The Blog

Cortometraje for narration

One of our major goals for Spanish 3 is to refine narration.  We believe this is a critical function of language.  Teenagers do it all the time.  They talk about what they did over the weekend, over the summer, yesterday in math class.  They tell stories about the amazing shot at the basketball game or the kid who threw up in the cafeteria.  They describe the plot of the movie they saw last week or the book they finished last night.  A great deal of life’s language is narrating stories.

Here’s an activity we did to practice narration.

    1. Show the cortometraje “La leyenda del Espantapájaros.”  First, show it with no audio and ask students what happened.
    2. Offer key vocabulary like espantapájaros and cenizas and molina.
    3. Show the video again, with the audio, and then ask key comprehension questions.
    4. Watch the clip one last time with the audio, pausing to point out key events and the verbs used to talk about them.
    5. Chart the film in the form of a timeline.  Use a symbol such as a triangle for description or setting the scene, and one such as an exclamation point for key actions in the storyline.  Use a symbol such as a right-facing arrow to add the sequencing phrases used like “esa misma noche,” an important proficiency-pushing skill in storytelling.  Put description above the line and actions below.
    6. Have students retell the story using their timelines.

Extension:

Use this film as a starting point to investigate and share other legends.

Transition into students doing a similar timeline of a story in their life or a good story they’ve heard so they can share with classmates while practicing sequencing and narration.

If you teach a language other than Spanish, please share a similar short film others could use for that language.

 

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March 21, 2013 6 Comments

A storytelling success story

In honor of last night’s #langchat topic, I want to share something that happened in one of my kindergarten classes this week.

At my school, we have mandatory Spanish from age 3 in preschool through 10th grade. Until 2nd grade, however, students only receive between 15 and 20 minutes of instruction per week. I’ve been told many times that this is a waste of my time, and I know there’s very little you can do in that amount of time, but as I’ve said before, that time compounded year after year as students stay at our school could produce some significant acquisition.

In preschool, I teach a story in the fall and a story in the spring. @PreKlanguages gave me a crash-course in teaching preschool that rocked my world: start with a character and a color. Add an action. Add a song. Repeat every week. So that’s what we do. It takes us an entire semester to go through our fall story: there’s the grass, and it’s green. On the grass there’s a house. It’s red. Who lives in the house? Elmo? No, the pollito. He’s yellow (song: “Los pollitos”). One day he takes a walk. He walks fast. He walks slow.It continues from there but you get the idea.Fast forward to kindergarten. At this point the kids come to me and I can use my projector, so we have a powerpoint story and a lot of YouTube videos and playing online games, etc. In late winter – this week – the bear in our story takes a walk to the park where he finds a dad and girl, and a mom and boy. So I start telling the story and doing the action -el oso camina- and that word barely gets out of my mouth when I hear a little guy up front say “espacio” (despacio).

It almost took my breath away, and you have to understand why. This boy was in my preschool last year and hasn’t heard that word from me in almost a year (and I know he doesn’t receive any Spanish input outside my class). He has behavior problems. He has attention problems. Sometimes it seems he has processing problems. And he produced a comprehensible word in an appropriate context when I hadn’t used it with the bear and actually didn’t intend to.Children learn language because people are constantly telling them stories. Why wouldn’t this work in SLA as well?
photo credit: ucumari via photopin cc

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February 3, 2012 1 Comment

Activity 1: Cuento poco a poco

Telling a story by categories

photo by flamingoo
This idea came from a session at CSC on theater that was generally so awful that I left halfway through. Really, it was so bad it was painful. But, I came away with this activity that I thought I could make work in my classroom.

