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18 thoughts on “Video Rescue”
I’ve gotten more comfortable with sharing videos I made last fall. I don’t know how applicable they’ll be for others, but so far I’ve posted:
1. on Circling with Names (technique for beginning Chinese classes): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nSHAkJH5ex8
2. Chinese reading games https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uzm-9KuHaXM
3. My student’s book trailer for Terry Waltz’s easy Chinese reader “Pandarella”: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TGbwd3IznDI
I plan to upload video from my first 4th grade exploratory class this month. A video-savvy dad volunteers to video at our school, and he’s working on editing now. He’s also agreed to video classes with my 7th graders doing Listen & Draw, Look & Discuss, and Read & Discuss. So I hope by the end of the school year to have some clips ready to share.
I keep my videos “Unlisted” so you need the link to see them – they aren’t searchable. I’m still a little funny about that.
Diane can I link those three links to the Videos hard link?
Sure, feel free.
Alright Diane! I look forward to watching your videos!
I can’t wait to see the Listen and Draw, Look and Discuss, and Read and Discuss. I have been reading about this. Thanks.
I’ve done, this semester with my first level students, a very similar reading activity that you, Diane, call here Improv. A student acts out a sentence from a selection of sentences, and the class guesses which sentence is being acted out. I’ve been calling it Read-Act-Match, but I guess it’s basically charades.
But better than charades to me: the whole class ends up reading & rereading the same few sentences. Even better is to use a group of sentences that form a story line. I now find it even better to story-ask the sentences and type them up right there in class. The kids own them more & come up with stuff that they’d like to act.
I tend to find charades kind of lame by comparison!
I’m going to do that!
It’s been a real pain in the butt trying to video record my classes this term. The school’s video camera is hard to get ahold of. Then, the one good video I did get – 20 minutes of the beginning of one of my classes – ended up being a mess. I started class asking students to do a kind of bell-ringer instead of my usual launch into Look & Discuss, and it flopped. I had to put a student out… it was just a mess. Argh. Watching myself and my class in that recording makes me want to put the hammer down on those kids. It’s an ongoing battle, and I know all the teachers working with this particular class (our classes of kids travel together, European style) struggle.
I guess I’m saying all this because I’d really like to contribute to the video collection and not because I feel like I’m a pro at this. Far from it. I just get a lot out of watching others’ videos of them teaching in real classrooms with real kids, dealing with real issues, and I hope that other teachers here on Ben’s PLC feel encouraged to submit videos of them teaching, good or bad. In fact, the not-so-smoothly-executed-instructional-delivery-videos can be very informative, sometimes even most informative.
As I benefit tremendously from watching other CI teachers’ videos, I offer my own. I recorded last Friday, 4/25/14, the first 15 minutes of my period 3 Spanish 1 class (87 min block). I would have recorded more but my computer/recording device lost its juice. It’s in 2 parts.
I greatly appreciate anyone who takes the time to watch. If you may, some feedback would be most beneficial. Short and sweet will suffice, along the lines of… 1) One thing you found interesting, and 2) One thing you’re left wondering about.
part 1: http://youtu.be/BQZjreke6aE
part 2: http://youtu.be/C_zYnkmyAJ8
Thank you PLC! I hope to have better quality recordings up in the near future.
I really liked that you had the students do the drawings so that you captured what was interesting to them. You seem to be very easy going and calm and that gives the class an anchor. When you have energetic students that is a must. Sometimes when my classes get a little wild I forget at first that the calm starts with me. The students seemed excited to be speaking Spanish and you have a great sense of humor in the class. I noticed when one student was talking the two energetic boys were totally quiet showing their interest.
My question is what was the picture of on the bulletin board? That was when you showed the two meanings of hacer.
I am glad that you made a video because I learn all sorts of new things watching others teach. That is a very brave thing to do. I am not sure that I feel that comfortable yet. I look forward to watching more videos.
Thanks Melissa. I too think it’s great that some students enjoy speaking in L2 and listening to their peers speak in L2. However, I see what Ben means when he suggests below that I should work on having them speak less and listen to me more. There are times when the barometer students fall out of understanding when a high processor is speaking. I do repeat to bring back to comprehensibility, and circle with twists, but I have to work on not letting these exchanges between high processors and me get out of hand. Sometimes, a high processor flatly needs to be told, “Not now.” I get that.
The picture on the board that got students all giggly was a color copy of a Dr. Bill Vecars doing the American Sign Language (ASL) for “do”. (“Hacer” in Spanish means ‘to make’ or ‘to do’… I had a picture of a student doing the gesture ‘to make’, but no picture of anyone doing the gesture for ‘to do’ until this class period.) They were laughing because they thought I look like him. I usually put up pictures of my students doing the sign gestures, but I just needed to get this one picture of the sign gesture “do” up quickly. His website is here:
http://www.lifeprint.com/
I’ve been using his website a lot as I’ve switched over to using ASL. I like the black & white sketched visuals that Dr. Bell Vecars has available for our use. I’ve downloaded the ones I frequent on my computer to pull up in class if needed. I’m fixin’ to use ASL exclusively next year. If I recall, there were others here like Chris Stolz or Jim Tripp who think using sign language for our gestures is what we should be doing. Some of the members here said they like their students to make up the gestures, but I personally like having internalized the ASL gestures, and students are learning a 3rd language in the meantime.
thanks!
