Chispa videos
With the teacher’s help and through working with the related content (video, short story, interactive games, worksheet) students will become familiar with and master the high frequency structures presented in the videos.
To prepare students for the video follow these steps:
1. Make sure you watch the video a couple of times so that you are familiar with it. Take screenshots for a Picture Talk or select interesting parts of the video for a Movie Talk.
2. Do a Picture Talk or Movie Talk before showing the whole video to your students. Make *circling and *personalized questions. If you are not familiar with these strategies you can read this blog post from Chris Stolz.
3. Show the “Palabras importantes” that appear on page 1 of the worksheet to your students and have them practice the interactive games so they can get comfortable with these key words. You can do this before or after showing them the video the first time.
4. Show the whole video to your students, but only focus on a few sections of the video if you feel the whole video is too advanced for your students.
5. Have students work on the interactive story AND also the printable version of the story.
6. Have students complete the worksheet.
Depending on your students' level you might want to select only specific questions from the worksheet or interactive games. For example, if your students are in kinder or first grade dont ask them to do the "Word race" in which they have to type words pretty quickly, instead you can ask them to just play the memory game and the drag and match game instead.
* Circling: Is when you make a statement and ask simple questions about that statement. If posible it's better to do this with some visual support, for example showing a picture or a frame from a video. For example:
Teacher makes a statement: El personaje tiene antenas.
Circling questions ¿Tiene antenas el personaje?
Students answer yes/no.
Teacher restates: Sí, el personaje tiene antenas.
Circling question: Clase, ¿Tiene 4 antenas?
Students answer yes/no.
Teacher restates: No, el personaje no tiene 4 antenas.
Circling question: Clase, ¿Cuántas antenas tiene?
Students answer: 2.
Teacher restates: Sí, el personaje tiene dos antenas.
* Personalize: Is when you ask questions to students about them (what they think about something, if they like something etc…) Going back to the same example you could ask to one student:”
Teacher asks: Marco, ¿Tú tienes antenas?
Marco responds No.
Teacher restate: No, tú no tienes antenas.
Teacher asks: Clase, ¿Ustedes tienen antenas?
Clase answers No.
Teacher restate: No, ustedes no tienen antenas.
Another example would be. María, ¿Te gusta el helado? María answers, Sí. Follow up question:¿Cuál es tu helado favorito? You can follow up by saying: Clase, levanten la mano s les gusta el helado de fresa. Etc…
Tip: Do not over do it. Once you notice the class clearly understands the statement move on to the next statement and start circling again if you feel they do not understand this new statement. You do not need to circle or personalize every single statement, only the ones that the class does not understand.
Circling and personalizing are simple and powerful methods to make sure students understand the high frequency structures that you want them to acquire. Make sure to include them while working on these videos through Picture Talk and Movie Talks!
We hope you and your students enjoy these videos. We will upload a new episode + related content each month. If you have any feedback to help us improve these new videos feel free to reach out to us at info@rockalingua.com at any time.
Have a great school year!
César and the whole Rockalingua Team