Visual PQA (vPQA) Update

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12 thoughts on “Visual PQA (vPQA) Update”

  1. This is good to hear. I really think this type of Look & Discuss PQA with subtitles will make that first step of TPRS easier and more appealing to newer teachers. Let’s face it: PQA, taking 3 structures and improvising personal questions, is scary and delicate.
    This return to images is like a return to one of the greatest tricks in the TCI book. And the slide show is like a PQA map. One slide flops, well, just click to the next one. Yes, I see that it could restrict the free-flowing mojo a little bit, but what we get in return is stability and security!
    Similarly, this is what makes MovieTalk easier and more comfortable than TPRS for many teachers. If what Julie is sharing represents A LOT of her time, I feel like she deserves more than credit. I’ve done PPT PQA before after seeing Laurie Clarcq do it 2 years ago, but the time it took for me to create the show meant I never did it again. I also didn’t get the same interest I got from PPT PQA that I get from stories. Maybe it has to do with the age of my students. But I’m willing to get back on that horse!

      1. For me, it feels like this would rein me in just perfectly. I have yet to see the slides but can feel the power and scaffolding (of myself, the security of the railing that would keep me from spinning all over the map).
        Can’t wait to see these and to read Ben’s meticulous documentation. Thank you Julie and thank you Ben for documenting and thank you Ruth for translating and thank you everyone in this group for digging away as you all do, uncovering all these rich layers!!!

    1. Eric, if you are still willing to share your verb pictures that you made some time back, I would appreciate it. I find that pictures ground me. I love L&D with artwork of Spanish artista and it starts our hour out in all Spanish. I would like to use your pictures as part of a word wall. I have never had a word wall before but I think that my students will benefit from it. Do you have a word wall? I would like to see some pictures of others as I create mine.

      1. docs.google.com/presentation/d/1LwtyvhUvVz0yuNKyabQDNJexrX71QsqtfMypIcGht_Y/edit?usp=sharing
        I have these made into laminated cards (pic on 1 side, 1st & 3rd person present tense on back). I have only gone through the cards 1 time this year, to show what kids know and see what they don’t.
        I have 2 verb wall posters (1st person & 3rd person), but honestly, my kids rarely look at it.

  2. It’s just a Google folder, simple, nothing fancy. If it turns out that we need something different, then someone can do something different. Let us know if you have a better (simple) idea about how to share these. I know you haven’t seen it yet. Soon I think 🙂

  3. And Eric, Julie would be the first to credit Carol and Laurie and the other super experts who have brought this PP thing along, However, I point to the Chest of Drawers thing, the ability to present her slides in a masterful taxonomy, that I have not seen elsewhere, where a lot of PP slides I have seen elsewhere are not crafted in the way I see Julie doing. That’s the difference for me.
    Also, Eric said:
    … I also didn’t get the same interest I got from PPT PQA that I get from stories….
    Yes, nothing can replace a good story. But when you are sweating bricks trying to get that story up and built, after sweating bricks after doing all the PQA needed to set it up, I am perfectly fine with any loss in interest.
    And in fact, it seemed to me, and this to me is a point of huge importance, that the middle school kids that I saw Julie working with have just left, or are just leaving, the switch over to abstract thinking from the 6th grade and are still largely concrete sequential. So the kids I see in Julie’s classes with the slides are really remarkably involved and I would think that (depending on the teacher’s experience with stories as well) they would be less interested with stories. Lots of different variables apply to that last sentence, like student population, etc. but I think it might be true. Plus, we can do both! Stories can set up and support vPQA and vice versa.

  4. That’s cool. So it’s largely the “embedded/extended/graded/scaffolded” element of the slideshow that makes it special.
    I also bet that having response options and the verb conjugated already encourages students to talk (pronunciation may be an issue, but only until enough teacher reps are had). And it is having the personalized options available that gets different kids to acquire what is personally meaningful to them, while everyone gets tons of reps on the verb target.

    1. …so it’s largely the “embedded/extended/graded/scaffolded” element of the slideshow that makes it special….
      Yes. And the fact that Julie has a genuine interest in what her kids feed her.
      Well put Eric above. Thanks. The response options are huge. Plus, if on lleva, duerme and hace ruido Julie has already done a story, we can see another reason why the kids are so loquacious.
      I am glad I deconstructed the four classes I saw Julie teach to such an extreme degree. I learned a ton. I see the value of the slide, the gradation up a taxonomy of more information with each new slide, the captioned response options right there on the slide with the picture, the human interest showed by the teacher, etc. It all opened up my entire view of what this work can entail. The idea of having pre-made lesson plans in the language I teach at my finger tips that I can use if I don’t want to do a story that day is a new great addition to what I thought was enough.

    2. The scaffolding up from simpler to more complex sentences and phrasing is something I’m tucking into my memory for next time I use a Power Point with pictures. I only do them after a couple days of auditory input, though. As a first step in reading, I have used PowerPoints without captions and we caption them live in class; I have also pre-captioned and we discuss and true/false/opinion about them.

  5. Back when we discussed “reports of the day” I shared the PPT slides I was using that contain the thematic (low-frequency) vocabulary covered in a traditional Spanish 1 program. I stopped doing this, because I realized how non-essential a lot of these words are, and because of the research I started reading on teaching words in semantic sets.
    BUT, there were a few kids who would ask when we were going to do “reports” again. Like anything I do, the key element is the storyasking. I just ask questions and the kids enjoy mixing the personal with the imaginative (customized). I recall how the slides made the activity more comforting to me as a teacher. Here they are if anyone wants to adapt (they are available as well at the bottom of my school website).
    Date, Clothing, Weather, Food, Drink:
    docs.google.com/presentation/d/1CIzsrEFuNVPs0Ea_FqLxUbjNXBh7i5p8xmiTu3_uAbc/edit?usp=sharing
    Sports, Instruments, Time, Daily Routines, School Objects:
    docs.google.com/presentation/d/1ObQBWcU5xEcY3h5Chc0XPhJI7K5tOVt1zc9P-fNtI6c/edit?usp=sharing
    House, Family, Adjectives, Transportation, Places, Professions:
    docs.google.com/presentation/d/1YT1c_Q_5VjWvyEyqU9X0Kze89nIOvmDQrJa5vLF2OVs/edit?usp=sharing

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