Reflections of a Spanish Teacher

TPRS year 2 - visitors

2012-02-14T18:09:00.000-08:00

I was reading the other day about someone having a visitor coming into their class and how it was great because it gives the students a chance to show off. It got me thinking that I really think that would help some of my students. Yesterday, one student (who had heard all about Spanish class) came into my 5th hour class. They enjoyed performing for him. He (a native speaker and friend) thought class was amazing and also confusing (because he didn't know their inside jokes). The students in that class have interesting personalities and their inside jokes in class are unlike any other class.

Today though, a teacher had two observers who were going into teaching and they needed to do some observation hours for their undergraduate teaching class. She passed them off to me because he kids were just taking tests. The girls were both graduates of the school I teach at and Native Spanish speakers. I was a little bit nervous because the morning didn't go exactly the best (the previous entry on Junior High is a result of today not going so well in that class). And that sort of put a bad taste in my mouth the rest of the day. But my kids know that if I am not having the best day, they just get to try a little harder to help me out. And they almost always rise to the occasion.

So my observers came in 5th hour and stayed through 8th hour. I think at one point of staying in Spanish for most of the class I stopped and told them, "I don't know if you realized, but this is only a Spanish one class." And sure my kids were making grammatical mistakes, but they were understanding SO much Spanish and it was really fun to tell the story with them. They were showing off like crazy and it was awesome. I wish I could have observers come more often. It really is great for my kids (and for me) to see how much they have been learning.

TPRS year 2 - Junior High problems

2012-02-14T16:43:00.000-08:00

This entire year it seems like I have had the hardest time reaching a group of my students. Said group consists of 8th graders. Now last year, I loved my 8th grade class (they were an improvement over my 7th grade class). But I also had known the kids and their older siblings from previous years and had a rapport at the school.

Since I started over this year, I have a different group of 8th graders every quarter. These 8th graders really can do amazing things with language because they haven't quite become self-aware yet to realize that they might look like a fool in front of the rest of the class.

Nevertheless, my first group of students all followed one student. About halfway through the first quarter, he decided he didn't like Spanish class (in conjunction with some big personal stuff going on in his life I found out about). I was counting the weeks until that class was over so I could start over with a fresh group. They actually did pretty well. They responded well to my rules.

I have another group who has been wonderful with the language and I felt like I was getting even better with my storytelling abilities and simply allowing a story to happen with them. But two of the students in there are a little unruly. One of them bought into class for awhile and she was behaved. She's a little bit of a firecracker. But for the most part she does what's needed to be done. The other student is the leader of the pack. He's the cool guy and everyone knows it. I actually think he's a really neat kid. I had to hold him after one day and I asked him to help me out with the class because the other kids look up to him. He has (to his credit) been pretty awesome since (except Kindergarten day). I think he enjoys class but he still has to be "cool."

The firecracker though today was upset at me for not letting her sit in a different chair from the seating chart. I have come to the conclusion that there is no reason or argument good enough for a teenage girl. This is most likely why Fred Jones talks about the blank stare. If you give the student nothing to fire back at you with, you will most likely eventually get cooperation. So note to self, don't attempt to reason with the firecracker anymore.

I thought maybe my kids are just getting bored with what we're talking about in class. So I need to actually get to the storytelling and personalizing the stories to them instead of more One-word images. I did the one-word images for about three weeks now, so it's probably time for something new.

TPRS year 2 - It's supposed to be a bad day?

2012-02-13T16:08:00.000-08:00

In previous years, I would often find myself taking a sick day when I would feel a little "off." There are days where I can just feel like it's going to be a bad day simply because of my attitude when I walk into school. So I would just save everyone the grief and I would call in sick and email my sub plans to the secretary.

I thought it was a good plan and everyone won. This year is different because I have already used up all of my sick days for visiting the doctor with my wife (prenatal visits). Then I took a week off after she gave birth and now I am completely out. If I miss anymore days, that comes out of my paycheck in the summer. So I better really feel sick or it's a bit pricier.

Consequently, I have been forcing myself to go in. Interestingly enough, this phenomenon of me not feeling good (when it happens) occurs on Mondays.

So today is a prime example (as well as last Monday) of me feeling really not up to teaching but going in anyway. What I found was something astounding. My students did awesome both days. They were enthusiastic and enjoyed the weekend chat. They came up with interesting things to talk about and the classes pretty much ran themselves. It's odd because it's so counter intuitive.

As I think about it, most of the days I can remember this year of me going into school grumpy have ended up being wonderful days for TPRS. I wonder what causes this.

Either way, it's proof to me that teaching kids through stories is a heck of a lot better than teaching them the traditional way.

Today I even had a student observe a class (since he's been hearing about how awesome Spanish class is all year) and he (of course) enjoyed it.

TPRS year 2 - Kindergarten day (revisited)

2012-02-08T16:34:00.000-08:00

I wrote an entry here about my first attempts at Kindergarten Day (or what I thought it was) last school year.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

So last year I probably misunderstood what exactly “Kindergarten day” is. I thought having a children’s book up on the board and having the kids translate the pages was what I was supposed to do. I discovered through reading about other TPRS teachers’ experiences, I instead discovered that the purpose of Kindergarten Day is to read to the kids in ONLY Spanish and allow them to soak in the language (no translation).

A few weeks ago I tried this out on a Friday after a reading we had. I tend to rush through the readings a little bit because it’s not my strongest point as a TPRS teacher and I can tell since I am not as passionate about them, my students aren’t as passionate either. I prefer speaking the language (Tangent: On the other hand, a teacher that just started using TPRS this year LOVES the readings and feels less confident on his spoken TPRS and the students love doing the readings in his class). But we can simulate a little bit of the Kindergarten experience through finding a children’s book and reading it to them in comprehensible language. It could be a book in English that we describe in Spanish or it could be a book in Spanish that we read when level appropriate.

Long story short, it went great a few weeks ago and my kids really liked acting like Kindergarten students. A few were asking me when I would read to them again and I decided this week. I chose: El Oso Verde de Alan Rogers. (“The Green Bear” by Alan Rogers). It’s great in that it’s very colorful and you can describe what’s in the pictures as well as it not being too complicated to follow.

Here were the ground rules:

My job(s)

I will read in Spanish to you and point in the book
I might also ask related questions while reading the book
I will stay in Spanish the entire time

Their job(s)

bring in cookies, juice, milk, a blankey, a stuffed animal, etc (optional)
give me their eye contact
pretend like they are children (sitting/laying on floor)
answer questions in Spanish (no English)
enjoy listening to the story and to the language

Today my classes were REALLY excited about it. As soon as they walked in they were ready. I had to explain that we had another activity beforehand but I wanted to give them 20-25 minutes of Kindergarten so if they would just let me know when it was time by saying, “¡Ya no puedo más!” (I can’t do it anymore!) – a structure we had used in a previous story.

A few students probably behaved in my class much like they behaved for their kindergarten teacher and were fidgety and didn’t appear to be paying attention. But for the most part, they did a great job. I joked with them (since it was a half day today) that they had done such a good job in class that I was giving them the second half of the day off.

Successes:

· I think this activity works because high school students are nostalgic for their elementary school days

· Students seemed to enjoy the activity

Needs improvement:

My push over nature allowed some kids to go to the cafeteria at the beginning of class to get milk. I told them next time to come prepared. Maybe I should have let them learn their lesson this time by not letting them go so they knew the consequence was real first
Some students didn’t really play the game
One student commented that the book had no plot (afterwards). Someone else responded: "Hey, we were in kindergarten. It doesn’t matter." So maybe I can also choose some more engaging books every once in awhile.

TPRS year 2 - Student made quizzes

2012-02-08T16:24:00.000-08:00

I met with my principal this morning as we discussed my two evaluations from last semester. He commented how impressed he has been with me as a Spanish teacher: both in the rapport with the students I have acquired in a short time as well as the Spanish abilities he has noticed with students. I would assume that students didn’t speak it as much before (except the Native / Heritage speakers which make up about 40% of the school). Thanks to the sneaky teaching of TPRS, they are acquiring the language without realizing it. J

While we were talking, I mentioned something that has been a breath of fresh air as well as a great addition to my teaching this semester. Over Christmas I bought BenSlavic’s TPRS DVD set for only $35, which I thought was a really nice deal after reading both of his books last year. It really helped flesh out some of the concepts he talked about in his books.

I noticed that Ben has his students write 8 question quizzes in one of his classes to have an assessment at the end of class. So students are not required/expected to write anything during class. They are expected to watch, listen, and answer (as well as act when necessary).

The idea of students making the end of class quizzes for me though is… GENIUS. So I tried it out during these weeks and students actually do a great job. They get to listen to the story all of class and then write out 8 questions (either that I have said or of their own creation). Then at the end of class, someone passes out little pieces of scrap paper I have (thanks to extra worksheet copies and such) and they take the sí/no quiz. Some of the questions have been awesome!

The best part, all I have to do is grade AND I have a record of what we have been talking about for future games in which I want the students’ stories as the driving force for the game. (For example, see my caramba game for my eighth graders last year.)

I think this is a winning idea for the following reasons:

I am often tired at the end of class and in the last five minutes, I can’t think of five questions, much less eight.
Using eight questions is good since quizzes/tests are 50% of their grade. This offers a good buffer for their grade in case they miss one or two every once in awhile.
Students who make the quizzes must pay more attention to how I am asking questions (since Spanish is different with no usage of Do(es) / Did at the beginning of questions, it’s good to make them conscious of how to write questions in Spanish by listening to me.
Students get ownership of something in class that affects the rest of the class
It seems to build their confidence
the quiz writer has to pay more attention than otherwise
it establishes a routine for Spanish class unlike any other; in the last 8 minutes, someone passes out the sheets of paper and we take the quiz, go over the answers and have 2-3 minutes at the end
I am able to praise students for awesome questions

Additional notes

it’s funny how students almost always have a question (in Jr high) about if the teacher is a loser: ¿El profesor es un loser? to which the answer in class is “Sí.” (I model that I would rather that they make fun of me than each other in class.)
students almost always volunteer for this surprisingly
they still have to take their quiz after writing it, but shouldn’t they get an easy A?
If no one volunteers, I have each name on a popsicle stick for each class and I just draw that name. Once they go, their popsicle stick cannot be drawn until everyone’s name has been drawn.
if a question is poorly worded (and 20%-30% or more miss it, I throw the question out / offer it as extra credit)

TPRS year 2 - Teaching to the interest level

2012-02-07T09:08:00.000-08:00

I remember sitting in a college master's class for foreign language teachers- after already having taught for a few years - and the professor was talking about teaching to the National Standards and creating units that appeal to the classes. As I thought about teaching in a rural school in Missouri, that lent itself to teaching about hunting, racing and a few other stereotypes you might come across from small towns. The vocabulary would be incredibly specialized, but it would be interesting to the kids.

Perhaps I didn't realize it at the time, but you could create a unit about fishing/hunting and still have authentic texts with many other words you would be able to pre-teach. But the textbooks made by publishers are always so watered down with things that are assumed to be important vocabulary. I can't tell you how often I have used the phrase: "subir al pirámide" (to climb/scale the pyramid). Yet that was in my Spanish 1 book with vocabulary back when I took Spanish.

When I look at all of the vocabulary in the textbooks, it's overwhelming and often (at times) silly what words are deemed important. To my students, many of those words aren't important.

I'm so thankful that through TPRS, I am able to not worry about units as much or making my class very vocabulary driven. I teach them structures and we fill in gaps. Every once in awhile I might try to throw in some words that I know are useful (modes of transportation, animals, rooms of the house, weather, etc), but we let the story take us to the destination of learning the language.

In this way, my students ARE engaged, because in a story we can talk about hunting, fishing, racing, and whatever else they might have seen in a movie. This makes the language more meaningful and something attainable, while learning a bunch of grouped vocabulary terms makes it seem like something you have to work at through memorization.

What about units? In my opinion, the units should be done moreso after students have a well-rounded vocabulary and you want to treat them more like students of the language with more emphasis on grammar (much later than Spanish 1 and 2). You might be able to dabble a little in Spanish 3 and 4 with those things, but it seems as though we really have to work on the kids using the language (from hearing it correctly used in context) before we can even try to approach any "grammar lesson."

year 2 - TPRS - one word image

2012-01-30T20:41:00.001-08:00

I change schools this year thinking that at a bigger school I might be able to avoid junior high Spanish. Yet this year I still have one class of eighth graders that changes once a quarter. It's my first hour in the day so I feel like I have to start my day with much more discipline and structure because junior high kids need it more than the high schoolers.

Nevertheless, I've probably already mentioned before about junior high students. I would say that it takes a special personality to teach seventh and eighth graders. I think you need a lot more patience and sometimes an ability to be goofy with them. But they definitely have their own sense of humor.

So I've been watching some DVDs made by Ben Slavic where he shows himself teaching French through TPRS to middle school students.

Something he talks about with middle school students to build up their understanding with the language is an idea called one word images. This idea has helped me figure out how simple a TPRS lesson plan can really be. Maybe in your district you have all sorts of random vocabulary words that you have to teach. I think one word images are a great way to accomplish this.

So you pick out a word from a list of high frequency words or perhaps from the required vocabulary you have to teach. Then you write that word on the board. I think nouns are best because verbs flow pretty naturally as well as high frequency structures like: has, is, smiles, happy, sad, etc

Today for example, we started off after our warm up with the word: airplane. Now I said it a few times and then asked for a volunteer. A girl volunteered and she became the airplane. She is a big purple airplane with blue dots. She smiles big and she is happy. She says, "I'm happy." She's in space and she swims in space. She swims like Nemo from Finding Nemo. (the students were loving this because a lot of these were their ideas)

Then a student watches the big plane from the window. He is happy because the plane is happy. He says, "woah! The plane is big. The plane is purple with blue dots. The plane swims like Nemo. I'm happy."

There was nothing exceptionally funny about this story. But the students in junior high loved it. And in turn, I loved it and thanked them for making class so interesting.

Now to figure out the word for tomorrow. :)

year 2 - TPRS - Native / Heritage speakers

2012-01-16T14:17:00.000-08:00

There are two terms I am familiar with when talking about students in class who come from Spanish speaking families. I believe the terms are: Native speakers and Heritage speakers.

From my understanding, Native speakers are those students who will be fluent in the language (most likely first generation; moved to US) while Heritage speakers would be students who can speak the language but in a more limited context due to their parents speaking the language but they have been raised in Gringo-land. If my definitions are off, please correct me! :-)

The following is what I do with Native / Heritage speakers in my classroom.

So I teach at his rural school that has seen a huge increase in the Hispanic population in the last fifteen or so years. As a result there are many students that are first or second generation Spanish speakers who are forced to take Spanish since no other foreign languages are offered here. Since teachers at this school tend to leave after every two or so years (what I saw at the last school I taught too) it's hard to establish any good curriculum or sense of stability for the schedule.

Consequently I have at least a few native speaking students in my classes who must feel insulted in their intelligence at times because obviously their needs in language instruction would be more like our high school English classes for Americans. Yet at my school there haven't been any incredibly talented teachers who have stuck around for long enough to change things. Students sometimes have been rubbed the wrong way by a Spanish teacher telling them that words that they use are wrong (because the teacher is too ignorant to know any better).

As you probably know from this blog, I've pretty much converted my teaching style of Spanish to TPRS. At my previous school I was able to teach students high frequency structures and more about the language in a digestible and interesting way. But my students last year were all non-Spanish speaking students. So they were all starting from about the same place.

TPRS is neat even for multi-level learning like I tried in my ESL classes with adults. But with the huge discrepancy of Native / Heritage speakers and native English speakers, I wasn't sure what to do.

So I haven't required a lot out of my native/heritage speakers. They can pretend like they are students learning Spanish like everyone else or they can read books in Spanish during class and write summaries. Most opt to participate in the stories. Now I have tried to talk to the native/heritage speakers outside of class and many of them have said that they enjoy class. Probably because TPRS makes class seem a lot more like playtime in the language with acting and compelling input activities.

Assuming that my school decides to keep me on next year, there has been talk about me teaching a Spanish class in the style of language arts to help the native/ heritage speakers learn how to read more as well as function better in their language. It's exciting but daunting because I am not sure if my Spanish abilities are quite up to par to accomplish this feat.

year 2 - TPRS - parent/teacher conferences

2011-10-28T11:12:00.000-07:00

So in the last school I taught at and the current one, they tend to have a short day (until 12:45) and then they have parent/teacher conferences from then until 7:00 pm.

It makes for a long day. In my previous school, we were able to stay in our rooms during the parent/teacher conferences and I think I might have 8 or so parents come (a few of which worked in the building). At this new school, all the high school teachers had tables set up in the gym for a one-stop parent/teacher shop. It was a little different, but forced us (especially me) to be more social.

At the beginning of the year, I had a mother meet with me and introduce me to her son. She expressed to me her reservations about him because he had taken Spanish I the previous year and had completely failed it and had to repeat the class. She was worried that this year would be just as bad or worse for him.

I've noticed this year he's been doing quite well and tends to have an ok time in the class. He also aces his quizzes over the stories and structures. His parents came lastnight and his mother was so thankful for how she even heard him speaking Spanish one day nonchalantly in conversation. He responded in typical high-schooler fashion, "It's no big deal. The teacher says it everyday." Nevertheless, his mother was able to see the change in his attitude toward class and he has completely turned around in it.

There were a few other students whose parents told me how much their kids talked about class at home or listened to songs from class at home and shared that with their parents. These are my treasures. These are the things that are what remind me that the day-to-day frustrations and difficulties are worth it because I have students interacting with the language and loving the experience in the classroom.

year 2 - TPRS week 2 - Principal observation & quizzing

2011-09-06T09:13:00.000-07:00

So last week I had my principal come in on Tuesday during a class and we were still doing the introductory activity where you talk about the different things that students do and then I always try to make it silly as soon as possible because it's much more interesting when it's silly or fantastical. It has been especially nice because I am teaching at a new school this year and I need to get to know students all over again. So the first few weeks of class, it's a great activity with very little planning needed since my students have pictures on their desks of something they like to do and we talk about it.

So I can practice sports vocabulary, body parts, useful prepositions like "with", "for", "like","en" and much more. At the same time, I can learn students names and something about them to help me with learning their names.

But I digress... so my principal came in class and we'd been having class like this for a week already. He comes in and witnesses TPRS for the first time. Mind you, when I interviewed with him, I explained that I didn't have a textbook for my students to use and he thought that it must be either a classroom management nightmare or a genius idea. The class went very well. I gave a quiz afterwards and all the students got 3/3 except for one student who got 1/3. I need to focus on her more in the future and point and go slower.

My principal had written a little note with the following:

Outstanding! I truly enjoy seeing your enthusiasm for learning. It is unbelievable how you can maintain your energy and keep students engaged over an extended period of time!

On the faculty meeting on Friday, he also encouraged all the other teachers to stop by my classroom to see how I am teaching Spanish this year. So, in short I think it went well!

Now my quiz was a little different than last year. This summer I attended another workshop with Donna Tatum-Johns and noticed that she quizzed us over the structures. So she covered the structures up after teaching and asked us what each of the 3 structures were. So on my quiz, I did just that. I said the Spanish term that we were practicing and had them write what it was in English. Since we're just beginning that's ok. I'm excited when we'll get to the point of much higher level language ability.

year 2 - TPRS week 1

2011-08-26T15:39:00.000-07:00

So I started at a new school and I have a lot of neat things going on at the new school. I decided to label the new entries based on what weeks they happen in if possible. I don't feel the need to blog as much as I used to since I'm doing a lot of the same things. Now I have to pay attention to some different things since I feel more comfortable with TPRS itself.

The following are some things I've been working on this week:

Native speakers:
I was really excited when I interviewed with my new principal because I know that the school had about 40% of the students, Hispanic. Many of them are bilingual while a few don't know as much Spanish and know more English. I know some of the students at the school and always asked them about their Spanish teachers and always heard how boring the class was. This always made me fearful of teaching there because the Spanish-speaking students have to take the class even though they already speak Spanish.

In my interview I talked about how the native speakers might still enjoy my TPRS classroom more than a traditional classroom because it's all about interaction and we work on literacy as well. So he was convinced and gave me the job.

I decided to offer the Native speaking students a few choices (since I learned in Love & Logic that choices are a big deal for students' empowerment):

do what everyone else does and pretend
read children's books / chapter books in Spanish and write 2-3 sentence summaries

I also let them know if they cause problems, they have to do option 2. I would be happy with either option because they can help me in option 1 and they can help themselves (in their literacy) in option two. So for me, it's a win-win.

None of the students really took me up on the reading. They have told me that they actually like my class because we're speaking in Spanish for most of the class and we are saying interesting things (Thanks TPRS!).

So for now, I'm really excited about having the native speaking students in my class to help out and offer some neat perspectives (especially when we get more conversational)

Attention spans / rebellion:
I've been doing my best to call students out on their attention problems and rebellion during class breaks and different things. Since I am somewhat confident in my TPRS and PQA abilities, I can now focus on students individually and teach more to their eyes than I used to.

So I've talked to a handful of kids that I've noticed slacking a little in class and I've asked them if they're doing ok and if I am not going slow enough for their individual needs. I also have been doing my best to build a rapport with the students to help squash potential rebellions later by being more approachable.

Thus far, it's been a great first week and I'm excited for the rest of the year.

last day

2011-05-25T08:55:00.000-07:00

So I think I got to know my students better than ever with this whole TPRS thing. And I was able to establish connections with them that I hadn't been able to do as easily before.

I mean, before, I would be able to ask them how they were and make artificial conversations with them about things. With TPRS, since it's a conversation, it's more natural and even though often times it can be fictional, they're playing along with you and sometimes a student will allow a real event to pop in while you might change what happens to them.

This year was about trying out as much as I could of TPRS and I found that although some students (from my lack of reading their eyes) got left behind, the abilities in the language and the confidence levels were much higher because you're constantly conversing in the language and students slowly will create sentences for you. Also, some students found themselves saying things in Spanish outside of class (and I'm not talking about random vocabulary). Instead, they have sentences going around, possible descriptions of things going on.

After this year, I am more than ever convinced that TPRS is the way to go for me in the future of teaching Spanish.

