Friday, May 13, 2016

Picture Word Inductive Model / Vocabulary

In a search designed originally designed to find some creative interpersonal speaking activities I came across Edutopia's article "Using Photos with English Language Learners."  It was here that I first learned of the Picture Word Inductive Model or PWMI. (I don't know if this makes me way behind the times but it does make me wonder why ELL and LA teachers don't share more resources...)

I've long enjoyed using photos as a speaking or writing prompt in my classes but I really liked the format of the PWMI and decided to give it a shot.

A colleague recently shared a folder of great photographs that he uses but I wanted to find something that could lend itself to the vocabulary we'd been learning. A quick Internet search for "pictures that tell a story" yielded a ton of resources. I decided on this one from Printaholic.com:

Image credit: http://www.printaholic.com/15-cool-pictures-that-tell-a-story/

I asked students, in groups of three, to come up with twenty vocabulary words that described what they saw in the picture. Students were given three minutes to do this and many groups came up with more than twenty words. I asked groups to share out and, with the image projected on the board, I labeled the photo.

The next task was to classify the words into four different groups. I explained that groups were entirely up to them and could be groups according to words type, an overarching theme, even words that began with the same letter. When they finished they had to give each group a title.

Independently (this can be done in groups as well but I wanted to mix it up), they had to write four more words for each group. This time the words didn't have to correspond to the picture but they had to fit the group. Students worked alone on this for five minutes and then shared their words with their groups.

Now it was time to start asking some questions. I started with some basic questions like ¿Quiénes son? ¿Dónde están? ¿Qué hacen? ¿Están durmiendo? 

The students had a ton of vocabulary at their disposal so I started pressing for details, making sure to point out particular vocabulary words I was using. I let the group discussion go for about five minutes- enough so that students had a good outline for a story- and then had students write independently for the rest of class. The directions were to use the vocabulary to describe in 100 words what was happening in the photo and the responses were phenomenal!

While I like to focus more on input rather than output in my lower levels, it is true that everyone (parents, admin, even students themselves) want and expect to be able to actually use the language and I thought this was a great opportunity to get those creative juices flowing! I was so pleased with the outcome of this activity that I found some more interesting photos and made a couple of worksheets to use as sub plans. In the sub plans I asked students to exchange stories, read their partners' story and write down four questions about something in the story they'd like to know more about. The author of the story is then asked to go back and include the answers to these questions in their story.  It might be fun to do this as a speaking and listening activity in class.


Thursday, May 12, 2016

Character Analysis

Image Credit: http://www.nonsuchbook.com/2010/01/the-reading-habits-of-fictional-characters-matilda.html

My level one classes are currently reading Robo en la noche. We've just finished chapter where the actual robbery takes place and I wanted the students to make an informed guess as to who the culprit was. I was trying to come up with a plan that would provide valuable reps of the target vocabulary while at the same time teach students to express an opinion. I thought: Character analysis! Students would have to re-read the text (valuable repetitions) in order to find the thoughts and actions of a particular character. Next, they'd have to analyze these actions in order to determine who was most likely to have committed the crime. Finally, they'd have to articulate their conclusions (express an opinion).

I started with an Internet search to see what was out there in terms of Character analysis templates and lesson plans and found some good resources from Read Write Think.  Focusing on only four of the characters, I made a modified Spanish version of the table found here.



The only problem was my students didn't have enough adjective vocabulary to describe some of the personality traits I wanted them to analyze. I decided, since my objective wasn't focused on the acquisition of adjective vocabulary, to just give them the words they'd need. I prepared a list of as many adjective cognates as I could and made a Spanish/English matching activity.

I started with a warm up question:

¿Es más importante lo que una persona dice o lo que una persona hace? Explica. 

This generated some interesting responses and led to more personalized questions like: 

¿Piensas en cosas que no haces? ¿A veces haces cosas sin pensar? ¿Hablas sin pensar? ¿Conoces a una persona que habla sin pensar? 

While we were discussing these questions (a great opportunity to review some of those super verbs like pensar, hacer, and conocer), I passed out the adjective match-up activity. I gave students about three minutes to complete it independently and then projected the answers on the ppt. After ensuring that everyone had the correct vocabulary, I explained that in groups of four students would be going back into the book to find out what each character does and says and then record this information on the table I had given them. I explained that each person in the group would be responsible for researching one character and that they'd share their findings with the rest of the group. As always with group work, I had to emphasize that all the work was to be done in the target language. With a student volunteer and some sentence starters on the board, I modeled how students were to share their opinions about the characters (Yo pienso que Juan Carlos es egoísta porque a él no le importan las aves.).

When students finished, I projected the question:

¿Quién robó las aves? ¿Por qué? 

I also provided the following template for students to use to answer the question:

En mi opinión / A mí me parece / Pienso que / Creo que _____ robó las aves porque 

____________________________________________________________________.

Students were give two minutes to discuss their answers in groups. After sharing out as a class, students had to give their response in writing using 50-75 words.