A few months ago I attended a workshop "PQA" with Kirstin Plante and Carmen Meester. I had already seen Justin Slocum Bailey and Sabrina Sebban-Janczak at work in Agen, where they also did a PQA with us. So I was convinced of the value of this method. Already in the 1st week of september I tried to do a PQA with my students, but that was disappointing! I soon realized that a good PQA is so much more than a 'class discussion' with your students. And so I was very happy to have the opportunity to attend the workshop with Kirstin and Carmen. I still find it difficult to find 'good questions' for a PQA, because the 'quality' of your PQA depends entirely on the questions you ask. So, if you have already done a nice PQA with your students, let me know the question you asked. You would do me a great favor. The PQA A while ago (before the lockdown) I asked my students the following question: "Which country would you like to visit once? Suppose you can travel anywhere. Money or papers are no problem, you can choose wherever you go. Which country is your favorite country? Which country would you really want to visit once?". Everyone was given a sheet of paper and colored pencils. I asked my students to draw the flag of that country in the middle of the page (if they didn't know the flag, they could look it up on their cell phone via Google). Then I asked them some additional questions. They had to draw the answers to those questions around the flag. To make sure everyone understood the questions correctly, I used the presentation you can download below. While they were drawing, I walked around and told what they had drawn. E.g. "Oh, you would like to go to Morocco. And you want to go with your husband and your children. And I see that you want to go by car. And you want to go during the summer holidays. Do you want a holiday home or do you want to go to a hotel? ... ". The questions I asked with the presentation were:
As I walked around in the classroom, I also checked who would go to a hotel. After all, I wanted to make a story with them about a holiday in a hotel (after the PQA). My colleague Marijke Renneboog had already done a TPRS story about a hotel with her students and she was very enthusiastic about it. And so I also wanted to try it out. When everyone had finished his/her drawing, I asked the questions again. If the students were unable to answer immediately, they could point to the answer on their drawing and I could express what was on the drawing. When I noticed that a student preferred not to speak (after all, not everyone likes to be the center of attention), I immediately switched to another student. I also asked a few students who knew already a little bit more of Dutch: "Why do you want to go to that country? Do you want to go there because you think it is a beautiful country? Or do you want to go to that country because the climate is good there? Or because the food is nice in that country? ". These questions are not so difficult to clarify. The result was a very nice conversation where a lot of input was given and the students could tell a lot about themselves without many words :-). Most of the students told a lot, but also those who are not so good at learning a language could express themselves through the drawings and the photos. TPRS During the PQA I had already decided that Amir would play the 'leading role' of our story. He had made a beautiful drawing. He would go to Switzerland with his family - by plane. He would go during the summer holidays because then the children have no school, and they would stay in Switzerland for 3 weeks. He chose Switzerland because you can take beautiful walks there. When I asked him where he would be staying, he immediately said he wanted to go to a "fancy hotel" as "Hey Janique, money isn't a problem, is it?". Just what I needed for my story :-). I showed the slide of the "fancy hotel" and that immediately set the mood for the rest of the story. When the elevator (see the next slide) was out of order and the whole family had to climb the stairs, Amir could well imagine this situation. The kids who would ask again and again, "Daddy, are we almost there?", The youngest he should take on his shoulders, ... He saw it all happen. And then, when everyone was finally upstairs and they came to their room, I said in a somewhat mysterious way, "People, Amir, his wife and his children are finally at the door of their room, but there is a problem. There is a big problem! What do you think is the problem? To which Abdullah promptly said, "Key broken! Must go down again!". Can you imagine how happy I was? The class decided that Amir's wife and the children would wait upstairs and that Amir would go down alone. Downstairs at the reception he got another room. But of course there was also a problem in that room! I never had to ask a lot because the class could think of enough problems and tried to explain with hands and feet what happened in the next room. Only with the cockroach it took me a while to understand what they meant. I had collected several pictures of problems before, but never thought of cockroaches! :-) In the end, it was decided that Amir would demand the hotel manager to refund all costs and that he and his family would move to another beautiful and fancy hotel. End of story! It was nice to see everyone so active. All students did their best to understand everything, they helped each other, using hands and feet to express themselves, ... What an amazing experience! Worth repeating, I would say! After class I made a short text about the story that we have read in the next class. Above you see on the left the 'drawn answers' to the questions during the PQA (these are not Amir's answers) and on the right you see a photo of the text I wrote after the lesson (although in Dutch).
1 Comment
Janique Vanderstocken
7/17/2020 01:28:19 pm
In the meantime, I've received a lot of questions from different people.
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Dutch BlogThis blog is actually a translation of my blog in Dutch - as I want to practise my English. Click on "Dutch Blog" if you want to visit the original blog. |