In “Cuento poco a poco,” I use the fruit machine chooser to randomly choose a student to start. Then, the student has to begin a story with something from the first category. So, if it is ‘things that are blue,’ the student may say, ‘En un planeta azul vivía un mónstruo’ or something else according to his/her ability. Then the next student picks up the story by adding a detail from the next category. Make sense? These are the categories I started with:

• Cosas que son verdes• Un sonido extraño
• Cosas que son cuadrados
• Cosas que son altos
• Una acción inesperada
• Un pariente
• Un hábito curioso
• Una persona en un show de televisión
• Un fin triste
The first time we did this, I found an unexpected benefit: the first time around, some students added a random detail that seemed disjointed and didn’t actually further the story, like “the monkey had a grandfather who was a giraffe.” So I explained that students should incorporate all the details together to make a coherent story. It made them listen to each other more and use other students’ details to come up with a logical continuity. Sounds like subtle AP practice to me. :) We changed random words to whatever they wanted (green to red, tall to fat, sad to tragic, etc.) and began again, with a different student starting.Thoughts?

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March 29, 2011 4 Comments

And the winner is…

This year I picked up some early childhood Spanish to free up some time for our K-8 teacher to increase his instruction in our grades 6-8. So I teach 3-year-olds through 1st grade. I get 10 minutes per week with 3-year-olds, 15 minutes with 4-year-olds, and 20 minutes with kindergarten and 1st grade.

The first reaction I get from language teachers at this is laughter. What can you do in 15 minutes per week? Nothing.

I laugh back. Not nothing. Something big, or so I have found. It’s not earth-shattering, but it’s a breakthrough for me.

A little more background–the private school where I teach is connected to a church with a very strong emphasis on adoption, and we have a lot of internationally adopted
students in our school. This year in my younger classes I have, for example, two four-year-old Russians and a 1st-grader also from Russia. I had a few questions at the beginning of the year, people asking me if I thought them taking Spanish would hinder their English acquisition. I told them, bah, absolutely not. Bring on the languages, right?

All–and I mean 100%–of my training is in secondary education. So I started this blind. I knew it needed to be immersion. I knew it needed to include stories and questions. Songs. I knew last year they learned a few words of vocabulary and did a color sheet and I knew that wasn’t the route I wanted to take. But the format? Clueless. After my first day in preschool I sent a shout-out for help to @PreKlanguages who called me and gave me a 30-minute crash course in teaching preschool Spanish.

So, we’re building a story. There’s a red house on a green hill. The yellow chick lives in the red house (Los pollitos dicen pío pío pío). One day he takes a walk and finds a blue lake. He drinks the water. He sees his friend the brown frog. The brown frog jumps 10 times and sings “Cucú.” And so on. It’s crazy fun.

For 10 weeks I’ve been asking, ¿Quién vive en la casa? Providing options. Superman? No. ¿Tú? No. Your teacher (name)? No. ¡El pollito vive en la casa! Waiting for someone to answer. So far, nothing. Which doesn’t bother me, it’s natural acquisition and you just wait for it to take its course.

Until yesterday. I’m in one of my four-year-old classes and telling the story. Here’s the red house. ¿Quién vive en la casa?

And there it is. One of the little boys pipes up in all seriousness, “Pollito.” Like “pozhito” with a rasp on the ll and all. I jumped up and high-fived him and nearly went through the roof.

And the winner is…

One of the Russian adopted boys.

Oh and today? In a three-year-old class I asked, ¿De qué color es la casa? And a little girl answers,

Roja.

She flipped the vowel to feminine. They have never done that before.

That’s what 15 minutes a week can give you.

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October 29, 2010 2 Comments

Books recommended as ‘easy’

I found a helpful post on Amazon.com where someone recommends easy novels to read while learning Spanish. I hope to order them and see whether they might be good for Spanish 2, since I’m all about feeding kids authentic rather than learner Spanish from the beginning.

One is La Tierra del Fuego, and the other is El Clan de la Loba/La Guerra de las Brujas.

For Bethanie, who asked a long time ago, and anyone else who cares.

**update**
Here are a couple of other options recommended to me via Twitter and Amazon:
A children’s sensation in Spain, Manolito Gafotas (if you can find enough copies en español)
The last of the Manolito series, Manolito Tiene un Secreto
Adventure novel Limpieza de sangre
El pirata Garrapata (and sequels) - I’ve been able to read part of this book since the original post.  I don’t believe it’s “easy” at all and I don’t recommend it for novice learners because it’s packed with satirical language and double meanings.  Everyone’s name means something else, or a combination of things, and the dialogue between characters goes back and forth in constant misunderstandings and rephrasings of plays on words.  It’s fun, but not for a novice.

