Picture Word Inductive Model / Vocabulary

In a search designed originally designed to find some creative interpersonal speaking activities I came across Edutopia's article "Using Photos with English Language Learners."  It was here that I first learned of the Picture Word Inductive Model or PWMI. (I don't know if this makes me way behind the times but it does make me wonder why ELL and LA teachers don't share more resources...)

I've long enjoyed using photos as a speaking or writing prompt in my classes but I really liked the format of the PWMI and decided to give it a shot.

A colleague recently shared a folder of great photographs that he uses but I wanted to find something that could lend itself to the vocabulary we'd been learning. A quick Internet search for "pictures that tell a story" yielded a ton of resources. I decided on this one from Printaholic.com:

Image credit: http://www.printaholic.com/15-cool-pictures-that-tell-a-story/

I asked students, in groups of three, to come up with twenty vocabulary words that described what they saw in the picture. Students were given three minutes to do this and many groups came up with more than twenty words. I asked groups to share out and, with the image projected on the board, I labeled the photo.

The next task was to classify the words into four different groups. I explained that groups were entirely up to them and could be groups according to words type, an overarching theme, even words that began with the same letter. When they finished they had to give each group a title.

Independently (this can be done in groups as well but I wanted to mix it up), they had to write four more words for each group. This time the words didn't have to correspond to the picture but they had to fit the group. Students worked alone on this for five minutes and then shared their words with their groups.

Now it was time to start asking some questions. I started with some basic questions like ¿Quiénes son? ¿Dónde están? ¿Qué hacen? ¿Están durmiendo? 

The students had a ton of vocabulary at their disposal so I started pressing for details, making sure to point out particular vocabulary words I was using. I let the group discussion go for about five minutes- enough so that students had a good outline for a story- and then had students write independently for the rest of class. The directions were to use the vocabulary to describe in 100 words what was happening in the photo and the responses were phenomenal!

While I like to focus more on input rather than output in my lower levels, it is true that everyone (parents, admin, even students themselves) want and expect to be able to actually use the language and I thought this was a great opportunity to get those creative juices flowing! I was so pleased with the outcome of this activity that I found some more interesting photos and made a couple of worksheets to use as sub plans. In the sub plans I asked students to exchange stories, read their partners' story and write down four questions about something in the story they'd like to know more about. The author of the story is then asked to go back and include the answers to these questions in their story.  It might be fun to do this as a speaking and listening activity in class.

Grading Writing / Correction Grid

Lately I've been preoccupied as to how to provide feedback to students on written assignments without killing myself grading. (In an ideal world I would focus solely on listening and reading in the lower levels but I've come to realize that parents and administrators want to see proof that their students can communicate in the language.) I asked a colleague of mine how she manages to give meaningful feedback quickly on assessments like timed writings. She suggested focusing on one aspect of the writing, i.e. subject-verb agreement or gender agreement, and quickly scanning the writing, highlighting (with an actual highlighter) any errors in the one area you've decided to focus on. She also suggested having students go through each other's work doing this process with the highlighter for you. Brilliant.

While she was explaining this technique to me, I remembered a Correction Grid I found years ago on TES. It's used to fix writing errors by assigning common mistakes a number. It's really useful in terms of helping students self-correct writing mistakes and to facilitate peer-editing. I thought if I were going to take my colleague's advice, I could use this grid to help students identify which aspects of their writing I/they would focus on when giving feedback. I've re-written the Correction Grid and am sharing it below. The original can be found here.

Spanish Correction Grid for Written Work

Silent Discussion

Finally, a long weekend and time to blog! I'm full of activities I want to write about. The first, called "Silent Discussion", is an activity I discovered while walking through the hallways of my school. Posted on the walls outside of a history classroom, I saw large sheets of paper on with a question in the center around which were all sorts of student responses and commentaries. Thinking this would be a great way to generate responses to some of the higher-level thinking questions in my class, I asked how it worked. Below are the instructions:

• First, put students in groups of three or four (no more than four and no fewer than three) and give them a large sheet of paper and markers. 
• Give students a question that they will write in the middle of the paper. 
• Explain that they will be silently discussing, in writing, their thoughts on this particular question.
• Instruct students to respond to the questions themselves and comment on at least two of their partners' responses. 

I love this activity because it gets students producing in the target language (which is not as important for me in lower level classes but anyone who observes you loves to see it) and it provides an opportunity for students to pick up writing skills from their peers. Below are some of the responses I got to one of the great questions in the Esperanza teaching guide (not perfect but a good start!):

El resumen / Reading Activity

En la clase de escritura nuestro profe nos pidió escribir un resumen de un ensayo de Octavio Paz. La destreza de resumir es algo que mis estudiantes practican con frecuencia en mi clase y por eso me interesaba averiguar cómo los profes de Middlebury la enseñarían. A mí me gusta la actividad muchísimo porque sirve para alcanzar tres objetivos: los estudiantes reciben la repetición necesaria para adquirir vocabulario nuevo por medio de leer tanto como escribir; tienen que analizar un texto para identificar el propósito del autor, el mensaje, a quien se dirige el texto, y los detalles y, por fin, tienen que resumir, un pocas palabras, la información pertinente. Sin embargo, mi profe extendió la actividad con dos actividades que, en mi opinión, sirven para hacer el ejercicio uno en el que los estudiantes pueden colaborar y reflexionar sobre su trabajo antes de entregarlo y así se aprovecharán más del trabajo. Sé que usaré esta actividad en mis clases en el año que viene y quería escribirla para aclarar la estructura:


1) Primero, prepare dos textos breves (para las clases más avanzadas los textos pueden ser más sofisticados) y dos pruebas correspondientes que evalúan el entendimiento de las ideas principales (las ideas necesarias para la buena formación de un resumen) de cada lectura

2) Repase las características de un buen resumen con la clase y, por supuesto, muestre un ejemplo de un resumen bien hecho

3) Divida la clase entre dos grupos y asigne el primer texto a un grupo y al otro grupo el segundo. A Los estudiantes se les permita leer sólo las lecturas de su grupo.

4) Asigne a los estudiantes el trabajo de leer y resumir lo que han leído.

5) Dirija que los estudiantes de un grupo intercambien sus resúmenes con los estudiantes del otro grupo. Déles tiempo para leer los resúmenes y hacer preguntas.

6) Por fin, suministre la prueba. Después de que los estudiantes la terminen; repásela con la clase. La idea es que si el resumen está bien escrito, con todo el contenido imprescindible, los estudiantes la aprobarán. Si los estudiantes no la aprueben el que escribió el resumen sabrá la información que le falta y lo que debe incluir para mejorarla.

7) Pida A los estudiantes que usen las pruebas y los comentarios de sus compañeros para re-escribir el resumen.