Category: Bahasa Indonesia

ASILE 2016 – Games & Activities for Language Classes

2 Comments

One of the workshops we attended on Sunday was led by Pak Irianto Ryan Tedya. It was a very enjoyable workshop with songs and games, 2 of which would be ideal as a brainbreak or for TPR.

The first game he shared was ‘dam dam sut’ which is his own variation of ‘suten’ (gajah, orang, semut). This game reinforces the target structures:

  1. Kita seri (we draw)
  2. Saya menang (I won)
  3. Saya kalah (I lost)

Each with their own hand gesture:

  1. Hands crossing left to right horizontally palms facing downwards
  2. Hands up in the air, fingers splayed
  3. Hands down wards, palms facing opponent.

The game is played in partners and together players say dam, dam together while clapping and then together say sut and on sut, players choose to either do:

gajah (elephant),

orang (person) or

semut (ant).

When first introducing the game, Pak Irianato recommends just focusing on;

  1. Gajah beats orang (elephant steps on person)
  2. Orang beats semut (person steps on ant)
  3. Semut beats elephant (ant gets into elephants ear and irritates the elephant – ant is small yet powerful)

Pak Irianto asked us to play 3 times with a partner and then swap partners choosing someone new. When he judged that we had mastered that, he asked the whole class to synconize our games; meaning that the entire class clapped & said dam, dam, sut at exactly the same time, starting very slowly and encouraging everyone to keep the rhythm.

Once this is mastered, I would introduce the above target structures yet Pak Irianto encouraged us all to use it right from the beginning. One participant suggested the following rhyme sung to Frere Jacques to consolidate vocabulary:

Saya menang

Saya menang

Saya kalah

Saya kalah

Kita seri

Kita seri

Marilah bermain!

Marilah bermain!

All up, it was a fun game and I loved the way that the game increases in complexity which makes it appealing to all ages of students.

The final activity he did with us was awesome and perfect for TPR. This song could be adapted to any verb. I love the idea of asking students for action suggestions!! I was thinking of how much fun ‘menangis’ (cry) or ‘jatuh’ (fall) would be. Pak Irianto first taught us the song and actions then suggested adding the jumping left, right & centre afterwards to add a further challenge.

I didn’t take any notes, just this video!!

Kursi Luar Biasa – Jawaban Benar atau Kreatif? (True or Creative Answers?)

2 Comments

Usually in Kursi Luar Biasa, (literally – the amazing chair [special student interviews]), I ask students personal questions about themselves (age, likes, pets etc) followed by a quiz. The quiz is a benar/salah style quiz. I began at first by asking students to stand if the statement I said about the ‘amazing student’ was true or sit if it was false, however I soon discovered that this became a sheep following exercise; if one stood/ sat then the majority followed suit without any thought. So the quiz became, stand if it is true for you and sit if it is false for you – as this requires greater focused listening & personal accountability. So if I say, ‘Susan tinggal di Victor Harbor’ (repeating one fact that Susan had told us about herself), the students who also live in Victor, stand. If I say, ‘Susan tidak tinggal di Mount Compass’, then all the students who don’t live in Mount Compass would stand, while those who do, sit!

As Kursi Luar Biasa (KLB) is largely a short one on one conversation with just the occasional questions addressing or about other students (to ensure comprehensibility and/or to encourage listening), engagement levels from the older students have decreased noticeably this semester. I have racked my brain for ways to ramp it up. I scoured Bryce Hedstrom’s Persona Especial posts for suggestions appropriate for this age level as well as being suitable for Bahasa Indonesia (the Indonesian language) and tried those that had potential (see past posts) but there were still students using this session as a zone out time. As they are generally quiet, I’ve accepted it because it has allowed me to focus on the ‘awesome’ person and to keep the spotlight right on the student who chose to sit in the chair! I also justify it to myself with the thought that while they are not listening with the intent to understand, they are still being exposed to Indonesian.

