Filling In Blank Spaces in Class

5 thoughts on “Filling In Blank Spaces in Class”

1. Pat Rolfes

   November 6, 2015 at 6:20 am

   I had a terrible start to the morning the other day…I hit a deer on my way to work with my brand new vehicle. So, needless to say, I was a bit rattled when I got to school. My first-period class is Spanish 1 (HS gr 9-12). When they came in, we reviewed some vocabulary and I was still agitated. One of my students asked me (in Spanish) if I was ok. I decided, what the h***, and I started telling them the story (in Spanish) of the morning events and how this crazy deer (had to intro that word) had came out of nowhere and attacked my poor, beautiful new car. I really played up the drama and emotions. The students were riveted. THEY asked me questions. Was it a boy deer or girl deer? Was it big or small? Did I have it (they meant keep it)? And of course, I embellished a little bit, it was enormous with 30 point antlers etc. The boys in the class were on the edge of their seats, the girls were into the emotions of the ordeal (not the specifics of the deer). When we got back to talking about the original targets I had planned for the day, we somehow managed to tie all of them to the deer attacking my car story. Even the verb ‘to sleep’ because, as one of my students told me, “The deer is sleeping. The deer is going to sleep for all of time” (he meant ‘always’, but couldn’t remember it). After a rough beginning, that class made my day so much better.
   Long story short…sometimes great things just happen without trying to plan them out. Trust me, hitting a deer was not on the lesson plan. 🙂
   Pat R
   Worthington, MN

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2. Ben Slavic

   November 6, 2015 at 6:54 am

   Dr. Krashen would love this. Compelling input. Bam!

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3. Ruth

   November 6, 2015 at 11:03 am

   This gave me an idea for my 8th graders. It’s kinda like OWI but you start with one sentence instead of one word.
   I’m going to ask students to choose one of these two sentences (or maybe the first time we do this, I won’t give them a choice. I’ll decide that Monday morning):
   “When Anoushka is afraid she gets nervous, [and today she is nervous].”
   “On the way to school, Pat hit a deer with her brand new car.”
   Then I can ask a class story or they can work with a partner to create a story that surrounds the sentence. In the second case, I would provide or we could create as a class a list of written questions in TL (another way to ask the story) for them to answer. This would help to rein them in a bit, keep it simple and avoid them thinking they are writing a story in English.
   Then we read and discuss and compare them the next time. We’ll see what happens on Monday and where this goes. If it works, it’s one more variation.

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   1. Ruth

      November 6, 2015 at 11:10 am

      Ben, I just made something complicated from your original idea of a simple and meaningful way to spend 10 minutes. I’m keeping that idea too. 🙂

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4. Ben Slavic

   November 6, 2015 at 1:51 pm

   Yes Ruth and here we are again getting to really good practical stuff to use in our classrooms, which along with maintaining our mental health via the society and friendship of others here in our group is the purpose of the blog.
   This sentence that you wrote that came from what Pat shared is gold:
   …“On the way to school, Pat hit a deer with her brand new car.”….
   It IS how an OWI works exactly, only it’s a sentence and not one word that we are working from. I LOVE how we are identifying here how we can now think more in this work about starting with something small (a single thing or a single idea) and expanding it. It makes our work in CI much simpler.
   I did a one word image yesterday with a visiting group of 5th graders. My 6th graders knocked it out of the park and the 5th graders were totally involved in the creation of the image as well. It was because we started with simplicity and built it up to what I can only call a kind of happiness in the co-creation of the final image, which was beyond compelling to many of the kids. (What we finally came up with was a demonic unicorn with big bottom teeth, bad breath and a hideous face compliments of my artist who is beyond talented – you can just imagine how kids that age would respond to that image. I don’t think they even noticed that medium of delivery of the input was French.)

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