.

This sub activity accompanies the "las novias de mi hermano" unit that I taught from www.martinabex.com.  You can purchase her lesson plan bundle at

http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Las-novias-de-mi-hermano-5-day-Lesson-Plan-Bundle
I highly recommend it!

The activity will take about fifty minutes for a focused student to complete.  It could also be using as a reading or writing assessment.  Download here:

http://www.scribd.com/doc/124032388/Las-hermanas-malas

Please let me know if you find any errors in my files!  I seem to always miss something.