Speed Speeches with Essential Verbs
One of the many, MANY important things I learned from attending my first Maestra Loca workshop is that you have to keep things moving:
https://twitter.com/SraSpanglish/status/1124757088700334085?s=19
I applied this principle for some intense STAMP test prep (I know, I know, I miss my AAPPL, but if my new) district wants to pay for it…). And the results were amazing. I gotta say, I was pretty panicked thinking about my kids doing presentational speaking without a chance to write and revise their thoughts OR re-record. But then I remembered that less is more, and to fall back on the basics–the essentials, if you will.
So I typed up my seven most essential essentials on a slide, duplicated it, and added some general topics I figured my kiddos should be able to say SOMETHING about by now:
- Novi@ ideal
- Fiesta ideal
- Madre/Padre ideal
- Escuela ideal
- Sábado ideal
The idea was that they would make as many sentences as they could even marginally related to each topic. I expected them to delve into personality and physical descriptors, age, and activities for the first, maybe adding some dates and weather for the second, mixing up some different activities and descriptors for the third, working in some classes and school supplies and then some events and community words.
And nobody just said me gusta basquetbol the whole time.
(There were some instances of going through all of the verbs with the same word added that suggested people were videogames, however.)
I think there were two main things that made this work–and that will really help on the speaking part of the STAMP later this week.
- The 30-seconds for prep time (for flipping through notes, talking out ideas) and then for speaking–no chance to slow down!
- Competition. Students had rotating partners who would tally how many times they made a sentence with each verb–double points for the first instance of each to encourage more variety. The speaker with the most points at the end got their choice of Smarties or a sticker (5 of which buy you an exemption on an informal grade of their choice).
I honestly think this was the best way to plumb what they actually could use in a pinch and to get them to reach into the recesses of what they had seen and heard throughout the year. But only time–and the STAMP results–will truly tell!