For novels specifically written with language learners in mind, I do recommend any novels put out by TPRS Publishing and of course, you can also check out the Blaine Ray TPRS novels.

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September 23, 2010 2 Comments

My level 1 and 2 stories (for Bethanie, and whomever else)

A little while ago I made a post about pleasure reading that elicited a few comments from Bethanie:

Bethanie said…

Could you elaborate on what you do with the reading guides/palabras claves? I would like to incorporate more long reading into my classes in addition to the shorter pieces I already use, but struggle with some of the same things you mentioned.

Also, if you could select books for levels 1 and 2, what would you pick?

Thanks!

24 November, 2009 21:08

Sarita said…

Hi Bethanie! Now I just hand the students the guides/palabras claves and they turn them in on the due date. A couple of tips that are important, I think, are 1) to reduce frustration, read together at first to teach them how to find the important things without looking up every word (make sure you understand subject/verb, leave the sentence as soon as you have the gist of it, leave the paragraph as soon as you have the gist, understand every part of a sentence when you know the answer to a ? is there); 2) give them the page numbers of the answers to the questions and make sure they’re chronological; 3) give a list of high-frequency words from the chapter that they’re not likely to know; and 4) rehash the chapter in a TPRS/circling way when they turn in the guide to gauge who understood what.
As for books for lower levels, have you seen the TPRS books by Blaine Ray et al? You can start here. Good luck!

25 November, 2009 16:07

Bethanie said…

Hi Sarita,
Thanks for your response. I have a few of the Blaine Ray novels, and I think they are a great idea to consider. I find teaching this type of reading to be a greater challenge at the lower levels (1-2) than at the upper levels (3+), so I appreciate the ideas that you’ve shared.

01 December, 2009 22:47

When I first started giving my students stories with comprehension questions as assessment, I remember wishing there were more available for free on the internet, especially for lower-level students. I’m still not aware of anyone publishing or offering such stories on the internet, but at least I’d like to offer mine to Bethanie and anyone else who wants to use them. A few notes about them:
1-I believe that students pay more attention with a lower affective filter (and therefore acquire more) if the stories are interesting, funny, weird, or all of the above.
2-Long stories are frustrating so none is longer than 1 page.
3-Sorry for any mistakes/misprints. Feel free to make them your own.
4-They deliberately use vocabulary my students learned in that particular quarter. You may want to replace words to match your students’ vocabulary.
5-The stories that are one page long with questions on the other page, I scored as tests.
6-There are a couple of stories I wrote for them to answer questions on (quiz grade) and then they filled in blanks with different details to make the story their own (daily grade) and exchanged with another student(s) who answered the questions based on the new story (quiz grade).

Level 1 stories
Level 2 stories

Hope you find them useful!

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January 7, 2010 3 Comments

A case for pleasure reading

Stephen Krashen has done a ton of research on what he calls Free Voluntary Reading. Catch up on his research by checking it out on his website. Basically, the premise is that kids learn more (and language learners acquire more vocabulary) when reading at an appropriate leve and something that is pleasurable to them. I was so won over by the research in this area that last year I decided my students were going to read a fiction book outside of class. Mi criteria were that the book had to be related to Latin culture in some way, preferably by a Latino/a author. As a result, my students read Cajas de cartón in the fall of Spanish 3, Esperanza renace in the spring of Spanish 3, and Ciudad de las bestias in AP Spanish. Watching my AP Spanish students read now, after reading the two books last year, I can see how much their reading comprehension has jumped. Also, they could tell you countless stories of how certain vocabulary are imprinted in their memories because of reoccurrences in context in the books, which they like.

