Today younger students loved the Number Game – I used to do this one all the time and haven’t for sooo long!

Play some cool Indonesian music. Students walk, dance around the room. When the music stops, they freeze. Then T calls out a number in the target language, and students have to form a group of that number.

Once they have the correct number, they sit down. Teacher walks around and counts, or left-over kids do the job. Great for practising numbers and for getting the wiggles out of littlies!!!

They were so much more settled after this game. I even tried it with a tricky year 3 class, they loved it.

I decided that as my report cards were almost done for the year, it was time to try out something new in the classroom. MovieTalk was it! I read through Bu Cathy’s blog about Movie Talk and had a look at Martina Bex’s blog. Martina had a cool powerpoint which she used in conjunction with a movie about two wildebeests. I ditched that particular one, as she used it with beginners – I wanted something to revise lots of language we had done throughout the year. Plus the cognates (like ‘tronco’ for trunk in Spanish) didn’t really suit Indonesian.

Someone suggested a clip from Frozen. I took a look at it and thought ‘Wow!’ I was able to use lots of vocabulary we had introduced already, such as ‘mau’ (want), ‘lari ke’ (run to), ‘tidak bisa’ (cannot), ‘berjalan’ (walk), ‘cium’ (smell – which I had done with Preps but not other year levels, but apparently it doesn’t really matter if you use new vocabulary – after all, the students can see what you are talking about, and I check for comprehension and also used a real ‘bunga’ for them to sniff!), ‘jatuh’ (fall down), ‘lihat’ (see), ‘punya’ (has), ‘sedih’ (sad), ‘senang’ (happy), ‘beri’ (give). Some new ones were ‘salju’, ‘es’ and ‘bersin’ (snow, ice and sneeze). You can see there are many high-frequency verbs in here!

Firstly, I watched the video at home and made up a script for the clip. I think I may have become a bit carried away and made the script too long, but as it is being used for revision I am hoping it will be OK. Then I made a powerpoint presentation with photo stills from the story and added text, a la Martina.

I showed the kids about 4 photo stills from the first scenes of the clip and talked about these. I asked them in L2, ‘Who has seen snow?’ Who has made a snowman? Do you eat carrot? Have you got a carrot nose? I showed them a flower and asked them to smell it – ‘Cium bunga’.

Then I began showing the clip (no sound) and stopping it everywhere something important happened that contained the structures I wanted to introduce/revise. I stopped it at the scene where Sven gives Olaf back his nose and they are happy.

Lastly, I showed the clip it its entirety without stopping, with sound. This meant the students still had the surprise at the end. There a a number of things you can do post-movie talk.

With my Preps – 2, I intend to a One Word Image about a snowman, so we can re-use the lovely structures we used in the movie talk. We will also choral read the power point story together.

Here are some activities I will choose from to do with Year 3s:

• Show them the story in text only (no pics) and have them ping-pong read or echo read.
• Show them text and one person acts out a line, others have to read and guess the line.
• Use words from the text in a Wordle. I read the story and they try to beat each other to find the word I stop on.
• Liar, Liar – I ask personalised questions from the story, they have to lie about the answers!
• Fix- It-Dictation – write a line that teacher reads, fix it, translate it.
• Choose 2 – 4 sentences, copy, illustrate.
• Quick Quiz
• Tidak Game – teacher reads lines from the story and makes up some silly ones that are untrue. Class has to listen carefully and shout, ‘Tidak!’ when teacher fibs.

Wow! I reckon that should keep me (and them) busy until the end of the year!

I also made a movie clip where I slowed down the clip to half speed, said what was happening, and included a text. This can be seen at my you tube channel, Indonesian Fun for Juniors. (Olaf dan Sven) If you click on the CC at the bottom of the screen, a red line should appear beneath it and text to accompany the audio will appear.

olaf-dan-sven-movie-talk   Here is the powerpoint I made. It does have one small error, which my students have not been able to find yet. I told them first one to tell me gets a prize. Can you find the error?

Helpful advice: Don’t talk about photo stills first with Preps, go straight into the movie clip – it was too much listening for them!

I have been thinking about trying one word images since I read about them on Bu Cathy’s blog. So today I took the plunge with my Prep classes. I found a large cardboard box in the office, and took it into each class with me.

I asked the students, ‘Apa ada?’ (What is it?) They came up with a few suggestions. When one student said ‘Ular’ (snake), I agreed. I asked if it was big or small, what colour it was and what it was doing: ‘Ular makan? Ular berjalan? Ular lompat?’ (Is the snake eating? Walking? Jumping?) by giving choices using known vocabulary.

The first class said the snake was green and orange and it was walking to a mountain (child said ‘mountain’ in English, so I just translated and went with it. We had used the word some time ago) with Ibu Anne. The second said the snake was green and brown and it was eating all the class! The third class said it was pink and brown and it was eating a small mouse at Point Cook College.

The subsequent drawings were sooo cute, and gave me a great indication of who understood the discussion. They all asked me if it was true and if they could look in the box, which of course was empty! Lots of fun!

Looking forward to trying this activity with the older kids as well.

Do you have a ‘bag of tricks”? I shared some in my last post about my advice for teaching younger students. But I wanted to share some of the activities and “tricks” I have collected from multiple people over the years. After you have taught a little, you start to have a “bag of tricks” which are […]

via What’s in the bag? — Mrs. Spanish’s class

Today I wanted students to translate our story which we have been working on (orally only) for about three weeks. One class was a little restless and I sensed they needed to move and have some fun. So I told them we were going to have a translation race, girls versus boys. They sat in two long lines. I read our story line by line, and the first two students had to translate into English. If they were not correct, the first hand up in one of the lines got the opportunity to answer. The two front people then moved to the back of their line, and the next two got the second sentence in the story. Every one got to have 2 or 3 goes each, it was fast moving, and the people at the back had to listen in case they were needed! I was able to quickly see problem sentences that the class had difficulty translating to work on for next time. And the boys loved beating the girls!!

Recently I have tried something new with the Special Chair. I have told the class, after interviewing someone in the chair, that “Ibu Anne mau informasi tentang (nama)” – Ibu Anne wants information about (name of child in chair). I told them ‘satu poin Bahasa Inggris, 2 point Bahasa Indonesia’. While this means that children are using some English in class, I have found that many of them are using Indonesian, or a mixture of English and Indonesian to give me information about the ‘special’ person. If they use English or incorrect Indonesian, I repeat what they said correctly. This means there is a higher percentage of English than normally used in this activity.

However, it is giving me an excellent idea of who is more confident and able to use Bahasa Indonesia. It also means that I know how well students comprehend the back and forward chat between the ‘special’ person and the teacher. I have Preps able to give me information in complete, correct Indonesian sentences, which is great feedback for reporting time!

What do you think of this idea? TPRS, or pushing the boundaries? Would love to hear your comments and suggestions!