Get connected
Dr. Liam Printer - 'The Motivated Classroom' Educational Consultant, Author, Researcher
  • Home
    • About >
      • Coaching
  • Podcast
    • Episodes 1-40
    • Episodes 41+
    • Programme Notes 1-40
    • Programme Notes 41+
  • Blog
  • Videos
  • Workshops
    • Teaching with CI
    • Reading strategies
  • Consultancy
    • Presentations & Workshops
    • TPRS / CI
    • Testimonials
  • Publications
  • Contact

Student-centered ways to review a TPRS novel

16/5/2016

0 Comments

 
The TPRS novels have completely revolutionized my teaching. In the past 3 years I have used a wide variety of these readers with diverse student groups, levels and ages. While of course, the actual story line, plot and themes appeal differently to each individual student depending on their own personal interests, the idea of reading a whole novel entirely in Spanish and actually understanding what is going on, is hugely motivational across the board. 
Picture
My students are all very familiar with my mantra "Leer es poder" (reading is 'power' or​ reading is 'being able', a play on words and sounds), so much so that when I say "Leer es..." the whole class will shout "PODER" back at me.

Personally I believe that part of our role as language teachers is to instill a love for reading. Teaching skills as well as content is widely recognised as part of our profession and reading is a skill. A skill that moves our students so far forward with their language learning, and with the TPRS books making this skill 'compelling', it motivates students to keep turning pages and keep acquiring more language.

In terms of reviewing a novel, I am not a big fan of the standard content testing so I have tried a few activities like 'the yellow brick road' and 'freeze frame' from Martina Bex among others. This time round I decided to make it more student-centered hopefully meaning higher engagement and less work for me! Win win!
Student-Centered Novel Reviewing:
  1. First each student was given a chapter (some chapters were assigned to more than 1 student). They had to find a phrase or quotation (maximum 8 words) that summed up the key information in this chapter.
  2. Next they wrote this in big letters on yellow card paper after I had approved it.
  3. I collected these all in; shuffled them and then gave a set of cards to each table of 4-5 students.
  4. Their next job was to try to find the chapter number and page for each phrase in their groups.
  5. Once they had this they had to put them in order. The first group finished was the winner.
  6. Next we used these for The Yellow Brick Activity where students in pairs used these phrases to talk about what was happening at that moment in the book.
  7. The final piece of the jigsaw was The Freeze Frame activity. We did various takes on this using the cards the students had created. In some scenes they had to act out the scene previous to what was on their card and finish frozen on their phrase, while in others they just acted that sentence.
Picture
Freeze frame superstars
Picture
Students working to find the phrases
The students really enjoyed all aspects of this and I am very happy that they know this novel inside out now. I prefer to always have the students do the work wherever possible and these fit nicely into that approach. One possible nice extension activity would be to ask the students to make up a completely new scene in a totally different context with the phrase they have on their card. Give them some time to prepare it and either act it out or record it.
Picture
Creating the yellow brick road cards
Picture
Props in use for freeze frame time
As always I would welcome your comments and shares. Please let me know if you have done anything different as I am always keen to learn and try new ideas.
0 Comments



Leave a Reply.

    Author

    Dr. Liam Printer:
    Host of The Motivated Classroom podcast, keynote speaker, presenter, lecturer, language teacher, teacher trainer, educational consultant, published author and basketball coach. 14 years teaching experience in a variety of educational settings. Currently I am the Teaching & Learning Research Lead and Approaches to Learning Coordinator at the International School of Lausanne in Switzerland where I also teach language acquisition.

    View my profile on LinkedIn

    Archives

    May 2022
    August 2021
    December 2020
    June 2020
    May 2020
    April 2020
    January 2020
    October 2019
    April 2019
    January 2019
    September 2018
    August 2018
    April 2018
    March 2018
    January 2018
    November 2017
    October 2017
    April 2017
    November 2016
    May 2016
    January 2016
    November 2015
    October 2015
    September 2015
    April 2015
    March 2015
    February 2015
    January 2015
    December 2014
    November 2014
    October 2014
    September 2014
    August 2014

    Categories

    All
    Agen
    Classroom Management
    Comprehensible Input
    Covid19
    Doctorate
    Feedback
    Ideas
    Inside My Classroom
    Motivation
    Professional Development
    Projects
    Reading Strategies
    Remote Teaching
    Research
    Teaching
    Technology
    TPRS

    RSS Feed

Proudly powered by Weebly
Photo used under Creative Commons from karenstintz