If anyone is so inclined, I would like some feedback on the finalized lesson plan notes I have written for iFLT. Diana has asked the presenters for any materials that might help clarify what we model in our morning classes with the kids, and so I wrote the notes below. If teachers attending were to read this in advance either here or on the iFLT website, it might save some time during the de-briefing time after each class, which de-briefing periods I understand to be only 45 mintues. So any reactions/clarifications on what I wrote here are welcome:
Tuesday (Day 1)
1. Circling with Sports Balls cards. For the rules and for personalization, and only thirdly to teach French.
2. TPR/PQA four words from the Word Wall. Play with those words (allows me to teach the rules of engagement). Playing with words to start class means asking the kids how we can remember what each one means by asking for a gesture or a sound cue, always asking the kids for their input, and then doing TPR with the words, doing anywhere from one to four words, depending on the mood.
3. Activity 2 leads to the Word Chunk Team activity to bond kids in a group/tribe and have some fun. This will be limited, obviously, to a) the four we TPR’d, b) the concept of not (the sound it makes in French), 3) maybe a few numbers thrown in, 4) the question words.
5, Do a really simple story that is one of those first stories that skip used in the spring. (Not the Linda Li coffee one that she and Krashen have down to a routine, which is PQA.) If the kids have never done a story, then we must start simply. Here is the ultra simple script that I will start with. It is so simple that the names are the only variables:
A Fight
- loves
- wants to be
- hits
Jillian loves Brad. (get a girl actor up now and circle that). Brad wants to be with Sammie (get Brad and Sammie up now and circle). Jillian hits Sammie.
Here is what I will do:
Step 1: PQA
As you know, the first part of any PQA session is establishing meaning/gesturing. I will tell the kids what each target structure means in English (limit 2 min.) and then ask them to suggest gestures for the structures, much like we did with the Word Wall words. What I do is say to them, in English, “Class, how can we remember that “aime” means “loves”? Then I shower them with praise when they show and you all agree that “loves” is the hands held across the chest with the head at an angle (or whatever THEY want it to be) and “wants” is two flat hands rubbing together (or whatever THEY suggest) and “hits” is one fist in the flat hand (or whatever they want to be as a gesture for that word).
For the second part of PQA, the “just talking to them part”, my mindset will be, “I am now going to get as many repetitions as I can on each of these three expressions before starting the story. I am not going to say one thing that doesn’t have one of the target structures in it. I will focus on the students and how wonderful they are, and how wonderful their cute answers are, even if I don’t use them in the story.
If the kids just sit there and don’t suggest anything (one version of hell), I will TELL them what is happening. I look at a kid with a mysterious look and you say, “Class, Anthony (look directly at Anthony) loves ______”. Let the KIDS fill in that blank with their cute answers. Laughter will follow as you reject a few and finally accept one.
I just go on like that for all three structures. Before doing that, of course, I can’t forget to line up my three target structure counters as usual (nothing in stone here, I am just sharing what works for me) and keep each one of them on their tasks of counting the structure that they have been assigned. They do that on a little colored square of paper on which they write the structure they are counting and tally them using the four and across tic method and then they hand them to you at the end of class. (This counting thing is not just to let you know how many times you say a target structure – its real benefit is that when you stop the class every once in while and look directly at one of the counters and ask him or her, “How am I doing?” “How many have I got?” in English. It really has an odd way of engaging the entire class, is why I say that. It just keeps all of the kids engaged. Weird but true.
When that dies down a little, whether in two minutes or two or three class periods, you know that you are ready to start the story.
Step 2: The Story
If you can (it varies from story to story), use information that you got during the PQA to start the story. This morphing of information from PQA into the story doesn’t happen very often, but when it does, it jacks the interest in the story up. For example, if it turns out that, during the PQA, you replaced the fictitious Jillian with your own student Janet, you just call Janet up to the front of the room, saying something like, “O.K. we need an actor” and look expectantly with a smile at Janet, never forcing a kid to come up. Wait them out. At some point a kid will come up. It shows them who is in charge when you wait them out. Some of the kids like to see us squirm in that moment of doubt as to whether a kid will get up. Then, when after up to a minute that seems like an eternity to the us when we are first learning, when a kid stands up, the entire energy of the class shifts to us and the creation of the story, and we have won an important power struggle with the class – the message being that the teacher is in charge.
