About a year and a half ago Charlotte (Germany) invented something for middle and elementary kids and shared it with us here. It’s called a Wall Zoo. Then today Eric Herman referenced the idea in a comment, using the term that best describes Charlotte’s idea – Draw and PQA (DPQA). It is another blue chip idea that we can use as a template.
Here is Charlotte’s idea:
I asked the students which animals they would like to draw (in the foreign language, which is English in our case) and they each picked an animal that we translated. Then I did some PQA about who would draw which animal. Then they drew them and cut them out and we stuck them on the wall for a big zoo. Next lesson I’m going to circle questions about the zoo. “Does the polar bear live in Alaska or in Afrika? Does the shark eat the penguin? Does the giraffe live with the fish? Do you like frogs?” etc. So far the kids (ten-year-olds) had lots and lots of fun, but essentially we were doing a list. I thought it was ok, because from now on, we’re going to use the animal words in stories. I don’t expect them to know them all perfectly, but I tried to expand their vocabulary by a list all in one go. Oh and we might jump into a story about two of them at the zoo.
I responded to Charlotte: This has great potential. You are using your ten year olds’ naturally high interest in animals as a base for CI. That was a great move and a great choice – just brilliant! I would bet that any middle and elementary school teachers reading this will be doing a wall zoo next week. It will work in high school too. This is compelling input to kids! First of all, each kid’s own animal is up there. They are just waiting for you to get to their animal! They may not say it but it is true. This really could be a curriculum for an entire year of TPRS. It could be as powerful for younger kids as CWB to start the year. We are all well aware that the word “compelling” is key to what Krashen has been thinking about and talking about for the past five years. And this takes the kids directly there – into compelling input. If you want, write up any details for us. As others try it out, this idea will grow. I will just make a category for Wall Zoo right now and place it in the Beginning of the Year category. Note that, once those animals are in the zoo, you can ask anything about them, make up any stories about them – the possibilities for CI in your idea here are endless. Many good things will come from this idea. You could write an endless series of cute little stories about how certain animals interact. You cold ask kids how they feel about certain animals. You could do RT with this all day long. Congratulations!