TPRS year 3 - Agentes Secretos (teaching book)

So before Christmas, another Spanish teacher (at another small school) and I had planned out a unit of sorts for the first semester.  The goal was to teach the kids enough of the structures in the novel Agentes Secretos y el mural de Picasso.

The following is a reflection of the reading of the actual book as well as other activities that we did during the unit...

Went well:

• many students enjoyed reading a book and commented on that in their reflections on the unit
• students did well (minus a few outliers) on the test that was IN Spanish about the book and things that happened
• utilized different learning styles to help the kids understand the novel
• powerpoints with animations of characters 
• actors
• drawing
• reviewing
• the Native / Heritage speakers read the chapters for us as narrators

Improve on:

• doing more activities to vary review of chapters
• it seemed like we were rushing through the book near the end which made some kids uncomfortable
• start doing book a little earlier
• realize that not everyone likes reading
• talking about the students and linking language to them and their lives
• having students guess details in story...
• teaching the novel using reading strategies 

TPRS year 3 - Agentes Secretos - week 1

So this week we finally started reading Agentes Secretos y el mural de Picasso by Mira Canion in my Spanish 1 and Spanish 2 classes.  I thought it would be great for both levels and we could just do more in Spanish 2 with culture and embedded readings about history and culture to enhance the story.

This week for our TPRS structures and embedded reading, Josef Sallen (the teacher I'm planning this year with) had a great idea.  He decided to write an embedded reading about Francisco Franco (a dictator from Spain's history that also is mentioned in Agentes Secretos y el mural de Picasso).  It talked about how Francisco Franco is a boy and his dad is a soldier and Francisco later wants to be a soldier.  Then it gives some background about the Spanish Civil War and the two opposing sides in the war.

So it occurred to me that since we're going to be reading the novel and Joe had written the embedded reading about Franco, maybe we could find some other things from the era to help us go back in time and to understand the perspectives (that's national standards talk!).  So I found some propaganda posters that I showed for warm ups and had the students figure out which side they probably went with (the day after the embedded reading).  And on Thursday (on song day), we listened to Ay Carmela.  I saved a lesson plan about it.  It's a hymn for the Republican side of the Spanish Civil War.  It talks about the Battle of the Ebro (arguably a somewhat important battle in the Spanish Civil War).

I did a history lesson about parts of the Spanish Civil War with a PowerPoint in Spanish halfway through class.  My kids actually seemed to enjoy it!  Who knew that they could enjoy history in Spanish class.  The best part is that it only helps us to further understand the backdrop for the novel Agentes Secretos y el mural de Picasso.

Then today (Friday) we read the first chapter of the novel.  I haven't done a novel reading before.  I asked my kids to be patient with me since I was trying something new this year in teaching them.  Then we read.  One of the neat things was we have many Spanish speakers in class and I asked if they wouldn't mind helping me read the Spanish since they're so much better at the language than me!  It went over wonderfully. The kids were able to follow along and read while someone spoke in Spanish with a native accent.

Some problems of course did occur:

1. some students no matter how easy you might try to make it just don't like reading
2. the readings are way too easy for Native / Heritage speakers
3. only a few kids really bought into helping translate the novel as we went through
• I would really love for all the students to get excited about understanding and helping out
• How can I create a classroom atmosphere that will be more comfortable for all students?

Some things that went well:

1. For most students, the structures in the book were way easy to translate and it helped with confidence (still confusion between quiere and tiene among some Spanish 1 students)
2. Native / Heritage speakers read out loud as we followed.  I asked them if they wouldn't mind helping me read since they spoke Spanish way better than me while we followed.  Most jumped to the task since I asked them to hold back on helping us translate today. 

Ideas for future:

A teacher had an idea to get my kids to participate more when reading, I could have assign the students into groups with a color or animal and then periodically only allow that group to answer the questions.  This could be a much better idea for those big classes where some kids monopolize the answering.

TPRS year 2 - Working with novels

So this next year, another teacher and I decided that we should really work a lot more with the readings in teaching through TPRS since increasing the students' literacy is what will really help them acquire the language much better than anything else.

There are all sorts of TPRS novels that use 200 or so high frequency words or less.

We decided to choose a few novels for each level and then teach backwards and determine the structures in each novel that we should then teach to the students so by the time we read the novels, the students will feel more like it's easy to read.  I think this will also help me not feel like I am just taking random structures and teaching them just because.  It will help me have more of a sense of purpose to my teaching with TPRS.

The first two years I worked with TPRS, I really was working more on the form such as: circling, PQA, going slow, teaching to the eyes, and other things mentioned in TPRS workshops as well as Ben Slavic's books.

But this last year I really felt as though I hadn't done an adequate enough job of getting my students about to read a novel.  So this year we'll work harder on getting to that goal.

This also coincides nicely with something my school wanted to encourage with the Native / Heritage Spanish speakers.  There are some who know Spanish and had to learn English after immigrating to the US that never were able to learn how to understand what they read in grade school.  By the time they get to high school, this skill has become more and more necessary in classes.  So if I can help the Native / Heritage speakers to read in Spanish and work on things like talking about the main character and plot points, etc, then this will also help them in their English (Literature) classes as well as other classes where synthesizing information that has been read is an integral part of the class.

I'll be slowly charting out my plan(s) for the year as I figure them out.  I recently ordered about $90 worth of TPRS novels from tprspublishing... hopefully I can find some to plan with.

Día 13 - planning

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.