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!
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