However, sadly, I will miss the students that I have experimented the method on this year. I have been teaching at this small rural school for 5 years now (starting off originally as an interim Spanish teacher / warm body). Since then I have gotten my master's in teaching Spanish as well as my certification in teaching.

Next year I will be teaching in a new school and will have to build new connections. I will be able to see the effectiveness of TPRS in a mixed classroom with students who already have fluency in spoken Spanish or partial fluency because the town is a mixture of white-Missourian students and Mexican and Central American students.

I'm excited about the change but I will miss my students dearly. I hope to only further improve my TPRS teaching next year and do much better at assessing my students as well as not leaving them behind.

Día 161 - story - s/he remembered

2011-05-06T08:48:00.000-07:00

So I've been coming up with some of my own stories with structures I think might be fun. I was thinking about a silly story that I could do with my Junior High kids. The neat thing is how different my original idea (written story) and their story (oral story) came up. They loved their story so much though and it was a magical class that day. You could feel the energy and excitement.

The story involved the structures:

estaba sorprendido (he was surprised)
recordó que (he/she remembered that)
buscó (s/he looked for)

The students came up with the following story:
      There was a chameleon named Thomash. Thomash entered his room one day and he was surprised! He was surprised because there was a girl in the pool in his room. Her name was Jackie. Jackie was really sexy and she had a small bikini on. Jackie liked to swim. Jackie invited Thomash to swim with her.
     Oh no. Thomas remembered that he didn't have a bathing suit. Thomas went to "Chameleons-are-us" and looked for a bathing suit. He looked and looked and looked. He found one and grabbed it. It was a tight bathing suit. He went to his room and Jackie liked the bathing suit a lot.

The written story was the following:
   There is a boy named Gregorio. Gregorio enters his bedroom and he is surprised. His bed isn't in his room! He looks for his bed in his room. It's not there. There is a problem. He doesn't remember where it is.
     He goes to the bathroom. He looks for it in the bathroom. He looks for it in the toilet. It's not there. He looks for it for an hour in the house.
     "Where is my bed?" he thinks.
     He goes to his friend's house. He enters his room and he sees his bed! His bed is in his friend's room! Gregorio grabs a chair and hits his friend in the head.
     "What's your problem?" his friend asks.
     "You stole my bed!" Gregory yells.
     "I didn't steal it. Don't you remember?" his friend asks.
   At that moment, Gregorio remembers why his friend has his bed. On Tuesday, he lost his bed in a basketball game with his friend in the park.

Día 158 - important structures in the language

2011-05-02T13:41:00.000-07:00

So I teach Jr High through High School Spanish (Spanish III is the farthest but after next year I imagine we'll have Spanish IV if I stay there).

I'm really excited about what we've been able to accomplish with TPRS this year. I'm far from perfect with the teaching style but I've seen some amazing things with more than anything my students' confidence levels in trying to communicate in the language and going for meaning versus 'grammatical correctness'. Plus we're teaching them how to succeed more with the language by teaching it in an appropriate context.

But my Junior High Spanish classes are not required and they are only for a semester. Still, I see that the students in Junior High are really fun to play around with and I would like to come up with a list of structures to target for the Junior High levels that I could easily use or they could bring into other storytelling in later years. I don't want to teach them the same things. Maybe similar things. Sometimes I've been bringing in lessons from Blaine Ray's Look I can Talk year 1 book. I've also taken some ideas from Amy Catania's Cuentos Fantásticos.

I find that a lot of the stories that I have acquired outside of Blaine Ray's book have to do with a lot of vocabulary and not as many structures. For me, this makes the story much more specific than it needs to be. I've found that it's better to have the structure focused around your action/verb because you can easily change who does that action and then in the reading use the other word you wanted them to learn like (grandmother, etc).

Maybe I'm missing the point, but it seems like the vocabulary is more easily acquired and the structures are more of what I should focus on. I can easily throw the vocabulary in while circling

So if anyone has any ideas of structures that might be high frequency and useful to throw in for my Junior High Classes, let me know.

I'm also going to more seriously take into account the questionnaires next year and use those to really make my classes more engaging.

Día - 152 - speaking of quizzes

2011-04-19T11:21:00.000-07:00

So it's in my nature to want to know how my students are doing! Sue me.. wait... don't really.

In my district we have these wonderfully useful days (notice the hint of sarcasm there) where we have professional development built into the school year and we have the first Wednesday as an early out and then stay until 3:30 doing professional development. It might be nicer if there was an actual language program I could meet with and hone our skills together. Instead, we might have a speaker talking about different things we have to do as educators in Missouri. Before, it was all about the state testing. Ay ay ay

------end tangent-----

So we have these short days and I decided that since I only have 20-25 minutes with my students on those days, I should give a quick quiz. Yeah. I know, right? I should have done this years ago. Well at least earlier on in the year. I give little pop quizzes on the stories where the students have to use the language to answer the questions. However, I wanted to see how well they could do on identifying the structures and using them.

I had two parts. The top was 20 or so structures we've been using a lot this year almost in every story and matching them to their English counterpart. These were in the past tense, like our spoken stories. The second part was a story we'd gone over before and I blanked out some of the words with a word bank These were in the present like our written stories. In all, there were 32 points.

Ever since grading them, I've wanted to kick myself. I had students score as few as 7 and some score as high as 32. But how were some of them capable of scoring 7? The diversity of the grading helped me realize that I had been failing them in not assessing their understanding of the structures.

It's such a "DUH" moment too. I assumed way too much from the quizzes that I had been giving. Somehow, I figured out that there were some students really struggling with the information. What is most frustrating is they weren't letting me know that they didn't understand!

What does this tell me? More quizzes over structures and much more accountability with eye contact to students.

Día 128 - Quizzes

2011-03-15T09:10:00.000-07:00

I don't think I've talked much about assessment yet this year. The problem is I don't really know yet how to create a wonderful summative assessment tool. I have so far decided to use formative assessments. For those of you not familiar with the terms...

A summative assessment is basically the assessment we do that shows the students have learned from the unit, such as a test, a paper, or a presentation. It's a big assessment.

A formative assessment is what we use along the way to track the students' progress so we can possibly help them before the summative assessment (test, paper, presentation). These could be quizzes, worksheets, classwork, or anything that gives the teacher an idea of how the students are progressing with the material.

Well, I really like the formative assessments. I am the foreign language department at my small rural school. As a result, I haven't been too worried about creating massive tests for my students. Instead, I have been giving 3-5 point quizzes constantly. I try to do at least 2-3 a week when possible. This is so I can constantly chart the students progress. Another formative assessment in TPRS are the writing assignments for students to write in the language. This has proven helpful to see how students are doing as well.

I like these assessments because they are realistic and as I chart my students' progress, I am able to go back and help on things that they aren't quite grasping yet. The silly thing is that the quizzes I give are over the stories that we talk about in class. As a result, the quizzes are so silly because our stories are often silly. This also helps the students to succeed on the quizzes because they are able to remember more pointless information such as the names of silly characters or why they looked weird or what their problem was. The best part though is that it's sneaky teaching because they think that the quiz is incredibly easy and forget for a moment that the whole thing is in Spanish.

I love when students tell me that a quiz was easy. That means they were paying attention to the meaning (and not worrying about the language which is naturally being acquired).

I should do a few summative assessments though throughout the year. I hope to worry more about that next year. This year I might try and give a test over the main structures and some other vocabulary we've gone over to make sure they're getting it. But the quizzes reflect the learning from the students and that's good enough for me to defend myself.

Día 125 - junior high Spanish

2011-03-10T15:30:00.000-08:00

One day a few weeks ago, my storyline developed into a boy had a big zit bigger than an elephant and he was sad. Jessica Simpson loved him and kissed his zit. I didn't have any idea the story would go there. When we got the actors, it of course added interest but the story started out fairly interesting to that class.

My Junior High Students filled out a questionnaire at the beginning of this semester and I wanted to get some more ideas of things to talk about in class with them using the language. I also have seen that the more we can personalize the stories around them, the more interesting it is and silly it gets. Of course, we must remain in the realm of not making fun of the students.

In one of Ben Slavic's books, he talks about using a student's pet as a character in the story. Only, he starts the story with: "___ has a guinea pig." And then he talks about how they have a mean guinea pig, etc. It develops into a character and even though that person's guinea pig isn't any of those things, it makes the story more interesting to the class.

Sometimes we want to make fun of something in Spanish but it can't be the students. So how can we make fun to learn description words without hurting students' feelings? That's where pets can come in. My students learned the word "fat" pretty quickly because I always talk about my fat cat, Felipe. Sometimes I might even teach the word "Smelly" with him. Or "stupid" can also work because I'm not talking about a person.

So I tried this out with a student. I wanted to practice the structure "Had." So I read their questionnaires and looked for pets that we haven't learned the names of yet. Then I started the story out with "____ had a hamster" instead of "there was a hamster." It worked out well. I went along with Ben Slavic's idea of describing the hamster as mean and seeing where that is going. Then I practiced the structure "s/he wanted to have" and it turned out the mean hamster wanted to have a car. So he went to a competition in McDonald's where he ate 104 Bic Macs. The purple Teletubbie only ate 103.9 Big Macs. I got some repetitions of "s/he won" in there, which was my third structure and then they finished the story with the Purple Teletubbie eating the hamster.

A student told me that she wanted to be a part of the story. She's quiet but her eye-contact is great and I can tell she is picking up the language through quizzes and occasional comics and other things. So I decided to incorporate her into the story. There was only one problem, the structure I wanted to practice was "s/he lost." Well, no big deal. I looked at her sheet and saw she had a frog. So we talked about her ugly weak frog with 1000 eyes who wanted to have 9 sexy girl flies. He went to a competition in Jersey shore and jumped low. A beautiful penguin jumped higher and won. The frog lost. He was sad.

The interesting thing was the class loves these things as well as the inside jokes later that are created just for us. When I reminded them that the students' hamster was dead, we pretended to be sad for her. I love it.

Moral:
So if I get stuck in a storytelling rut, fictionalizing pets is a good way to make a story more fun.

Día 112 - students trying

2011-02-24T11:55:00.000-08:00

I love how in TPRS, sometimes you forget that you're using the language in class because you're trying to accomplish things with it. It's more evident when students are really enjoying it and they try to use the language to get their point across.

This year, I have had students try harder than ever before to create sentences (even if grammatically they're a little off). But from a communication standpoint, don't I want them to have the confidence to try with the language if they ever meet native speakers? YES! I would rather that they try to communicate and build connections even if their grammar isn't perfect than have them so worried about the conjugations of the verbs that they just decide to stay quiet.

My favorite is that sometimes students parrot the things that I say in the perfect time like such phrases as "¡ES OBVIO!" (It's obvious!)

This will always crack me up because my students just pick that up so quickly and start using it. Sometimes they try to correct the story that they think is going in the wrong direction by telling me that it's obvious and telling me another fact. If the fact has been established, I can't change it but if I am only asking questions, sometimes I'll let them have the victory because "es obvio" ;-)

It's so much fun though. I love how my students are trying and as evidenced by the readings, they are learning the language even if sometimes they are quiet or tired. They are getting the language better than before through TPRS.

Some of the best times are when my more advanced students just come up with the craziest sentence in Spanish and the rest of the class gets it to laugh or they want to know what they said because I laugh. I like to acknowledge their efforts with a laugh or a huge smile. Even if we don't always use the idea.

In fact, the curious thing, I have a student who describes himself as lazy. He admits that he doesn't do homework. I haven't figured out an effective way to assign any yet this year. Hey, I'm still learning! Last year in Spanish 1, he was quiet and often times would just occasionally chatter with the girl next to him in English. This year he has really opened up to the language and does amazing things with it. Sure he makes mistakes, but he's trying and his gains have been incredible. I have to be careful not to get carried away with him in class and stay grounded with my barometer students, but he and others like him this year have definitely helped validate the teaching style for me.

Día 111 - in need of something

2011-02-23T11:55:00.000-08:00

So this has been a very curious year with TPRS so far.

As I started out in the beginning, we tried to talk about all sorts of different things with the structures. I've found that there are times when it's very hard to create a spin-off story that interests the class from Blaine's Readings. I think it's because I am thinking in the box and constraining the story to things we've already done.

It's funny that at the beginning of the year, colors and size made it silly and funny. Now, my students don't seem to be as impressed with using colors in the stories. It makes sense that we would need to add progressively harder details and more vocabulary, but sometimes I find myself at a loss.

I was reading a lot of Ben Slavic's book PQA in a Wink over the weekend and something that I noticed, he came up with a story about a girl wearing chains and black pants just to add something odd to the story and she ended up becoming a firefighter and saving some boy in class. Obviously, you only can script maybe the point of departure, but that might still be helpful for me to think in terms of introducing the story to the new structure pretty quickly in there.

This makes sense because I need to get to the new structure as quickly as possible to circle it and we can add the easy details in as we go. Often times we don't need to circle the structures on the easy details. It's funny how I used to have to circle: tenía (he/she had), quería tener (he/she wanted to have), or even se llamaba (his/her name was) and now we can fairly effortlessly throw those structures into the story.

So, in conclusion, I need to work on the following things:
1. getting at least the first new structure as close to the beginning of the spoken story as possible to circle it and let details fall into it there

2. start helping encourage new types of information aside from color or size. We can talk about clothes, body parts, food, or whatever we NEED in Spanish. But I should work on incorporating one or all of those in the future stories even if it's in circling to help introduce words to start learning.

Día 110 - student participation

2011-02-22T09:55:00.000-08:00

So I've been failing my students! It's not like I am giving out F's.... but I am failing them because I haven't been cracking the whip on my expectations for class. I'm too much of a push-over.

Some of the kids in youth group at church were talking about a teacher they had this year who was really strict but they didn't talk about her in a negative light. They said, "She's strict, but we learn a lot in there." It seems as though there is a positive association in their minds when the teacher is strict but actually can teach them as opposed to a really strict teacher who just sits there and lectures them about non-class material (like a former teacher a this school). Oops!

I've always been laid back as a teacher for the most part but as I've been told by parents of children, the best thing is consistency. When parents raise children, they must be consistent in their rules. I realize that students don't always have the easiest time in life. I try to be firm but kind. But I still have students who find it appropriate to put their heads down on their desks in my class. Then of course, they're going to fall asleep. I mean, the posture can't be doing much for the brain.

It probably helps that I've been reading through Ben Slavic's TPRS in a Year this weekend in an attempt to get out of this funk I've been finding myself in as a TPRS teacher. I find that students don't seem to be interested in the stories like they used to be.

The problem is most likely a result of many factors. But one of those factors is that students most likely don't feel like they have to pay attention. If they aren't paying attention from the beginning of class and I don't say anything, they think they'll get away with it. I usually encourage students to sit up straight, but there are days where I don't say anything and I just let them get away with it without talking to them.

So today in one of my classes I had students who weren't giving me eye contact and they weren't trying from their posture. I stopped and explained that they needed to sit up straight and give me their eyes. They resisted and groaned and I waited patiently with a smile. Once I had it, I continued. During the class it happened again . I apologized and said, "I realize I have been failing you this year by not making sure you are sitting up straight and paying attention. I will continue teaching when I have you sitting up straight and your eyes on me." Once I had it, I continued. It took a little bit out of the class' story today but it will only make things easier in the long run. I only wish I would have started the year with being better about this.

Día 109 - idea for an activity

2011-02-18T11:46:00.000-08:00

So I just had a few ideas. We'll see how they work out. Last year I used to give certain stories to students (pre-TPRS) and then I had them order them again to a logical order. This kind of goes along the same lines but somehow the idea was dormant in my brain until this exact moment.

Idea 1:
So an obvious idea would be to break the students up into groups of 2-4 (depending on the class size) and then to have a reading for the day cut up into pieces. Then I have the students order the pieces. Once they order them, we'll go over the story and see how they did. It would be good to help them think about the narrative while piecing it together.

Idea 2:
Another idea would be to have the groups be given multiple stories that are the same cut up and each story is in an envelope labeled with a number or a letter. Each group would race to put one story together. Then we would see who came closest. We could start out with simpler and go to more complex.

It could be a good review of vocabulary and/or structures that have been presented.

Idea 3:

I was thinking that something I could do with my 8th graders (or high schoolers) would be break them up into groups and give each group a different story. Each group would then have 6 panels cut up. They would each have to draw 1-2 different pictures from different parts in the story to illustrate it. Then we would circle through the stories and have the groups put the pictures in order based on the story. I thought it would be better for them to draw them since I am horrible at drawing them.

So we'll see if I'll remember to do any of these activities in the future. ;-)

Día 106 - patience

2011-02-15T13:34:00.003-08:00

Ok. So I have a class that LOVES to use as much English as possible. I think I've created a bit of a monster because they tend to blurt things out in English and I've honored it by going with it.

My thoughts have been, I can help them translate a phrase. But I can more than ever see the two words rule of Ben Slavic as being important. So much time can be wasted in English. I would rather them just use as little English as possible so we can practice the structures in Spanish.

Yesterday I kind of failed (thus the name of the previous entry) and I actually stopped class a little early by stating... "Guys, there's a little too much English today and I'm just going to end class early because I'm frustrated with it and I don't want to yell."

I know it wasn't the best course of action. If there were a kid who wanted to end class early, he would just speak in English way too much from now on to frazzle me. Sure... it's possible. But I am not saying I will let it happen anymore. It was a wake up call for me to be more pro-active about production. I am not referring to making students repeat what I say. I want them to TRY in the target language. In TPRS, they do learn how to speak in the language, but laziness compels us all to take the easy road sometimes.

So today when some students spoke in English during the story, I paused. I looked into the class with a blank look. The question was that a girl wants to buy a big wig in a store. The wig costs the other hand of a student. (In a previous story, something else cost him his first hand). I staired blankly when a girl suggested that it cost "His other hand". Eventually some students tried to explain in Spanish what the student wanted to say. I wasn't sure if they remembered, but a students said "Otra mano" (other hand... WITH feminine agreement! WOW). This happened at a few times in the class and it seemed to work well. At the end of class, I explained that I hope no one feels bad. If I think they can try to say something in Spanish, I will patiently wait for them to from now on.

We'll see how it goes.

Posted by el Señor Jordan at 12:18 PM

Día 106 - love

2011-02-15T08:57:00.000-08:00

Keep in mind I am coming from a very teacher centered frame of mind as I've plunged into TPRS. As a result, I expect things to pan out a certain way and in the TPRS classroom, this isn't always going to happen. It probably will depend on the comfort level of the teacher with the story and the structures.

After suffering a few days have flopped for my weekend chat activity on some different Mondays, part of me wants to scrap the activity completely. The problem is when the students don't want to make it interesting or entertaining, they won't and class that relies on participation will be painful. I remind them that it's as boring as we make it (as a class) and I remind them of their participation. Nevertheless, there are still some "off day's"

I currently envision myself on a road with two potential outcomes:

1. start planning out my lessons more allowing the TPRS I've grown to enjoy to become much more mechanical

2. pick myself up after each failure, analyze where the problem occurred and figure out a solution (if possible) for the next time. For example... if a story flops with the class, try and figure out what I was doing to make it flop. Perhaps the class is really bad about agreeing on a name. So I can just wait for a little bit and then tell them "It's obvious" and tell them the name. As long as I can always do this in an encouraging manner. But there are times I like to be open to where their story is going because some clever things can come out of it.

Maybe I should write out my own little possible script for each story ahead of time so I have something to fall back on in case the energy is low. But isn't that the moment to remind my students that they can't slack off and need to step up to their role in class?

Yesterday I think part of the reason that it went poorly was because I didn't feel like talking much and my storytelling was very mechanical. I wasn't showing the students the love and attention they deserve. Consequently it flopped. I find myself remembering 1 Corinthians 13:1-3:

If I speak in the tongues of men or of angels, but do not have love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. If I give all I possess to the poor and give over my body to hardship that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing. (NIV 2010)

No matter how great I might be able to make a story, if I don't express love to my students. If I am unable to convey a sense of "I care about you as a person and how you do in this class", I will flop. Some might learn Spanish, but many will be turned off by my attitude. For my success of TPRS, I must always be ready to talk about the students. That's the key. Anything apart from that isn't as interesting to them. I must choose to learn about them through the language instead of "just trying to get through the story."

Día 109 - going slowly

2011-02-14T03:30:00.000-08:00

Yesterday I was teaching my 8th grade Spanish class. The kids just started during this semester. They're kind of my experimental group where I try out things because in the long run, all I do for them is only going to further establish a base for next year when they enter Spanish 1.

So the first two weeks or so, we talked about them and learned some different verbs and I practiced some of the interrogative words in Spanish with them (who, what, where, why) as well as important prepositions (with, of, from, in, on) that will be useful for telling stories.

Then for a few weeks I thought it would be fun to try a little TPR with them to work with classroom objects, review some of the verbs we learned in command form and also add some body parts. The whole point is to build them up a little with some different activities before storytelling.

I'm not opposed to starting storytelling from the very beginning, but I just thought they might like something a little different after I go to know them. I know the 7th graders that I had before Christmas loved TPR.

So we started storytelling from Ana Bachman Catania's Cuentitos Fantásticos. The first day, the structures to practice were:
hay - there is, there are
brinca - he/she jumps
entra a - he/she enters
corre - he/she runs

The basic script was that a student runs and jumps on the bus. He runs and jumps in the class. Finally the principal enters the class and takes the student to the office where the principal jumps on the student. Then the principal is happy. I stayed pretty close to it because I was modeling the storytelling to them and they were hanging on. There was a moment of confusion or two, but I went back and we got through it. I did change the verbs to the past tense though while telling it out loud

The second day, I decided to do another verbal story. I added 'levanta' as a target structure (he/she lifts). and just and instead of following the script about a bad student, we could have a little more fun. So I asked at the beginning if there was a student. One of the students remembered how to say "deer" in Spanish. The class went with it. So we ended up with a deer in Cabela's. He ran and jumped in Cabela's. Then it turned out he lifted the teacher. Taylor Lautner walked in and the deer lifted him too! Taylor Lautner wasn't happy so he lifted the deer and went home with the deer. At home they watched tv.