Yesterday, a year 7 boy, J, changed all that! He had us all following closely his hilarious answers and the entire class was 100% engaged and following the discussion closely! After The interview  had finished (stopped by the recess bell), I asked the class for a rating out of 5 (using their fingers) and 98%  rated it 5/5 while 2-3 rated it 4/5. I got exactly the same score for overall comprehension of the entire conversation!  J began by telling us where he lived and about the people in his family (great opportunity to revise one of the new target structures from the story that lesson) and then when I asked him about the sport he plays, we learned that he plays centre forward for Goolwa Hockey Club and is the leading goal scorer (dua juta gol!). A student who actually does play for Goolwa, was shaking her head and making it clear with body language that J does NOT play hockey for Goolwa!!  He started wildly embellishing (when asked what team he plays in, he stated the under 18’s – a grade that doesn’t exist in our local association), he had everyone’s attention.  We also learned that he plays in the AFL for Port Power and after pulang sekolah (another target structure from the earlier story – go home from school), he eats and then goes to Adelaide to train! He also claimed that he was a talented surfer, almost as good as Mal (a fellow student who is an extremely talented surfer and has participated at the national level). This last claim had his friends rolling on the floor with laughter!! He also made ridiculous claims about playing in the NBL! It was the most enjoyable KLB interview I’ve had in a long time and one I encouraged the students in that class try again!

Previously, I have discouraged students from stating fictitious information about themselves because I’ve always considered this part of the lesson as an awesome way for me to get to know my students better. However, my brain is generally on overload and I am finding, I’m embarrassed to admit, that unless a student tells me something really unusual or moving, my back to back lessons all merge into a vague hodgepopdge and I forget who said what. Yet I still see a value in beginning this way, especially with the middle primary year levels. It is a safe way in which to support students with repetitions of the vocabulary and language structures needed to answer personal questions or to talk about themselves to others. It provides them with a solid foundation upon which, when they are older, they can start being creative and quirky!!

I am so looking forward to next week when I can encourage the other year 67 classes to be wild and wacky.

Two Introductory TCI/TPRS Workshops -MLTASA & CLTSA

10 Comments

Over the weekend, Bu Annie, Ibu Sharon & I attended 2 conferences; 1. MLTASA (Modern Languages Teachers Association SA) in the morning and 2. CLTASA (Chinese Language Teachers Assoc) in the afternoon. When we first heard that both associations were holding their annual conference on the same day, we were incredibly disappointed as we were committed to present at MLTASA while Ian & Caitlin (2 TCI Chinese teachers from QLD) were presenting at CLTSA. Luckily our presentations did not clash and we were able to get from EDC to Napier House in good time. However the locked door into Napier House cut short our celebratory hand pumps and thankfully Ian had his phone on! 

The MLTASA conference began with a plenary by Sean Keenihan, who spoke about ‘the role and value of Languages education in schools – a business perspective’. Sean wears many hats and most relate to his Chinese proficiency, dating back to his high school days. When asked how to encourage students to learn a language he reflected with this: after graduation as one of hundreds of lawyers, he was the first from his year to be employed and this was entirely due to his bilingualism. His graphs illustrated recent growth figures in the SA tourism sector and he also talked about the growing state of global business. These two sectors are a just 2 of many that have a huge and growing demand for bilingual employees and thus being bilingual is giving many job seekers  an X factor, making them highly desirable in a competitive job market. Apparently only 30 of the 700 2015 SA lawyer  graduates were employed! I wonder what their X factor was? 

Our workshop, ‘Teaching Languages with TCI/TPRS’ was to be held in the larger room at EDC due to the large number of participants who had signed up for it. What an awesome way to begin!! We began by asking participants to bring their chairs to the front of the room and to sit in a semi circle facing the screen. As this was our first ever presentation and indeed our first ever attendance at MLTASA, we had no idea what to expect. One thing we were looking forward to was an audience of largely non Indonesian speaking teachers, who would experience our demo lesson from a student perspective and therefore hopefully feel the power of TCI even more dramatically than our Indonesian speaking colleagues. Our presentation began with introducing ourselves, outlining our TCI journey, and giving a brief explanaton of the acronyms TCI, TPRS & TPR. Due to the short amount  of time we had available and that we were a little late starting (domino effect of the 2nd plenary speaker running over time), our introduction was minimal. We felt that a demo would be more powerful than heaps of information. 

Our demo focused on the Pleased To Meet You (written by Jim Tripp) story. We began with establishing meaning of the target structures (siapa nama, nama saya, astaga, berkata – what’s your name, my name is, OMG, said), before giving a circling demo on siapa nama & nama saya. Sharon then established the ‘Stop – I don’t understand!’ gesture before telling the story. Afterwards she did a comprehension check and everyone gave her a thumbs up!! We had a little time for questions and we were very relieved that attending MLTASA was a high school French TPRS teacher!! It was awesome to connect with Zelda who has been working alone for 2 years – we take our hat off to you! Zelda was able to respond to questions that came from secondary language teachers – a cohort we have had the greatest difficulty connecting with as we have no secondary experience. Our promise to them that TPRS was designed initially for secondary students by a secondary language teacher rarely helps. Zelda’s contribution and support was invaluable.  

