Tina continues her response to Pamela’s concerns expressed in the previous article:
Tina:
I said earlier that I would provide ways to provide repetition without circling.
To provide repetitions outside without having to rely on “circling” you could:
“Ask” a story or tell a story to them using comprehensible language. Circle to the extent that you can “get away with it” before the kids start to get bored or frustrated. So in other words, take the pressure off yourself to hammer the words in with a sledgehammer. Circle more “lightly”, maybe aiming for 5 or so repetitions of the target items. Relax, knowing that the items will come back later in the story and in later activities.
Then, as the story goes on, “recycle” the story from time to time. This simply means, review what you have established as true so far. You would go back and basically summarize the story. You can do this three to four times in a story and it seems natural as can be. During “recylcing” you rally do not need to circle much if at all, since the stuff you will be talking about is already known to the kids.
After you finish, you can do a “reenactment” or as I learned since I am doing what Ben recommended and having a kid video the stories for us to use in our class documentary at the end of the year, a “video retell”. My kids LOVE this, and I imagine even without the video they still would. You simply take a comfortable seat, and then without being the one in the spotlight, retell the story in a dramatic “narrator” voice, with the actors, in front of the room, reenacting the story with total confidence as they have already “rehearsed” during the creation of the story. Here’s a video I took of my kids a few months ago, with their faces blurred, of a story we created together.
Have a student make a drawing (like a two- or four-panel comic strip with very few words) of the story as it is being told. This student should do the drawing in secret, so it is a surprise for the class when you use it later. I have the kids use an easel, another thing Ben suggested, but you could also have them use paper and then show it on the overhead projector, if you like that. (I do not like technology, which may be why I have not yet tried Movie Talk!)
At the end of the period, you can give a Quick Quiz. To do this, you would have a kid write five to ten questions (yes/no or one word answers such as “What is the name of Bob’s dog?” or “ hat restaurant do they go to second?” You then can use the questions for the quiz. This is a good job for a faster, bored kid.
The quiz can either be on paper, with the kids jotting down the answers, or orally, with the class calling out the answers together. To provide more reps, I always ask the questions twice. If it is an “oral” quiz then I tell them to listen the first time, silently, and then call out the answer together the second time I ask.
The next day, you can review the artist’s work. This is basically ANOTHER retell, in a different format so it still somehow manages to feel fresh. Here is a video of a retelling using the artists’ work we did in my class a few months ago.
The next day, you can write up the story using a process I call Write and Discuss. You can “employ” another kid as the Story Writer to write the story (since you do not share an L1 you will need the kid to write in an L1 you both share or in L2, in which case you want a super-smart superstar kid who is really bored to do the L2 writing since it is real challenge!). Then you simply question the students on the story as you write it line by line. Here is a video of that in my classes.
You can also check out Ben Slavic’s 21 reading options, which can literally take two or three additional class periods and provide more reps, which are in several of his books so I would feel it a copyright infringement to share them here. I think they are discussed in his PLC as well, which is $5 a month to join.