It was silly, but I made sure to go slow and circle as much as possible while going slowly and pointing. The students did a wonderful job. They all did well on the quiz at the end.

But I realized that it was because I had to go slowly and point. Sure some girls got a little chatty during class and I had to give them a patient but stern look. They stopped and we continued. The class did a wonderful job and it was their story.

So today we'll do a reading in the present tense and we'll see how they do with the same structures but now in the present.

Día 101 - decorations

2011-02-07T09:08:00.000-08:00

So I always love decorating my classroom. It's funny. I'm really not a very good interior decorator. But the Spanish classroom can be a place where bright and tacky is acceptable because the idea is to bombard the students with language.

I have purchased some different decorations (moreso my first year). In general though, I try to make them these days because I don't really like the decorations that are mass produced. They don't really mean much to me. But I have the typical days of the week, months, colors, emotions and a few posters from teachersdiscovery.com

I also have some different things I have acquired through traveling or that people have given to me from different countries. I like those because they're more authentic.

My goal has always been to give them something purposeful to zone out on.

Interrogatives:
I made some of the question words with bright colors as posters a few years back without realizing how easily I can incorporate them into TPRS. It's kind of funny how that just worked out.

Numbers
I also have a number wall where I have in brightly colored paper the numbers from 0-1000 (skipping 10s and 100s). This way students can just use the number they want to and we can learn them that way. It's nice.

Prepositions:
After reading someone else's blog (I think), I also decided to have a list on the wall of common prepositions in Spanish with their English translation. It's on boring yellow paper but I tried to make it a little more colorful with different colors for the words. It has been incredibly useful for circling in stories and I can give a brain break to the students by walking over to the poster slowly and build a little more interest while I go point to a word on their.

Places:
Last year at school we had this nice colored laser printer. I printed out a bunch of different pictures of places for a unit in Spanish one to learn some different places (movie theater, pool, restaurant, etc). I laminated them and labeled them underneath this year and placed them all over the room to have a way to bring that vocabulary into the stories whenever possible.

'Can I' QuestionsThese are just for the kids to have in general to leave the classroom. I pretend like I don't understand them if they try to leave without asking in Spanish. Of course... Can I... go to the bathroom/nurse/office/locker... etc.

Papel Picado
In previous years, I had students make 'papel picado' for Day of the Dead. I loved hanging them up at the top of the classroom because it brightened the classroom so much to have them in there. But this year I kind of forgot about Day of the Dead while being so pumped about this new teaching method. It's always good to have student work posted. I need to make more little decoration projects for my kids... even a little praise wall where I post exemplary work from different students.

Personal Pronouns
So I was really excited last year about this poster that I made. It it's pretty straightforward. I decided to design the personal pronouns in Spanish (you know... like "I" "you" etc). But I illustrated it so that it could be a graphical representation for the visually stimulated. If you'd be interested in seeing it, I have the original copy and I think I have the divided up version so you can print the different parts of it and tape them together like I had to. Then I laminated it.

I probably shouldn't just leave a link because the images are provided by pixton.com.

The Thinker
I'm probably the most excited about my most recent addition to the classroom....

I noticed that it was hard to incorporate the phrase "creo que" a lot into class but I thought it was useful and fun. So I found a cartoony picture of the 'thinker' statue and colored it. I then made a thought bubble and wrote in big letters "Creo que..." (I think...). I laminated it and hung it up on my wall. Now I can hang up a different ending each week to what he's thinking about. It's a great opportunity to incorporate vocabulary and students are able to try and guess the meaning. So far he's thought his pants were in the microwave and this week he thinks the leprechauns stole his underwear. But I'm excited about the opportunities to change it each week for my kids to figure out on their own.

Lastly, I made a little poster for myself with a quote that is to remind me to be more positive... I got it out of the book How to Win Friends and Influence People

I shall pass this way but once, any good therefore, that I can do or any kindness that I can show to any human being, let me do it now. Let me not defer nor neglect it, for I shall not pass this way again.

Día 100 - Children's books

2011-01-27T11:37:00.000-08:00

Ever since I was first studying Spanish in college, I remember that my favorite section in Border's was the little kid's section of books because they had Spanish books for kids! It was there I bought the book: Un dinosaurio en peligro ("A dinosaur in danger") that I talked about a little bit in this entry. It's a great little book.

So I slowly started acquiring children's books in Spanish as I went throughout college and the farther I have gotten, the larger my collection has gotten. I currently have over 50 (easily) and a student gave me a small bookshelf that she didn't need anymore because I didn't have a place for my children's books!

Sufficed to say I get pretty excited about them. I actually modeled an activity with my classes one day because I really want to have a great time with them in Spanish, but I would like to help build their enjoyment of reading in Spanish through children's books for now and slowly we can move into chapter books.

One day last semester (before I was going to be absent), I had the kids pick out a book from the many that I had from a series. On amazon.com I found a series of books that I really like and they're somewhat cheap and they have differing levels from Lightning Readers. Some of the ones I really like are Manchita la vaquita torpe, La tortuga tonta, and El planeta de dinosaurios. But there are so many.

So I took all the different levels of those Lightning Readers that I had (20 or so) and I put them on a desk and had directions on the transparency for the students to get a book and on a piece of paper:
1) write their name
2) write the title of the book
3) write a short (2-3+ sentence) summary of the book
4) write down 5 words they recognized with the meaning and 5 new words they had to look up with the meaning.

The books range in level of difficulty. But I just thought it would be neat for them and the pictures would help them figure out the meaning as well. So that day we read a book and I gave them 20 minutes to complete the activity and then we did something else.

Then on sub days, I have this assigned to them and they have to complete 2 books and turn their paper in before they leave. It has worked well for the high school students. It's also good because they know what to expect and they have something they can accomplish without me in class.

Some teachers have them perform previous TPRS stories for the sub. I like this idea but haven't tried it yet. For now, I am ok with the readings since I have smaller class sizes and my students (although more comfortable than any years before) aren't as comfortable yet with the language.

If you are a foreign language teacher and have the resources, I recommend trying to buy even 1-2 children's books a month to slowly up your arsenal. They can be a great activity by themselves. Sometimes if not a lot of kids show up or my plan has flopped, I'll read them one of my favorite children's books from my collection and they gather in a circle and we can talk about the pictures and different things. We might shift the conversation onto the students and talk about them. But it's a lesson plan by itself.

Día 96 - music day

2011-01-21T11:39:00.000-08:00

So you've probably figured out by now due to my numerous entries on music that my students have been enjoying it this year. Part of it might be that it's a different activity from the norm and we aren't telling stories but I still require them to do something with the language and then we treat it as a reading a little bit when possible.

And yesterday was supposed to be Music Day (Thursday), but I had a student from Truman State University come in to practice TPRS. I had to explain to my students that we would shift music day to Friday and I almost had a mutiny. Another teacher told me today that yesterday she saw on students' facebook status' that they were excited for what song Señor Jordan had picked out for music day. So I guess it's been a little successful?

Something that I've noticed though is that I don't usually do much to introduce the song. We go into it, then maybe after the first time or second time I tell them where the artist is from so they don't think they're from Mexico (for speaking Spanish). But I don't do much with the song ahead of time.

So today I decided that the song would be Celos by Fanny Lú and I wanted to practice the idea of 'tiene celos' (He/she has jealousy ("is jealous"). I thought it would be a good way to prep the song and if we had extra time after the song we could continue a storyline or talk about the video and the story that we can infer from it. So I wrote that one the board and asked "¿Quién tiene celos?" (Who has jealousy?). I was met with confusion because I had promised a song and they knew THIS wasn't a song... oops. I told them "un momento" and continued. We got to develop little silly stories and associations so by that time I got to passing out the song, they understood as soon as they saw the title. I think this enriched the song more than before because now they had a context for the phrase and they also had personalized it into their class so we could talk about the crazy jealous woman and also talk about people in the class.

I think future implementation of this kind of TPRS introduction to a song will only further reinforce music day to make it better.

Día 96 - failing miserably; lesson learned

2011-01-21T09:58:00.000-08:00

So I had a former college classmate working on their internship this semester and they wanted to come in last week to observe TPRS and maybe try it out sometime. Last week they came in and I completely messed it up. I think he only commented that it was neat because he was trying to be nice. I didn't have the normal energy. My students didn't either. I couldn't even get some of the structures to be used in the stories because I allowed too much free reign on them and didn't target them as much as I should have.

It was a complete mess. The main problem was I hadn't been able to read my structures from Blaine's book ahead of time and look at his storyline for ideas. I often like to think about them at least the night before and more or less have a possible idea of where the story could go. The key word is could though because in TPRS you never quite know where a story could take you. As long as you're practicing the structures there is a lot of flexibility.

He came back this past Wednesday. I made sure to read the story beforehand and one of the main structures was "he/she looked for"... So I decided to do a little PQA to segway into the story.

Often times on my stories, I used to ask the students "¿Qué había?" (What was there?). But this time... I wrote the structure on the board with the translation underneath.... "buscaba" (he/she looked/was looking for). I then asked them who was looking for a duck in Spanish. If they forgot the word for duck, I wrote it in Spanish and English on the board again. Then they might have said "no one" to which I taught them the word "nadie" and wrote it on the board with translation underneath. If no one was looking for a duck, I started practicing "buscaba" with "Who looked for a duck?" "Did ___ look for a duck?" "Oh.. did you look for a duck?" "What did you look for?"

The idea was to get repetitions of the phrase in there while trying to start a story. In the first class, they rebelled against the duck but we established more personal things for them to look for. In the second class, they went with the duck storyline adding in their own details. In the third class, they looked for the duck and it was incredibly off of the wall and the duck was looking for the fox that had kidnapped his family. It was a tad more gruesome, but we were using 'buscaba'.

Sufficed to say, the class on Wednesday was a much better demonstration and it excited me that I discovered this new way of introducing a story of using a key structure and making my own sort of Personalized Questions with the students at the beginning to personalize it a little more. It might turn into a story or it might just be funny and in the target language. Either way, you're talking in the language. The fact that we were speaking in Spanish for almost the entire class is impressive and the student teacher was blown away and excited to try.

Día 88 - no plan!

2011-01-07T09:14:00.000-08:00

So today I just couldn't figure out what I was going to do with my classes. Last semester Friday was kind of a toss-up day and sometimes we would have games or other activities. But I didn't have anything planned for today.

I thought about starting a new story and then we'll do our weekend activity Monday, the written version of our story on Tuesday, a spoken story on Tuesday, etc. But for whatever reason, as I familiarized myself with the structures moments before class, I could not get them ingrained into my head.

So I winged it. I asked the class what there was. In one class we talked about how one of the students was sick in her whole body while another student was only sick in his head. She wanted to see a specialist in Minnesota while he wanted to go to the insane asylum in an island of one of the students. Her specialist in Minnesota cost $500 and a small cow. She had 900 small cows but not $500. Oh, and she was in a steak house when the story started. The boy who was crazy thought he was a beautiful bipolar girl. That was a fun idea in-and-of itself. I need to use that in other stories. Just the structure: 'pensaba que' (he thought that) would get some good practice right there and you can just throw it in casually without focusing on it. So some of the students will acquire it.

I was amazed that a student remembered "se suicidaron" (they committed suicide) from a previous story about all the deer in an island of one of the students when I only had said it a few times. They're so clever.

In another class, which is my harder class to sell the stories on, the class did a wonderful job. Their storyline consisted of a bear that was really big and he was in a locker of a student that was too small. He was hungry too. That's how it started. I asked about another student who had a small gray cat in her big locker to compare and contrast. One day, the student went to his small locker and opened it. The bear said: "ROAR!" The boy jumped and ran to Canada like Roadrunner. But in Canada he fell. The big bear ran like a bear after the boy yelling like a bear. The bear found the boy and ate him.

In another class (which is high energy), we came up with a story about a fish who had a beard like ZZtop, lots of muscles like a student teacher. He was as big as Donkey Kong. He was violent because he didn't have a father. He lived in the Bermuda Triangle. (We also had a lot of tangents about my cat and his romantic life in Spanish).

Somehow, my students basically planned the class for me. It was a really fun day for them and it just involved me asking them: "¿Qué había?" and negotiating the meaning from there. I might offer an idea or two in the language. But they were doing a wonderful job of helping me. I should have no-plan days more often. The best part is that my students don't know the difference from any other day when I do this. But we're practicing the target language and throwing in some extra vocabulary while reviewing structures that are basic to the stories.

Día 86 - surveys

2011-01-05T11:47:00.000-08:00

My mom taught me about a nice assessment tool for the students to use on the class. It's very simple. I try to do it with each class at least once a semester now.

It is START / STOP / CONTINUE. I have the students write on a piece of paper these three words and then they have to give feedback for each. I always encourage them to write as much as they would like because it helps me understand what they are thinking about class.

Under START, they write the things that we do not do in class that they would like for us to start doing.

Under STOP, they write the things that we do in class that they want us to stop doing.

Under CONTINUE, they write the things in class that they would like to continue doing.

I was surprised to find that some of the students do not like the storytelling method of teaching. I think this relates to the idea that some people will always be bored no matter what you do with them in class. I try to make the class as fun and dynamic and silly as I can. But of course, I need the help of the students. Sometimes students do not offer suggestions to a story and it of course doesn't hold their interest because they have decided not to participate in the group. Unlike other classes, when we participate, we are usually having a wonderful time, and laughing and really enjoying ourselves. The students who are not participating are in essence like wallflowers at a social function. It's a tad confusing because I really thought that everyone would enjoy this, but there will still be students who get bored. Even though I try to bring them in, they might still choose to tune me out.

There are times I think maybe they are not understanding. But on the quizzes they will do fine. So I guess they would rather be bored in class. I'll still work on reaching them so they won't dislike this teaching method.

Many students wrote that they would like for us to do song-day more often. Currently I have it scheduled for Thursdays. Maybe I should consider that I could reward them with an extra song day one week if they are really on fire for the class.

Otherwise, most of the comments were that I should continue to do my different warm-ups (see them here).

Día 86 - Warm ups

2011-01-05T11:28:00.000-08:00

I would be really interested to hear how teachers in Spanish classes do warm up activities, especially with the lower levels. I tried to do some with cultural points in English from a trivia book with a Junior High class last semester but we started the class out with way too much English for my taste.

My Junior High kids really need some sort of structure too. So I don't mind experimenting with them. What I started doing by the end of the semester with the 7th graders was to have 4-5 mini statements and have them fill in the blanks with the correct word. It would be reviewing words we've gone over.

What I should maybe do is change the activity from that. Right now I have them matching the words together. Maybe I should do 'unscramble', groupings or have them make up logical sentences with certain words. Maybe they could remove a word from a sentence that doesn't quite fit. I guess I have more possibilities than I realized.

Since we use a lot of spoken language, I thought this would be a way to help them see the words and interact with them a little bit (which seems to be the purpose of the dictation activities that I haven't tried yet).

I just know that I am lacking on these kind of things for my lower level classes to get them going when the bell rings.

For the 8th graders I am going to check their notebooks once a week and look at the these warm-ups to give them points. We'll see how it goes.

Día 86 - Parallel stories

2011-01-05T11:15:00.000-08:00

I was reading about trying to make students more aware of tenses and I had never really tried this as much before. They did get really comfortable with infinitives (comer, hablar, nadar, etc) in the first few years of Spanish and also the present tense. So when we got to the past tense, they had a hard time recognizing the words because they were in different forms.

Today though, I was going over a reading out of "Mini-stories for Look I Can Talk!" involving a boy wanting to impress a girl with a duck.

Through the class I was in the past (imperfect), past (preterit), present, commands and conditional (would __). The conditional was a little new to the class. But in the reading a boy wants to impress a girl. He tells her "I have a big house and 20 cars." The people in class knew this was absurd so we joked around a little in Spanish about it. I asked a student about his girlfriend (personalizing the conversation). Then I asked him if he said this to his girlfriend, if she would be impressed. (Conditional & past subjunctive). He understood the meaning and said, "No." Simple answer. I didn't need him to repeat "She would not be impressed" (In Spanish). I just wanted the meaning to get across. Then I asked if she would kiss him. He said "no". Would she hit him? Probably. So somehow she would hit him in the ___. I asked if she would hit him in the ____ with her hands or her feet. He said feet. I then jokingly said... maybe she would hit you in the ___ with [student's] leg and gestured as if I was tearing it off. To my surprise, the students lost control and thought this was a wonderful detail. It's funny how by adding words like "with" "of" "from" "under" "on/in" to a story, you can make them so much fun.

One of the times I said "estaría" (would be) a student looked at me and asked what it meant. I told her "would be" and she said "Oh. That makes sense" and we moved on. It's great how simple this method treats the grammar. I didn't pull out a conjugation chart and show her or anything fancy.

This silly story was very useful to me because I was not in the best mood. In the morning, I had a class that didn't have much energy and I pretty much would have been fine with going home if they would have let me.But, I am really grateful for this high energy class. They did their job very well. I think part of it was I leveled with them at the beginning of class that I wasn't feeling pumped up and I needed their help. And they did a wonderful job!

Día 84 - Questionnaires

2011-01-03T12:13:00.000-08:00

So Ben Slavic discusses using a Questionnaire at the beginning of the year for your students in one of the books I am reading. In this way you can really cater the class to their interests.

I tried to start off the year with a class plan like he suggests. I had the 7th grade students draw a picture of something that they liked to do and then we talked about everyone. Throughout the week we practiced those different things and came up with some silly stories even from those phew drawings that they did.

Sadly, that's about as far as that went and then we started using materials without the personalization. I would guess that Ben Slavic's success results from a constant personalization in which he is always adding information relevant to the students' in his stories. The first week or two I had very few behavioral problems and we were learning all sorts of language. It established a really good tone for the class that I didn't follow up on unfortunately. Hopefully I can improve from my mistakes.

So now that I have the 8th graders for this semester, I plan on giving them a questionnaire today and then doing the introductory activity like last time. Then we'll have material to talk about for the whole week and I will be able to have information to talk about them.

One teacher used the questionnaires to figure out what problem to create in a story. It was genius. It can be found here.

He talks about how because a student wrote that she likes to talk, he can now create a story where she has lost her voice and really needs to talk.

Since the fundamentals of a story in TPRS are a problem and different locations while practicing the established structures, I can easily see how this story could go different places.

So my goal this semester is to make sure to personalize the class a lot more for the 8th graders and to help them realize that they really are the class and the language is what we happen to learn as a byproduct.

Día 80 - music as an authentic text

2010-12-14T16:44:00.000-08:00

This is in reference to something I started doing this year on Thursdays with a song of the day. I wrote a post about song day here.

Last week, my students and I were telling a story via TPRS about a rich boy who had 1.5 enormous houses and 20 cars who got excited about seeing a girl with moose antlers.

During the story, the boy had to go to get romance lessons from James Bond and then he came back to the girl much more suave but without any money. Somehow it clicked that he should tell the girl: "No tengo dinero ni nada que dar, lo único que tengo es amor para amar. Si así tú me quieres, te puedo querer, pero si no me quieres, ni modo que hacer" (I don't have any money or anything to give. All I have is love to love you with. If you can love me as I am, I can love you. If you can't, no big deal.)

The neat thing is that was a chorus from a song we had done in class and we were able to simply incorporate it one day and the students could follow it and it helped establish another connection with the song.

Music has become such an amazing authentic text for my students. We have started learning high frequency words such as love, heart, soul, etc just through going over songs. It's great for certain vocabulary. Not to mention it helps kids relate to class (as well as the language).

With the aforementioned post in mind, I actually had a student walk in just a second ago. She told me that she has fallen in love with Spanish music. Another student had some music playing in Spanish and had her listen to it and she asked what it was. He told her they had listened to it in Spanish class and then he went on to let her listen to other songs by the same artist. These other songs we haven't listened to in class but he's found a love for a band through the one song we listened to in class.

Do you see what is going on? I'm not even exposing them as much anymore. Now they've learned about a few bands in Spanish and they are exploring them on their own! This astounds me. I just started doing it as a warm-up and it became a half class period or more when we do it. Some of the kids who usually are disengaged in TPRS (which is hard.., because TPRS is incredibly interesting), are all over the song on song day. They memorize them and request we listen to the songs again days where we have extra time. It's great.

I'm so glad I've stumbled upon this.

What's neat is in college we learned about providing authentic texts to the students. I was never quite sure how to do that. Sometimes it's hard to adapt an authentic text to a class' needs. The teacher made sure to remind us not to change the text, but rather to change the task associated with the text.

So the task is to fill in some words (with a word bank) for listening comprehension. Then after they listen a few times and watch the video we go over the blanks as well as the meaning. Some students write down the whole translation, others probably throw their music sheets away.

But many of them have been telling me that they've been listening to music outside of class and it's such a neat connection to have with them. We are able to talk about certain cultural themes as well since the songs are poetry.

Día 73 - structures

2010-12-03T08:06:00.000-08:00

I sometimes forget how impressive things can be with TPRS for the typical students. Let me first share my experiences with learning Spanish as well as teaching Spanish.

In my experience, the Spanish classroom is a place where a few people try to talk and the rest of the people don't really care no matter how hard the teacher tries. The students can learn vocabulary very easily. When it comes to anything else though, they don't get much farther in production than saying things like cavemen. Many do not even try and a majority of the class looks incredibly bored.

In my first 4 years I tried this traditional teaching method. I worked for hours and hours designing lessons and often times would lose sleep trying. My students wouldn't even use the language very much. They were too nervous because they learned the language through vocabulary and conjugating. I gave them all the rules and then let them try to sort out the mess. It wasn't very effective.

Then I found TPRS and discovered that I do not have to kill myself with planning.

So we've been focusing on the structures of the language this year as TPRS suggests. Through circling the information and focusing on the structures and the meaning without worrying about grammar, the students are actually much more comfortable with the language because you start teaching them how it is used from the very beginning.

The other day my students were doing a reading and they were having a hard time with remembering the structure lleva (he/she takes).

