Heh heh. I just keep coming up with these annoying acronyms. Here’s another one – sabrina’s Writing Idea, or sWI. It is an excellent idea and easily put in place just by extending a story class by one day so thank you Sabrina:
One thing I started doing last year on the second semester with my French 2 students is this:
When we finished reading/discussing/doing pop up grammar on the written form of the story, I asked the students to insert another paragraph with a different location/person or whatever. Since they had the structures and the plot was repeated at least twice with or without resolution of the problem, all they had to do was to add in one more repetition of the plot with a different location or person or whatever the case was.
For example: Friday I did a story from Anne ( Talks Too Much) so: Britney talks too much, all the time, in Russian, about boys. She goes to the movies and sees Eddy Murphy and she talks to him too much about boys in Russian. Eddie Murphy is annoyed , doesn’t speak Russian and wants to watch the movie. All of a sudden , the manager, whose name is Mark, arrives and tells her to stop. She does not stop and continues to talk so he tells her : “Dégage!” (Get out of here!). They love that word! Then she goes to the library , where she sees Justin Bieber, who is reading. She talks to him too much, all the time, in Russian about boys. Justin Bieber is annoyed because he wants to read and doesn’t speak Russian. All of a sudden, the manager arrives and tell her to stop , she doesn’t stop so he tells her ”Dégage!”
When I did this story on Friday, I did not get to a third location/resolution of the problem b/c I had no time left, since I showed the artist’s drawing and did a Quick Quiz. Now when I go in tomorrow, we’ll do the reading/pop up grammar and questions about it and I’ll ask them to insert a third paragraph to a third location and/or with a resolution. It is output but it is output they can do because it’s fresh in their memory, having being repeated a lot, although perhaps not acquired yet but doable, not requiring spontaneous speech, and it’s been modeled already twice.
This gives them practice in writing, in a contrived fashion but it allows them to be creative with their details. Therefore they are taking ownership of what they write, and hopefully it will boost their confidence and ability in writing. I started doing this with my Fr 2 on the second semester last year. Since writing is on everyone’ s mind , I decided I’ll do this with my Fr 1 tomorrow , a little earlier than I would normally have but I feel the pressure coming on, and since these are IB super motivated kids I hope they’ll do OK with it.