Good morning!

I mentioned MovieTalks or StoryTalks at curriculum night and on previous blog posts so I thought I would give you a little peek into these popular lessons.

I piloted the idea of MovieTalks with my 4th and 5th grade classes and since then, have added them to my repertoire for my 2nd and 3rd grade classes. For a MovieTalk and StoryTalk, the format is basically the same.  I tell the students a story completely in Spanish.

Here is the format we follow:

• Student are reminded of two signals: “uno, dos, tres, ahora no inglés” (from here on in, no English is spoken by the students) and the students can tap the top corner of their desk if I am speaking too fast (slow-down signal)
• Watch a video or slides (for stories, I try to use slides of pictures to help us tell our story) with no sound only a couple seconds at a time
• After watching each “clip”, I tell the story in Spanish.  On the board, I draw pictures and write words in both English and Spanish. The English is there to help students to process all the information thrown at them.  It is not for them to repeat.
• I stop short of the ending and then shut off all the lights, turn on the sound and let the students watch the entire video uninterrupted. The hope is that all that Spanish they just heard is rolling around in their heads and not the English.
• It sounds intimidating but it is not.  Before each “talk” the students and I talk about how their responsibility is to sit back, listen and process.  I was lucky enough to get the students to give it a chance. Even the skeptical ones were smiling at the end admitting the story was not as hard as they initially thought. I still need to go over this part but a lot faster these days.

I’ve attached some pictures of what our board can look like by the end of a “Talk”.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The students are enjoying this lesson format so I am trying to include one at least once a week. Also in the name of speaking slower and keeping the content rich, these lessons may take up to 2 class periods so I guess it’s a lesson in patience for all of us.  🙂

For the younger classes, we spent last week talking about the colors in Spanish. We explored some poetry and some music and of course some of us colored! At the end of the week, we listened to a faster colors song to see how fast we could say them and we started our first book in Spanish: El Día que los Crayones Renunciaron (The Day the Crayons quit). It’s a long book so we’re only going to read one page each day and use it as a basis for a short discussion.

For our youngest learners, we are continuing to talk about animals and the sounds they make. We are also talking about how to introduce ourselves in Spanish using “me llamo…”

I am enjoying trying new things out with my classes and I hope they are also having fun. Have a good week!