[ola] Idea for miming template...

  • From: Nanosh Lucas <nanoshlucas@xxxxxxxxx>
  • To: "ola@xxxxxxxxxxxxx" <ola@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
  • Date: Sat, 9 Jun 2012 09:28:59 -0700

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

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  • » [ola] Idea for miming template... - Nanosh Lucas