El Jaguar Positivo y Los Monos Curiosos keep inspiring more simple conversations about different topics. Here is my collection so far:
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One image that can convey a thousand comprehensible words
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El Jaguar Positivo y los Monos Curiosos
I love drawing as much as I love teaching. The way my students engage with my hopeful drawings is my motivation to draw and to give my images the power to convey many meanings. I think novice learners need to find that power in the input they receive and feel empowered to use it in different ways. That is how I thought “El Jaguar Positivo y Los Monos Curiosos” could help.
First came the idea of just interacting with my jaguar. Every time I looked at it, I remembered the popular meme cat the poor lady always yells at, and I thought my jaguar also had many things to say. Since cognates have been key to helping my students find their power to communicate, I wanted them to be more aware of their existence while emphasizing positive things to say. El Jaguar Positivo brings a positive message in the form of a cognate and my students are invited to add the positive cognates they find in our lessons under the “poster”. I have invited other teachers to suggest some. Please share your own in a comment to spread positive cognate vibes!
Thinking of providing interaction among my students with short clips, los Monos Curiosos popped in. These three friends interact with the Jaguar Positivo and use simple expressions, cognates, and language my students can infer.
My drawings are precious to me and I feel they can encourage my novice learners see how many ideas they could express with the same images, and my goal is for the written input to be comprehensible. I just started creating some videos to use as bellringers. I like to project them on our Interactive Board and loop them for my students to see when they enter my class. I love how they make fun of my silly jokes or the face they make to show they are happy to understand. I also like to see what they can remember after I stop the clips and just ask them to retell what they remember. After making them aware that I use the same images and create different ideas, I encourage them to think of new ones.
If you would like to join the fun, you can find the video clips, the PDF of the existing video files, and the PDF images of El Jaguar Positivo and Los Monos Curiosos in my TPT store. You can download, print, and laminate the images, and have your students write new conversations with a dry-erase marker. You can also find comic strips you can print for them to write on. I would love to see what they can come up with. Please share!
Teaching with “Los Súper Siete”
Although I have been using comprehensible input for a while and have read and watched teachers talking about the “Super Seven”, this is my first year actually “teaching them”. My students are loving every step and I am impressed on how they have been talking and writing more because of them.
Before school started, I displayed them as I did last year right next to our whiteboard. However, unlike last year when I only pointed to them whenever we needed them, I decided to hire “Los Súper Siete”. I told my class I needed seven volunteers who were to be always ready to get into their positions whenever I said “Los Súper Siete”. I looked for active and extrovert students who were not afraid to act and say the words with enthusiasm. All my students wanted to be part of that.
Watching La Maestra Loca’s Youtube channel, I learned and was fascinated with her Canta Ninja idea. Inspired by that, I used the same technique with my class rules with only one student leading and the results were great. I wanted more students to be attentive and prepared to review these verbs in those moments they needed a brain break or reinforcement of their meaning.
The process
One at a time, I hired and modeled what each student had to say and do. I am sure many of the motions are the same or similar to others used by other teachers because I have seen a lot of CI and TPRS videos. Students only say the word in Spanish and do the motion. Since I cannot share videos of my students I illustrated the motions here.
Hay (There is/there are): I say the word while I pretend to look inside a box.
Soy ( I am): I point to myself with both hands.
Tengo (I have): I cup one hand and point to it with my other hand.
Me gusta (I like) : Two thumbs up while I move them in a circle from side to side.
Quiero (I want): I move one hand in a fist towards my heart and over my other hand.
Estoy (I am at): I stamp one foot as I move my hands pointing to the floor.
Voy (I go): I “Moonwalk” (while my face turns red with embarrassment when my students finally guess I am trying to moonwalk).
Once all jobs are assigned and I am sure everyone knows what to do, I surprise the rest of the class with their jobs. They have to stand across the “Super Seven” and say and act these parts after each one of them:
Hay (there is/there are) : Students just copy what the “Súper Hay” says.
Es (She/he / it is): Students point to “Súper Soy” and say “Es”.
Tiene (She/he/ it has): Students point to “Súper Tengo” and drag their finger over their cupped hand.
Le gusta (She/he/it likes): Students point to “Súper Me Gusta” with both fingers and move them in a circular motion from side to side.
Quiere (She/he/it wants): Students point to “Súper Quiero” with one hand and move it in a fist towards their heart and over their other hand.
Está (She/he/it is -at): Students point to “Súper Estoy” and then put both hands down as they stamp one foot.
Va (She/he/it goes): Students point to “Súper Voy” and then moonwalk.
So far, this is my students’ favorite brain break and they even ask me to do it for our visitors or for their teachers. I also recorded them doing it and shared the video with their parents on Seesaw so that they could teach their parents the Super Seven. For homework, I assigned a matching activity and they did great without them ever having written them down before. My students have been using the “Súper Siete” organically to talk about themselves and establishing comparisons with the characters of the books we are reading or the Movie or Picture Talks we do.