It wasn’t till much later, that Sharon realised that in our nervousness, the reduced workshop time and our determination to leave punctually, we forgot to mention anything about the unit of work we had created around this story to help participants trial a unit in their classrooms!! Oops. So if you were one of those participants and you would like a copy, contact me via my learn link address on the handout and I’ll happily forward it to you. 

We arrived at Napier House just before the post lunch conference sessions were about to begin, to our relief. Ian & Caitlin opened the locked doors which gave us time to quickly introduce ourselves to each other and chat briefly while heading upstairs to the auditorium. The entire afternoon schedule had been assigned to Ian & Caitlin! Imagine your only time constraint being getting to the airport in time for your flight home! We were slightly in awe and also a teeny (OK- a lot) envious!! Maybe next year, we need to ask for a double workshop session? 

Ian & Caitlin spent the first hour talking to a powerpoint which introduced TCI/TPRS to their audience of Chinese teachers. The powerpoint thoroughly explained TPRS, outlined how it differs from traditional/currrent language teaching methods, included several short videos of Ian teaching highly engaged year 7’s, year 10 free writes (290 words) , cold character reading , students talking positively about learning Chinese via TCI methodology, students reading unfamiliar texts fluently and a short yet highly engaging demo by Caitlin establishing meaning for ‘wants to eat’. As a student, I could immediately see the value of having the target structures clearly written on one side of the smartboard page and on the other side were other necessary vocabulary just as Diane Neubauer does.I hadn’t actually understood the beauty of this until that point! I also think I need to investigate buying a clicker gadget next year – it would be so convienent to turn the powerpoint pages from wherever I am in my class room!  

Ian & Caitlin stopped talking after an hour to give everyone a break and they were immediately swamped with people asking questions! The amount of interest was brilliant.  During their presentation, I could hear teachers around me commenting to each other quietly but unfortunately it was all in Chinese. 

During this break, it suddenly became clear, that the next session would have to be shortened significantly to prevent Ian & Caitlin missing their flight home to QLD. Particiapants were quickly called back into the auditiorium to answer any last minute questions. In no time at all, they were being presented with bottles of SA wine and the mad dash to the airport began. 

Thankfully we had offered to take them to the airport as this provided us all with a precious window for solid 2017 planning. We all acknowledge the need to arrange high quality training in Australia asap and are keen to collaborate on this by inviting a guest out to Australia next January to provide us all with much needed expert training before the 2017 school year begins! It would be awesome if the person  who comes out, is happy to travel as then we could offer training in a few states which will be much more affordable to participants! If this all happens, would you be interested in attending and how much would you be prepared to pay to participate? Considering our only option at the moment is a flight to either America or Europe ($$), it would be considerably cheaper and so much easier if this eventuates! Please comment below with any thoughts. We need your feedback! The more interest, the better! 

A Great Reading Activity For Pre-Literate Students

2 Comments

Have you seen the oral cloze retell idea by Eric Herman on my TCI/TPRS activities page which is found on my homepage up the top in the header?

Here it is:

On subsequent retells you can erase more and more words to give more advanced students a greater challenge and eventually erase the entire story and have superstars retell the entire story without any written support.

Example:

There is a boy. His name is Bob. He likes pizza.

There is ___ boy. His name __ Bob. He likes _____.

There __ ___ boy. ___ name __ Bob. He ____ ____.

There __ ___ ___. ___ name __ Bob. __ ____ _____.

 

I tried it today with a year 1/2 class as well as a reception class and it was awesome!

I began by asking 2 students to act out the story while I retold it. By now, I’ve lost count of the number of times they have heard it, but it never hurts to get in one more retell!! I then dragged over my mobile white board and asked the class to tell me the story again. It was brilliant how well they could retell the story! I wrote down the first 5 sentences on the board.

Buarlapar.

Buaya lihat Elsa.

Buaya mau makan Elsa.

Elsa berlari ke Horseshoe Bay.

We all then read the story together using hand gestures. At the end of the first reading, I rubbed out one word and in its place I drew a contrasting coloured line. We then read through it again together, however before we all read it, I explained that the next person to rub out a word would be someone who is both reading and gesturing beautifully. Boy – that ramped up the participation and engagement!!

We continued this until there was nothing left of the story and all that was there were red lines where the words used to be!! Both classes absolutely loved it and were so fluent by the time we rubbed out the last word!

