Bob Patrick writes on sentence frames. I have been barely able to fit in any stories lately because I too have become a big fan of this great idea from Robert Harrell which combines writing with auditory input. We may be talking about what they did over the holidays until June! I LOVE the Discovery Mall set of frames. Wow! Here is Bob’s report:
I knew as soon as I saw the posts on SF’s that I would be doing this this week. I shared it immediately with my colleague who teaches with me in the building, with my Student Teacher, and with my daughter who teaches Latin at a nearby school.
We’ve all been doing SF’s this week. I simply took words that are coming up in stories tomorrow and Friday, and created this story frame:
Olim ad tabernas Inventionis (Once at the Discovery Mall)
Nimium cupiebam . . . (I was wanting _________ too much). ______ me duxit ad . . . (________ led me to . . . ) Ibi vidi . . . (There, I saw . . .. ) Subito ________ iecit ________ . . . (Suddenly ____ threw ____ . . .) Tandem _____ mihi _____ ostendit. (Finally _____ showed me ____) Ego _____ _____ dedi. (I gave ____ to _____)
On Monday, after I introduced vocab and these sentences with my own examples, students spent about half the period writing their sentences. I urged them to write interesting, fun, crazy sentences. Spent the remaining half with me calling on individuals to read their sentences. I stopped them, asked questions, circled words, did some PQA, etc.
On Tuesday the whole period with calling on students to read with more of the same–exploring the mini story, circling, asking questions, having fun (oh the number of stories this created!).
Today I put 3 examples in a power point which I culled from all the papers taken up yesterday. I went for the most interesting, funny, outrageous. It was just wonderful. As a whole, they knew the target words (the point) and had great fun exploring these mini stories. The three students in each class were clearly very pleased that their work was chosen (I thanked them for “offering” their work for me to us–more laughs).
I did make a change over what was reported so far, and so did my daughter. Both seemed to have been good moves. When I wrote the examples into power point slides, I wrote it with correct grammar. I did not mention this at all. The students’ whose work this was did not question it, either. The changes were largely subtle. It modelled the kinds of word order and some inflections that they will see tomorrow in the story. My daughter asked students to swap theirs with a partner. The partner was to circle anything that was not clear and then return. Students were given a minute to make any changes they wanted to before reading their sentences aloud. She said that the act of reading another student’s work seemed to help them listen and understand better when read aloud.
This is a KEEPER. We will be doing this quite a lot more. See, if I get some insight or a new way of practicing CI like this once a month or once every two month, it’s worth every minute and every small penny I spend to be here. Gold. PLC gold!
Bob Patrick