This resulted in a beautiful thing the other day. My students had a reading activity and I asked about if a character in the reading takes a boy to her favorite street or to her favorite bathroom. Then I asked who had a favorite bathroom. A student told me that their favorite bathroom belonged to someone in class. From that point on, in Spanish it turned into a discussion on if they would take me to this special bathroom. She also talked about how she played baseball alone in the bathroom and she fished in the toilet. It was incredibly entertaining. I practiced lleva or llevas (you take) multiple times as I asked if she would take different students in the class to the bathroom. Basically she decided to take the whole world to the bathroom except for me! Even my fat cat was invited. The best part... we practiced lleva so many times, it was used naturally by the end of the class.

Not only that, we spoke in Spanish about a bathroom for about half of the class. It turned out that a student in the class taught how to speak 'butterfly' in the bathroom. Another was a dance instructor. This all came out so naturally in the language and was incredibly entertaining.

It helps me to believe in the TPRS method because the students are so ready to converse in the language with you unlike the traditional method.

Día 61 - Weekend Activity

2010-11-15T09:21:00.000-08:00

If you've noticed, I've stopped doing a daily blog because I was almost blogging at times for blogging's sake and decided instead that I should only write an entry when I had something to talk about.

Today I feel like I have one of the best jobs in the world. This is what TPRS teaching feels like when it goes well. You forget for a brief period that you're a teacher because they kids are enjoying the language and they're trying. It's true that most students do try to say things in the language when they have felt comfortable with it. But for almost all students, this comes with lots of repetitions. We must not forget to give them the repetitions needed in order to help them understand the structures of the language. And some of my students are amazing me at the language they produce when before they never really did.

But TPRS gives them a chance to shine like never before. And they can be funny in the language which helps a lot of them because you're telling stories and those can easily be made funny.

We did another Weekend Activity today. It's really just a warm-up for the week and we can get in some preterite practice. That is, one of the past tenses in Spanish,

So today I came up with the following true-ish statements about my weekend. (Sometimes things I think will produce great language flop). But today I was on.
-------------------------------------------------------
Durante el fin de semana: (During the weekend)

Maté una mosca (I killed a fly)
Mi gato me pegó. (My cat hit me)
Cociné (I cooked)

-------------------------------------------------------
The language from the first sentence alone made for an interesting story and numerous parallel stories. I had students killing elephants with their tongues and killing deer with tree trunks in the zoo. It was great practice and we also threw in some colors, days of the week, places and other random objects to kill something with. It was great. In one class, a student was supposedly pregnant with 21 babies from a previous storyline and one of the students ended up pushing him down a staircase with a friend and killing the babies (IN SPANISH). Sure, it's a tad violent. But not all of the stories are violent. And to cure the manic Monday feeling, you gotta do what ya gotta do.

Today has been sensational so far. I think it helped that I was able to pick something that students wanted to talk about. Although with all the details you can add in a story (with whom, with what, where, when, how) any story can become somewhat engaging if you can get your kids to add the right details!

Día 58 - ESL class

2010-11-10T08:58:00.000-08:00

So last night I started a weekly ESL (English as a Second Language) class with some Spanish speakers that I know. I was curious how it would go since the levels all varied. The levels varied from advanced to beginner. I had six students and hope more come next week as well because the class is so much fun with more people and more ideas.

I tried out the Blaine Ray Materials: Look I can Talk. It cost about $50 I think for the teacher's book and the student book. It turns out that they structures are basically like the Spanish ones only translated. So I could have saved 50 dollars. But that's ok. It's an investment in the lives of these people, many of them that have become special in my life in the last few years.

The class is once a week for two hours due to busy schedules. In the first hour we have a one hour oral portion where we tell a story in the past tense. Then we take a break and have a one hour reading session in the present tense.

Part 1:
Because you focus on structures in TPRS, we started with the following three structures:
There was a boy.
He wanted to have

He liked and went ___.

After lots of circling and adding details, it became...

There was a boy. The boy's name was Carlos. Carlos wanted to have two small cats. Carlos lived in Washington. There were no small cats in Washington. Carlos went to Missouri. There were small cats and big cats in Missouri. Carlos was happy.

(parallel story)
Alicia was in Missouri. Alicia wanted to have 10 expensive dresses.

Part 2:
In the second hour, we had the reading in the present tense which was very similar to the spoken story. The students did a great job of adapting from one tense to the other. Even the beginners were doing a pretty good job of following. When we finished everyone seemed to be very confident that the lesson was interesting and a success.

Reflection:

Since I teach Jr High and High School every day, the dynamic really surprised me. The people wanted to learn English. They realized the need and I was helping them. Unlike my students just wanting to have fun, the adults diligently took notes on the ways I asked questions and were very attentive. They asked lots of questions and were very engaged.
I was a little nervous because I do not have to think much about my native language but I thankfully remembered before teaching that 'Did' makes a question in the past tense. So I wrote 'Did' on the board and explained that we use it in English to make a question. Later I clarified that 'Does' is for the present tense to make a question
The levels were mixed but the beginners were able to hear the language from others in the class and I made sure to go very slowly and to point. I felt confident about my pointing and circling enough. I might have circled too much, but some of the beginners needed that input
I'm excited for the class to continue. I get nervous before teaching a new lesson but they're so fun once you get started and it doesn't feel like teaching when TPRS is done right. It just feels like you're hanging out with the group

Día 57 - MY students

2010-11-09T11:23:00.000-08:00

A student from the local university needs to do a practicum in which they plan out and teach a few days for a few classes. It's nothing major. But it is something that could be incredibly great for your students or it could be something horrible for them.

She hasn't really learned much about TPRS prior to coming and observing last week. But she has been excited about the idea and was able to see a little bit of the language gains one can accomplish through TPRS. The day she observed, we only went over a written story and then made up some different parallel storylines. She came yesterday to do two lessons with two of my classes. The first class went ok. After watching, I'm really glad that I had a little bit of an idea already how to tell a story through TPRS thanks to the workshop this summer. Granted, I still have so many questions and things I need to improve on. The main idea is to circle structures with questions and to go somewhat chronologically.

I noticed I hadn't explained it very well because the first class went in all sorts of different directions and the students (as well as the student teacher) were having a really hard time trying. The good thing is that I was able to model it a little more for her during the 2nd period class and she improved quite a bit between the first hour and the third hour classes.

Today she came back and did even better. The kids were enjoying the language and she was having a good time with them. Overall, I think she did a great considering she'd never learned with this method or really seen it modeled well. Tomorrow she'll come back for a reading with the kids.

But while I've been observing, I have found myself feeling kind of territorial with my Spanish students. They're MY students. I want to teach them. If something isn't taught how I would have taught it, I feel myself get uncomfortable about the concept. It's strange. It feels weird to give up my class to some stranger.

Lastweek I had a student transfer schools and in their new school they told me the teacher is just doing conjugation (the traditional way of teaching) and she's probably going to drop the class! That makes me sad because she did a great job in the class with the language with TPRS.

Long story short, I guess I care about my kids more than I thought I did.

Día 55 - Games

2010-11-05T11:57:00.000-07:00

When I first started, I would do games all the time! I mean, seriously. We played games two times a week. Sometimes if we could get through a book lesson quickly enough we would play games more often. The most popular was always Matamoscas. Then I learned about other games and have slowly been adding them in here and there.

The following is a list of games I compiled for someone on moretprs.net in a way to catalog some of the games that I've done in the past. I would love to attribute them to people who came up with them. But I don't really remember where I got some of them from.

Here are a couple I have used over the years:

A. Caramba
Here's a brief explanation... if you have technology it makes it a little easier and you don't waste paper but I did it back before I had a projector. (download ppt)

You make cards (slides) of different vocab.
Then you insert some cards that say "Caramba" on them and scramble it all up. ( I usually do 10 Caramba cards/slides)
you have students in teams
have teams elect a representative (this is the person you will listen to)
you show the vocab word (or show English word) or even something from a TPRS story and have them translate or finish or true or false... anything
if they get it right, they get a point and they may continue or stop
if they stop, they keep all the points they have accumulated for that round and never lose them for the duration of the game
if they continue they keep going until they: 1) stop, 2) miss one 3) get a 'Caramba'
if they get one wrong or a 'Caramba'; their turn is over and they lose any points from that round
my kids have a love/hate relationship with this game.

B. Conecta 4

I made a powerpoint and it's a tad tricky but it plays like the game 'Connect 4" with two teams
instructions are included in powerpoint (slide 1)
(download template ppt)

C. ¿Dónde está Wally?

in previous years I used this to practice place vocab
if you have tech, I have a PowerPoint template (download ppt)
if you don't have any tech, you can print out pictures of places and glue them onto a piece of heavier paper with a small pocket at the bottom and then insert some different waldos into the pockets randomly. Have those pictures taped on the board and have the students guess.
they write down their answers and if they are right, they get a point
to build suspense I go person to person and ask "¿Dónde está Wally?" and they have to tell me a guess... then as a class we see if they were right or not

D. Jeopardy

I have a powerpoint template (download ppt)
if you don't have tech in your classroom, you can always write number values on the board with the categories and have a notecard with the questions and answers. I've done both and either one is successful with the students.

E. Sentence scramble

I've come up with sentences and the cut them all up and had the students try to put them back together beforehand timed
the group that gets the most wins

F. Crossword puzzle w/ clues

I projected a crossword on the board w/ an overhead and then had each team with a different marker color. They were given clues for the words (in Spanish) on a piece of paper and then they had to figure out what the word was. One person could come up to the board from each team at a time to write a word in there.
the winning team had the most words filled in correctly
you can make free crossword puzzles at http://www.armoredpenguin.com and then project the pdf file saved to your computer without the clues on the board

G. Scrabble

I made my own little scrabble sets on cut up card stock paper/notecards
I made sure there were plenty of letters as well
students drew like 15 letters at the beginning and always got 2-3 blanks at the beginning as well.
first student would place a word down
students would build off of that word (like in Scrabble)
they would keep building off the of the words
the winners had: 1) most words or 2) longest word

H. ¿Dónde está mi _?

last year I had a student walk out of the class and stay in the hall... when they came back the other students had hidden one of their items... students then had to describe the person who took it.
this could be adapted to describe body characteristics, clothing, locations like 'near' 'far' 'above' 'below' etc

I. steal the bacon

if you're covering vocabulary... I liked printing out pictures last year when first introducing vocab.
After introducing it on the first day or second day, we had the students compete to grab the vocabulary word on a piece of paper before the other... this is an incredibly fun thing for them even at the high school age.... I just had them keep score...
seriously, even though it's simple... students LOVE the competition

J. Memoria

cards of things with pictures and spanish words or translation and spanish words
students play memory with the cards
take turns flipping them over; looking for matches
if they get matches they may continue looking

K. pesca ("go fish")

play 'go fish' with cards... I usually had the object and the picture or just the picture of the object
rules of 'go fish' apply
"tienes _? (do you have)
Sí... o pesca

L. Matamoscas (Flyswatter game)
this is my favorite game of all time

write vocabulary words on transparency
divide group into two teams
each team gets a flyswatter
one person from each team goes up to the board and stands on opposite sides of the board
instructor calls out a a word (opposite of the language on the board) and students race to hit it with the flyswatter
student who hits the word first gets a point for their team
students get two misses... if they miss twice, the instructor counts backwards from 15... if they do not get the word, no point awarded
if students do not know the words, their teammates can call out directions in Spanish (which are written on the board)
really good directions can get another team points as well
usually students stay up for two different rounds

Día 54 - Class-Create-a-story

2010-11-04T08:57:00.000-07:00

Today we had our song day which has become a strange phenomenon in many of my students. I really should have incorporated more music in previous years.

In one class after the song, somehow we got through the song portion rather quickly and then we had a good 15 minutes left of class. Now if we would have had 5 minutes or so left I wouldn't mind as much letting the students sit there because there's not a lot one can do in 5 minutes. But I thought that we could try an activity I thought up the other day.

The idea was to give the students the structures (if they needed the linguistic support) and then to go around the class and each person comes up with a line for a story.

Now, it went something like this (for the first try).
Había una chica.
   There was a girl.
La chica se llamaba Nancy.
   The girl called herself Nancy.
Nancy fue a México.
    Nancy went to Mexico.
Nancy vivía en Florida.
    Nancy lived in Florida.
Nancy fue hacia una cantina.
    Nancy went toward a bar.
porque no le gustaba Florida.
   because she didn't like Florida.
Quería tener 15 gatos.
   Nancy wanted to have 15 cats.
Vio un pingüino.
    Nancy saw a penguin.
Quería vivir en México.
    Nancy wanted to live in Mexico.

Granted I hadn't established boundaries for the story. Either way it was fun for the students to show off to their peers and talk about someone else. And the amazing thing is the language just comes out. They're not as self conscious like in previous years with production. It's awesome.

In the future, I might establish the problem first or have kind of a problem and let the first student establish the problem and then we can tell the story to try and resolve the problem. But for a first try, it filled the time nicely and we were able to further practice the language.

Día 51 - spontaneous production

2010-11-02T13:43:00.000-07:00

Last week I had a bit of a bad week. There are times that this teaching thing just seems as though we are constantly giving all that we can of ourselves to the students and it can appear so thankless.

This week I've been trying to come to work with a better attitude. I've been posting things in my classroom to remind me of this and whatever I can do to stay positive. My students need that positivity. When I start out positive, class tends to go better.

Yesterday, we did another weekend activity. Strangely, for a Monday it was incredibly fun to talk to the kids about their weekend. They really were doing a great job of playing the game and we had a lot of fun together.

My phrases were:

Fui a Des Moines.
I went to Des Moines.
Comí plátanos fritos de Cuba.
I ate Cuban fried bananas.
Besé a mi esposa.
I kissed my wife.

Strangely enough, in my 8th hour class, one of the many bright students that I have told us that another student who said he had gone to Asia told us that "corre del gobierno" (He runs from the government). I changed this to "Corrió del gobierno" (He ran from the government.)

Upon us asking how he ran from the government to Asia, the same student said (using my preposition poster), "fue dentro de una chica" (He went inside of a girl). To this I simply laughed and laughed while the rest of the class looked at me and wanted to know what incredibly hilariously unexpected thing that their classmate had said. It was magical. The boy turned out to ride in the mouth of the girl alone to Asia in order to run from the government.

In another class, we were talking about one of the characters that the class had created in their story, Dougie the pig. It turned out that Dougie went to a pig-processing plant this weekend and he is no more. While talking about Dougie the fictional pig who is now dead, a student said "Brett Farv jugar fútbol con Dougie" (Brett Farv to play soccer with Dougie). I helped him after congratulating him on his intelligence that Brett Farv played american football with Dougie (Dougie's skin that is). It turned into a storyline after that. It doesn't matter to me on Mondays because we're talking about the weekend and the spontaneous language is the best kind. Later the same boy told us that he was in the same discoteque that a student and Brett Farv were playing football in with Dougie the deceased pig's skin. It turned out he was dancing on top of a desk like Michael Jackson. He got the phrase "on top of" from the preposition list next to his chair.

These past few days, students have been taking more risks with the language and it is really neat! In fact, while we had a student from a local university observing TPRS, one of my students created a little story spontaneously without me even needing to ask any questions. He told us that he had a small island near Antarctica. The island has pirates and piñatas. Pepe the class piñata is the president. It was ALL Spanish. I was floored.

In previous years, it was so hard to get kids to produce the language. But now they are with TPRS. Today I told my kids to show off a little bit for the observer and they did. We used so much Spanish it was amazing. I'm not as worried now for when my principal comes to observe me. My kids do awesome under pressure.

Día 47 - Bad mood

2010-10-26T11:13:00.001-07:00

Do you ever wake up and just know it's going to be a long day? Well yesterday I didn't feel well and thought to myself that if I went to school, it would be one of those days. So I stayed home and rested and tried to do things that would re-focus my attitude to one that is more positive.

For whatever reason, I just find myself dreading teaching these days. The storytelling is so neat and yet it terrifies me because I worry that the stories will flop and I won't know what to do.

Some people say that the worst TPRS is still better than the average classroom. But sometimes it is so painfully quiet when I ask for responses from the students and even when some respond, no one reacts to the responses.

Today, the first three classes did not pump me up. I was not in the best mood to begin with. And for whatever reason, I just completely sucked up the story this morning with them. Some students didn't get the storyline as well as I thought they would. I must not have been circling enough. So what I need to practice doing is to get out the circling sheet from the workshop and look over it again to remember how to circle and tell the stories better.

I also must not focus on the negative behaviors. My students might not be paying attention. But in How to Win Friends and Influence People, Dale Carnegie talks about how everyone has the desire to be praised. If we can praise people, we can create the atmosphere needed in the classroom where students will want to receive the praise and be reminded that they are great. Of course, it must come off as genuine. I can see it though when I mention that someone is 'muy inteligente' when they give an idea. You can see them smirk. Even the students who might be considered "troubled" or "bad behaviors" smile when they are recognized as being smart! And this only further reinforces their wanting to answer questions in class.

I was reading on moretprs.net today in my free hour and Susan Gross (who I have not had the pleasure of meeting), a TPRS forerunner tells this to a fellow teacher:

Sometimes the kids are picking up something from you. Try very hard to go into the class with strong positive vibes. My guess is that they sense you are disappointed in some way. It is very insidious, this teacher attitude thing. Do some mind-cleansing breaths and then LOOK FOR things to praise. Look for the kid who is paying attention and praise him. Have him translate something that you KNOW he will get right and then tell the kid that he is watching you so carefully that he must be getting everything. Thank him for his attention.

Today that first part was me. When the kids walked into the room, they must have seen my lack of 100% and that didn't help the class to go any better. I didn't praise students but instead probably got more upset (without saying anything). When I start class frustrated, everything goes downhill fast. But if I can simply praise the students, it will refocus the entire class as well as myself to pay attention to the good behaviors in class and remind us what I would like out of the class.

Día 45 - Freewriting

2010-10-22T11:15:00.000-07:00

I find myself unable to start much new on Friday and then expect the students to continue with whatever thing next week without confusion or resistance. So today I decided to do a freewrite.

The idea of a freewrite is to encourage the students to write as much as they can in the language. You set the timer to 10 minutes or however many and let them write. At the end of the freewrite, you have them count up the words (could include places and names since they're proper nouns) and then have them write the number of the words and circle it at the bottom. Then as a teacher you can go through, leaving comments, or highlighting the parts you understand of their papers.

The purpose is to encourage their writing in the target language, which of course you're building up over time. It also helps to see which students can internalize the language to use.

Of course, today I might have flopped a little bit. I told the students that the goal was 100 words and gave them 12 minutes to accomplish this feat. In the future I might give a little more especially if it is a Friday activity and it's creative writing. Maybe I should try 20 minutes to make sure they have more time. It's also a reflection of my teaching and if I have done enough circling so that they can more or less understand the language to try to produce a little.

Today I left the structures we've been going over on the board and let the students run rampant. In the future I can probably not even wore about some of the more common structures we've worked with unless the students ask me to write it on the board.

I've read a few of them and the Spanish 1 students of course had the hardest time. Their processing of the language is a little slower (naturally) than my other students who are more used to me speaking Spanish from previous years (even though it wasn't through storytelling). But my hope is to use the Spanish 1 students as my basis for next year to have an idea of expectations.

But I also made sure to explain that we're working towards the goal of being able to write 100 words or more by the end of the year in Spanish.

Día 43 - Current Class Schedule

2010-10-20T09:21:00.000-07:00

There will be off days. Today I could tell that a lot of my students were tired. Or at least they were showing it. They probably didn't like the idea that I had an extended reading for us to do today. But hey, they need to get over it! That's part of the system that I am trying to follow this year while I learn and hone my TPRS skills.

I like worksheets about as much as the next guy. The stories are obviously supposed to be springboards for conversations. But sometimes as a TPRS teacher, our ideas bomb a lot because we just can't tell what will be funny on a certain day. It all depends on the classroom energy.

Today in the classes, student had a really strange energy. They had a desire to be goofy but it wasn't working well with the reading. I didn't scrap the reading because I thought it was necessary to go through with it. But I noticed through reading Ben Slavic's materials that he usually has a story one day, a reading the next. Then on Friday there is another sort of activity. I like the way that sounds.

But if I want to substantially change the format I'll just wait until after Christmas. For what I have right now, I think it's working well enough. The students are getting used to the format. Currently the format is something like this with the weeks alternating:

week 1:
M- weekend activity
T- new story
W- finish story
Th- song + finish story or story retells
F- story re-tell and writing story or game

week 2
M- weekend activity
T- reading
W- extended reading
Th- song + finish extended reading

F- reading, game, children's book, freewrite, etc

But I do like the idea of reading the day after the story. I also like the idea of sticking to a story for one day and not trying to resurrect it. The reason we tend to stay on a story for two days sometimes two and a half days is because of scheduling problems with early out days or because I might do a lot of circling and we throw in some silly details that help the kids feel more like it's there story

Food for thought.

Día 42 - I don't know enough Spanish

2010-10-19T11:11:00.000-07:00

I've been trained to speak Spanish according to the rules of grammar and there are many things I can probably not talk about at great length from lack of conversational practice in those areas or lack of interest. The daunting task when one teaches with TPRS is that a teacher might never quite know where the story could go if they are asking questions and relying on the answers from the students. Sure they can guide the students in their information.

But today I have come across some words I had to make sure of in the dictionary during class. I don't think that it's necessarily a bad thing. I am hardly a dictionary in class. There are many words I have never had to use in Spanish such as 'cheetah'. Yesterday as I looked it up during a storytelling session, the students were amazed that I had never learned the word in Spanish. But hey, I can talk for hours upon hours about literature analysis thanks to my college classes. I mean, that's the important stuff right?

Doesn't do my students much good. The idea I am working on is to model to students that it's ok for me as the teacher to not know every word in the Spanish language. I also like storytelling because they reveal to me the things I am not sure how to say and thus I have to learn them. Through teaching, I have probably learned quite a bit more about Spanish than in my graduate classes about the language because I was exposed to the questions I hadn't thought of about it by my students. Since I am no longer coming from a fresh vantage point, I appreciate my students pointing things out to me that I had not ever seen.

So in short, whether it be best practice for foreign language teachers or not, I don't mind admitting that I don't know all the words. ;-)

Heck in my previous post or two, I learned that 'snuck' is not standard English. The standard word is 'sneaked.'