IMG_1636[1]

 

IMG_1637[1]

IMG_1638[1]

 

Membagi Ide Bagus – Pleased to Meet You (Jim Tripp)

Leave a comment

The first ever story I do with my JP students is a mini version of Pleased To Meet You (thanks to our wonderful mentor Catharina for this pared down version).  

This post from Creative Language Class complements this story beautifully and would suit my year 1 and 2’s perfectly who first encountered the story in Reception (Prep/Transition) and would enjoy this extension idea as well as learning ‘suka’. It would also be great for older students just starting out on their TPRS learning journey.

Get to know each other using the TL!.

JP Indonesian Brainbreaks

2 Comments

Baby TV – A variety of videos for young learners of Indonesian. You will need to scroll through them to find ones that aren’t too fast or that go out of bounds, but a few have great potential. One I particularly liked was the 5 monkeys one which is highly repetitive and would be a good followup for target structures melompat and counting to 5.

Senam penguin – a fun quick brainbreak dance. Murid murid mau berdansa?

Bop! From TPRS Teacher (Keith Toda)

1 Comment

The students and I had fun this week trying a new game called Word Bop and a link to it can be found in the TPRS/TCI activities link in the header of this blog. 

I did play it slightly differently and in hindsight this variation was a good way to familiarise them with the game before we play the version as is found on Keith’s blog. I picked about 20 words from our upcoming story (Troy talks too much/ Troy bercakap-cakap terus) and put them into a wordle. We began by playing Martina Bex’s word race stories – a favourite with my students. 

I next asked them to choose one word from the wordle and write it on a folded A5 piece of paper. This probably isn’t that important a step yet it did give the students a visual prompt during the game when their minds went blank! As there were only 20 words and in most classes there are 30 students, there was naturally some doubles but as this was purely a task to get as many reps, it didn’t matter. When the students were ready to start, they had to put everything away except for their piece of paper and then arrange themselves into a circle.  I then asked them to practise saying their word very quickly, then asked them to say it quickly followed by the English translation. I next asked them to say both words faster followed by the name of a student sitting on the opposite side of the circle. By this time they were ready to start the game. Here is where the fun began. I asked one student to put their paper on their chair/pillowpet, take hold of the large stuffed gajah (elephant) and stand in the centre of the circle. I began the game by saying a students name. The student named had to say their 3 words very fast before the middle student holding gajah located them & threw gajah at them. If they achieved the task of saying their 3 words before being bopped by gajah, the student whose name had been said had to say their 3 words too before the gajah landed on them. So it went something like this:

Sam: berkata, said, Tom

Tom: astaga,OMG, Lilly

Lilly: pergi, went, Bobby

Meanwhile the gajah is flying around the room trying to catch up with the speakers. When it eventually does, the thrower sits back in their chair/pillowpet and the person to their immediate right (or left!) stands and takes their place. This last idea came from one of my students who noticed that the fast speakers didn’t get a go throwing the gajah otherwise! No one is allowed to touch the gajah except the thrower, which added a nice twist when it was accidently thrown outside the circle giving the next participant welcome thinking time. A few students (years 6/7) asked about being allowed to dodge the gajah which allowed a new level of hilarity as they toyed with the thrower only to move out of the way at the last moment! 

Week one back at school was uncharacteristically exhausting with unusually restless and chatty students. This game required them to listen closely as well as the opportunity for lively and entertaining movement.  It saved my sanity! Who knows what next week has in store for us all with both swimming for years R – 4 and NAPLAN! Yikes! 

Listen, Write, Illustrate

6 Comments

This week, I tried something new….

I have been ready to move on to a new target structure and with only 4 short weeks left of term 1, I didn’t want to begin anything major. This type of window provides the perfect opportunity to trial an idea and if it works, its a bonus and if it flops, then there’s absolutely no harm done and we can merely chalk it up as experience.

Our stories have usually focused on structures that help us stay in Indonesian when communicating with each other in the classroom. The story this term introduced the phrases, open the door & close the door which are both very handy in summer and winter! ‘buka’ &’tutup’ are useful in themselves too and it wasn’t till we added them to our repertoire, that I discovered just how useful they could be. Another verb that I really need to is ‘get’ (ambil). I often ask students to get a clipboard, a pensil, a penghapus etc. So last week, I set out with that intention.

