I was asked in St. Louis for a list of jobs my kids do in class. I can never remember them all, but here is a partial list with about 18 jobs listed – many of the ones below are described in either TPRS in a Year! or PQA in a Wink!. Those jobs marked with an asterisk are of major importance in my weekly schedule and somehow make the class – just because those people are doing those jobs – move along much better. I don’t know why.
– PQA Structure Counters* (3) (Monday) – The PQA counters do so much. They do things that we are not even aware of, functioning as a kind of social glue. They bring us together in pursuit of a common goal. Pure gold.
– Story Quiz Writer* (Tuesday)
– Story Writer* (Tuesday)
– Story Artist* (Tuesday)
– Distributor/Collector of Quiz Scantron Sheets (any day)
– Distributor/Collector of Pencils (I buy a ton at Big Lots as loaners – it avoids confrontations)
– Professeur (there can be two of these)
– Bleater* (auditions for this position are hilarious)
– Où/Where Person* (instantly lowers the kids’ affective filter in class)
– Quand/When Person (also instantly lowers the kids’ affective filter in class)
– Word Chunk Team Controller 1 (this is the most left out kid in class who couldn’t even get into a group. He gets to pick – which team raised their hand first – see resources/workshop handouts for Work Chunk Team details.)
– Word Chunk Team Controller 2 (another kid in need of feeling needed – this one judges synchronicity of group signed responses.)
– Word Chunk Team Controller 3 (keeps score)
– the Sound Effects Guru (as per Nathan Black)
– the Door Knocker Person (use of apps – this job and the one below are described on this blog site at https://benslavic.com/blog/2007/11/18/giants-vs-bots/ – both are big winners with the kids.)
– the Door Ringer Person (use of apps – see above link for detailed description of how both door jobs work in the classroom)
New jobs just added:
1. the Reader Leader*. This is the kid who leads the class in the choral reading of texts. She reads slowly and loudly and literally brings the class along with her. Extra credit for that.
2. the Memorizer of the Cards. This kid knows what everyone in the class wrote down on their Circling with Balls cards. Then, whenever I ask in any given moment in class, unexpectedly, what So and So does, he answers quickly that So and So does whatever. Then I ask where So and So does whatever and he answers where. Then I go back to the other CI. This is also an extra credit job. In fact all the jobs are extra credit jobs.
3. The Greeter. Kate Taluga says: “Everyday I greet all my students at the door. But I realize I don’t have this luxury beyond my first period class, as it seems that someone is always standing there with some kind of question. So on Monday I stand with the week’s Greeter and greet everyone and model the greeting phrase and secret handshake and the rest of the week some kid does it.
4. Alarm clock/English Abuse – kid who can make the most annoying sound in class sounds off at the slightest sign that the teacher may be going into an English rant or when the class needs to take a quiz (sometimes we just need to stop the CAI and take the quiz. The kid sounds off and the teacher thanks her/him profusely and segues right back into Spanish. The message to the rest of the students is clear. We’re hear to listen to Spanish, not to listen to the teacher talk about Spanish in English.
5. Hoy (today) Kid – (Spanish classes only) – this kid shouts “OY!” à la AC/DC’s rendition of the song, TNT where the Australian band members shout, “TNT, oy! oy! oy! TNT, oy! … etc.). I linked it to ‘today’ by telling the class that the band didn’t know they were singing, TNT today! today! today! Corny, but it works.
6. The Official Timer – this one is from Carla Butler. This kid times how long the class can go in the TL. Class times are written on the board. The kids get competitive and class pride is often on the line.
7. Vanna White – he or she strolls along the word wall and points out words as the lesson unfolds, helping the teacher.
8. Word Looker Upper – this kid has to jump on the internet and retrieve a word that the instructor doesn’t know, which is not a big deal because we can’t be expected to know every word – langauges are infinitely complex even for native speakers.
9. Clapper Kid – this kid gets the clapper/noisemaker. Give a noisemaker to one (responsible) student who then, in those moments when applause is needed/earned, starts the applause. The teacher then is not the only person to initiate applause, there are two people. (credit: Abbey Parks)
10. King/Queen of Gestures – some kid who just nails the gestures. They could keep some trinket on their desk… When you can’t have anything on your desk, it’s special to be able to do so. And, since 14-year olds can’t really control themselves, if they monkey with their trinket when it’s not the right time, they get fired and someone else gets a chance…. (credit: Grant Boulanger)
11. Student Secretary – Judy Dubois in France has a student secretary in each class who gives participation points to students. She explains: “I give the secretary (who changes each class) a class list and their job is to tally the number of times students raise their hand and speak. When an answer or suggestion is particularly good or the question difficult, I give bonus points. If a student gets out of hand, they get a “yellow card” I rarely have to give a “red card”. Of course, this is France, so everyone knows that yellow card is a referee’s warning and red card puts you out of the game. The secretary writes yellow card or red card besides the student’s name. This system is much simpler for me because I don’t have to stop to write it down or give a lecture, I just say “yellow card” and go on with the lesson.”
