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Report from the Field – Carly Robinson
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4 thoughts on “Report from the Field – Carly Robinson”
Actually the Realm got caught in the past, for those who remember it from about ten years ago. The reason it didn’t work was because we had great characters but the vocabulary needed was just too vast. Now, a re-do of the Realm for TPRS/CI trained kids at the upper levels might be something worth testing out. I never thought of that. Of course, back then we didn’t have any kids trained in stories at the upper levels. Thank you for this report Carly.
Thanks Ben, yeah I couldn’t think how to think big with the dragons without going out of bounds. So instead, while we did TPR for sortez (take out) and rangez (put away) we had those kids take out their dragons and talked about how big they were and what color etc. And then when we did PQA for a (has) and il y a (there is), we talked about them again. It worked well without needing to get to crazy.
Leslie Davison has a great dragon story for elementary. If you listen carefully to what little kids say you’ll hear them talk about how many teeth they’ve lost. Kids come to class with their mouth wide open pointing to the wiggly tooth. Once it falls out it’s saved in a plastic tooth locket that hangs around their neck like a trophy. It is a big deal. A tangible sign of growing up.
Based on the idea that we teach kids the language that they use,”has lost a tooth” would be the target structure in this story.
The dragon has lost his tooth. (or all his teeth…)
He goes to the dentist. He says: “I have lost a tooth. I need help…””
The dentist has teeth, but no dragon teeth.
He goes to the Museum of Natural History.
Mr MNH has dinosaur teeth. But no dragon teeth.
He goes to the Tooth Fairy. She gives him teeth.
The dragon is happy.
Any version of this story works well. Simpler for the very young, with added dialogue and details for the older kids. I bought a dragon puppet that roars with red flashing eyes on eBay. Student actors would work just as well.
I had this great class of Chinese 2 students last year that put the same dog in every story. It started at the beginning of the school year when we generated structures based on what students did over the summer. One kid said that he walked the dog. Then throughout the year Danny kept appearing with his dog Jeff and it worked fine. By the end of a year Jeff had travelled to Japan, become a champion ping pong player, eaten fried noodles cooked by Shakira, and had ice tea with LeBron James after playing basketball at school. The kids were always laughing and they stayed in the target language with their stories. My point is, if they love dragons, it is fine if dragons keep appearing in stories when you are working on new structures. As long as the kids are learning and having fun and aren’t getting bored. The moment you hear someone say, “Not another dragon,” is when you know it is time to move on but the whole year I never heard that about Jeff the dog. Now almost all the kids are in Honors Chinese and feeling confident about what they acquired.