I have been adapting a technique from the book Visualizing and Verbalizing by Nanci Bell to improve writing in my Spanish lit group. In a nutshell, Nanci presents one method so that students are able to use their mind's eye to visualize and their oral vocabulary to talk about the gestalt, or main idea, of a topic. It starts out using basic pictures that progressively get more detailed, then moves through imaging words, single sentences, various sentences, paragraphs and pages. I work with eight year olds and after one quarter we continue to work with the pictures and begin imaging words.
Her method uses twelve structure words that students learn so that they can be more precise in their overall understanding. I have translated them into Spanish: what=qué, size=tamaño, color=color, number=número, shape=forma, where=dónde, movement=movimiento, mood=humor o sentimiento, background=fondo, perspective=perspectivo, when=cuándo, and sound=sonido.
I use the simple pictures to introduce how to talk about nouns using the structure words. (I don't introduce perspective and movement in the beginning.) I ask the class to discuss at their table groups how they would talk about the size (and then other structure words) and give about a minute for them to come up with an idea. I have made it my mission to be aware of which students are doing most of the talking at their table groups and I ask the ones who did less talking to report to me what their table group came up with. When I am first introducing this I write their main ideas on the board, but I phase that out so that I can beging to see which students can write accurately, independently. After we have discussed the topic of the day (the picture) I set a time for 8 minutes. When the timer goes off, I ask them to read what they wrote and listen to see if it makes sense. I will often quote a workshop presentor, Ms. Barnaby, and say, "Revise with your ears, and edit with your eyes." I have to explain that to them more than once.
The two pictures are the same student's writing about one month apart. I see similar results in volume of writing from the majority of my group. The first picture shows that she ran out of ideas and had time to draw a picture of the cupcake (pastel). The second picture is about a month later after writing daily. She was able to continue to write for the entire time on the topic of elephant (elefante). This student does not write consonant blends independently, but she has improved in how much she can stay on task when asked to write about a topic.