Día 41 - time flying by

2010-10-18T09:28:00.000-07:00

Today is officially the start of a new quarter for my students. It's crazy to think that one quarter has already gone by. But since we only have around 180 days in a school year, it makes sense that after 40 days, we're starting another quarter.

It's still strange. I don't feel like we have come even close to accomplishing that much yet this year. With me learning how to use TPRS and honing my skills, I feel like I am failing my students with not giving them enough of the language.

On the plus side, I do teach in a rural school district where they don't have very high standards for Spanish teachers. My predecessors (as I have been told) ranged from:
1. a woman who didn't know any English that would sleep DURING class while her kids sneaked1 out the window to smoke... to
2. a woman who had taken a few classes in college that didn't have the training but the school made her teach Spanish

So this is a great place to hone my skills since it's fairly low on pressuring me to make sure my kids can perform well in the Spanish language. Naturally I want them to because of my own pressures as a perfectionist and an educator. But I have to be realistic. Either way, they're having a much better time than ever before in my classes and they're learning to use the language without thinking about it. Some of the more advanced language students (who might not be who you think) are taking some risks with the language and it's neat to hear what they come up with because of our telling stories. They are acquiring it through storytelling.

But I worry we won't get through ENOUGH. That's my flaw. I'm so used to the Textbook mentality, that I forget I'm teaching kids language and we're learning about it together. We cover what we cover. It's personalized to their interests. One class might learn more violent words for their stories while another might use more fairytale like words. Either way, it's the language.

1. Did you know that the correct past form of sneak is not snuck but sneaked? I typed snuck and it gave me a typo message. Where did I get snuck from?

Día 40 - Pumped up students

2010-10-15T15:45:00.000-07:00

There are times when I feel like I am doing the best I can every day when pumping up students. I try all week and there are times when their lack of energy just drains me completely. It's so important to have them onboard with me telling silly stories.

I found that by the end of last week, my students were responding to my trying hard all week. Usually on Monday we all start the same. No one really wants to be back. Well, few people do. But I'm still required to teach them. We do the weekend activity. Sometimes it's dull even though I try to create parallel story lines that are funny and goofy. But hey, as long as it's in the language, right? And if it is comprehensible input.

So today was the finish of a hard week. But the students did a great job telling stories today. I feel excited after a few days of a bit of a lull and lack of enthusiasm. It might be because I had strayed from the formula of storytelling. But I try to give different activities so my class is never the same.

We'll see how the rest of the year continues to go.

Día 39 - Song day

2010-10-14T11:23:00.000-07:00

I think I've mentioned this before. Once a teacher said that you should do one thing every day that you as the teacher enjoy. If the students hate it, no big deal. We need to show our passion to the students and see what they do with it!

I've often tried to incorporate music into my classroom but I wanted it to be purposeful to the students and to have to do with a certain grammatical structure we're going over. That would be swell. But my memory of songs in Spanish is not that great and therefore I wouldn't add as many songs only because they didn't have the grammar or vocabulary that I wanted to practice.

What?! Craziness... right? But this year, I decided to introduce some children's songs that I found on youtube and then it evolved into showing different kinds of musical styles as well from the Spanish speaking world. I like to incorporate pop culture into classes. A lot of Latin Artists are crossing over anyway these days like Shakira, Enrique Iglesias, Daddy Yankee, etc. So it's not a bad thing for me to want to incorporate music into classes.

I've been getting lucky lately because it might appear to the students that we aren't learning anything on music days. What I've been doing each music day is to show them a piece of music and then to have them listen to it two times. A lot of times, a video accompanies it on Youtube. They have to fill in the blanks of words that they should be able to recognize but also maybe that they can pick out thanks to a wordbank at the bottom of the sheet.

The next pass involves us talking about the meaning of the song line by line and I might have them circle or underline certain idiomatic expressions that would be fun to use in class as well as good words. At the end, their reward is to listen to the song again and we can sing along as well. I usually encourage them to at least sing the chorus with me. They don't always. But they're listening to the language and they have the words in front of them to follow along.

Curiously, it might seem boring, but most students really enjoy it. They're being exposed to new music that they can go home and download onto their computer (and some have!) and they are also learning some new words in Spanish. I don't think that it matters if there is a song with somewhat complicated grammar. If I don't make a big deal out of it, they won't either. But they're being exposed to the language and they might learn a word in the song because it's in the song, which they happen to like.

Ultimately, I've realized that my goal is to establish connections between the students and Spanish speaking culture. I can do all that I can to teach them Spanish. But if they are not passionate about learning about Spanish outside of class, then all they will get is inside the classroom. So this one day a week is so important to teach them about the culture and they have been responding positively to it. I've gotten lucky in that the last few weeks they've really liked the songs despite picky musical tastes at the school I teach... [cough: "country music"]

See today's song of the day: click here.

Día 38 - Lesson Plan Review

2010-10-13T11:08:00.000-07:00

My principal has to evaluate me this year. She passed out in everyone's mailbox (I assume) a Lesson Plan Review. The funny thing about Lesson Plan Reviews is that it is just that! It's reviewing my ability to plan and show things such as Backwards by Design, etc.

It's great that my principal wants to hold me accountable to teaching the students. In previous years, the principal never really stopped by to observe my class. So I got used to being completely immune to any possible dangers or fiascoes as a result of someone observing me. But hey, now that I am a real teacher with real credentials instead of a phony, I guess it's important that they observe me.

With TPRS, I think the idea of a lesson plan is a little messy sounding. Since we're practicing a structure or three, it might look like we're not learning at all, but it is completely based on conversation. I'm wondering if I put on the lesson plan review form that I am planning to teach, it might sound like I have no idea what's going on.

And that is sort of part of it. I mean, I don't have a complete understanding of what will happen in class. But if we're speaking and learning Spanish and the students are getting it, then isn't that the purpose of class. In a lot of ways, TPRS feels like winging it. Even though there is a plan, you don't want to follow the exact story because that means your students aren't contributing.

There have been stories that have completely floored me in their creativity and silliness. We also learned the structures.

So I guess hopefully my review goes well.

Día 37 - Take that, band trip!

2010-10-12T09:55:00.000-07:00

So I teach in this miniscule school. Perhaps we could call it a minischool. Sure, I'm a language nerd. That's probably why I like teaching a language.

Often times in my minischool, there are trips that students take like the band will go somewhere. If it is a day like today, the students miss half or the whole day and I am left with less the half of my class. I used to think, ok, we'll do a game to review the information. I mean, why not? It would be great. One problem is that there are sometimes days when I have no idea that students will even be gone. So as a result, I am left coming up with a game at the last minute and we've wasted another day for nothing! The kids in the class could have learned something new that we could later throw into a story that would just give them a slight advantage over the other students.

This makes more sense to me. In previous years if half of the class showed up, I might not really do much of anything with the students because my lessons were prepared in such a way as to not do the same thing twice. It was my flaw in thinking and possibly apathy at the lack of desire on the students' part to learn from their attitudes on the days when half of the class is gone. But that's high school students.

They've obviously learned this from someone to come into my room when 2+ people are absent and tell me "We need a free day because we're missing a bunch of people." Well guess what? If I give them a free day, they don't know what to do with their time and they want to cause trouble. No no no. The best classroom management tool even when half the class is there is to continue teaching.

I think it also sets a dangerous precedent to the class when not everyone shows up and I don't continue teaching. It gives them the message that they are only important enough to teach when the whole class is there. I want them to learn every single day. With TPRS I am flexible enough to even come up with a story or do PQA (Personalized Questions and Answers).

But I want to give the message to my students that every day we can continue learning Spanish.

So today I did a Toma 2 (Take 2!) of my Dinosaur story from Friday. I had smaller class sizes and we had gotten about halfway through the short book. So I was able to circle while telling the story. But this time I had the students form a circle. It was more effective. Some students resisted a little but we were able to have comprehensible input and finish the story today. I have decided each day to try and focus on positive things about each student when possible and to let them know. Hopefully I can encourage them to do well from the positivity and it can spread throughout the whole school!

Día 36 - Positivity and appreciation

2010-10-11T11:30:00.000-07:00

As I continue to read the book How to Win Friends and Influence People, I am dumbfounded by how practical the things that Dale Carnegie talks about in his book. It's also pretty cool that I can read it on the Kindle program on my Ipod touch. Can I just say that ipod touches are an amazingly useful tool!

The chapter I just read talks about showing people that you appreciate them. In the previous chapter he talks about criticism and how Abraham Lincoln did not criticize people anymore after a certain point in his life and by the time he died people thought very well of him. I guess I wonder about criticism. As a child people would tell us that they were giving us "constructive criticism." Is there such a thing? Does criticism really build us up whatsoever?

Either way, criticism as far as I can tell has not been a very effective method as a teacher. We're so often getting bogged down in the negativity and do not address the positivity. We fail to acknowledge students for accomplishing what we expect them to do. I think of the police. They don't pull me over and give me a sticker when I am not speeding. They only pull me over when I do speed. Nevertheless, as a teacher, our constant reliance on only giving attention to those who do not do what we want are giving them negative attention. For the students who want attention (either negative or positive), they can still feed off of us.

In the book, Carnegie mentions that everyone has a desire to be important. As I was thinking about Ben Slavic's writing about ways to invent new identities for students in his classroom, this was a wonderful application of the concept. If we can give students an identity in our classroom that they will want to step into in which they are the best at something in Spanish, French or whatever language and we constantly can use that in class, they will want to be in our class.

I've been trying to think of ways to encourage my students more. Especially for those who are already doing exactly what I expect of them. I must be careful to distinguish between flattering and honest appreciation. Flattery is false and people can usually see right through it. But if I can offer encouraging words to someone for doing something well (no matter how small it is), I can offer more positiveness to this negative world, one comment at a time.

There was a quote that he has near the end of the chapter that I have written on my wall in my classroom to remind me each day to change my old negative ways:

I shall pass this way but once, any good therefore, that I can do or any kindness that I can show to any human being, let me do it now. Let me not defer nor neglect it, for I shall not pass this way again

Día 35 - Children's story

2010-10-08T15:30:00.000-07:00

Today I didn't really want to start a new story and decided to start a children's story with the class entitled, Un dinosaurio en peligro. The book is about a dinosaur that worked and played in a small town and he had a snoring problem so the town had to solve it. It's one of my favorite books of all time in the Spanish language because it's simple but also humorous.

I originally used it with my Spanish two classes as an example of the preterite versus the imperfect, which are two past tenses in Spanish. But since we're using those with storytelling interchangeably without really mentioning it to the students, I decided that I would just use it today as a sort of fun activity.

Yesterday I watched a new show produced by A & E called Teach: Tony Danza. Tony Danza, an actor I grew up watching on television now around 60 years old has decided after a short boxing career and longer acting career that he wants to help make an impact on the next generation. He goes through a baptism by fire summer in which he takes professional development classes and I just watched the first episode where he is teaching at a big diverse school. He's teaching English and he comes off as an exciting and genuine guy. From what I can see, he has passion to become a teacher, but like me, I think he struggles with the question: "Am I really cut out for this?"

I do enjoy teaching students and getting to know them. I've enjoyed using TPRS because it often feels more like playing with the students and less like a traditional class. But there are days where I am met with such laziness and resistance on their part. In the clip of a future episode of Teach: Tony Danza, he can't take it anymore and walks out of class. There are many times I wish I could do that. My students can be some of the rudest and negative people, but they are most likely only reflecting what they've grown up learning from their parents and family. Nevertheless, it makes for teaching them very draining because I try to be pumped up and positive and they aren't making an effort to help me stay pumped up, which is what I ask of them every day.

So today I got excited about sharing one of my favorite stories with them and it flopped. I don't care for the physical room that I teach in too much. There's not much room for flexibility with the giant desks.

Success(es):

My first hour class was paying attention to the book and they were answering questions that I made about the book.
For some students it's good to have pictorial representations while telling the story.
Due to the size of my class and the smallness of the book, I scanned the pages into a Powerpoint to show them while I was going through the story and walking around the class.
I tried to walk around the class via Fred Jones explanation in classroom management while reading the story

Failure(s):

It's not the greatest setup and the desks are too huge.
I didn't pace myself very well and didn't finish the story in any of the classes.
Students felt as if they didn't have to think during the story because it was a story
many laid their heads down as if it were nap time instead of story time
some showed complete lack of interest as if one of my favorite stories could be [gasp] LAME
some students probably didn't follow because I didn't go slowly enough or use a teachery reading voice
I got offended when my students didn't show interest

Next time:

What I should have done was to have them come in and maybe I could have the desks all moved against the wall and they would have to sit on the floor. This would have helped them buy into the 'storytime' mindset
possibly bring in milk and cookies or some small treat for them to buy into the storytime
maybe don't circle as much as I did because it is storytime and try and get through the story as long as I can make sure that it is comprehensible
keep in mind that students often are bored in an activity; I can try to reach as many as possible but some students will still be hard to reach; not that I should keep trying, but I need to grow harder skin
encourage my students and remember to go slowly when needed

*If you are a teacher and would like to see the Powerpoint I created for the book just leave your email in a comment below.

Día 34 - Incentive for Junior High students

2010-10-07T11:18:00.000-07:00

I've been noticing that my passion is not with Junior High students. I messed up by not knowing enough about TPRS this year when starting with the Junior High. I've tried some different things but if I try to start with some materials now like Amy Catania's Cuentos Fantásticos, I am met with such resistance by the class.

Classroom management is something that is hardest for me to accomplish with the middle school kids. Yelling is not something I like and it is not incredibly effective. Yelling is basically a bluff and could be equated with nagging except for the fact that it might be louder. Kids probably realize by middle school if not before that yelling isn't the way to get them to do things. They fear punishment. Well some do. Others don't fear much.

I have some repeat offenders who want to distract the class and I tried being positive and told them to write me a letter of apology during class because they were being very disrespectful of me and I could not believe that they would treat me that way. They wrote me nice letters but the next day the problem persisted. Writing obviously is not a genuine representation of feelings and/or intentions at that age. It's understandable. I was simply trying it to see what would happen.

Sometimes I show them goofy things at the end of class or at the beginning. At that age, they love anything silly or weird. It's great fun. So I showed them a text-to-speech program and I blabberized a photo of myself. Then I let them draw on the faces of famous people with my Smartboard-like setup involving a Wii-remote and a projector. Yesterday the kids wanted something at the end of class and I was unable to finish my lesson because a few were being too distracting. So I told them at the end of class that there was no excuse for that type of behavior and I would not reward bad behavior with some incentive. I thought doing that would be effective to help them self-regulate but the other kids cannot peer pressure two of the students enough to stop talking and pay attention. Any attention is attention for these two students and they will simply act up.

A fellow teacher suggested that I try to offer something at the end of class and give it to those students who do what they are supposed to do in class and have the students who did not do what I asked to watch the activity.

So today I will give them 5 Señor Bucks at the beginning of class and if they do well in class they will cash that in at the end of class to do the activity. If they do not follow the expectations that I point out to them during class, I will take away their Señor Bucks during the infraction and they will no longer be able to participate at the end. I think the activity will be where I have the students draw on the face of a famous person at the end of class and the students who do not follow my instructions will not get to participate in the activity.

Vamos a ver... (we'll see)

Día 33 - Crawling out of my shell

2010-10-06T07:50:00.000-07:00

As a person I am incredibly socially awkward and I prefer to not be in crowds of people. When possible, I don't mind staying in my classroom. I tend to withdraw from the world.

A lot of my co-workers tell me that they rarely see me. Well for me, strangely enough, that is not a bad thing. The older that I get, the more antisocial I become. I wonder if this is part of my persona because when students come into my classroom I force myself to be happy and interested in them and it drains all of my social energy to invest it into them.

As a result, I have a difficult time walking through the hallways. I have always been bad about walking from point A to point B without wanting to divert my attention. I usually have my head down. My students often make fun of me and point out how much of a different person I am in the hallway. They see me as aloof and so serious while in my class, I don't have any missions to solve like outside of class.

I've been really trying to be outgoing. I have been forcing myself to stand outside of my door and greet people as they walk by. Even if they are not in my class, I try to smile at everyone. In previous years, I would sit at my teacher's desk and wait for students to come in.

But I have found in the days that I stand at the door and greet students with a smile, there tend to be less classroom management problems. It's almost as if that small validation of me welcoming the students has that much of an impact of their expectations of class. It's still not a perfect world, but I am trying to instill in them that I do care about them as individuals. That's an important starting point for us instructors with our students.

I'm still learning.

Día 32 - Criticism

2010-10-05T09:16:00.000-07:00

In his book Fluency Through TPR Storytelling, Blaine Ray recommends reading How to Win Friends and Influence People.

In the first chapter, the author talked a lot about criticism. Whether it be obvious or not, most people don't really like criticism. As a result, we tend to just tear down the walls of a relationship for nothing. I was thinking about this the other day in my interactions with my wife. I found that there were times when I would word something and would be quick to point something out that didn't really need to be said. It came off as criticism and she didn't respond well to it. I noticed she drew away fro me as the day progressed.

This helped me to further see the validity in what the author was writing about. My wife is not a child by any means. Nevertheless, my criticizing her is something that causes a tension in our relationship. Her response is to withdraw emotionally and physically. She walks away and ignores me.

As a teacher, so many people are quick to criticize one another. I have found on my YouTube videos that people filter themselves much less and are so quick to point out mistakes and less quick to point out positive statements. That's human nature though. We know what standard things should measure up to in our minds. Then we try to impose that set of rules on someone else based on our observations and contextualized understanding of the way the world works.

Nevertheless, what is the point in criticism? It seems to me that more than anything else, it is to humiliate a person and build the ego of the critic. As a teacher, my students are just humans with flaws. All of them are insecure in one way or another. I hope to foster a warm caring and nurturing environment in my classroom so that they can feel safe enough to have fun with the Spanish language in class. Our storytelling relies on them feeling comfortable enough to shout out goofy suggestions.

But when I criticize them, they aren't going to want to do much of anything. I must break this habit. Not just as a teacher but as a person. I must make sure to remind myself of people's different perspectives and to not criticize anymore.

Día 30 - Señor Bucks

2010-10-01T09:20:00.000-07:00

In my previous entry, I talked about being more positive.

Of all the years so far that I have taught, this method of positivity is helping me. I don't like to be angry. I don't like who I am when I am angry. If I get upset or angry at one class, I am more likely to get angry at another class. If I'm angry at a class, I am more likely to go home and get angry with my wife or with friends! No thanks!

So I'd rather encourage my students through my positivity to stay positive. If I model the behavior I want them to perform, I am providing them with a valuable resource on behavior that they might not have in their lives. They can learn how to behave if I am positive and in that way, I don't lose any sleep or hair over the classroom management. Sure we'll still have problems once in awhile. But what class doesn't have one single problem? We can learn from problems and they can offer us teachable moments to talk about something important in the students' lives as well. We are teachers of the subject as well as teachers of how to interact with the world. My curriculum is the students and their lives.

Thankfully through TPRS, I've been able to merge that with Spanish.

I remember learning about different classroom management techniques in college while I was in my 3rd year of teaching already. I thought that the majority were completely bogus. It bothered me to think about being positive to students and reward them. My question has always been, "What police officer stops you for NOT speeding and gives you a sucker?" They only enforce the rules when you break the law because you're not following the rules.

But maybe I was thinking about that all wrong. I do not know a lot about my students' home life. I do not know what kind of influences they have in their lives. Perhaps I can teach them how to behave though through positive means.

In future years, I would like to do a system with Señor Bucks where students can get those to purchase items in class for doing something like paying attention well or volunteering or always answering questions. Then they can cash them in for different perks. I might try to start it after Christmas to give it an easy starting point and time to plan the different perks. I do prefer positive reinforcement not to bribe students, but instead to teach them the right thing to do.

Día 29 - Positivity

2010-09-30T15:30:00.000-07:00

I've never really liked to be the enforcer of rules in my classroom. I understand that it is necessary but I feel like students should want to be there. With TPRS, I felt like I had found this method where the students were excited everyday about class and they were enjoying it and participating.

Because I'm focusing on so many things, I didn't crack down on the student here or there who would tune me out. I know now that I can't move on until I have all of the students' attention. It's just a matter of training my students that I will not teach anymore if they are not paying attention. I was reading in Ben Slavic's book that he will just stand and wait for the students who aren't paying attention. He might make a lighthearted face of impatience or he might show a face that really reflects his annoyance level with the student.

I've been testing something with my Junior High students and I think that it has been working. My students come from a class that they absolutely hate. They feel stifled in their class right before mine and often times they come in late because the teacher held them after. I'm a little curious about how the teacher holds them after class to punish them. It doesn't seem to work. The same offenders tend to be late to my class. She's really only punishing me and my starting class on time with that approach. If a student comes in late, they might already be a little behind because of our TPR'ing some terms. They can probably understand the story eventually due to the circling I will be doing with the story. It still might not make as much sense as to the rest of the class who is there the entire time. But I digress.

I've noticed every day that the students come in and I can tell how they are doing because I've been making a habit to stand at my door and greet my students as they walk in every day and try and give them a genuinely positive greeting and a smile to welcome them into class.

My Junior High students tend to let me know pretty quick how well math class went through their posture as well as their outspokenness. I have seen how the legalistic method of the math teacher has not worked at all for this class. They constantly push and don't feel any motivation to pay attention to her.

That must be where the personalization of TPRS comes in. We try to get to know our students and use that in class. We try to use them as props and actors and showcase their talents. The class is about them and what they can come up with. It's a beautiful thing.

I've also been working on being more positive in general. When my students in the Junior High class get a little rowdy, I stop and wait until their ready. The curious thing is that they apologize to me when they act out. They'll probably still do it here and there. But they are not doing it as often as before and when they do it they are quicker to correct each other not because I will punish them.

I have not punished any of the students in class this year. I've been lucky that nothing horrible has happened. But I think this is the case because the students genuinely like being in my class and learning from me. As a result, they are so quick to self-regulate because they understand that they want me to stay happy and to continue teaching so they can keep learning and the silliness can continue.

