I recently stumbled upon a blog post by Srta Spanish called Corre en Circilos which is translated into running in circles. Although I am not sure if I got the full understanding of her game, I did take away a great way to scaffold storytime in the ASL classroom. I wanted to share with you the structure I followed that worked really great with students.
Why I like this structure
This structure works great for a few reasons but mostly because it gives a ton of repetition, a lot of interpretive practice, and it gets students up and out of their seats. You know I love the purposeful movement in the classroom.
Story time
I was working on updating a weather unit and wanted to include more stories in the lesson plans. I already use “Summer” when I teach this unit so I wanted to add something a bit more simplistic, easier for students to understand to build some confidence, and something short in length since they would be revisiting it often during the activity.
Timeframe
I teach 70-minute classes. This took about 2 class periods to complete but could probably be done in one. I generally do some type of warm-up and a game before we get to the activity.
What I did that worked
The first thing I did was teach new terms. I used pictures then asked a series of questions about each. This is called circling. You ask questions in many different ways so students see the word several times. I did this with all the terms I wanted to teach related to “summer.”
Next, I had students watch a short story about summer I created about a family going on vacation. Students had a series of images that matched the information in the story. They watched the story then sequenced the images.
Then I recorded myself signing information from the story in one sentence videos. I turned the sentences into QR codes and hung them in sequential order around the classroom (like a gallery walk). Students traveled around the room (insert student movement) in any order they wanted to and translated the sentences into English.
After the translations, students returned to their desks and watched the story again. This time they had to put the translated English sentences in order.
The next task was for students to summarize the story. However, I didn’t want them just to summarize the story in order. I placed images from all the information in the story and students were to provide detailed information about each image.
Lastly, I recorded myself signing sentences about the story. Some were true and some were false. I put this video into an Edpuzzle for students to view and watch. If they needed to confirm an answer, I was OK with them going back to the story and checking for the answer.
That’s a wrap
So that is how I created what I am calling a circle story (since the students keep circling back to the information). Is there a better name for this or is it called something else? IDK but if you see me using the term circle story you will now know what I am talking about.
Here are the steps one more time:
- Cover vocabulary using the circling method
- Watch the story and sequence the events
- Translate sentences into English
- Sequence the English sentences
- Summarize the story
- True or false Edpuzzle
Alternatively, you could play true or false pens instead of creating an Edpuzzle. Also, you can have students draw and caption the story instead of writing a summary. So this series of activities can be changed up to work for different levels and include different activities so it doesn’t become boring. I would love to know if you are going to try this and how it works for you.
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