This is something I have struggled with since switching to TPRS and one of my major insecurities for the coming year.
I ran across some of my former students in Walmart the other day who were taking some Spanish classes in Upward Bound. Evidently the teacher shows my Chistes series to them in class but teaches more traditionally. My students were struggling. One of these was a student who had me for Spanish 1 last year and soared with the language. While she was quieter, I could tell by her warm-ups and writing samples how much of the language she was absorbing.
But she couldn't get the paradigm in this new class with the conjugation and probably being "taught" Spanish out of context.
I guess her grade isn't doing very well. I apologized for not doing a better job preparing her for this experience but told her that the fun part is she is better at communicating in Spanish than many Spanish 1 students taught through traditional methods. Although this still won't change her grade in her class.
This has brought up my own feelings of apprehension about the coming year with teaching in a department of more than ONE. Yikes! I can prepare my students for speaking Spanish and reading Spanish, but can I prepare them for GRAMMAR?
[sigh]
How do others do it without wasting too much time on grammar?
Showing posts with label failure. Show all posts
Showing posts with label failure. Show all posts
Saturday, June 22, 2013
Tuesday, April 19, 2011
Día - 152 - speaking of quizzes
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
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.
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.
Tuesday, February 15, 2011
Día 106 - love
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:
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."
Friday, January 21, 2011
Día 96 - failing miserably; lesson learned
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.
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.
Tuesday, September 21, 2010
Día 22 - what to do with Junior High
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.
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.
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