Diane Neubauer has described an activity that we all could use in our CI classrooms, not just as a strategy but also as a bail out move. Diane presented on this at ACTFL in Texas last November, but somehow it slipped under the radar here, so here it is in the form of six articles. (You can also find three videos by Diane on this topic in the Videos hard link across the top of this page.)
Diane reports:
“This is my favorite comprehensible input activity. I have to keep from doing it too often so that my students don’t get tired of it. You ask a story that the kids draw as you go, which means that you tend to go slowly enough (they’ll complain because they are drawing the details). Then afterwards you can grade the drawings and use them for a lot more. Later, type up the details everyone drew (with a few twists) and you are ready for Read & Discuss.
“I developed Listen & Draw once while trying to engage a lethargic, sleepy group of 8th graders in Personalized Question & Answers. We had introduced three or four new words, made some gestures to help recall them, and then I began to ask questions. Silence. Students sinking in their chairs.
“In a moment of inspiration, rather than try to drag interpersonal communication out of them, I asked myself, ”What can I do that will still cause these chatty kids to listen to these words in meaningful context?”. And I gave each of them a blank piece of paper. I left our new words on the board and began, slowly, to describe a scene. The students sketched what they heard, somehow visually including every detail.
Diane’s target structures were:
cross the street
waiter/service worker
chocolate milkshake
Slowly Diane described a scene using no other new words:
There is a person. He’s a man. He’s a waiter. He can speak Mandarin. He likes milkshakes. He’d like to have a chocolate milkshake. He’s beside a street. The street is pretty: there are a lot of flowers. Across from the waiter, there is a small restaurant. The restaurant sells milkshakes. The waiter is about to cross the street to buy a chocolate milkshake. I rephrased things after they’d heard it all, such as: There’s a Mandarin-speaking man who is a waiter. He’s beside a pretty street… etc.