12. Story Ender Fairy – this is the student who, as we say the three sentences speedily that wrap up a story as per the “Petit Renseignement” skill (#31 in TPRS in a Year!), waves his/her wand to make the actors fast forward to the end of the story. The fairy’s prop would have to be within reach of the kid.
13. English Patrol – this student shouts “alto!” if English is used. Timer will go back to zero. [credit: Kate Marquez]
14. Actors – will synchronize actions to teacher’s speaking or reading.
15. The Dialogue Bubble Kid, who runs across the stage with a big dialogue bubble with some key phrase written on it at various moments during Reader’s Theatre.
16. Cardboard Set Crew – this is a set of two or three artistic kids in each class whose job it is to instantly create – out of cardboard – a boat, a train, a tree, whatever is necessary during Reader’s Theatre or in a story. The admonition is to not have them create too many materials, and to do so only when some set object would really further the CI. Otherwise the crew tends to overbuild, as it were, when storage space is usually a problem and when the crew should be involved in the co-creation of the story most of the time anyway. This is Jason’s idea and it is a good one, especially for younger kids. Just go to Home Depot to pick up the cardboard – it’s everywhere on their shelves for the taking.
17. L2 Timer Kid – this student times how long we stay in the TL in a class period. [credit: Hayne Painter]
18. Capitaine Dictionnaire – Cheryl came up with this idea. It’s the kid who looks up the (very few) new words that the kids bring in via cute answers, words like “squid”.
We once had a group of kids – the Dog Barkers – whose jobs were to bark like dogs on certain cues, to mess with admininstrators, but that never really took off. I was all excited about, even had a theme song for them – a Ventures song in which hunting dogs actually bark as part of the music. Oh well. I got a little out there on that one.
Kids keep their jobs until the quality of what they have been chosen to do goes down or they choose not to do the job for some other reason. Kids usually jealously guard their jobs because they get extra credit (if they remember to remind me around the end of the grading period.) I have bumped up a grade by a full letter to some of these kids who were so helpful to me, so filled with good will because here was a class where they had a chance to count, during a grading term. If I am asked if I give extra credit I actually have an answer – I say only those who are good at their jobs during the grading term get extra credit. It really is a discipline ploy, and it works. Giving a job to a kid who is in the bottom quarter of the class, or who acts like that because that has been his experience in schools up to the point when he walked into your classroom, goes a long way in keeping the class focused.
In a nutshell, the most important jobs above, the ones that are necessary to drive my new weekly format (search “Weekly Schedule New (2011)”, the one based on Bloom’s taxonomy, are the three Structure Counters – knowing how many reps I got on each structure on Monday is very important to me. Then, on story days on Tuesdays I really need the Quiz Writer**, the Story Writer, and the Artist.
**Note: Ben Lev came up with a nice little set of instructions for the Quiz Writer. Here they are:
Querido/a Quiz Writer,
¡Gracias por escribir el examen pequeño!
1. Please write 15+ statements in Spanish about the facts of the story.
2. Use the new vocabulary in the statements.
3. Write about half of the statements true and half false.
4. Write Verdad (V) o Mentira (M) depending on the correct answer.
5. Listen carefully to the spoken story to help you write in correct Spanish.
6. Please write 1-2 statements that can be inferred from the story: something that is not said directly but can be said indirectly, supported by knowing the facts.
I just found another blog post from way back in 2008 on a search that expands a bit on the above:
https://benslavic.com/blog/2008/06/07/kids-need-identities/
[ed. note: jobs are merely one way to personalize our classrooms. The Circling with Balls activity(resources/workshop handouts page of this site) works for heavy personalization at the beginning of the year, as does the Name Game (described also on this site on the resources/workshop handouts page). Plus, we personalize a lot when we do stories, as Laurie really pointed out to our group at NTPRS when we co-presented – she made a whole list of things on the wall that I was doing to personalize the classroom during a story that I wasn’t even aware of, so thanks for that, Laurie!]