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In Your Face 1
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29 thoughts on “In Your Face 1”
Could we get an English version?
And I think the easiest answer the curriculum map question is to do exactly what you’ve said here, Ben. Just hand in a table of contents for Matava and Tripp, basically. Of course you don’t need to follow it exactly, or even at all. But no admin will ever know the difference, so what does it matter?
I just loaded it into Google Translate.
gasp! We will soon be obsolete! 😛 Thanks, I honestly hadn’t thought of that.
Just came across “tomber dans le panneau” on French Word a Day blog. It means to be duped, to fall for something like an April Fool’s Day joke. Current usage, Sabrina? Thought it could work in a story.
Chill,
Still used today so yes it is still current and you got the right meaning.
Yes by any mean use it in a story. I just love idioms , they tell so much about the culture and they are so fun to use.
Speaking of things curriculum-ish. Somewhere, Nathan Black has posted a list of high frequency structures that he cross-referenced with Anne’s scripts. If I can find it, I can email it to whomever wants it.
I would like it! Please. And thank you 🙂
mb: It could be just me, but I cannot find group member e-mail addresses. I see blog and websites and bios, so I have the list and you can e-mail me at chill1019@gmail.com
The list of group members will be published here this weekend. It is alphabetized with email addresses.
What a terrific script! I think it would work very well b/c you can totally make a movie of it in your head , it s so visual. Great combination of high frequency structures in French and yet so simple. Beautiful!
I have a question.
1. how do you use Matava Scripts. I bought some and am having a hard time with them. I get teaching the vocab, it’s the scripts I have a hard time incorporating. Are they used mostly for the reading part and storytelling part once the kids have the vocab?
2. I am being observed today in a class that I hate. I have gone away from the way I like to teach because of how the kids were treating me when I tried TPRS (they are Spanish 2 and I am sick of having my mojo drained by them). Part of me wishes I had stuck to the TPRS and not listened to them at all in the beginning of the year. My point is, it is testing week and I am not supposed to teach them anything “new”; should I throw in some TPRS for funsies even though the kids may rebel?
3. thanks.
Karen,
I think what you are experiencing is not unusual. The beautiful stories Anne write were written at first (I imagine) for her kids, and being the great teacher she is, she knew what vocab and structures they already had acquired, which are different for every teacher. So the first time I tried Anne s stories I felt overwhelmed b/c there was too much words or structures that my kids did not have.
Plus you have to remember she wrote them for the German language, which has totally different idioms and ways of saying things.
My advice to you, which has worked for me is to adapt them to your own language and level. I think that other people on this blog have done that too. I am thinking it was James or David who adapted a Jim Tripp’s Valentine story.
When you get better at this then you can strat writing your own stories b/c you know what structures your kids already know and you can build on those.
Yes!! Go back to TPRS.
The steps of TPRS are 1) Establish Meaning 2) Ask a Story and 3) Read a Story. The scripts are there to help with Step 2, Ask a Story. For step 1, when you are establishing meaning, that’s when you introduce the new vocabulary that you will need for the story. You do this in about five minutes by explaining simply in L1 what the words mean, you can notice derivatives, and you can establish gestures. Then to complete Step 1 use PQA (personalized question-and-answer). The whole process for Step 1 should take pretty much a whole class period (unless perhaps if you are on a block schedule, but even then, the more time given to Step 1, the better).
After you have thoroughly established meaning, begin asking the story based on the story script. The students should be able to understand easily and engage in the circling and creation of the story because they already have a feel for the words.
Does that help, Karen, or is something still confusing? Do you know how to use the script itself, by having the students fill in the blanks with cute answers?
(And if I am wrong in this description of the three steps, please correct me ASAP! :-))
Thank you James,
I understand the steps of TPRS. I am just not good at asking a story that is already created. I usually allow the kids to make up their own answers and with the scripts, the answers are there. I guess the way to do this would be to ask them the who and not the where or why. Maybe I need to see this in action. Hmmm….
The idea is that all the details in the scripts that are underlined will be different for each group of students. The students “fill in the blanks” (which aren’t blank in the scripts but filled in as examples) by answering your circled questions with cute answers. You can ask any kind of question to get the blanks filled in and extend the script, who, what, where, why, whatever.
Click on “videos” above in the menu bar for some videos of various teachers creating stories with students.
Sorry if I’m giving info you already know! 🙂
Ben and Anne,
A good French idiomatic expression to convey the idea of “in your face” would be : “dans le baba”. “L’avoir dans le baba” is what first came to my mind when I read this. And I am sure kids would love to learn that expression b/c the sound of baba is so phonetically easy and fun to say!
