Notes From Krashen’s Visit to My Classroom Feb. 1, 2012

5 thoughts on “Notes From Krashen’s Visit to My Classroom Feb. 1, 2012”

1. chill

   February 5, 2012 at 7:04 am

   Ben, it sounds like very important things are going on in your classroom. You continue to peel another layer off the onion. Since I am in chapter 3 of “Pirates” at this time, this conversation and Dr. Krashen’s input on aural input in level 1 has me wondering about how to proceed. I think my approach needs to be more PQA based and less reading assessment based. Feel free to chime in on your experience with the novel reading in level 1. Regarding Anne Matava’s stories, Nathan has posted, under word lists on Michelle Whaley’s blog, five lists of his high frequency German structures and has cross referenced them with Anne’s scripts. Nathan says he can talk with his kids about almost everything if they have these basic structures. My German teacher colleague, who is a traditional teacher, agreed.

   Log in to Reply
2. Annemarie Orth

   February 5, 2012 at 7:28 pm

   I am also working on Piratas with a level one class and I’m realizing that I’m not doing very much PQA because reading the story has been compelling enough for them. I have a hot pink dress for a student (most often a boy) to wear for Raquel and a black captain’s jacket for Henry. The students are just on the edge of their seats watching their peers act out these scenes. I’ve actually tried doing PQA second-that is, we’ll read some of a chapter as a class or students will read a conversation and then I’ll pull some structures out and we’ll talk speak using these structures. I’m finding it effective to review what we just read in Piratas in this way-through PQA. For example, I assumed students would immediately understand “no se permite” so I didn’t go over it first. Then I realized that many of them couldn’t figure out this cognate. So I wrote “se permite” and “no se permite” on the board and I asked the students what is and isn’t permitted in school. Then I switched to Piratas and reviewed this last part of chapter 4

   Log in to Reply
3. Ben Slavic

   February 5, 2012 at 8:32 pm

   Yeah, that’s it, getting reps on anything they don’t know in the reading like se permite. That’s it. We can’t think that PQA is only for the period before the story, or to begin the year, or on Mondays. PQA is the fascia of what we do – it knits the muscles of the language together. We can PQA during novels to clarify anything that they are not familiar with.

   Log in to Reply
4. Brigitte

   February 6, 2012 at 4:26 am

   It sounds like all (well, most) of you are well into the novel reading with your level 1s. So far, we have had such a good time with just the class-generated stories that I have not really spent any time thinking about novels. However, I think the kids are ready and I am now in the process of deciding which novel to use. A lot of you seem to like “Piratas”, however I don’t think it comes in German. Can anybody recommend a good German novel for first timers? Thank you in advance!

   Log in to Reply
5. Annemarie Orth

   February 6, 2012 at 6:17 am

   I can’t imagine reading a story with my 6th graders because doing PQA with them is such a hoot. But, I did give them an article from a Spanish newspaper about a man who won the lottery. I gave them a few key words and then I had them read the article silently and asked in Spanish about the man. They actually were able to get quite a lot of information from the article. The next day I took some important verbs and nouns from the article, PQA’ed them and then we did a story the next day with them. It was just a different and fun way of introducing new words in an authentic context.

   Log in to Reply