In this episode, I'll talk about transitioning from cycle 1 which is description into cycle to which is narration. So after you did all that just describing pictures and describing people in describing places. It's so much fun to start telling stories. So let's goSo I just like to give a shout-out to Kylie down in Texas. Yeah Kylie, it's Mom. Hey, Kylie. Don't forget to study hard. All right cycle to narration. So if you've been following the cycles of instruction and assessment that are laid out and Stepping Stones your one and Beyond or the curriculum club. That means that you probably spent the first cycle on description and descriptions great. However, it's a little static because all you're doing is talking about what you can see or what somebody's like on the inside and so when it's time to transition to narration things a little more exciting Whereas in description most of your prep was actually just finding pictures or eliciting ideas from the students with class surveys or card talk in narration. There is a little bit more prep and I would encourage you if you are a member of curriculum Club to prep and upload your resources that you make to the shared drive so that people can download them and you'll have them to refer. Back to you in the future. And also I've been putting in some resources into the shared drive as well. The more that we all work together throughout these cycles and throughout this year the more resources. We will have to look at next year. I imagine that next year. We're going to have a first thing share drive that's full of really awesome resources that you can pull down. So speaking of resources I have today been working on some more links to some demonstration videos of me and other people teaching these narrations strategies and so I just want to talk you through a few of the videos and talk about some of the employee prep that you need to do to get ready for these strategies. So one of the videos that I uploaded is called a writing Workshop lesson to help you find personal stories to tell your class. And if you're in curriculum Club that's in our YouTube playlist called curriculum Club demo videos. And in that video. It was from an office hours. I walked the people through they were all like where do we get ideas for stories that we can tell about personal experiences, like from our own lives. One of them had watched a demo video of me talking about my sister and when she was in like she just got out of fifth grade. She had a brain aneurysm and it's really actually pretty touching story because it's like I tell it from my perspective. Spective and he'll like I never really liked my sister but then you know, she almost died and so I came to a new realization of how much I valued my sister. So they were asking like they said, oh we watched that video. It was really touching. Where did you find that story and I taught them a couple of strategies that you can use to sort of mine through your own experiences to find meaningful stories that you would be excited to share with your kids because when I'm telling a story to my kids, I want it to be amusing. And entertaining and sometimes that's enough. But I also do want to bring them stories that are about like a little bit deeper meaning so here's a couple of strategies that I learned as a writing Workshop teacher that helped me find stories that I could tell my class. So one of them is well, they're all just basically teach arts and these are all strategies that we taught our students and if you teach upper-level classes like fourth year third year even maybe fifth year, then you might even do some of these workshops strategies in the target language and if You have access to that YouTube channel or YouTube playlist. You can watch me actually leading the teachers through the it's called generating. So it's like generating strategies for like generating ideas that you can tell stories about and actually it was so touching what I was talking about like the examples. I was giving for my own life that I started crying again. Just telling telling some of the stories to the teachers. It's a crazy video. So one way that you can do this is to make a t-chart and they're all t-charts on one side of the T chart you put moments and that never changes because that's what you're looking for is like the story of a small moment. Literally the smaller moment that you can tell the better because if we hone in on like an experience, that's maybe about 20 minutes long or even less then we can really bring out what we call it in writing Workshop the heart of the story The Heart of the story is inner thinking and feelings and Why it's important and like the meaning behind the story and if you're using the anchor charts and the writing Focus. In cycle 2 and cycle 3 which is also narration then a big part of the writing focus is bringing out the heart of the story. So bringing out the inner thinking and the dialogue and the feelings and emotions of the character. So that's why it says moments and not like stories. So one side of it says moments and the other side the things basically change depending on the strategy that you're using. But the one I used in that video was thinking of people who are important to me and then moments that I've had with them. So for instance, I put my daughter on one side because obviously my daughter is important to me and then you're looking for a moment. This is what they taught us in writing Workshop. You're looking for a moment that you remember with quote crystal-clear Clarity. So you look at that person's name. And you think what is the most Crystal Clear moment that I've had with that person. The reason that moment is crystal clear in your memory is because of the nature of the way, we encode our memories the way we encode our memories. They're very much attached. Our emotions and our social connections and if it was a new experience, like if it was something we've never experienced before so it when you have those moments that you remember with crystal-clear clarity about that person, you just jot down a couple of them and move on to another person. You can list all the people first and then go back and think of the moments but sometimes just writing down their name will trigger a moment that can get added to that side of the T chart that says moments if that's not really cutting it for you or You want more stories? You can also do places so places that are important to me and Crystal Clear moments that I remember objects is another strategy objects that are important to me and memories are moments that have had with those objects. Another way to do it is strong emotions. So list out all the strong emotions and you can see by listening through this probably how you could adapt this to a third or above your class to start getting ideas. For their personal stories that they would even share in this second cycle. So you could also do objects you could do strong feelings you could do. This is a really good one the first time and last time so like the first time in last time that I did something the last time I was in my house the first time I met my husband the last time I