Last year I had them read the chapter and then take an open-book quiz in class the day the chapter was due. There were some problems with that, especially that it was very time-consuming and I value my in-class time too much. So this year, they are doing reading guides instead, and this has worked wonderfully. As a taste, here is the list of Palabras Claves and here is the Reading Guide for Chapter 10 of Ciudad. I’m a firm believer in not reinventing the wheel, so if you want any or all of the reading guides (and vocab lists) message me on twitter at secottrell and I’ll upload them all to my Google Docs.

Get kids reading level-appropriate fun stories–it works!

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November 11, 2009 4 Comments

El campesino y la princesa (a Spanish 3 story test, with a bit of subjunctive)

Today I gave my 3rd quarter story test in Spanish 3. It’s about a peasant and a princess who get married despite the facts that they just met and her father doesn’t approve. It uses a lot of the vocab we’ve worked on in Spanish 3 this quarter. There’s a mistake on the question part–I left a de out I think–but if there’s anything else I blame it on sleep deprivation, lol.

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March 9, 2009 0 Comments

Good stories for commands

Here are a couple of good stories to use when teaching commands.

En aquel prado is a book I actually start using the first week of Spanish 1 to practice numbers, but the best use of it is for commands. The most repetition is in uds and nosotros commands, although with the first animal there is a tú command. Fun to get a little loco with and make animal noises and change your voice for the baby animals. What happens is, the mom tells the babies (in increasing numbers) to do something, and then they all say “Let’s —-!” Wonderfully repetitive.

¡Muy bien, Fergus! is a good one for tú commands. Everyone can relate with trying to train a dog. There are a good 5 or 6 commands in there, at least. And it’s cute. :)

Incidentally, if you can put up with RBD, their Pepsi commercial from Christmas before last also has a lot of tú commands. And telling RBD’s story to teenagers is always fun & funny. Univision has a couple of good videos showing teenagers marching in protest, in tears, against their breakup. SO funny.

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February 18, 2009 1 Comment

Subjunctive for doubt: Story, song, activity

One of my problems with standard curriculum is they can’t provide enough variety in activities focused on one issue. They try, I’ll give the writers credit for that, but there are only so many textbook/workbook exercises you can design to elicit subjunctive for doubt. And really, do we believe that those cheesy textbook videos offer enough patterned input for them to understand anything except how bad the acting is?

So I don’t use a textbook. My lesson activities include stories, drawings, writing, songs, and, occasionally, a game. This is what we’ve been doing for subjunctive by reason of a verb following an expression of doubt.

STORY:
Two students in the class were talking. A boy and a girl. Who are they? (the students decide) They aren’t big though. They’re small. They’re not in high school. They’re in preschool. It was a long time ago.
What were they talking about? Their hermanos? No. Their mamás? No. They were talking about their papás.
The boy said, “MY papá goes to China every month.”
The girl said, “I doubt that your papá goes to China every month. MY papá has 15 birds in his bedroom.”
And we continued with different phrases. I organized it by putting two speech bubbles beside each character on the board. The top speech bubbles were for what they said about their papás. The bottom speech bubbles were what they said to doubt the other person’s statement. We used places around our area and vocab we’ve worked on lately, but you can make up anything. As long as it’s interesting and relevant, they’ll stay focused. And mine picked up the pattern by the 4th or 5th doubt statement and were able to change the verbs themselves. Our statements were:
MY papá…
…lives in Bernheim Forest
…knows President Obama
…gives me chocolates for breakfast
…dies when he eats shellfish
…can walk 15 miles
…can drive his Corvette 100mph

(At the end we added that they both said “I want your dad to come to Show n Tell” to rehash a subjunctive for influence example.)

The next day, our song was No Sé Si Pueda by Fonseca. You can listen to the song on YouTube but there’s no video for it. It’s a good example of subjunctive for doubt.

The day after that, we played “two truths and a lie.” I divided the class in half, and each person wrote 3 statements, 2 true and 1 false, in no particular order. (I collected these afterward for a 10-point completion/effort grade.) The team got a point if the other team could not guess which one was the lie. Then, we put “dudamos que…” in front of the one the majority had thought was the lie, and they told me what else in the sentence had to change and why.

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February 13, 2009 0 Comments

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