To help students practice acting things out, you can have several situations students have to mime. Examples: Your wrists are tied to ropes that are attached to a pulley on the ceiling. The teacher (or other student) has control over the main pulley. (vocab: polea, jalar, atar con cuerda, arriba, dejar caer, levantar - and all the attached vocab that comes from dramatizing this). You could have slides describing these words or chalkboard drawings. With enough modeling and practice in small groups/whole class, you can come up with templates for students to use on one partner. (This is just a rough sketch, by the way) Yo tengo un(a) ___________(pistola/martillo/cuerda) (this could get pretty evil) Yo te ____________ (pego, ato, disparo) Tú ________(te caes, te duele, estás colgado-a) Then individual students can control the whole class. Steps: Teacher models. Students mime. Act out/do hand motions for the vocabulary. Teacher models sentence frames; students can use them as crutches. Students work in small groups of 3-4 doing/inventing new situations. Teacher asks for new input. Students show new miming ideas - teacher adds speech to a sentence frame bank. Rinse, lather, repeat. Thoughts: This could go over a series of days, all in one day, or all quarter, or all year. The grammar worrywarts can see the obvious potential - io/do pronouns, reflexive verbs, and on and on. The real benefit, however, is that the teacher shows a good model, students learn associated vocabulary, they have to listen and watch the teacher very well to know what they are supposed to do ("My hands are tied, you have a rope, when you pull, my hands go up"), they have to negotiate meaning in small, safe groups with students practicing small-group leadership skills, they can follow the model or create something new (asking the teacher for new vocabulary ¿Cómo se dice? - I respond in Spanish in the 1st & maybe 2nd quarters - afterward they have to act out or draw their question), the teacher learns to gauge class energy level, and students learn to control the class in Spanish - a difficult task that subtly creates some compassion for the teacher's job and more likelihood that students will start to realize how their own behavior affects the game flow. Ancillary lesson: I think another good lesson would be to model for students both direct and indirect ways of managing the classroom, and have them practice in progressively larger groups. When students shout out "¡Cáyate!" to a student who is interrupting, I can't help thinking with a little smirk, "My sentiments exactly." However, this shows that I haven't taught them effective and safe ways of making the classroom run smoothly. Examples of indirectly managing the classroom: - ¡A todos mis amigos que les gusta la música! (students in circle move to a new spot. The last person to be in position has to be the next leader. - Cada otra persona adelante. Círculo dentro a la izquierda dos veces (This makes good inside-outside circles for conversation) Examples of directly managing the classroom: - "Pedro, ¿necesitas hacer un comentario? Yo te estoy escuchando ahora. ¿Qué quieres decir?" - "Pedro, cuando yo hablo, ¿puedes escuchar, por favor?" - "Pedro, ¿Puedes ponerte al lado de Juanita? - "Pedro, ¿Puedes esperar fuera del círculo por x minuto(s)?" Students can practice disciplining one another all year - some students can and do do this already, but next year I want all students to have the ability to manage these social situations with more confidence. Well, that is all for now. Hope you are all well. Nanosh "Race was never just a matter of how you look; it's about how people assign meaning to how you look." - Robin D.G. Kelley