Día 27 - English/No English rules

2010-09-28T11:03:00.000-07:00

As I have been reading through Ben Slavic's books and blog, I have found that he has "No English rules" that pertain to when English is not acceptable. He doesn't go into specifics when talking about that, but I assume that means that there are contexts in which English is acceptable and not acceptable in class.

In Blaine Ray's class, it seemed like he mentioned that there was no English allowed and when students did not follow that, he gave them an additional assignment that they had to complete to count for their participation.

It sounds harsh. I wonder what my "No English rules" are. This perplexes me because this TPRS method requires a lot of student feedback. I mentioned in my previous entry how I would like to offer different potential suggestions to my students via a word wall.

I also try and build up their vocabulary by offering suggestions in the story. But I have found that in story telling, there are times when I cannot possibly plan on where something will go and I do not have the adjectives to describe such thing to offer suggestions. I hope that improves with experience. I have been meaning to come up with lists of words to have around the class or just to have close-by that I can refer to as supplemental target vocabulary.

From observing my teaching today, it appears as though my English rules are that when I ask for students to answer questions and they answer in English and I know it is something that they should be able to say (either in the reading because it is written word for word or because we've beaten it to death 100+ times), I will stare at them blankly until they try to say it in Spanish or someone else will try. Sometimes I even offer a humorous voice trying to speak English with Spanish pronunciation rules so that they understand that I can't accept their answer in English.

If we're going over a story and they offer a suggestion that the class happens to like and it is in English, I often can translate that for them and then it becomes an interesting phrase for them in Spanish that they have now shown interest in learning and it becomes a special phrase for their class.

I'm still not sure what the best way would be. I like the idea of not allowing the students to speak English, but sometimes they come up with amazing ideas that you can use.

Día 26 - In need of some decorations

2010-09-27T11:39:00.000-07:00

I decided that something that is lacking in my room for good ideas and suggestions is my having the room covered with different sections of things. Currently when we tell stories, I would like to focus on some different vocabulary to add into the stories. If a person went somewhere, how did they go?

One such list of words I would like to have is a list of types of transportation. But lists bore me (and most people). So instead of lists, I would like to have a section on my wall dedicated to types of transportation and have them colored and labeled in Spanish.

I would also like to do this with different types of animals.

Eventually, I think it would be awesome to come up with a list of interesting adverbs and/or actions and have my students take pictures of those things so that I can post them across the classroom as well!

My room will always be a work in progress. But I want my students to be able to see the words already on the wall so I don't have to keep writing over and over on the board animals and other things.

Día 25 - Reading Activity with Junior High

2010-09-24T09:57:00.000-07:00

I had a reading activity with the Junior High students and it was a subtle joke but it was right up their alley. I actually didn't think about it on a conscious level when writing the story but it popped out of my mouth during the talking about it and the kids became much more interested in the story when they made a connection that I hadn't thought of. (See story)

The premise is that a girl has a horn and she can't get a boyfriend. It echoes the story that I told the class a few days ago in that there is a person with a relationship problem. I'm just working with the present tense and some similar structures from the previous class period. The idea is to build their confidence on reading.

The activity is to go over a sentence, have a student translate it and help with any words they don't know. In helping them with the words, you can move on to the next part. You may circle during the reading to ask about previous information in the story. You can also refer to the parallel story that you told in class in the past tense to test the students' memories and remind them of the funny story that they created which happened to be similar. You can also create spin off facts about the students. I hadn't even thought that I would have students who would want to have horns. But they did and then we were able to circle about how they have horns, how many, what size, what color, etc.

Then we could continue with the story after some circling about their horns and the girl's horn from the story. I will give them a short quiz at the beginning of class later today to see how they do. Other than that, I'm not sure what to do with them today. Hmm....

Día 24 - Creating a story for Junior High

2010-09-23T11:44:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I decided to experiment with the Junior High class because they were not responding well to my stories.

So I created the following as a plotline.

Now keep in mind that when you're creating a story for a class, you start with three target structures and a problem.

The idea is to either solve the problem in the story or work on solving the problem even if you don't resolve it.

The reasoning behind this is that without a problem or some sort of conflict, you have no gas for your story. It's great to add details and funny little extra things to the story, but if the story does not have a plot, there will be no context for which the students to remember the terms.

My problem was that:
A boy wants a girlfriend but he has bad breath.

My target structures were:
Estaba triste (He/She was sad)
Quería tener (He/she wanted to have)

Le dijo (He/she said to him/to her)

I started off class with PQA asking the class how they were feeling. I thought that I could have my stories in the future highlight an emotional condition of some sort to tie them in together. It offers a good context for my brain at this juncture.

Then we went into comparing and contrasting how people were feeling in class. Until finally I asked for a volunteer. We established a new identity for the student because I didn't want to have any actual student to have 'bad breath' unless I clear it with the before class. So my actor wanted a girlfriend and he had bad breath. Throughout the story we added extra words. If the students wanted them written on the board, I wrote them, otherwise we moved on.

We had two different locations in the story due to time constraints. After class a student told me that it was a very interesting story. This helped. I also had one of my sillier boys in class act as a girl that had no nose who he ended up with at the end.

All in all a good story. Now today I would like to do a reading activity with similar but different details or a dictation as mentioned by Ben Slavic in his book TPRS in a Year!.

Día 23 - PQA

2010-09-22T10:08:00.000-07:00

If I haven't explained PQA in depth very well, it's because I am not very good at this thing called TPRS quite yet. If I were to have been a pro already, I would have certainly mentioned PQA.

PQA stands for Personalized Questions and Answers.

I actually bought a book by Ben Slavic called PQA in a Wink. Since I was taking graduate classes all summer, I wasn't able to get into the reading and preparation for teaching TPRS until during the actual school year. So I am learning while doing.

But I digress. If you're curious about PQA and TPRS in general, you might read Ben Slavic's explanation in his blog on the Three Steps of TPRS.

At the beginning of class, when you want to teach a new story, you have your three structures that you want to use and you can use one of them in the present tense.

So today, I had the three structures from Blaine's story:
quería comer - he/she wanted to eat
sabía - he/she knew
le dijo - he/she told him/her

I started off with class asking in the present tense (because those phrases are in the past), "¿Quién quiere comer?" (Who wants to eat?)

Well if you've taught high school before, you should know that high school students are always hungry. So I had some students suggest some things. We talked about how they wanted to eat steak, salad, and then I asked who wanted to eat 'chocolate'. I wanted to kind of follow Blaine's story since this is my first year. In the story a girl wants to eat chocolate from a place but there is none.

And after the 5-10 minutes of PQA, we were able to start the story and I went into the past tense. I could easily start off the story as in previous stories but now add the new phrase in the past tense. It was seamless. Students could go from the present to the past tense in their heads without any problem.

For whatever reason, I have not done this. Instead, I usually ask for a volunteer and then start creating a story instead of seeing who will play along with me beforehand and that's how they can get into the story. This makes more sense and you get to practice the present and the past tense of a structure during class. Not to mention that in the rest of the story, you can refer to the other things that the other students said to compare and contrast with your main character.

It's great for establishing potential parallel story lines before you're even storytelling.

Now this is one of the ways to do PQA in class. As Ben Slavic says in his blog entry, some teachers would rather just use PQA during the entire class because you're just talking with your students and practicing the language.

A positive for PQA is that it can help you warm up a little as a class without jumping into asking the whole class for details too soon.

Día 22 - what to do with Junior High

2010-09-21T15:30:00.000-07:00

I really do like Junior High students on a personal level. They have such energy and enthusiasm for things. They are incredibly fun to talk to. Nevertheless, teaching a group and enjoying a group on a personal level are two very different things.

One of the things about TPRS that I was excited about was the idea that I could use the energy of the Junior High students to my advantage in the storytelling.

But for some reason, they did not like my story today. In fact, they hated it. I was trying to use a story from Blaine Ray's Look, I can Talk! book. The storyline is simple. Nevertheless, the junior high students wanted to have the main character kissing and all sorts of other things. The storyline was not as riveting for them. One student commented that the story was boring. I reminded him that if he was bored in the class, it was his job to suggest things when I needed them to make it interesting.

A strange thing tends to occur in my classroom where students in the Junior High class try and make suggestions before I even ask for suggestions. Or I have to limit their suggestion to something that fits into the constraint of a very loosely scripted story. It sounds strange that I would even have to limit it, but there are times when the kids want to throw out so many outlandish things that they get lost by their own craziness. As a result, I can see further why it's my job to help them sort through the ideas that are able to work and which ones are not with the story.

For example, the students think that when I ask for a place that saying someone's pants is acceptable. If I play along and have so and so go to someone's pants, the students then get lost and complain that it doesn't make sense that someone went to someone's pants. I of course explain that everything is possible in Spanish class. Their suggestion ends up confusing them in the long run.

Tomorrow, I have decided to take a little break from Blaine's materials for the Junior High students specifically and work on some structures that I want to teach them and some storylines that I think they will enjoy more while still acquiring the language. Let's hope so.

Día 21 - Weekend Activity # 3

2010-09-20T15:00:00.000-07:00

Today I think I flopped. At least so far. It is frustrating because my students just haven't had the energy or creativity today to help me make better stories.

I started off with a few sentences about my weekend for the students and the phrases:
----------------------------------

Durante el fin de semana....

     During the weekend

Fui a una fiesta
   I went to the movie theatre.
No bailé.
     I didn’t dance.
Toqué la guitarra.
     I played the guitar.
---------------------------------
The first few hours of the day flopped. I cannot completely take the blame because my students were incredibly un-energetic. But my hope was the through using TPRS, I would be able to get my students to enjoy class more than ever before.

I understand that some students will be bored simply because they are in class. TPRS is not a cure-all for students to enjoy class. It does work well for those students who do not like the traditional class where it is teacher-centered. Nevertheless, some students will still be bored. This is a hard lesson to learn because I deeply want all of my students to connect with the material everyday.

Many TPRS teachers say that "Even bad TPRS teaching is better than the 'traditional' Spanish class." I can see where they are coming from. The difference with TPRS is that I believe in the methodology more than with the previous type of Spanish I taught. Why do I believe in it you might ask?

I believe in it because I have been able to see students connect to the language through TPRS. I have seen firsthand how a teacher can cater certain vocabulary to the class' preference to make class more interesting to them.

We are not forcing production at the early phases of the class. But eventually we are building them up to be able to do so. And we are building with baby steps. Some of my students who were 'traditional' Spanish students last year still will use the 'r' on the end of their verbs because that's what the traditional conjugation type teaching leaves a lot of kids with. They don't remember to change the word. You teach it to them as 'comer' and then change it.

Well with TPRS, you don't tell them that 'comer' is the basic form and that it changes. You move backwards. Instead of saying "We change comer to como, comes, come, etc", we point out after having different forms of comer or other verbs that the 'R' adds the meaning of "to" to the verb. It seems backwards but it makes sense. If I want my students to use the verbs in context, I should teach them to use the verbs first in context and then to tell them to add the 'r' later.

My next classes were a little better. It was still a lack-of-enthusiasm-lunes, but hey, the days that are hard just remind me that those days where things work are that much more worth it. And I'm still far from being perfect as a teacher and at TPRS.

Día 20 - Goofiness

2010-09-16T09:53:00.000-07:00

I can't underestimate the importance of goofiness with Junior High students. It's interesting teaching middle school and high school because their worlds are so incredibly different.

Middle school students have so much more energy and I am trying to use that. Part of me tries to calm them down a little bit so that we can learn. The high school classes often need me to encourage them and coax them into getting a little more goofy.

There is definitely something more fun about middle school students.

Yesterday we were reviewing a story and they were dying of boredom. So I introduced a new word while we were talking about the story. I figured it couldn't hurt to through in the word besar (to kiss) into the PQA. The students suddenly all got really excited when I asked if the character in the story kisses someone else. Of course he does not. But then the students start getting really excited and I have to ask if the character in the story kisses or if a student in the class kisses. Suddenly all of the students want to call out suggestions and contribute to the story.

And all I did was introduce the word kiss. I need to start thinking like a middle school student again in order to better teach them.

Día 19 - Lack of Enthusiasm

2010-09-15T11:53:00.000-07:00

The neat thing about TPRS is that I can see my students really responding more to the material because it's all about teaching comprehensible input in a meaningful (albeit silly) context.

Nevertheless, students will still have "off days." It's frustrating for me because I need my students to help pump me up. What I have noticed generally is that days in which I am not incredibly pumped up are the worst days for the students too. I really must show a desire to be there and to start class on time. Today I was running a little behind. As a result, I started class a few minutes later than usual and I could sense the lack of energy in the students because I didn't greet them with energy when they came into the room. They can sense the energy I have and that determines how they'll respond to the class. As a result, I failed that class this morning. For the second hour, I made a mental note to start as close to the beginning as possible. It was more successful. For the most part, the majority of the students were trying and I had to coach a couple of them into paying attention. But hey, that's what the participation grade reflects. I'll encourage them to participate and pay attention, but ultimately, it is still up to them to run with that.

I did explain that I need them look at me and to answer questions with the rest of the class (in a choral response) so that I know that they understand. If they don't answer, I will assume that they do not understand and I will keep repeating the same things over and over again.

This seemed to encourage the ones who weren't answering to chime in because I needed them to as well. When one or two students don't, they send a message to the others that it's ok to not pay attention. I need to make sure I am constantly offering them positive reinforcement to pay attention when possible to remind them that they have to give their 100%.

I think that what I need to do in the future is to start giving the students a quiz each day and as the last question they should rate their own participation out of 5 points based on how they did. I think this self-evaluation will help them to want to do better since they can see what their effort is worth.

Día 18 - Reading activity 2

2010-09-14T10:05:00.000-07:00

So one of the hardest things for me is to get excited about reading in Spanish class. I think it's because a majority of my college classes in Spanish were about reading way too much literature in Spanish. In my opinion, teachers can easily overkill the reading portion in classes.

Nevertheless, an integral part of storytelling are the readings. Blaine Ray's Look I can Talk text includes readings and extended readings.

My understanding (which could be wrong) is that readings can be used in class and also for homework with a few simple questions. When we have a reading in class, as I learned in the conference, we should go over it as a class. We go through the reading and have the students translate one sentence at a time while we go through them. If there is something they don't know, I should just tell them.

Problem 1: Pacing
I tend to miss the point when it comes to a reading. I understand that they throw in new words to the stories to help students learn the present tense in conjunction with the past tense and also to reinforce important vocabulary. There also should be a similar storyline from the story told during class.

It makes sense that these readings serve multiple purposes. They are a springboard for conversations about students while developing literacy in Spanish. Nevertheless, I want to make sure that we get through the text in a class period. Perhaps that is where I'm wrong. My approach has been to force them after we tell the story and to make us talk about them during class making sure to finish them during that class.

Instead, we should just see where the story leads us and the different questions. As long as we're learning Spanish, it is ok if it takes us a day or even two to finish reading a story within a paragraph. This would probably keep it more enjoyable.

Problem 2: Overteaching vs. Underteaching
I guess I get the fact that we're supposed to just tell students what something means when they don't get it. But I also don't want to help foster those students who have "learned helplessness." I need them to own their learning in my class. If I get the impression that they aren't trying, that's where I get frustrated. But the language is still new to them and they have other things on their mind. So I am not sure at what point I should be quiet and not help them in the story translation.

Problem 3: Homework
I often wonder how to successfully implement homework in my classes because giving additional readings with a slightly higher level of literacy is how we can increase our students' understanding of the language. Today in one of the classes, I assigned a longer reading after we went over the one in class and a few questions about the story. Once the students saw the reading, they already assumed it was too hard. I guess I haven't been building them up enough yet.

Tomorrow, I am not sure how to handle this. The idea was to talk about the extended reading in class after they did it as homework. I guess we'll see what happens. I encouraged them to do their best and to just try and understand the story based on what they already knew. There were only a few new words. I need to find a more effective way to do homework assignments.

Día 17 - Weekend Activity 2

2010-09-13T13:52:00.000-07:00

Today I started off class with one of the warm ups. We looked at a piropo (pick up line) in Spanish.

Then in class, the following was my "lesson plan":
----------------------------------

Durante el fin de semana....

     During the weekend

Fui al cine
   I went to the movie theatre.
Hablé por teléfono.
     I talked on the phone
Comí en un restaurante.
     I ate in a restaurant.
No bailé
     I didn’t dance.
---------------------------------
Now I saw "lesson plan" loosely because we were able to focus on one sentence for a majority of the class. Each class was different. It is seriously crazy how good my kids are getting at playing the game.

Every story, as usual came out completely different. I started off telling the class: Durante el fin de semana, fui al cine, while pointing to the board and the individual words. The students responded as they were supposed to: oooOOOOooooh! And from there I asked: ¿Con quién fui al cine? (With whom did I go to the movie theatre?) Some remembered the word from previous lessons and said: la esposa (wife). It is neat to see that simply by conversing in the language how quickly the kids can pick up words. It's important to assess them, but it is getting to the point where it feels like we're hanging out every day.

What surprises me more is the desire from most of the students in class to add the output. Now in previous years, my students were forced to respond to a question in Spanish usually by various methods. The end result was most of them were not comfortable enough with the language yet to produce the output. With TPRS, each day the students help more and more in the stories to add different details. It is so true that adding in the details is really easy when you tell the story. Each class' personality will shape the vocabulary that we learn. But since we're practicing structures, the vocabulary is like the icing on the cake. But as my fifth year of teaching, I have never had so many students wanting to blurt out answers to questions. I think part of it is the desire for them to help me in keeping the story moving. If they don't answer, I will assume they don't understand. If they don't understand, I'll have to stay on the same things over and over again without adding much additional information. So these past few weeks have trained them very well.

I'm so excited for each day of teaching. I remember that a teacher once told me that you should try to do at least one thing each day in your class that you enjoy. With TPRS, I've found an entire class period of something that I enjoy. It makes the classroom come alive with the language so much more than I had ever imagined.

Today based on my "lesson plan," I had students going on dates with one another, going to other's houses with 10 ugly fat smelly girls. A lot of the suggestions are coming from the students...

It all started in one class like this... keep in mind there is some additional circling that I do in here but I have tried to abridge the story for you to see the progression.

Clase, ¿o el profesor fue al cine o Agustín fue al cine?

(Class, did the professor go to the movies or did Agustín go to the movies?)

Bien clase. El profesor fue al cine.

(Good class. The professor went to the movies)

¿Agustín fue al cine?

(Did Agustín go to the movies?)

No. Agustín no fue al cine...

(No. Agustín didn't go to the movies.)

¿Adónde fue?, clase.

(Where did he go, class?) ---- take suggestion

Oooooh clase, Agustín fue a la casa de Chinchilla.

(Oh class. Agustín went to Chinchilla's house)

¿Fue a la casa de Chinchilla con una chica?

(Did he go to Chinchilla's house with a girl?) -- Class said "¡Sí! "

Clase, ¿con cuántas chicas fue Agustín a la casa de Chinchilla?

(Class, with how many girls did Agustín go to Chinchilla's house?)-- suggestions--> 10 girls

OOOOOH.... Agustín fue con 10 chicas.

(Ooooh. Agustín went with 10 girls)

Clase, ¿las chicas eran muy bonitas o muy feas?

(Class, were the girls really pretty or really ugly?)

And from there, the class started adding more details and poor Agustín (who was a great sport) went to Chinchilla's house with 10 ugly, fat, smelly girls. Chinchilla played right along and said "¡Muy bien!" as if to say that's what he wanted all along.

Día 16 - End of class writing assignment

2010-09-10T15:00:00.000-07:00

Today I had my students do a write up at the end of class. I gave them 10 minutes apiece and depending on if I had been able to do writing with them before or not, I determined my expectations. For some of the classes, I told them a really small number like 30. But I made sure to explain that more is better and if they can do more than 30 I expect them to. Some students who normally would not do more than they were asked did. I'll have to make sure to praise each of those students when they get their papers back.

Or maybe I could start doing 'homework pass' for a homework writing assignment or something like that for those kids who write the most. It's good to give them a reward for doing more work.

I was proud of the students who did what I asked and more. I only had a few students who were not able to get the number of words. This only frustrates me as a teacher because I should have been better at encouraging them and making sure they were paying attention.

In my Junior High class, I know that sometimes their attention is a little bit of a problem. It's the last class of the day and they are squirmy junior high students! It's hard sometimes to keep their attention. Regardless of what I try, they can easily get off task. But hey, I'll still working on this method. What I was saddened to find out was that they were not keeping up their part of the bargain in class because many of them did not write the story that we had talked about in class. It almost seemed as though they didn't follow most of the story. One or two of the students did. I don't have to worry about them because language comes more naturally. But the rest seemed to miss out on all of the fun details and even the basic skeleton of the story. This worries me because storytelling is not useful if they are not understanding the language.

The purpose of this assessment is to help me figure out what they know by the end of class when it is still fresh in their minds. I will probably try again today to see what they come up with. Maybe Friday was just an off day.

I need to do assessments more often in class instead of assuming that they understood. As Friday proved in the one class, I was way off on my estimates of their level of understanding.

Día 15 - Song!

2010-09-09T11:05:00.000-07:00

So I found this incredible amount of children's songs in Spanish with animation. They're not those cheesy songs that no one has heard of that were specifically created for Spanish classes. They are cheesy on their own and people that I know actually heard them when they were children!

The songs can be found on youtube.

I decided that I want to start off class a little different each day. So far I have figured out that I want to incorporate jokes and songs throughout the week. Some other ideas of things to incorporate are riddles, news articles, commercials and Chuck Norris Facts in Spanish. I want to do a different gimmick each day of the week so that it stays interesting and each day one might student have something to look forward to.

The idea is to give the kids something at the beginning (or end) of class to bring them into class. It's kind of like a warm up and it's also a chance to expose them a little more to the culture. If we tell stories for longer because of this, that's ok. We're still learning Spanish and I am working on making the input more comprehensible.

Today, we sang: Cucú Cucú. It's a catchy little song about a frog and different people. I had my students fill in some blanks of familiar words and we sang it. Even if they didn't want to sing, I asked that they at least sang/spoke 'Cucú Cucú'. For the most part they all did. It made class a little goofier to start out with and I found that the participation was even better today than yesterday for some of my shyer classes.

