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Report from the Field – Ron Wilbur
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11 thoughts on “Report from the Field – Ron Wilbur”
I asked about the story and Ron obliged me with this description of it:
The story started with me singing “Silencio” a la Jose Luis Rodriguez, a Venezuelan singer. A student asked if I could really sing, and…. it started.
A student sings in the shower and has his pet fish in the tub with him who cries when the student sings badly. (Lots of descriptors from there.)
We moved to another reticent student who has a dog (on the other side of the room because he sings so badly). Another boy joined him in singing. Of course, the dog howled when they sang badly. He howled badly, too, until someone played a violin in the right pitch.
So we obviously needed “stone faced” Isabella Beethoven to direct this orchestra.
And who knows where it ends up tomorrow. The possibilities are endless.
What a blast!
Notice that Ron started with a character and added the best details with the two best questions of “where” and “with whom”. Those two, when we invite the students to offer cute answers, can really get a story going and did in this case.
This sounds great, Ron. I am curious. What is the state of TPRS/TCI in Florida? I am glad to know you are involved! My daughter was in a middle school in St Pete and no one was doing it.
This is a great report, and it is especially nice to read here at the end of the school year!
Here is a good MovieTalk for your class: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4VqmRzH2xQY
I am TOTALLY gonna use this MT in my class!! Thx so much
Loves to sing
Sings badly
Hurts his ears
Can’t stand it
When doing MovieTalk: Remember that there is no way we can teach everything that is going on in even simple video clips, so avoid trying. The old way of teaching involves a kind of exhaustive effort on the part of the teacher to teach everything into the analytical side of the brain, to get the highest score, but this effort exhausts the kids who, especially in language learning, can only digest a few sounds – the target structures – in one class period. The truth of less is more/narrow and deep must be respected and we must teach accordingly. So when doing a MT clip, pick a limited amount of structures and stay with them. Just gallop over or, with beginners, skip completely, sounds that involve verbal structures that your students don’t yet know. Don’t forget to do this. Limit yourself. Break away from the old exhausting way of teaching. Teach to the whole brain and learn to relax.
This is so timely, Ben. I’ve been doing a MT (Crayon Dragon) with one group of 7th graders and we went for 20 minutes on 9 seconds worth of video! Their creative ideas and output in general wowed me. So naturally I thought that I’d do just the same with my other 7th graders, who are much slower processors. It’s crashed and burned hard with them and I was having a tough time figuring out how to move forward.
Now I see that I should’ve done some bits of circling on the characters before skipping ahead to the structures and parking on them. Commenting on every little detail/character motivation wasn’t the way forward for both groups.
Many thanks!
This is spot on advice. Keep it simple.
When Movie Talk gets to feeling laborious it is a sure sign that they are on overload. I have been watching and taking screen shots for targeted discussion. Writings morph out of that.
Just thought I would share this morning’s experience in German 1 here.
We are reading “Arme Anna” (Pobre Ana, Pauvre Anne), but today we totally abandoned any attempt to do anything with it. Instead, we talked about a student who was absent yesterday. During the course of the period, we learned that he had visited Disneyland Japan with Kim Kardashian, had gone on a roller coaster together but refused to go on a dark ride because Kim wanted to kiss him, but he didn’t want to kiss Kim, so he left and went to a Whale bar where he ate a 134-ton whale steak as an appetizer. Then it was time for the five-question quiz.
While we were creating this story, we did some other things as well. At one point I asked about who has the best roller coasters and what people’s favorite roller coasters were. This was a “four corners plus middle” activity. (The middle was for people who didn’t fit any of the categories.) Students had to tell the class what their favorite roller coaster was (called on students randomly). When we were acting out the story, the class all had to ride the roller coaster. Everyone put their hands in the air, then I called out “going up”, “going down”, “left”, “right”, “straight ahead”, “stop” and everyone had to lean as if the roller coaster were doing that. (Lots of yelling and laughing while this was going – and I happened to think that this was a great way to teach left, right, and straight ahead.) The class persuaded me to play Kim Kardashian and had a lot of fun watching their teacher act silly.
This entire class period was utterly impromptu and had nothing to do with the “Arme Anna” reading, but since everyone was engaged in the target language it was better than what I had planned to do. A win all the way around.
Do you hear me cracking up?