Once upon a time there was a teacher who knew that the textbook just wasn’t fostering proficiency in her students but she didn’t know what to do differently.
One day, she attended a short workshop on storytelling that changed her life. Jeffrey the martian penguin and Garfield and Paco the cowboy who bought the horse from the clown became a common presence in her classroom. And students loved it. And students remembered it.
So, textbooks are flashy and boastful but they aren’t great, but they’re done. Someone else has done all the work and they’re just so easy to open and talk out of. Creating your own curriculum is hard. Recently I blogged about ways and more ways and still more ways you can make creating curriculum a little easier.
Still, ending up without a textbook is a big job that most teachers take a little at a time. What’s a baby step you can take outside your textbook? I think I’ll end up addressing that whole question in an e-book or at least a blog series but for now, here’s a big important one: Tell a story.
Recently on Twitter a teacher who had taken a workshop on TPRS and had the concept wanted to know what a first step could be for her to actually implement storytelling in the class. Here are my baby-step tips for telling your first story in class:
- Ask yourself what are we learning now? I encourage you to frame it as a proficiency task rather than a grammatical function. Studying past tenses? Refocus to narrating a story. Uses of ser? Refocus to describing myself and my friend.
- Think of a frame to a story that you could use to highlight your target features. Narrating a story? How about kids at a party when the lights went out from a big storm? Sketch the frame on paper.
- Leave lots of details not related to the target, or that fit in well with the target, that students could add themselves. Who was at the party? Let the students decide. Why did the lights go out? Maybe they’ll decide the ice cream truck crashed into a pole instead of using a storm. What were kids doing when the lights went out? Let them decide. When you tell the story, it will 1) keep them involved, 2) keep them motivated, and 3) give you lots of instant feedback on comprehension.
- Think about how you will draw the story. My students have to draw whatever I draw. You don’t have to be an artist – I have become an expert at stick figures! But illustrations help cement long-term memory and help avoid English use.
- Think about how you will highlight features. I often write vocabulary or, in particular, verb endings in a different color or in a different location on the timeline or with a shape drawn around it to get students to access patterns faster.
- Decide what supplemental activities will go with your story. A good storyline can last 4 or 5 class periods. Some ideas:
– Consider breaking the story into two parts to recycle or divide information
– Give a quiz asking for short answers in the TL and allowing students to use their vocabulary and their drawing. This will get students used to 1) paying attention and making sure they draw/write and 2) using and reusing and using more and more vocabulary.
– Look for a song you can use to work with the target even more. Ask me or @sraslb if you can’t think of one.
– Consider using a commercial to get students talking on the task even more.
– What about a game?
– What about a related corporate website?
– In the end, how can students use interpersonal, presentational, and/or interpretive communication to build accuracy and proficiency with this target?
Good luck with your baby steps. Before you know it, you’ll be running. El fin.
Foto credit: Fundación Cerezales
I love this idea! Could you post an example of what you mean when you mention drawing on the timeline? That phrase made me picture this in a completely different way than I originally was and I love it!
Could you clarify what you’re asking for? Would you like me to elaborate more on “sketching the frame” or “drawing the story”? I couldn’t find the timeline reference here. Glad this post helped you though!
In bullet point five you talk about the use of different colors or “in a different location on the timeline”. Do you draw out a linear timeline of events?
Aha! Baby brain. 😉
Yes, I do often draw a timeline, especially when the target feature is a verb tense. For example, we explore both past tenses together. When we’re storytelling, we draw the events on a timeline – description and ongoing events go above the line, sudden events below the line.
As another example, we explore the I/we subjects together. I write the I verbs in a different location than the we verbs. So writing the words in a different location in the story drawing can encourage further noticing and deductive reasoning of the rules. Make sense?
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This post is really helpful, as I’m trying to do more TPRS and lose the textbook…. but I’m scared! 😉 Can you explain more about the 4th bullet– Draw the story. Do you draw it as you tell it? Have it drawn ahead of time? Have kids draw as you tell the story? Is this with the original telling where the kids are giving you answers to move the story along? or is this a re-telling, where the kids now draw? I need to SEE someone teach an entire unit/story in order to figure out TPRS….I think I get pieces of it… but I don’t get how to make it work for an entire level of a course….
Hi Alison – I actually am working on planning a video; I’ve had several requests for it and I think it would be really helpful. It’s just a question of logistics at my school, unfortunately.
To answer your questions:
Yes, I draw the story, the first time I tell it.
Students are required to draw/write anything that shows up on the board. It keeps them paying attention and they’re motivated knowing they can use their drawing in a quiz that will certainly show up in the next few days. When I taught lower levels, the only supplies required were 3×5 cards for vocabulary, a Mead-style composition notebook, and colored pencils.
As for what I draw on the board, there are two criteria: 1) what will aid comprehension and 2) what will emphasize the targets. In contrast to TPRS, I use almost no translation either in the story or written on the board, unless I can’t get the meaning across in 30 seconds or less. Written words may include some emphasis; e.g. if I am targeting “talking about what activities *I* do” I may write the -o on the end of verbs in a different color to get students to pick up on the pattern.
To help you see how I do this on a bit longer scale, look at this post on the first days of Spanish 1 and see if it helps.
I’m in the same boat. I really want to do it but have no idea how to get started. I teach k-5 and when I speak mostly in Spanish I loose the 3-5 group. In K-2 they love it and want to hear more. I think TPRS would be a great bridge for all the age groups.
You’re right – intentional, patterned storytelling, when you’re paying attention to whether students understand and are engaged, is the best way to increase target language use, step out of the textbook, and teach target features and skills. Good luck!