I began with having the word up on the board and asking students to copy me saying it a million times using a variety of voices. I love doing this and wish I had a greater ability to mimic well known characters! I also love singing the words because this gives me the opportunity to stress syllables slowly and clearly. Students just love opera singing!! Its hilarious watching them doing this! Maybe they get just as much enjoyment from watching me!! Following this is an explaination of  what ‘ambil’ means along with asking for a hand gesture which clearly demonstrates its meaning. I only choose one gesture for the entire school, so I encourage students in each class to demonstrate their suggested gesture repeatedly while I search for the student whose gesture is either identical to or very similar to the initial gesture that I chose during the very first lesson of the week. I then give kudos to the student whose gesture was ‘chosen’ by looking them in the eye and giving them a big smile! It truly makes their day! We then as a whole class practice their gesture while simultaneously  verbalising the structure chorally.

Then instead of circling to chase those repetitions, using either a picture, powerpoint or student, my distributors handed out a pensil, clipboard dan kertas to each student. Then I asked students to lipat (fold) then lipat again (while demonstrating to minimize using English). I could then ask students to ‘buka kertas’ ( open the paper – got a rep of buka in- what a bonus!) and number each quarter. I then gave the instructions while gesturing to clarify my meaning: Bu Cathy berkata dan murid menulis. After clarifying the meaning of menulis (write), I said the sentence, “SpongeBob ambil sprite.” and students wrote it in square nomor satu. I clarified that only the Indonesian must be spelled correctly!! Then  I asked students to menggambar SpongeBob ambil sprite.

I got so many repetitions of ‘ambil’ and students through illustrating each of the 4 sentences truly demonstrated that they understood and comprehended it. It was a fun way of having all students fully focused and on task. They loved it. 

Enjoy the following selection of work from one of the year 5 classes.

  
  
  
 
 

Membagi Ide Bagus – Student Free Day Links for Circling & Assessment

Leave a comment

I would like to share with you a variety of links which we will either be covering at our PLC Student Free Day or will be useful as a follow-up afterwards. This hopefully will make it easier if all the links are together so that we can refer back to it later or pass on to others who were unable to join us.

Our schedule for the day will be:

8:30 – 9:00am meet and greet, grab a cuppa

9am  Aim (French) demo with Sarah Slee

10am Circling workshop

11am break

11:30am Strategies to assist with recording student progress

1pm Lunch

1;45pm Assessment & ACARA
– Assessment and reporting parameters and issues
– Designing assessments to reflect the AC intentions and AS
– Connections between TPRS & the AC

4pm finish

 

Links include:

Circling

1, Martina Bex has a great post entitled, What is Circling and it includes a free PDF hand out.

2. Terry Waltz has  circling cards available through her website, Mandarin Through Comprehensible Output as well as a Prezi demonstrating how to use them.

3. TPRS Q & A also has a post called What is Circling And How to do It?

4. TPRS Q & A is a great blog and this post entitles What Does the Goddess Laurie Clarq say about Circling is well worth reading.

5. A French Demo At a Blaine Ray Workshop – Carla Tarini is being coached by Blaine Ray on how to circle.

6. Circling does not always go smoothly or predictably which can be said of just about anything involving children and/animals, so they say! Keith Toda wrote a blog entitle Circling Troubleshooting which will help you identify why your circling efforts may not feel successful!

7. Here is another great video! This one is of Terry Waltz working with students for their first Chinese lesson. Here you can see Terry demonstrate a multitude of skills one of which is circling!

8. TPRS Lesson Demonstration – Great PDF which breaks down of circling

Assessment

1. Martina Bex posted recently, End of Term Assessments which although definitely aimed at high school teachers, included some great ideas & interesting clarifications.

2. Fluency Writes (Free Writes) by Judith Dubios on her fantastic blog called TPRS Witch can be read here: http://tprs-witch.com/fluency-writing-2/ This post explains both what fluency writes are and why they are so useful.

3. Bryce Hedstrom’s Blooms Taxonomy for Foreign Language Instruction

 

Looking forward to our Student Free Day!! See you there and thank-you for supporting it!

TPRS Indonesian – Find it on Facebook!

3 Comments

Yesterday I finally worked out (with Googles help) how to create a Facebook page! I have been thinking about the value of a Facebook page dedicated to TPRS Indonesian teachers for several months now and finally convinced myself that it was worth a shot! What tipped the balance for me has been the recent posts on various TPRS facebook pages that have been awesome. I realised that we (TPRS Indonesian teachers) need a forum through which we can share useful Facebook posts, our own personal blog posts as well as short personal annecdotes with each other as well as ask each other for help, clarification or feedback specific to teaching Indonesian via TCI. 

So, check it out, like the page and then feel free to contribute in anyway that supports your own understanding of TPRS in the Indonesian classroom! I look forward to seeing you there!