Verb Slam Activity

This post is for Magister.
The Verb Slam Activity, a TPR based activity, brings into the students’ deeper minds instant or nearly instant identification of many high frequency verbs found in the target language. Like TPR, it is a necessary precursor to stories, vPQA and anything else that requires instant auditory identification of verbs later in the year.
Strategy #7 – Verb Slam Activity (VSA)
Verbs, above all other aspects of language, determine the success or failure of our work using comprehensible input. We focus on them in a way that we focus on nothing else in our instruction. Along with TPR and numerous other activities, VSA allows us to do that. How does it work?
1. Find a picture of some verb you want to teach, some verb that you feel your students need repetitions on, some verb you really want your students to know. (In Denver Public Schools, we have two lists to refer to that we distribute to all new teachers as the DPS Scope and Sequence. It is basically a list of what we want them to teach for acquisition that year. One list has 100 verbs and the other, for upper levels, has 200.)
2. Establish meaning just as you would do in any comprehension based activity.
3. Ask for a gesture from the class, or use the same one from your first period class so that you don’t get confused throughout the day.
4. Start circling the verb.
5. Say the verb in every single statement or question you make, “slamming” it into your students’ minds. Get as many reps as you can in the short period of time you have before they become tired of the picture.
How does this activity differ from Look and Discuss?
1. L and D is general discussion about a picture. VSA focuses only on verbs.
2. L and D can last more than a few minutes. VSA cannot last longer than a few minutes because of its intense focus on only one word at a time.
3. We make a verb wall from VSA that stays up all year. That is the main function of VSA, to get a verb wall built in our classrooms that has on it only verbs that our students have full command over.
To make the verb wall, put a big sheet of empty paper (butcher block, etc.) on the wall. Work with a verb as described above. Do not add the verb to the wall until your class has acquired it. If certain students have acquired the verb, that is not enough. Just keep slamming a verb, one verb for a few minutes a day for a month or more if necessary.
Delaying the ceremonious addition of the verb to the poster paper until only the entire class has clearly acquired it frustrates the faster processors but keeps the class together. The extra reps don’t hurt those faster processors anyway. By doing it this way, you avoid classes where some kids know the verb and some don’t, which unravels programs over time.
Over time, the growing butcher block lists are added to spaces near the ceiling of the classroom for reference during writing activities.
I always put the third person singular form of the verb on the verb wall, while obviously using various forms of the verbs in various tenses during the VSA discussion.
Here is an example of how to slam a verb:
1. Write the new verb down on the board: travaille – works
2. Say to the students, “Class, “travaille” means “works.” (Note: all we do when we establish meaning is to say or write down “this means that.” We don’t explain any more than that. We just say “this means that”. That’s all.)
3. Ask the class what “travaille” means. The students all say “works”.
4. Next, we say to the class, “Class, show me works!” Use the Show Me cards. The students suggest possible gestures and you accept one, praising the kid whose idea it was, insisting on a round of applause from the class for that kid. We try to remember to gesture the verb whenever we use it all year, while also looking at the inventor of the gesture in an approving way each time it is used. Kids learn to take ownership in certain verbs when they were the one to suggest a gesture for it. Whatever gesture the first period class uses, use that one throughout the day to keep things simple.
5. Now we have established meaning. At this point, just as in all the other comprehension based activities, we are ready to discuss and personalize the verb using PQA or PSA. Ask general questions. Does (your student) William work? Circle those questions exhaustively in the normal way.
By now your single baseball pitch counter or PQA counter – see Jobs for Kids section – who is counting repetitions on that single verb, will tell you that you have, perhaps, 50 reps on the verb. Thank them. When the discussion wanes, move on to something else.
[Credit: the term “Verb Slam” was created by Polly Fuller. Thank you, Polly!]