I have used ASL for many years for some signs but this year I have learned much more from a fellow teacher that speaks ASL. We have also started a ASL club in our school and have some students who are really taking to it. I am helping that teacher learn about TPRS to teach our club and have been looking for posters for the question words so I will check out this site today. Thanks for the site.
I also agree that a few students can talk too much and take over the class. My first year I just let them yell out ideas but now I look for raised hands or I ask for someone that has not talked that hour to volunteer. That way one or two students don’t get to take over. Also some of the quieter students have amazing ideas and I tend to choose their ideas, if they fit well, to foster more involvement as well as highlight them as just as important as the louder ones. I can’t wait to see your next video.
Output from us is good because we know to stay in bounds and keep the reps going and keep programming all we say toward our target expressions. On the other hand, when students output, it disrupts that process, which should not be interrupted.
In our classrooms, children should be seen and not heard. The need for focus is disrupted by such children. The analogy would be of a baby getting to sit in adult fashion and converse with adults. Even if some of what he said made sense, and may even benefit him, he still is outputting before his brain is fully in command of the output and, much more importantly, disturbing the class (we don’t learn our first languages in classrooms).
I object to interrupting the subtle flow of input from the teacher and do not see the reason we would give to encourage it. We teach classes, not individuals, as mentioned above, and what is best for the class, everyone in it, is comprehensible input, without any distractions.
Note importantly that in the first two years the silent mode from our students is not completely silent. By encouraging their one word answers, they are outputting speech* within the uninterrupted flow of language.
I am certain that when a first and second year class is in that more silent mode, when they start to naturally output in levels three and four, at the earliest, then their speech output will be much more crisp, with a better accent, than if they rush things.
*see https://benslavic.com/blog/category/vcu-vons-checking-for-understanding/
When we are doing a story, I ask questions to personalize the story and the students will give me ideas. This is what I mean by having students talk.
Wonderful pacing and flow with the kids. They were involved – look at the discussion about the track athlete from 7:00 to 8:00 in the first video. That was strong CI – your questions were met with short answers by the students. It continued on into the second video. It was good Look and Discuss. Did you give the three structures for the Look and Discuss image first?
You listened to them, perhaps, too much, without getting back from them a nice quiet listening in a quiet room so that the CI could be front and center. The chatter in the room seems normal, but it would fray my nerves. Your need to keep things in bounds was in conflict with their desire to take you out of bounds, not consciously or maliciously on their part, they were kids just having fun, but that desire to have fun can unfortunately go into conflict with the need for the room to be quieter so that the CI can “stick”.
Watching this video reminded me of being in similar classes when I used to allow more speech output than I do now. In fact the kids were speaking Spanish, but clearly, they were mixing it in with too much general commentary, either short bursts of English or laughter. Each burst distracted from your lesson.
How to get them to speak less and just listen quietly would be in my opinion the task before you at this point. I certainly would not have the answer to how to do that – we all decide how to do that by ourselves in our own classrooms and there is no one way to do it.
It’s too late with this year, but I think it a reasonable goal for next year. Another thing is that I didn’t see a lot of laser pointer support of any new structures.
There is so much to work with here:
1. good strong CI
2. good flow
3. the pace worked for the kids
4. good personalization going on
I would like to see a story. That particular class has enough strong potential actors. They could knock a story out of the park. I would like to see more.
I also agree with everything Melissa said above. Right on, Sean, this is exactly what I want more of, and what I thought would be a big learning tool for us here in the group – lots of videos to prompt discussion about how we can get better at this. Nice first video – keep them coming!
I wasn’t expecting such pointed feedback. Thanks!
I certainly will work on getting students to speak less (actually, I am working on it now even if it is one month away from the end of the year). It is a struggle. Many do get upset when I quiet them down. I’ve certainly grown some thick skin about it, though. I have to say that I’m lucky to have small classes. This is a class of 20 kids. My other is a class of 15. Drop-outs and what not. I think I would really struggle if I had these kids in a class of 30+. Kudos to you guys who do it.
This Look & Discuss session was non-targeted. I started class everyday that week putting up some illustrations students did depicting things going on in their lives. I didn’t target structures but I certainly tried to pull-out neglected structures from times past.
Soon after this video ends we spent the rest of the time on a story-asking. You’re right Ben, there are a few good actors in this class; students who love to present, speak, and lead. At the same time, these good actors need to work on their listening stamina.
Thanks for the encouraging words.
I just was searching on YouTube for Chinese TPRS videos… and I came across Michele Whaley’s Russian class. I haven’t watched the whole thing, but it appears to be a full class session. There was also a link to a condensed version of it.
Michele, is it ok to share that link with the PLC in the Videos section?