Ha, yeah! I got a kick out of just reading “dans le baba” (and then saying it out loud and then smiling, to be exact!) so I bet kids would love it, too 🙂
“In the…?” what’s a baba in French? In Chinese, that’s “Dad.”
Hi Diane,
Sorry I just saw this. “Dans le Baba” means in your butt, although you wouldn’t use baba for butt in another instance. Well at least I ‘ve never heard it, but in that expression that is what it means.
The script above isn’t complete. The second and third locations aren’t there and the variables aren’t underlined. I just wanted to share it. At the back of TPRS in a Year! there are four stories described in minute detail how this process works. Basically, as James said, you exchange out the variables, the underlined words, but NOT the target structures, with cute answers you get from your class. The target structures are not a problem bc of all the PQA done on them the day before.
Are you doing this Karen? The personalization piece, the humor, all the original stuff that gives stories their magical qualities, comes from those variables. But if you leave them and go too wide, you have left the script. Then it falls flat. So it is a delicate balance.
Another point here, an important one, is about the drawing out of the PQA as long as possible at least one class period. Blaine does this for ten minutes and then goes into a story. That’s not enough in my opinion. If you get enough reps on the target expressions, Anne’s scripts are easy.
I have never fully understood why some people say that about her scripts. The German part doesn’t bother me, and the fact that my kids may not have been exposed to a certain structure beforehand doesn’t bother me either. I subscribe to the idea that if we repeat something enough, they will get it in class, regardless of whether it has been listed and targeted and branded and labeled beforehand.
Click on the category titled, “Punch List”, do those things, work with the variables as described above, read again those four stories (Sample Stories A through D) at the end of TPRS in a Year! Doing those things should help.
For Karen — Two comments:
1) I agree with Ben that sticking to the script helps tremendously, overall. At first, it was hard to change my way of thinking. I used to do TPRS like Karen describes, with quite a bit of leeway. I think that I struggled for years due to:
a. no jGR
b. not having good scripts based on humor and interest; and,
c. lacking sound methodology (i.e. getting cute answers, but limiting the scope of the story to the text proper.)
2) Also essential is the full day spent on PQA. Watching Ben’s video about ‘Jesus feeling cold’ really helped me. That video was so funny that I let my students watch it for a few minute, too. 🙂
Good points, Ben.
Karen — you can do it!
–Leigh Anne
Thanks Ben. I do the personalization. That is the best part. Maybe I just don’t pay well with scripts. I do like having the structures though.
Hi, it’s Anne. I just wanted to say, that if you read the blurb at the end of both script books you will see that the students are prepared for scripts by at least 8-10 weeks of introductory work. Ben does circling with balls; I use the questionnaires. Although I’m glad some people can find some use for the scripts, in my opinion the best thing that I do is that introductory work at the beginning of first year. It enables students to acquire such things as: is called, has, wants, goes, likes, plays, eats, drinks, is afraid of, etc. By the time we start the actual scripts, the kids are ready for them. Someone in this thread mentioned curriculum; I think the table of contents from the script book is inadequate. I think you really need all of those high-frequency basic words and phrases.
Sabrina is right–those stories were written for specific classes, and I knew exactly what they already knew and didn’t know. It’s also true about the German. I wrote those in German originally and am teaching French now, I’ve had to modify most of them. It would be ideal, as Sabrina also said, if people would write their own. I can’t teach from anyone else’s scripts. If you are interested, there is also an addendum in each of the books telling how I come up with scripts.
Second that on the front loading for the year. Not only do I do CWB but I also work from my word wall with OWI, WCTA, and Word Associations. It used to be that people never spent time in the fall setting up stories. They just started in. But I can’t see not prepping for stories for a month or two while we set discipline first. I resonate with Leigh Anne’s list as well. Those are the exact three things that give me what I need to make CI work.
I agree with this completely, prepping for stories is SO important, and also it acts as a nice ‘training period’ not only for your students, but also for yourself! Definitely allows you to ease into the method and have greater success down the line :). I usually move from CWB to Questionnaires + OWI. I can also see doing this for much longer then I have been, easily not getting to stories until second semester.
Like skip. He may not even have started stories by now. Maybe he’ll start in May. He’s a PQA master.
Does anyone else tea h on the 4×4 blo k schedule? I do and feel such a time constraint knowing I only have them for one semester and there is curriculum I have to get them to “master” as well as “output”
I teach on a year long block. So I get a class every other day for an hour and a half. It works well. I can’t imagine only half a year, though. It just wouldn’t feel like enough time affect their subconscious.
I teach on the 4 x 4 block, but as the only German teacher. I am really only accountable to myself so I don’t really have those issues. But I also do German I and III in the fall and German II and IV in the spring and tend to have mostly the same group as started with me. I don’t have to share them with anyone or have them ready for the grammar teacher down the hall.