This is a recent comment by Jim that I am making into a blog so that I can add it to a new category on the right of this page called “Beginning the Year”. There is a lot that could go in there, but those posts are just too hard to access now. One good thing – especially for level one classes – about starting the year, for people who are newer to all of this, can be found on this site on the resources/workshop handouts link. Here is Jim’s idea:
Ruth, I had great success with getting lots of stories in my Spanish 2 class this year. At the beginning of the year, I had the kids bring in a “summer prop”. Most of the kids brought something in. I would spend at least 2 days with each kid and their prop. As this was a 45 minute class, there wasn’t much time and we rarely “finished” the story.
We started out with some simple PQA about the student’s summer relating to their prop, and what it really was all about (Where did you go? When? With whom? Why? etc.). Usually it was a souvenir from a trip they took that summer. It was really low-stress PQA because it was THEIR prop, not something I picked out.
After some straight-up PQA, (usually with an abrupt change in tone, as I made it clear based on my facial expression that we were no longer talking real life), I would start asking a story. I didn’t have to arbitrarily target much if anything, because the nature of the prop and topic usually brought in enough new stuff on its own. (I started the year with a review of structures from the previous year, but soon realized that was unnecessary.)
Then, I typed up the story and we read it together. Now I have a whole book full of stories that the students illustrated, and that class’ stories are great because each one MUST include the student in some way. We ended up spending almost the entire semester of 45 min. classes in this way.
I will definitely do this again next year.