Unlock with PatreonThe Problem with CI
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Verb Aid
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7 thoughts on “Verb Aid”
I did this by accident a few weeks ago. It worked well for retells: I told the kids, get into groups of 3, have one narrator and two actors, and re-enact (with narration and some dialogue from actors– maybe a total of 4 lines for the story). The list of verbs was very useful for the lower kids. I got really “clean” reps out of it: very few errors. I sweetened the pot by saying “best awesomely overexaggerated– AND PERFECTLY SYNCHRONISED– acting gets chocolate.” Worked great. Havn’t done it for writing tho.
We could call this activity a “threetell”
Sounds like a keeper. Where do I put it? Of course, the categories aren’t really that at all, just a list of words to help me find stuff of which the word threetell is a good example – an idea that we would forget to do in the classroom unless it had a catchy name.
Such “categories” help me find stuff by related words. The truth is that a lot of great classroom ideas have scrolled into oblivion here for lack of a way to organize them. So that explains all the categories* and acronyms. Threetell it is.
*What has happened as TPRS has grown and matured is that each individual teacher has resonated with something and experimented with it and it grew into something else and so that there is no one thing we could call TPRS/CI. That explains the resistance of the method to be a method and why I vastly prefer the term process.
In that sense, I was talking with Diana the other day and she asked me what I would be focusing on in San Diego with my morning classes and the answer was nothing in particular because there is no way a teacher can do the method as much as experience the process.
So the notion of writing the verbs down takes one form for me and another for Chrisz, because it is a process. Anyone reading here to try to “learn the method” won’t be able to. They won’t get it until they have done it long enough for it to register in their bodies.
Teaching using comprehensible input is much more of a body based kind of thing than a mental way to teach. This allows spontaneity. New things like threetells are constantly being created and then disappearing. They are like a time lapse movie of a week of weather in ten minutes.
Really, it’s impossible. Each class is different. Some of them suck and some rock. We feel our classes instead of teaching them. They just happen. That’s why I never like to look at the story until when class starts.
Feeling classes. Hmmm. That sentence right there is likely to get me put on the loony list by traditional teachers. I have a quick and honest response to that possibility, however – I don’t give a rat’s ass.
I’ll make a category for retells. Might help somebody.
This sounds promising!
I love this idea — I will put it to use next year with my upper levels. It is exactly what I needed…
Thanks for bringing this idea to the forefront via the two week schedule. Genius!