Once we have the actor up we strictly follow rule #6. Also, I like to have a stool ready for them to sit on during the story, placing the stool a bit off to the side so you have room to move. I have the script in my hand, looking at it whenever I need to, ready to go sentence by sentence, replacing each variable as it comes up in linear fashion, not leaving the track that the script provides. I remember to go slowly with plenty of circling on each new sentence, because the kids have never heard the language before, looking to replace only the variables in all stories, keeping the structures in and, again, circling especially each of the target structures because they, not the story, are the subject of the lesson. The story is merely a delivery device for the structures. So:
Jillian loves Brad
may, via the vehicle of Circling, become
Janet loves Jordan (these are kids in your class)
So all I have to focus on when starting a story, as mentioned above, is to focus on the first line. I may end up spending the entire class on that one line (it won’t happen with this simple script but it can happen with more complex first lines of stories). Milk that first line. Circle it. It may be that Janet doesn’t love Brad. Go with that. The KIDS will give you all the facts. THEY will make sure that you get it right.
In the same way that I had three kids counting structures during the PQA, I now have three kids doing jobs for me in the story. I have a kid write the story out as it develops. I ask another kid to begin writing a short quiz for the end of class (all questions must have yes/no answers – I use those little pink scantrons, thus saving me time in getting those numbers into the gradebook). I ask a third kid to illustrate the story as it unfolds to be projected out so that all can see it, as a visual guide for retells at the end of class. I need the last 15 minutes of class for the quiz and the discussion of what the artist has created. I will need the story from the story writer to create the reading (Step 3 of TPRS) for the next day’s class.
For the purposes of this session, I will ask one of the teachers to write the story out in French in a Word file for the actual reading class. I would normally write it for class for the next day, but it is easier if one of the attending teachers does it so we have it when we need it. Besides processing the artist’s work and giving the quiz, I may try to address metacognition piece that has been described in my PLC over the past year.
Wednesday (Day 2)
1. More cards, but I won’t have time to get to many of the kids. See if that can become a story. I would use a second simple story script today, unless we didn’t have time to get to the story from yesterday. Maybe use a Matava script.
2. Review the four Word Wall words already taught, play with them, add a few more, hang out with the words and the kids.
3. Maybe do some more Word Chunk basketball game but probably not because of time.
4. Box Guessing Game (only if time). I have never tried this before so I probably won’t do it but I include the idea here bc it is cool. A kid chooses a box from a choice of two. There is a dollar or something in one of the boxes. The goal is to set archetypal sound resonance tense patterns in the kids, as something to experiment with next year. To experiment with it at a national conference may be kind of stupid, but I’m talking about it here so that we can talk about the potential at iFLT anyway. I’ll probably wait until the fall. The idea is to introduce four verb forms of “to choose”. This is to get mega reps each class on va choisir, choisit, choisissez, and a choisi (near future, present, command form, and past tense). It would be a part of the normal class sequence of events so in that respect it is kind of a big deal. This is a way of getting their deeper mind to experience those four verb tenses daily while they are not focused on it, but rather on the box game. I am attempting here to drive into the unconscious mind four verb tense archetypes, their archetypal sound patterns, for later when those sounds occur in other verb forms. Sorry it’s not clear but I want to include it in these notes in case we have time to work together on it at all during the week.
4. Again, if we do a story on Wednesday I need a teacher writing up the story for the reading on Thursday, or Wednesday if we get to it. A lot of planning TPRS/CI classes, by the way, has to do with going with the energy instead of a set lesson plan. Many teachers would balk at this, but consider the alternative. Classes like before when everything is planned out and there is no room for sponataneous humor. No thanks. Been there done that. Also for the story I’ll need the three kids as artist, story writer and quiz writer.
5. I have to model the quiz process, the use of dictée for the teachers and the end of class on Wed. is the time to do those two things, and maybe the metacognition work.
Basically, the observor will have seen in Tuesday’s and Wednesday’s classes a sequencing from Beginning of the Year activities (four of them), into PQA, to stories, and then to reading (the Three Steps of TPRS). How much of which of these things happens depends on the serendipity of what emerges in class.
Thursday (Day 3)
I would love to do a straight Matava story day with modeling of the three steps and especially the transition from PQA into a story, but time may not allow. I may have to start class with the reading of the story from the previous day, because it is important at these conferences for observors to see all the things we can do with reading, esp. spinning out stories. I’ll have to wait until Wed. afternoon to start planning Thursday’s class. For more about how the week can actually become a taxonomy of the Three Steps of TPRS, see the article called “Suggested Weekly Schedule – 2011 – also a category here).
Note that in these three sessions I am trying to compress into just under 8 hours of iFLT instruction many months of beginning the year work, so all we can do is hope that we get to all of the things described above with our students.