To keep the knowledge in context and provide my students with situations where they could commonly use these verbs, I let Cuadrado and Círculo take over as part of our “Prepárate” (bell ringer). Here is a sample of my TPT product. My students have fun understanding the comic and playing the roles afterwards. This has also worked well for “improvs” as a ticket-out -of -the -door. I usually tell them the situation and volunteers role play the comic and add their own spice. See more Cuadrado y Círculo.
Hope you feel like trying these ideas with your classes and share how they work, and/or your tweaks,
Have some “Super Seven Days” this week!!!
La Profe de Español
CREA – My class’ RULES
CREA
This is the word that resulted as an acronym for the way I rephrased my classroom rules this year. It stands for
Colabora – Collaborate
Respeta – Respect
Esfuérzate – Make an effort
Arriésgate – Take risks
My goal was to find words that represented the CI class rules and that gave students room to come up with the way these rules would look and sound like as for our Responsive Classroom approach (philosophy?).
Last week, I saw some of my classes. I teach Pre-K to fifth grade Spanish and I see most of my students twice a week for forty minutes except for Kindergarten (30 minute-classes). I only see Pre-K and Jr.-K once a week for thirty minutes. Although I saw both Kindergarten classes, I did not mention those rules yet. We worked on our introductions and our line and rug routines.
With first grade was different. After our introductions and practicing the steps to sit on the rug, I chose my first hire of the year: Our Silencio helper. This person would count from five to zero when s/he notices some students have not seen our hands are up and we are quietly waiting for instructions. My back up plans are our call-and-responses, and a bell I have on top of my desk to add variety. All of these are ideas I have been getting from the Responsive Classroom books we are reading and from seeing them applied by many CI teachers in their videos.
First of all, it is important to know that In my experience, I use English the first class to ease the transition for new students and to let them know that they are not expected to understand everything. During the new students orientation, I welcomed our excited new students into my classroom using only Spanish and two ended up crying, including the child who blurted out her very well rehearsed greetings to me right away. Lesson learned!
In my first class, I restrict the total use of the target language to modeling the routines as I name them in Spanish (Una sola fila, levántate, siéntate, mete/voltea la silla). When I refer to the rules, I point to them and I ask my students to tell me what they think they mean. Crea, Colabora, and Respeta are cognates that encourage my reading kids to confidently say their meaning. Esfuérzate and Arriésgate are not that simple to infer but after I read them, children recognize “Effort” and I explain that “Arriésgate” is just what they are doing saying all their guesses no matter if they are right or wrong.
For each word/rule, we come up with examples of what they would look like in Spanish class. These are just some my students came up with:
Colabora:
-When someone does not know what page/materials/activity we are working on/with, we can tell/show them.
-We can point to things or act out words so that people can understand.
-We can translate words in English if we are asked for.
I usually lead them to “Support the flow of the class”.
Respeta: I ask students to tell me what our eyes, mouth, and whole body would look and sound like to show respect.
-We listen to the person that is speaking.
-Our mouths are close when someone is talking.
-We don’t make noises.
Esfuérzate: I tell them not to give up when they find themselves not understanding.
⁃ Look at the teacher’s actions.
⁃ Look for words that sound familiar.
⁃ Use the posters on the walls.
⁃ Use your materials.
⁃ Ask questions.
– Use Spanish as much as you can.
Arriésgate: My goal is for students not to be afraid of making mistakes and learning from them.
⁃ Participate.
⁃ Say what you think it is.
⁃ Guess the spelling / meaning/ pronunciation a word
– Use your Spanish as much as you can.
We accompany each word with an action to make it comprehensible, fun, and active, TPR -style.
Colabora: arms around each other in a circle.
Respeta: Left hand behind our back, right hand making small circles down as our head bows. ( Easier doing it than writing it)
Esfuérzate: We pretend we are lifting a big and heavy weigh and end up showing our muscles.
Arriésgate: We lift our right hand up as when we win a tournament.
Once we learn the actions and how to move safely and respectfully into the center of the classroom, I choose my second hire: our CREA helper. I was inspired by Annabelle Allen and her Cantaninja for this. Whenever I feel we need an energizer/brain-break, I would put my hand under my chin making a “C”. My Crea helper would get up from the chair and say CREA. This would give the class a signal to be ready to move when my helper says “Colabora” and then goes all the way up to “Arriésgate”. I told my students it should be done quickly and then we would go back to what we were doing quietly.
I will keep adding my observations as how this works with my other classes. This is an attempt to be more reflective on my teaching while sharing my experiences. I hope this can be useful for you somehow.
Striving and Sharing 