I also read them a quote from Blaine Ray that I got from Ben Slavic's book TPRS in a Year!. Blaine Ray says:

"I believe people who are the most effective at TPRS don't tell stories. They ask questions, pauses, and listen for cute answers from the students."

I read this to my students to remind them that I am only in class to help them with the Spanish part of the story and to help a story flow along a path. I provide the skeleton of the story with a basic outline and it's their job to fill in the fleshy parts.

It seemed like they responded well to my reminding them that the class was about them and their ideas. I hope tomorrow can go as well! Maybe I should post the quote somewhere in my room to remind myself that the stories are not about my ideas, but rather about theirs.

Día 14 - Writing

2010-09-08T11:45:00.000-07:00

TPRS is all about learning through telling stories. This can be orally or in written format.

Hopefully, the students get better and better at telling stories. I have been focusing on telling the stories orally. In the Look I can Talk book by Blaine Ray, he gives you a reading as well as an extended reading. In the teacher's guide, he gives discussion questions for the class as they read the story.

I understand that the purpose is to get the students to read as well as learn to talk simultaneously. We also teach the past in class speaking while the stories are in the present tense. In essence, this helps the students learn to the tenses at the same time. It makes sense. In my experience, the students who are taught only the present tense in the first year always use it as a security blanket. Why should that be if everyday language incorporates more than one tense?

One of the things that you can do to assess your students after a story is to have them write a summary of what you talked about in class. Depending on how much time is left in class might affect your expectations for how much they write. I have been finding myself getting through the story and forgetting about that part of the class. I do need to encourage my students to write as early as possible because we tell the stories so much in class orally, it should be an easy enough transition for them to write the stories in Spanish.

I have done it with a few classes once so far and I was surprised by the results. They do a great job overall. I tried to give them an easy goal to accomplish in 5 minutes like 30 words or something. In one class I had a student write almost 100 words in the 5 minutes left. He was obviously more advanced in his ability to communicate. But his enthusiasm is what I hope all of the students can come to have in class.

So I challenge myself to have my students write more about their stories instead of forgetting about that part of the storytelling process. We need to review the information in various ways instead of just moving on to new stories. We can easily play with the old stories to make sure to continue to practice the structures.

Día 13 - planning

2010-09-07T11:45:00.000-07:00

My first year of teaching, I would wing lessons quite a bit. I did not plan as often as I should have and I would say that my classes did ok, but not exceptionally. Nevertheless, my personality helped the students enjoy class for the most part. Last year, I became an over-planner. I got home and would plan each class for hours at a time. When I wasn't doing homework for college, I was designing new worksheets and PowerPoints for my classes.

I think the beauty of the TPRS method is that you really do not have to plan as much. Provided that you know the language enough to tell stories with your class, you just get better by practicing it with your class. I am by no means an expert. But I have really been enjoying this method with my classes so far this year and they are also.

Part of the lack of planning does make me nervous. I feel like I might just lose control and the class will be a complete disaster. I just hate the idea of something going wrong because I didn't plan enough. In college they taught us that your lesson plan must be indepth and you should make sure to have differentiation planned in.

TPRS is such a simple method on paper but much more complex in the classroom. The reason that it requires less planning is because the students have to help deliver the lesson to the class. I do not know what the lesson will look like at the end of class until it happens.

Each class can take three or four structures and do completely different things with them.

That's what makes it fun. The class isn't about my perceptions of Spanish anymore. It's not about my expertise of the Spanish language. Instead, it is about what the students want to get out of the class. They're in control and I facilitate the learning.

What a beautiful model.

Día 13 - Weekend Activity

2010-09-07T09:55:00.000-07:00

In my free time, I've been trying to read more about TPRS and different strategies other teachers implement to find success in their classroom.

Last week, I remember either reading in some random site or on moretprs.net about an activity with the weekend for class.

After the weekend, the teacher writes up a few options on the board of what they did. Then they can talk about students and what they did on the weekend with yes/no questions. Each week you could slowly introduce more terms and vocabulary catered to what your kids might do. But even if they don't do the things, you can still have them "play the game" of storytelling through lying about what they've done.

Today I decided to try it. With TPRS, you should be able to turn anything into a story if your class participates. But it REALLY depends on the class. It doesn't matter what the teacher does, if the students don't want to participate, class drags on and on.

I started off my classes with some of the question words and the following on the board:
--------------------------------------

Durante el fin de semana

   During the weekend...
     1. Fui a San Luis
           I went to St. Louis
     2. Vi la televisión
           I watched tv

3. Comí en Macaroni Grill

I ate in Macaroni Grill.
-------------------------------------
From that, I introduced the information and then started straight into asking questions about other people. If you're not sure how I did that, see the previous entry on circling.

By the time I got to the last statement, a few other people in class should have been able to include themselves.

Successes:
Third hour did a fantastic job today. I reminded my students that it was their job to make the class fun before we started. I then proceeded to start class. By the end of the class, a student had gone to Mcdonald's in Texas with Dora the Explorer to eat overweight, ugly and smelly children. Another student went to Narnia with Gary the snail to Mr. Tumnus' house to eat Mr. Tumnus. Another student ate brownies in the gas station bathroom with Justin Bebier.

Fifth hour also made the class incredibly fun. The hilarious thing about TPRS is that you never quite know where it's going to go during class. You can always have an outline of things that you'll be doing. But each class can take such interesting turns with the structures and make it their own. During fifth hour, two students showed up late and it turned into a romantic situation later in class. One student went to Texas with Dale Earnheardt Jr. Another student went to Japan with Peter Parker. I evidently went to St Louis with Samuel L. Jackson. One student watched Pokemon while another student watched Spongebob. The teacher watched Dr. Phil. The teacher went to Macaroni Grill. Another student went to Subway with the student she arrived late with to class. Suddenly, we had a romantic situation in class that I hadn't foreseen! I took advantage of it and asked what she ate her food with. She ate her food with his hand. Finally, he kissed her on her hair. The students were yelling out suggestions but I wanted to go with a less obvious choice. He was a good sport and kissed his hand then touched the girl's hair.

Did I show up to class today knowing that a student ate fat, ugly, smelly children at McDonald's with Dora the Explorer or that two of my other students enjoyed a romantic dinner at Subway? You never quite know what will happen in TPRS when the class does their part.

Room for improvement:
It's funny because I was doubting the usefulness of my approach to the weekend activity this morning because it flopped in the first two classes.

The students acted as if they had not slept at all during the weekend. No matter how much I tried to get them to enjoy class and to wake up, they didn't try as hard. I tried to remind them that I could only do my half and the class was only as interesting as they made it. Nevertheless, by the time I got to third hour, I just found myself kind of drained of energy.

This just helps me realize that I need to help the first two hours to get a little more goofy with their stories because they don't quite have it mastered on their own like 3rd hour and 5th hour.

Día 12 - circling

2010-09-03T11:13:00.000-07:00

Something I need to work on in my storytelling is circling. Circling is the idea that you return to the other parts of a story to review information and practice the structures.

A basic part to good TPRS is repetition. Students (and anyone) remember something the more that it is repeated. If we just tell the story once from start to finish, many of the students might miss out on the information because of new structures or just focusing on something in the language and missing the rest of the the sentence. Or... just being in the clouds for a moment. Hey, they're human.

So through circling, we return to previous information and introduce it in new ways to make sure students are paying attention still. But if they are paying attention, it is not too hard for them if we do it correctly.

There are some different ways to circle. Imagine our statement is:
John juggles pineapples.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
1. You can circle the subject. (John)

Does John juggle pineapples?
Class, does John or does Rick juggle pineapples?
Rick juggles pineapples?
Who juggles pineapples?

2. You can circle the verb.

Does John juggle pineapples?
Does John juggle pineapples or John eat pineapples?
John eats pineapples?
What does John do?

3. You can circle the complement.

Does John juggle pineapples?
Does John juggle pineapples or oranges?
Does John juggle oranges?
What does John juggle?

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Circling is useful because we can return to previous information to review it for the students to remember the important facts of our story.

I've noticed that it is really good for the students to think of things in different ways too. So since you're asking about the same sentence in different ways, you're helping them to exercise their mind a little more and in addition figure out how to respond.

This circling often is asking for one-word answers. It's easy and to the point. Once you've established more details, your star students will want to show that they know more than just one word by reminding you of all the details with the one word answer.

In the workshop this summer, we were told to make a statement, ask a question, ask a question. In this way, you do advance in the story, but you also are making sure to review the information.

Here's a possible example of circling in a class after I have gone through the three statements:

There was a boy.
The boy's name was John.
John juggled pineapples.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Class. Was there a boy or was there a penguin? (Boy)
Oh right. There was not a penguin. That's crazy. There was a boy.
Was the boy named Alfredo or John? (John)
Right class. The boy was named John.
Class, was the penguin or the boy named John? (the boy)
Right class. The boy was named John.
Class, was there a girl or a boy named John? (boy)
Did the boy juggle apricots? (No)
No class. That's absurd. The boy didn't juggle apricots. The boy juggled pineapples.
Did the boy juggle apricots or pineapples? (pineapples)
Yes class. The boy juggled pineapples.
Was there a boy or was there a pineapple? (Boy)
Was the boy named pineapple? (No)
No class. The boy wasn't named pineapple. The boy was named John.
Did the penguin juggle pineapples? (No)
No class. The boy juggled pineapples.

After a little bit of circling, you might notice some of the kids are still not getting it. If they are not getting it, try and speak more slowly. Also, don't forget to ask them what you said in the spoken language. So for my Spanish class, there are times when I want to make sure that they understand a question and I'll ask them: "What did I say?" They can answer it in English and we can move on. If you notice the kids are getting bored with the circling, make sure to add more details to the story while circling.

I have noticed that because of circling, my students remember details that even I have forgotten. To be fair though, I am doing storytelling in all of my classes (6 periods a day) and the stories all have fantastical details that I can't always remember. But they help me immensely. And this builds their confidence in the language because they understand!

Día 11 - parallel storylines

2010-09-02T13:59:00.000-07:00

One of the most interesting parts of TPRS is the ability to create parallel storylines.

I'll write the examples in English for you in case you want to translate them to some other language.

Let's just say that I started out the class with a student volunteering.

Statement 1:
Class, there was a boy. (Class: "Ooooooooooh")
Class, was there a boy or an elephant? ("A boy")
Class, was there an elephant? ("no!!!")
No class, there was not an elephant. There was a boy. ("Yes!")

Statement 2:
Class, the boy's name was Jim. ("Oooooooh")
Was the boy's name Jim or Trevor? ("The boy's name was Jim")
Was the boy's or the elephant's name Jim? ("the boy's / the boy")
Was the elephant's name Jim? ("no")

Possible parallel storyline:
Now, because I've already mentioned an elephant AND a name of a person, I could already start a parallel story with the elephant or with a student named Trevor. Or I could make up a parallel story about an elephant named Trevor.

Statement 3:
Class, Jim liked penguins. ("Ooooh")
Did Jim or Trevor like penguins? ("Jim")
Did an elephant or Jim like penguins? ("Jim")
Did Jim like elephants? ("no")
No. Jim did not like elephants. Jim liked penguins. ("Yes")

Possible parallel storyline:

Since we're talking about liking something, I could now have my elephant named Trevor that likes something else to compare and contrast. Or I could have Trevor like elephants. Or I could ask another student if they like elephants. Or I could ask the open ended question to the class to let a volunteer answer the question: "Who likes elephants?"

Then as you add details to the story, you can add more people with other details about them. Sometimes, you will find that through fishing for details about people that are being added to the story, you can use that later as fuel for a different story. This also helps learn about things that the students might find funny or lame.

I'll now give two examples of parallel storylines in from the last few days.

Example 1:
In one of my examples, a class did not have the other half of the class and one of the people that we had made a silly storyline with was still in class. Because we are practicing structures and not worrying as much about the vocabulary, I decided that we could use a little more practice on the same structures that day so that it wouldn't be a wasted day. I used to just give free days. But if you do TPRS, you're playing around with your students anyway and it's a lot like hanging out with them when you do it right.

So as far as classroom management, if your class is helping you make a story instead of whatever else they might do on a free day, you've already taken care of any classroom management problems and they're more than likely excited that they're still working on something in class. We had established the day before that the girl liked tall African American boys. The main character of our story (who was absent) liked green cats. Thanks to the parallel story we had fished for the day before, we had a new story to work with until our hero was back to resolve his dilemma. The students had their heroine leave where she was (Sonic) because there were giant squirrels there. She went to St. Louis in search of tall African American boys. Sadly, she only found the president of cats in St. Louis and ended up going to Church's Chicken. In Church's Chicken she came across President Barack Obama and he was accompanied by African American boys for our heroine to be with.

*Side note* Depending on your school environment, this storyline might not be as politically correct for some students as others. I teach in a rural school in Missouri where the students were suggesting these things. But the purpose of these things was to help the students learn the language. Every class will look different. Yesterday, I noticed some students loosing interest and when I asked where the hero went, someone suggested "Hooter's". I looked at him with a sly grin and asked "How did you know?!" Then I said, "Yes class. He went to Hooter's." And all of their eyes lit up and they were back in the story. Sometimes we have to throw in details but we're doing it to teach the language. I am not addressing what goes on at Hooter's. He just went there to look for some cats. Sadly, there were no cats in Hooters.

Example 2:
The second example occurred today in my Spanish classes who are the farthest. Once we finished our first story this week, I gave the first reading from the book Look I Can Talk by Blaine Ray. The first Mini-Story is about a boy who lives in California that wants cats and not elephants. The story is in the present tense. In order to get the students to talk a little in the present tense, (or past) you use the story and translate the story as a class and offer any words they don't understand. You can do five-second grammar* explanations if there are any problems. The story on the paper is really a springboard for more storytelling. You want to work a little bit on their reading abilities as well as introduce the present tense to the students after you've gone over things in the past.

It makes things easier because since the boy liked cats in the story, I was able to start asking my class about who likes elephants (because the boy in the story does not like elephants). Then you can start getting your students to tell you how many elephants they have or how many they want to have. You can talk about size, color, actions the elephants do. It's always good to compare and contrast with the students. It's up to the teacher to help this happen. So one student had an ginormous (huge) pink elephant that was in 'Toilet Town'. Another student had a microscopic purple and brown elephant that was in his house. Another student had a giant black cat that was in the teacher's pants!

The idea is to start the students off with reading and then you can start making up stories. As long as it is in the language and they are getting comprehensible input, you're doing great.

*five-second grammar explanations are just that. Keep it simple and don't over-complicate answers to questions when the student most likely is not a grammar nerd like most language classes try to prepare us to be. Stick to five seconds or less when explaining something about the grammar of the foreign language. Sometimes, it's also just ok to say "I don't know!" , "It just is!", or "You know, Spanish is just different than English."

Día 10 - TPRS

2010-09-01T11:17:00.000-07:00

Wow, I can definitely see how people who like to plan things would have a problem with TPRS. The more you plan a story, the more you limit what the students can do with it.

As I've learned, since you're working with structures, you can teach those and regardless of where the story leads, the students are using the structures. It's win-win.

Today I could not have told you where my stories would have gone! My classes attempted to finish up the stories that we started yesterday. The stories got very elaborate in some classes. I love how you get to throw in high frequency description words into the stories to help make them more interesting.

Based on the same structures and similar start to the story, these are things we learned about today.

In one class, a girl wanted to have 2.4 babies. In the same class a boy got a new gigantic television from another boy who wanted to have a dollar and he gave him a dollar.

In another class, a boy went to Six Flags dancing slowly (or slow dancing) with another student. He later went to a Hooter's (because the students didn't think I would take that suggestion!) walking like Steve Urkel quickly.

In another class, a boy went to Taco Bell where Gerard Butler happened to have 900 green cats and he gave them to the boy!

In another class, I was most surprised when a girl who wanted 16 tall African American boys went to St. Louis because there were lots of gigantic squirrels in Sonic (where she was). She went to St Louis kissing the air quickly. She then later went (at the suggestion of a student) to Church's Chicken walking like a chicken slowly.

When storytelling, it is very important to know your audience. My students are getting better at playing the game every day. But they still need suggestions from the teacher that are outlandish or normal to build up more vocabulary.

So far, the hardest class for me to connect with has been the middle schoolers. They don't quite seem to be as engaged as the high school students with this method and I think it is because I am not quite as in touch with their culture to grab their attention. But I'm still learning about this method, so we'll see.

It's definitely more exciting for me as a teacher to come into class and feel the excitement from the students as they tell the stories with me.

Día 9 - TPRS

2010-08-31T09:36:00.000-07:00

So I had purchased TPR Stories for Paso a Paso by Karen Rowan a year or so ago when I was wondering how to implement TPRS into my teaching. I decided to start the year off with it in my classes. Nevertheless, I just found that it didn't fit the style of TPRS that I wanted to use.

My class enjoyed the TPR portion in which we had to perform different actions. But it got to the point where my brain just wasn't able to fill the class with things for the students to do or novel commands. At that point, Rowan starts adding in Personalized Mini Stories (PMS). Nevertheless, as I pointed out yesterday, those stories are very forced. They are forcing the students to follow a storyline so that the teacher is in control of the class and they basically just insert students' names into the story.

When I learned TPRS from the workshop this summer, we learned that it's about teaching certain structures. A teacher can throw in all sorts of vocabulary into the class as long as they keep in mind that the purpose is to give the students comprehensible input. The stories that Rowan had created were too detail driven to make sure students acquired the vocabulary. Instead, it is important to focus on the structures and the vocabulary will come more naturally. Today, I decided to start over (in a way of speaking) by starting to tell stories from the book Look I can Talk! by Blaine Ray.

The beauty of the stories in the teacher edition is that you can really open up the stories to whatever. Not all of the classes have to be the same.

For example, in three different classes I decided to teach the same structures. The levels of Spanish are 1-3 and I can tell already that the level of stories will be different because the students in the higher levels will have more words that we can play with.

The basic structure storyline is that:

There was a boy.

The boy's name was [Student's name].

The boy liked ____.

The boy wanted to have ____.

The boy was in ___.

There wasn't any ___ in ___.

The boy went to ___.

It's pretty basic. With just that storyline, we went for almost the entire class talking about what the boy wanted and adding details. In each class the storyline differed greatly.

First hour:
There was a boy. The boy's name was Jesús. Jesús liked dogs. Jesús liked blue dogs. Jesús wanted 100 blue dogs. Santiago wanted a new television. Nacho wanted 50 dark-haired girls. Marcos wanted lots of money. Marcos wanted one dollar. Jesús was in the the mountains in Japan. Nacho was in the White House. Marcos was in a big box. There were no blue dogs in Japan. Jesús went to Marcos' big box. Nacho went to Marcos' big box. There were 900 girls in Marcos' big box. There was a party in Marcos' big box.

Second hour:
There was a boy. The boy's name was Pedro. Pedro liked cats. Pedro liked pink cats. Ana liked penguins. Rosa liked to play baseball. Pedro wanted to have 100 pink cats. Pedro was in the Colorado Mountains. There were no pink cats in the Colorado Mountains. Pedro went to Six Flags.

Third hour:
There was a boy. The boy's name was Burrito. Burrito liked cats. Burrito liked green cats. Burrito wanted to have 900 green cats. The professor didn't like cats. Catalina liked yellow penguins. Eva liked blue horses. Catalina wanted one incredibly small yellow penguin. Eva wanted small blue horses. Burrito was in Diana's house. There were no cats in Diana's house. There was one dog in Diana's house. Burrito went to Brazil slowly on a penguin.

fifth hour:
There was a boy. His name was Diego. Diego liked cats. Diego liked green cats. Carlos liked gigantic squirrels. Ana liked tall African American boys. Diego wanted to have 307 green cats. Carlos wanted to have 11 gigantic squirrels. Ana wanted to have 16 tall African American boys. Diego was in the bathroom. There were no green cats in the bathroom. There were yellow cats.
So as you can see, each class had very different details that they added and they personalized the story to fit their needs. I tried to help them learn to play the game. Hopefully we'll get better about playing the game as we go.

Tomorrow I think we'll continue the story. Some students seem to just shut off for a moment and they do not signal me as we rehearsed. I need to be better about making sure I talk slowly enough for the students and to point slowly.

For assessment during class, I did try the 'show me your fingers' activity where the students are supposed to show their comprehension to you. If they show all 10 fingers, they did not understand. If they show you 9 fingers, they understood 90 percent, etc. You want to shoot for about 80% comprehension or more from the entire class. If there is less, review and make sure that the students understand the material. I also had the students write 15 words in the last few minutes of class of some of the parts of the story. This was to build their confidence that they could understand what we were talking about in class.

This method is much more entertaining than traditional teaching because the class can be so different based on their ideas and the story can still be compelling.

Día 8 - Storytelling in Class

2010-08-30T11:37:00.000-07:00

It seems a tad premature, but in the book TPR Stories for Paso a Paso, Karen Rowan already has introduced Personalized Mini-Stories (PMS).

Today I thought that my students and I could probably get along without them but it seemed like they needed to spice things up. This Monday they were dragging more than ever and the year just started.

I decided to do a little TPR to warm them up. Then we went into the story.

They did a pretty good job with the story. I did like the story for the most part. However, the teacher was trying to force too many vocabulary words into the story instead of allowing it to be more natural. I saw TPRS modeled in such a way that you are constantly fishing from details from your students and circling. So it seemed strange to tell an entire story basically without the help of the class. I decided to make the story more bare-bones and try with the class. This allowed more circling of the important parts of the language and the structures I chose from the mini-story were important ones in storytelling.

I did also tell the story in the past tense instead of the present tense because in the workshop I took this summer, Donna Tatum-Johns taught us that in her classes, she teaches past and present simultaneously. Since she is focused on meaning instead of grammar, this is highly successful with her students.

This thought intrigues me since for as long as I can remember, students tend to default to the present tense even though you teach other tenses because the present tense is one of the first things they are exposed to in the language.

Día 7 - Three-Ring Circus

2010-08-27T11:52:00.000-07:00

Today in class I wanted to spice things up a little bit.

In the book TPR Stories for Paso a Paso by Karen Rowan, she mentions an activity called: Three Ring Circus.