was in you know, when I graduate from high school the first time I met my best friend last time I saw my granddad before he passed. So those are some ways to get out meaningful stories that you can share with your students. So this will be eliciting stories about yourself. If you want to elicit stories about other people that the students know for instance, maybe like a beloved staff member like in some schools. Everybody loves the janitor. Everybody loves the lunch worker or everybody just loves the bus monitor or the principal or the counselor. So if there's somebody like that or the PE coach or whatever somebody that all the kids know in your class and that they all really like So you can go to those people and you can ask them. Hey, what's a moment you could do that little exercise with them if you want to get a more like meaningful story. You can actually ask them. Do you have 20 minutes to sit down and told me you know go through this exercise and told me a story that you won't mind me sharing with the class or you can just ask them to do the easy for part. Give me a story exercise. Basically, you take an index card and you ask them for things. Now if you're talking to a staff member probably best for you to write them down yourself because that's more respectful of their time. So you ask them to tell you one where they were to who they were. It or whom they were with three what happened like three to five events not like all the details and for why is this a crazy or interesting or important story to you? So then basically you've got the setting and who they're with and what happened like the plot and like the meaning or what you might call the author's purpose and sharing the story. You can also do this with your students. Sometimes. I like to just have them do like card talk. I call it narration car talk because what you're doing is eliciting a story and so just have them sketch. Maybe you can do front and back like on the front a time that you won something on the back a time that you've lost something and I just like to give my kids like four minutes to do the sketches and I really coach them. Like nobody's going to judge you if your sketches aren't good, but we are going to judge you if your sketches aren't done. So you've got four minutes. So just put down some symbols and stick figures so that I know what your story was and then you can use that kind of like a visual aid to tell the story. You don't have to do that though. You can ask them like the day before you launch into personal stories, maybe like the first day till story about yourself. Maybe the second day. You liked old story about a staff member. And so maybe by the third day you're hoping to tell some stories about the kids so you can ask them like as an exit ticket that day before to write in English or their L1, whatever it is to right. The same things for things one where they went or where they were to who they were with three what happened just very briefly like bullet points or maybe ask going to make a little timeline and for why is the story interesting or important or crazy or you know why you're sharing the story? And then you've got like this Bank of stories. Now, you can also tell personal stories about like so many that nobody even knows that would be called like realistic fiction. And actually in the curriculum club I'm making a list of various YouTube videos all I have a Spanish right now, but I do have some Spanish stories that are told by native speaking kids and they're all about like their personal lives. So one is like these cute little kids like getting a new student in the preschool class. Another one is like my first day of school. Another one is like a teenager talking about her summer vacation or something like that. So you could do with that like a reverse movie talk. And you can even stretch out a reverse movie Top over two days like the first day you can tell the story like with a visual story where you just draw on the board and tell the story and there's lots of videos that you can watch in the list of strategies. And then write about it and read that and everything and then the next day you can do it like a reverse movie talk. So you would show them probably at Point 5 speed one of those videos about personal stories that I loaded up into that document. Sorry, everybody else. I'm working on the other ones, but we do have Spanish. And even just looking at the Spanish if you teach in their language will give you some ideas of things that you can Google. I basically Googled Spanish teenage YouTubers and then I found a list of Spanish language teenage YouTubers. I looked through all their videos because what do teenagers like to talk about? Well, they like to talk about their lives. So I found a couple of really cute YouTubers who tell stories about their lives and I put them in the list so you could do that, too. So once you have this Bank of stories, then you just have to kind of think about like, how do you want to tell them? so there's lots of different strategies. I'll tell you the easiest ones first. The easiest ones are using a story map a story mountain or a timeline input chart and the Very easiest way to do it is to like prep your story in advance on one of these charts and then put the chart beside you. Either are working on the board or working on your overhead projector or your smart board or something like that and look at what you've prepped. So you've written everything on the narrow on the story map or the story melon or the timeline chart and then you're just looking at that and telling the story. You can tell the same story to your first year second year third year fourth York is by looking at the documents that I made for you guys which are like beginner intermediate and advanced language for each phase of every cycle and you can look and just make three different timelines or story mouse. In fact, you could write your first story map go run off a copy on the copy machine add some language in a different color for your second year class. Running off again on your copy machine and then add your upper level language on there as well and a different color. So that way as you're ramping the story up and down you kind of have like this language planned out. So those are the easiest ways and like the easiest way to get your kids to focus while you're doing this is to have them fill out their own graphic organizer as you do yours. So like you're writing on the graphic organizer and they're filling out either the same graphic organizer, or maybe you give them the option of like doing the one graphic organizer to fit to rule them all if you have kids who need an extra challenge or maybe you've taken like you've got a blank timeline. Everybody else has a blank timeline, but then you've got o timeline that has like World Bank on it. And you say hey look if you feel like you need a word Bank grab the one with the word Bank you feel like you just want to follow along and do kind of the regular assignment then pick the blank one. That's what I'm going to be using or if you really want an extra challenge you want to be creative today pick the one graphic