Today’s project was like one in 4 skills: write and then tell a story — this time a short one about a person, place or experience from the internship — while the other listens and writes it as just notes rather than whole sentences. She did that in a two step process: first showing us complete notes, and then on the board writing a shortened version, both of which steps you’d need for less skilled Ss. Joseph and I shortcutted a step further: he told me the story already in shorthand, and I further shortened it in notetaking, making it even more “poetic.” I titled it and typed it up and made it pretty for him.

Click

For Joseph, By Joseph

Tim
Mentoring teacher
Supportive
Patient
Guided me through everything
Profound knowledge of English
Various teaching methods
Humorous yet considerate
Click
Immediate click

And here’s what I wrote for mine, and pretty much what I told him, which he shortened further and I corrected slightly so he’d get the pauses right:

Last class
Videotaped students with camera
Asked them to say goodbye
Jaime — awkward, serious and emotional
Trying to communicate
Words hard to come by, carefully chosen
I love…
You
I miss…
You
I miss you.

Some Ss had ideas for variations on this exercise: just nouns so as not to intimidate. Expand the poem for syntax or metalanguage lesson. Exercise for simple past. Do it in pairs. Tell the story as poem or prose first, but have it end up as poem with “diminished” syntax.