The idea is that you have three students doing completely different things while you try to talk to the class about it.

So in my classes today for the last 10 minutes, we tried this. I had three volunteers. I told the volunteers the following directions and made sure they continued performing them until we finished talking about them.

Volunteer 1: Walk to the wall. Hit the wall with your foot. Walk to the desk. Hug the desk. (don't stop!)
Volunteer 2: Dance to the board. Kiss the board. Dance to the table. Eat the table. (don't stop!)
Volunteer 3: Sit on the book. Stand up. Play guitar. Yell. (don't stop!)

Then you ask the rest of the class questions about the students performing the actions. You can start out with yes/no questions about them like:

Does V1 walk? (yes)
Does V2 yell? (no)
Does V1 play guitar (no)
Does V3 yell? (yes)

Then you can ask different questions with one-word answers like:

Who yells?
Who plays the guitar?
Who kisses the board?
Does V1 hit the wall with his/her hand or his/her foot?
Does V2 hug or kiss?
What does V2 hug?

My class really enjoyed the fact that three people were constantly performing these things simultaneously. It spiced up class and helped to narrate a little.

Día 7 - quizzing

2010-08-27T11:38:00.000-07:00

TPR
As I was counting, we have covered over 50 terms in that time span. Typically we are adding 9 words a day. In doing so we have jumped to a fairly accurate comprehension of over 50 words.

Through TPR, I have added the commands: tócate [body part] (touch __), toca [object] (touch __), besa (kiss), abraza (hug), golpea (hit), baila (dance), llora (cry), come (eat), bebe (drink), grita (yell), siéntate (sit down), levántate (stand up), derrama (spill), camina (walk), corre (run), señala (point) & huele (smell).

Each day we'll also learn body parts or classroom objects.

At the end of each class, it is recommended that you have students close their eyes and perform the different actions. This sends the message that students are expected to learn something in class that day. You call out the different commands and watch students perform them. If some students are still unable, you comment something like, " We still need to work on that one a little bit, but we'll work on it more tomorrow!" This is to remind that students that they are all going to learn in class even though it might be a little harder for some.

Usually you call out the commands that you have taught the student that day, but I like to throw in some of the older ones as well that are easy for all the students to build their confidence. That way even if they don't get a new one as easily, they can prove that they have learned something before. I also make sure to use all the terms or as many of the old terms mixed with the new terms each day to help with binding.

The way I have accomplished this is by writing all of the commands in the sections from the different days we've gone over them to remind me when in front of the class to do certain actions. The list is getting huge now though! I might have to start printing it out.

Even though I assess my students every day, I decided that I should try to give a 10-20 point quiz once a week. One TPRS teacher told me that she does not like to tell students when they will have a quiz or a test because it's better to assess them where they are at and you do not stress them out. As far as they are concerned, it is a regular part of class. You can tell them after the quiz that they just took a quiz. At that point they should already have a good idea of what their grade was.

So in some of the classes I had them write the English translation of what I said. Almost all of the students got a 100%. One or two students got Bs. This helps me realize that I still have to help build up those lower students.

In one of my other classes, I decided to do the quiz orally. I just had the students close their eyes and perform the actions like any other end of class. To keep track, if a student missed one, I would write their name next to the question. This way I could keep track of the points for the gradebook. They did incredibly well. For TPR, I think this is the better way to quiz.

So far I am quite impressed with TPR in my class and am much more excited to start the TPRS portion of the year in a week or two.

Day 6

2010-08-26T09:09:00.000-07:00

TPR
My students seem to be enjoying the hands on learning associated with TPR. One issue I have noticed is that I like to review sometimes so much that by the time I get to the new words, I have a hard time coming up with chain commands with the new things. Maybe it's not necessary to do so many chain commands every day because the novel commands can become more fun and those can help the students to bind the information.

I would like to practice some more chain commands with my students though for the days to come.

What I like about TPR and TPRS so far is the minimal planning involved. However, the more that you get into the commands, it might help to plan out a few possible situations (with novel commands). Today, on the fly I was able to create little narrations about a book dancing with a paper. The book kissed the paper. The book kissed the paper with tongue. The paper hit the book. The paper cried. The paper ran away.

Although some students were confused about paper crying, this just sets the students up for the rest of the year with TPRS. The goofier the novel commands are, the better off we will be for tapping into their creativity later. I want to prep their minds and start them off before we tell stories in such a way that they are prepared for goofiness and they can get further out of their shells.

Some of them do not do all the commands. I do try to coax them into doing them. But I feel more confident about TPR each day that we do it because I can see how what we are doing can be built on later.

I am not sure about the book I chose though (TPR stories for Paso a Paso by Karen Rowan). Rowan did an excellent job of coming up with stories and mini-situations throughout the book that capture the vocabulary from the book. Nevertheless, a lot of it is forced because she is trying to use a textbook. I would like to try this book the rest of the year. But some of her stories try to force too many things artificially instead of naturally. I could be wrong though.

I admit that this is my first year trying these strategies so I am hardly the expert.

Day 5

2010-08-25T11:39:00.000-07:00

TPR (Day 5)
For my TPRS students today, I have been slowly adding to the lists of words and the craziness is certainly ensuing.

I did have some students today who asked if we could stop doing the standing up all of class. Nevertheless, most of the students seem to really enjoy having to move instead of any other sort of production. This also helps you determine which of the students in class are going to be your actors. If they ham up when you tell them to do something, chances are they will ham up when you give them acting parts.

Unfortunately, two of my students really want to lean against things or sit down during class. No one else in the class appears to want to do this. But these two students, who happen to be more athletic do not want to remain standing or are having a harder time doing this. I hope to be more encouraging to them in the future to let them know how important they are in the class and their standing is only for a little while longer before we start storytelling.

But seriously. I have to stand almost all day and I am not complaining! It makes class go by much faster for me and for most of the students.

One of the most important factors so far in class has been the Novel Commands. Blaine Ray does mention Novel Commands in his book Fluency Through TPR Storytelling. I did not realize
before doing the TPR how vital these are in the classroom. It's fun enough the first day or two for students to touch a part of their body. Later having a part of the body dance is fun. But then when you get to more abstract ideas like 'dance the paper on the wall', they have to visualize the words and make some sort of sense out of the message in order to act it out. These novel commands can get much more complicated. I love how the students are able to get a majority of the commands the more we baby step with them.

TPRS
So in my 7th grade class yesterday, we had a wonderful time with TPRS. I continued the activity I mentioned yesterday from Ben Slavic's book that involved having each student draw something about him or herself. Then I would slowly talk about each student in Spanish and learn with the rest of the class about the students. For me it is interesting because I learn personalized information about my students lives. For the students it is interesting because the class is almost entirely in Spanish.

I have been so incredibly nervous about TPRS since the workshop I took with Donna Tatum-Johns this June. It just seemed like so much to be cognizant of when teaching. But once you start doing it, it works so easily.

For example, yesterday I continued reviewing information with the class. We went over how many students hunt deer. Another student hunts the professor (AY AY AY!). Two students play drums. One student plays "Mushroom Head" on the drums while another plays "We Will Rock You." One student plays electric guitar. Another student hunts giant orange elephants. Finally another students likes to ride four wheelers.

The most entertaining moments in class were when a student joked about hunting 'el profesor' instead of 'los venados' (deer). I played along with the student and this could actually be an interesting storyline later. Granted that might be something teachers could avoid depending on the student but the class was playful. I asked a student before class if he could hunt elephants. He told me he would like to. So we said instead of 'deer' like everyone else, that he hunted elephants. I decided to milk this one for all it was worth and I started probing for details. I found out that the elephants that he hunted were very big and they were orange.

Somehow when I asked a student if he rode elephants or fourwheelers, the students realized that the 'profesor' actually rides giant orange elephants in [local town]. They loved it.

This just helped me realize how easy TPRS can be. If we start off learning about our students through PQA, we could have ideas for material to last us the rest of the year personalized to the class!

I'm incredibly excited to see what we come up with this afternoon.

One negative thing is that it is hard to plan for class right now since I am relying on the students and I tend to do better in the moment. As a result, I find myself (just as when I used to perform) incredibly nervous before my last class. I hope this wears off.

On the plus side, I don't have to do hours upon hours of prep like I used to.

Day 2, 3 and 4 TPR

2010-08-24T11:42:00.000-07:00

TPR
Well, I am continuing with Total Physical Response (TPR) probably for the next week or two. So far the students have really responded positively to it and they can remember the words very well.

I am also glad that I can come to class with minimal planning and rely on my understanding of the language and creativity to make the students point to things and act out different things in their head that I say so that they can perform them.

If done correctly, it is stimulating for them as well as entertaining. I like to offer fun and goofy things for the students to do. For example, today we went over 'señala el libro' (point at the book) and I later added 'señala al profesor con la lengua' (point at the teacher with your tongue).

When the entire class did that, it looked like they were spitting their tongues out at me and I said with an offended expression: "¡Clase por favor!" (class please!). To which many of them laughed.

It's incredibly engaging too. Certainly students have been complaining here and there because they want to sit down and they claim to be tired. I caught a few trying to lean up against their desks or the wall. I try to keep them pretty active though so this doesn't happen. In addition, I make sure to model the behavior that I expect. I point out to them that if I stand, they can too.

I think that this teaching style really fits my personality better than others I have tried because I can be a positive person as well as goofy and teach the students. I am also not worried if students try to complain because I will just respond by telling them that instead of complaining or sighing, I want them to say "yippee skippee" or something to that effect with enthusiasm so that we can build on the positiveness.

TPRS
In my last hour class, I decided to start trying out a little TPRS with my 7th grade students because they need a less traditional style class at that age. The junior high class has always offered me something to be desired regarding classroom management. I've been reading "TPRS in a Year" by Ben Slavic which can be found on his website. In it he mentioned used Personalized Questions and Answers (PQA). Long story short, yesterday I tried it for the first time with my 7th graders. It was their first day of class due to assemblies during the first week. I challenged them to learn with me and I started an activity that Ben did in his class. I wrote down a sentence about myself on the board "El profesor toca la guitarra." Then I circled and asked questions with "Who plays guitar?" or "What does the professor play?" in Spanish. Then I had the class draw a picture about something they like to do. When I went around the class, I started teaching things about the students based on their drawings and Spanish.

It was incredibly effective! A para-professional in the classroom told me later that it helped keep her awake and was fun. Not only was the adult in class enjoying it, the kids were all paying attention! They might have drifted once in awhile but I could get their attention back pretty easily. I am nervous and excited to try it again in an hour to continue learning about them.

Day 1 TPR

2010-08-19T08:58:00.000-07:00

TPRS (Teaching Proficiency through Reading and Storytelling) started off many years ago as TPR (Total Physical Response). When I was first researching it about two years ago, I stumbled across a Youtube video that actually shows TPR in its primitive stages.

In TPR, the instructor teaches the students through call and physical response. The teacher might say "touch your hand" and model it to the students. Then they will add more body parts and movements. This can be later changed to add sillier movements such as "dance your hand on your head."

In TPRS teaching, the instructors are advised to start with traditional TPR in the classroom to help students acquire some basic necessary vocabulary before the storytelling portion.

The text that I have chosen in order to help me learn a little more about the TPR process is TPR Stories for Paso a Paso by Karen Rowan. She has a done a good job of incorporating the slightly dated Paso a Paso book series to teaching TPRS. You don't have to have the book necessarily to teach with this method because it's mostly TPR and then later storytelling.

Today I have started off with my first few classes with TPR. We went over 8 commands involving touching body parts and one additional command "dance."

Since the classes that I have had so far are Spanish II and Spanish III, I thought that they might reject my method and opt for the traditional teaching of passive learning and staying in their seat. All of them tried it and seemed to enjoy it. Because I'm not asking them to speak, simply to do, they do well with it. I also tried to make it silly (as suggested) by telling them to do such things as "dance your mouth on your finger." I modeled it and they laughed and tried.

I've been nervous about this transition in my teaching for the past week more so than ever and today I felt a breath of fresh air. My students really did enjoy it and some made comments about how fun it was.

In the portion where I had them close their eyes and perform the actions, all of the students got 100%. Part of me wonders if some were peeking out of the corners of their eyes. But hey, the purpose of TPR is to teach all the students to succeed. The good thing is that we had plenty of repetitions for them and tomorrow we'll throw them in there as well. What I like is that since I have decided to start off the year in all levels (1-3) with the same material, I am able to adapt it as I go throughout the day and practice it way more. Once we get into storytelling, I will expect richer stories from the older students because they will have more exposure to vocabulary from previous years.

We'll see if they can remember it though.

I'm going to start TPRS

2010-08-18T09:51:00.000-07:00

I am going to do my best this year of incorporating TPRS (Teaching Proficiency through Reading and Storytelling).

I went to a 3 day workshop this summer and it has completely supercharged my expectations of myself in the classroom with my students. I really hope to be able to deliver the language to them through the TPRS method. However, one of the neatest things about TPRS is that it is so customizable and it builds off the personality of the teacher as well as the class.

The basic premise is that we can teach students through Total Physical Response actions as well as Storytelling. We start off teaching actions and then later build that into storytelling. Students acquire the language better through the narrative and the associations that are created through the meaningful narrative.

The better narratives will be able to evoke some sort of emotion. It seems as though the examples that were given were about goofy and crazy situations. However, someone once told me before performing improv that you do not have to make it funny. Some of the best scenes he had done had people crying at the end.

So I will start out goofy. But part of me wants to try out other storytelling genres with TPRS and see if the other narratives also have positive results on the memory of the students.

The evolution of planning

2010-02-16T12:07:00.001-08:00

Preface:
My case might be typical or atypical. I am not incredibly sure. I first started teaching as a college graduate without any certification whatsoever. I hadn't even planned on going into teaching! I hadn't found anything as far as work a few months out of graduation and I received a phonecall from a rural school in Missouri who was desperate for a Spanish teacher and would look the other way about my lack of certification. Three or so weeks later, I started teaching Spanish.

Somehow I find myself in my fourth year of teaching. The interesting thing about my experience is that I haven't been spoon-fed anything from education classes. Instead, I have come up with all my activities on my own and learned many lessons that some students might already know about before arriving into a classroom. Regardless, I would say I am a much better teacher this year than I was when I started. I am constantly changing and trying to improve. This might be evident in previous posts and will be more evident in future posts. I am a reflective person and enjoy thinking about how to become better at something.

Planning
With that as my preface, I want to explain how my planning for classes has changed over the years. I first served as a tutor in college for Spanish students in lower level classes. The lower level Spanish classes required the students have a contact hour with the tutor and so I would usually have groups of 4-5 students for a 50-minute time slot. My planning would involve my asking the professor what he wanted me to cover with the students and then make a few activities up either beforehand or on the fly during that tutoring session.

One summer during college, I taught a summer school Spanish class for a total of six weeks. I had children from ages 6-12 in the class at one time and it was an interesting experience. My mother is an elementary school teacher and she helped me understand that planning was something that could be done through breaking down the minutes of classes.

My first year of teaching, I taught two different classes of Spanish (I and II). My plans consisted of three or so things that I planned on accomplishing. Each class had a word document and all the days of that week. Under each individual day would be a description of the activities I hoped to accomplish.
-----------------------------------------------------
Ex: (from Week 1 2006)

El viernes el 25 de agosto

* Nota Cultural (p10): discuss Usted

*review alphabet/greetings/formality

*numbers 1-10

*VIDEO-VIERNES: Las chicas superpoderosas (Episode: “Slumbering with the Enemy”)

-answer questions on sheet after/while watching the movie

Tarea: Greetings Worksheet

-----------------------------------------------------
I have slowly evolved this model as I teach. I like breaking it down. For the following two years I did this as well and would try to break down times when needed. I would occasionally write lesson plans as I started taking college classes last year. However, those are too impractical for my purposes. My priority is to teach my students and writing long lesson plans does not help me teach more effectively (from what I can tell).

This year is when things started changing more dramatically. I continued the class schedules as separate documents. But because I had so many different classes, I decided to create a document for the daily schedule. Each page contains a different day of the week but I have all of my classes planned on the same document. In conjunction with this, I have stopped thinking in terms of days and what things I can do to waste time, etc.

This is actually something that excites me more about teaching. I have started thinking in terms of Activities and units instead of chapters. I save on my jump drive the different units with their own folders and all of the materials that I might ever need (ppts, transparencies I make, partner activities, worksheets, etc) as well as a summary of the unit. In the summary, I plan out numerous activities and make sure to have many different activities.

In thinking in terms of activities, I can diversify my teaching. If I notice that in one unit summary that I am doing a lot of one type of activity, I can then add more activities of different sorts but keep them all in that document.

For whatever reason I have found myself more enthusiastic about teaching and the days do not bother me because I know what activities I want to accomplish instead of worrying about the time.

My planning takes much more time than it used to. I used to wing most lessons my first year. But now I plan out my lessons and try to do much more partner activities and lessons that incorporate different senses, etc.

I would say I've evolved.

Computerized testing

2009-12-16T11:55:00.000-08:00

I find myself in a place of tension as an educator.

Performance-based Activities

I've been thinking a lot lately about activities involving performance in the target language in order to test my students skills. Doing this I could still have a rubric for grading and I could be looking for individual things. Or I could have my students perform a task or solve a problem in the target language.

This approach is appealing to me based on backwards-by-design. I could design a unit and then have my summative assessment as some sort of task that students must perform so that I can lead them by the hand all the way up to that point.

And yet, I also feel as though I should give students that might prefer the formal version a test. So I find myself in this limbo between two types of assessment.

What does this mean for me? Well, one thing I would like to do potentially with this is to give students an option by the time of the test. Either they can take a written test or perform a task in the target language and both would be covering the same points, but would offer the students with a choice. I like this idea in that I could be tapping for multiple intelligences.

But at the same time, perhaps I could give students both and they would even each other out. Or alternate depending on the units. Some students will prefer the 'test' over an 'activity' because it's safer while others might like the risk of trying out the language for a purpose other than an 'A'.

Testing

Then there is testing. I change my philosophy each year on how I should be teaching my students and therefore, how I assess them. This is my fourth year of teaching and I have never used the same test. Every year I write it again. This year I am proud to say that I try to include different types of activities that are more focused on meaning and less interested in spelling because do I really care if the students can spell the word right? Or do I care more if they can use it to express themselves. How often will I have my students write on a piece of paper instead of speaking? I would think speaking makes more sense.

So testing should reflect their understanding without forcing them to worry about every single letter. Instead I can offer Cierto/Falso questions and even multiple choice and matching (something that I shunned before).

This year I have also decided that I would rather test my students over the computer in order to save paper and the hassle of subjectivity in grading. In addition, I can ask the students to improve on their first performance and to take notes on anything they missed. It doesn't mean anything extra for me if they are to retry the test.

The pictures to the sides are some examples of tests that I've been making through: quia.com.

It's pretty basic to use and takes a little longer to make the tests for my students, but I see the perks as being higher.

Something I've wondered though is that because my school is small, I have to have to students go to the library to take the tests and that is changing the environment and taking them out of their 'Spanish' comfort zone. So scores might be slightly lower on the test due to inability to recall information as a result of the environment.

But thus far my Spanish 2 students have preferred the computerized tests and tomorrow I will test out my Spanish 1 students and we will see if they also prefer the format.

Get things rolling

2009-05-27T13:39:00.000-07:00

I've been learning that a good teacher reflects on past experiences in order to better him or herself as an educator. If we do not reflect on our past successes/failures, we are doomed to repeat them.

So this is to help me reflect.

Final activity for classes (Start, stop, continue):
On a piece of paper, help me (the teacher) by answering the following:
1) What should I start doing?
2) What should I stop doing?
3) What should I continue doing?

8th grade answers: (13 students; 12 answered)
1) start
more games / doing fine / more 'regular' words to create sentences / pay more attention to students in case we talk about you / studying cultures / no homework / games / class was pretty good / IDK / practice telekinesis /more about culture

2) stop
flash cards / throwing markers at students / abusing the students / like the tests / nothing, this class is great / tests / tests / nothing comes to mind / cheating at 'caramba'; jk, all is good / nothing; I think your methods of teaching are effective and fun / tests / tests, quizzes, any study guide

3) continue
games / games /using games and interactive things to teach. That method seems to have helped a lot / the games are REALLY helpful and make it easier to remember. Kudos to you for being so creative / word search / games / reviewing terms, colors, etc / liked activities / being flipping awesome / everything else / powerpoints / 'I liked how we started out with conversations. Then when we learned new things, we played games to remember them. I liked the fly swatter game! Not to mention we're actually learning something the way you're teaching. Actually understanding it. That type of thing.'

Spanish I (10 students)
1) start
more review games / more food days / more parties and food / projects on the computer / go over verb words more / more movies / there isn't that much that you didn't do in class. I really liked it! ¡Gracias! / ¡Por favor tocar la guitarra más! / I think we should have as culture day like Sept 16. / salsa dancing

2) stop
the rants / game: ¡Caramba! / TEST!!! / listening activities / videos we had to watch / translating / I didn't like the audio activities, but they did help me / song: El Pollo / I didn't like the listening activities because I couldn't ever get anything out of it / listening worksheets

3) continue
how easy it was to learn / I like the way you teach and everything / me gusta your sense of humor y fiestas / games & talking time / review games / learning Spanish / I really liked the way you taught it was great & I am excited for Spanish II. / me gusta ¡Caramba! / I liked the whol class and the games. I felt like it helped me learn better and remember things. / fiestas, all games, caroling

Spanish II (8 students)
1) start
no sé / more projects to help, like the movies / more detail on eso, esa, esto, esta / we should make flash cards in class / hands on examples, more time on reflexives / being more strict on things and when people don't turn in homework show them you're not worried about your grade and doc points / more worksheets to drill the concept in your head / more games that apply to the lesson

2) stop
no sé / nothing / nothing / playing 'Lotería' / ---- / IDK / nothing / nothing

3) continue
videos and powerpoints. The city project was fun! Asking about our weekend. / teaching the way you do / games and fun learning / continue making videos / using pictures and other examples that make it easy for people to visualize / redo test mistakes when you get it back because it helps out / showing powerpoints, they really help / movies and gimp projects

Food for thought...