organizer to rule them all or Cornell notes or this inside-outside timeline. The inside-outside timeline is basically a timeline with thought bubbles so that like they're putting in the stuff that this is happening in the story and then above there. They're putting in like the thought bubbles. If you have Heritage students or students who are like in a mix level class and some of them are really Advanced or like someone was asking last night in a webinar that were asking like, what do I do with these kids who've had me and then I've got these kids who've had the textbook and my kids who I had last year or kind of board. So you can ask those kids to look at their performance on the writing Continuum for narration. You might have to give them a pretest in order to do this so you can have your heritage kids or like more advanced kids or you know, basically Have all the kids do this but especially for like they would all take the pretest. Well, like especially for your upper level kids. You would have them look at their performance on the writing Continuum for narration and then look at the level that they didn't quite meet. So on the Continuum you have to have all the elements of that level to like remain at that level. And so if they only have like three out of four of the elements for a level 6, then you can say hey look you need that fourth element in order. Order to really be solid at level 6 so they could make themselves like some little Post-it notes or like a little page in their notebook or a little, you know, cheat sheet of some type and like brainstorm either on their own or with you or going to look it up online like lists of words that would help them to achieve that goal. And then they can work as you're narrating the story to take notes that include that element. So for instance, I don't remember what exactly number it is, but one of the things on the narrative Continuum says that they have to put in inner thinking after somebody talks or does something not every time of course, but that is if you read well written fiction even like language learner fiction like the comprehensible readers, you'll see that oftentimes a character does something and then they have a thought about it that brings out the heart of the story like the inside part of the story makes it more interesting gives it more meaning so that's a writer Lee thing that even proficient kids or kids who like had a lot of input Put or Heritage speakers. They might not know that little writerly trick. So as they're experiencing the same input as everybody else. They are like using this list of phrases and helpful hints and reminders that they've generated to help them do that goal and they're using that in their notes. So the easiest way to do like I said, the easiest way to deliver narrative input is to have them all use the same exact thing that you're doing and you're using the same graphic organizer. You already have it planned out over to the side. You're basically recreating it. I would say the next easiest thing is to do reverse movie talks or regular movie dogs. So in a reverse movie talk is just reverse because it's in the language. And so that means you can play it at point seven five speed for them and let them like kind of marinate in the fact that they don't understand the words. They'll understand some of them but they'll have some holes in their comprehension and then you just do a regular movie talk, but I have found that doing this with my kids makes them a whole lot more motivated to listen to me explaining the movie because they realize oh the first time we watch that I didn't understand hardly anything now my sweet little teacher is explaining it to me. Yay, and then I would say the next most Challenging thing is to do a visual story. That's where you like prepare the story in advance. I like to just do it on a piece of paper and the piece of paper like represents my whiteboard. So I think through the story and like as I'm thinking through it I draw on the paper and I think about anything that my kids aren't going to understand so I draw it or think how could I act it out? And once again, you can make three different little fake white boards or Preparation white boards so that you can tell it one way to your beginner's one way to hear it. immediate and one way to your Advanced kids All right. Well, I hope you have a great time doing narration. It's tons of fun and I'm going to make some more podcast episodes to talk about specific strategies and also a curriculum Club people if you're listening I am about to start sending out some sign up sheets for these email series that will walk you through the strategies in the different phases. So you'll be able to tell me through signing up on the sheet what phase are on and then you'll get a series of four emails that talk about the overview. That face and a few strategies using that phase and language that goes with each strategy for beginners intermediate and advanced like on a little table a little graphic. Like I've been making for the phase overviews and also some assessment considerations. All right. Well, thanks for listening and have a great Halloween. Okay. Bye. Hey, it's Tina here. And I really want you to send me a message. So if you could just please hit the send a message button or go to Anchor dot f m / curriculum Club / message. Then you can send me a voice recording who knows I might put you on a future episode. So if you could just let me know what you think or what you want to hear from me or how you think I'm doing or if you have a story to share or a joke, or you want to sing me a song. I don't really care and here I'll even bribe you so by the end of the month whatever month it is that you're listening to this at the end of the month. I will go look through all the messages that I've gotten through the month pick one randomly, and I will give that person anything. They want any one thing at all from our online school at CI - lift off dot teachable.com. So please hit me up. Send me a message by hitting that button or go into anchor dot f m / um Club / message
Learn more about starting Cycle Two, Narration, in the Stepping Stones curriculum......and then please let me know what you think or if you have questions, comments, feedback, or anything else you want me to know! Leave me a voice message here. If you are not a Curriculum Club member, you can sign up for our waiting list. We will open registration around Thanksgiving for our Fall cohorts. The cost will be $34 a month -- about a dollar a day for daily lesson plans, weekly live coaching with recordings available for you to watch anytime. bonus live webinars (plus recordings available anytime) with Tina, our coaching staff, and special guests, and a private Facebook group where our goal is to answer every single one of your questions as we go through the curriculum and work together to get you where you want to be in your language classroom! To learn more about the book Stepping Stones Year One and Beyond, which this podcast series is based on, visit our online school. And if you want to chip in to support my coffee habit, you can donate to the podcast here. 