Central States Presentation - Best of MO - Stay on Target

Hey everyone. Thanks to all who came out to my presentation at Central States in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

As promised, here is the PDF of my presentation. Please let me know if I can further clarify anything.

Click here for PDF (52 mb)

FLAM presentation - Mythbusters: TPRS Edition

Here is the basic presentation outline that Bess Hayles and I presented on.
https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B_jfUujjoeDHR2JpRW1vWi0zejQ

I also included notes of things that we talked about in our defense of some of the claims. I hope it's helpful. In general it was pretty crowded and well received.

Nevertheless I can't help but think that maybe people wanted to see more about HOW to teach with TPRS and not just listen to us defining it for people about what it is and isn't.

So next year, my wheels are already spinning about maybe trying to give more workshop-type sessions on building skills like circling/PQA or TPR, etc. I think that would be invaluable for teachers! So fingers crossed.

FLAM encore presentation - Stay on Target

Here are my presentation slides for my encore presentation from FLAM with links to what I mentioned!

https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B_jfUujjoeDHUEx1ZnVwNE1QaTg

TPRS Presentation in nearby District

So my francophone* colleague Bess Hayles and I were invited to give demo TPRS lessons in a nearby school district.

After that we gave a talk about Comprehensible Input to those interested. There were about 24 teachers that attended and they were a very fun and kind group of teachers.

We taught 90 minute blocks and my Spanish 1 students were great kids. They were very respectful but quite unsure of me since I am so weird.  By the end of the class though, I was able to win quite a few of them over.


While I was incredibly nervous, the teachers and students were gracious to us and I couldn't have asked for a nicer group to do my first TPRS model lesson and co-lead a professional development session.


Here's what I did in my lesson plan, not knowing what to do for a Spanish 1 class, and I didn't get through it all.

FLAM / KSWLA Presentation

So I gave my presentation first thing on Friday morning after the kick off ceremony and I was told that there was a mix-up and I was going to be presenting in the big banquet room.

I tried to explain that I had previously only drawn crowds of 15-20 people.

Nevertheless, I was told to just have everyone scoot over to where I would be presenting.

So in the banquet room, we all ate breakfast and there was a middle stage area, and two projection screens and I figured that once it was my turn to begin, I would just choose a projector to use and everyone could move over.

As it was time for me to start, I noticed that quite a few people didn't seem to be leaving from their tables.

I figured they were still deciding where they were going.

FLAM / KSWLA presentation: Stay on Target!

So I asked awhile back about people's thoughts on what I should present at FLAM this year. And here is my title, blurb.

Stay on Target! Ten Target Teaching Techniques & Tips

Presenter: Jeremy Jordan, Lee's Summit High School, Lee's Summit, MO

Jeremy Jordan of Lee’s Summit High School explains various techniques that he uses in his classroom to push TL usage to 90% or higher, while still helping class be a fun, positive yet rigorous place to be. Examples will be straight from Spanish class, but will be relevant to any classroom.

Audience: All Language: Presented in English Theme: Best Practices

And I came up with quite a loaded presentation.

If you want to see it, here it is!  I tried to include a lot of activities I use or have used in the past to help push my students to using more TL in the classroom.

Of course, there are so many other things I have found success with, but these are some of the most powerful that I have used that have resonated with my students.

And here are my presentation notes in a convenient PDF for you!

FLAM Presentation - Stay on Target!

My first official TPRS presentation to colleagues

Today I was given the wonderful opportunity to share a little bit about TPRS with some of my new colleagues (at my new school). I think that it was an overall positive experience.  Just like in my classes, I over-planned and some things under-planned.

Here's a PDF and here's a PowerPoint file if you would like to see them.

But here's a rundown on the good and bad for me in case I ever do something similar again:

Story idea - monster - follow-up

A few weeks ago, I posted about a story line I was wanting to do with my classes involving a grandmother (or any other character), monsters and silliness. See that post here.

So I had a class that was a little bit ahead of my other classes due to a late start and I wanted to have an additional activity (reading pass) for enrichment and to get those pesky yo forms of the verbs for them!

See abuela embedded reading.

I wanted to give them a google slides presentation instead of another piece of paper to read and while I thought about telling the whole story again from the grandmother's perspective, it occurred to me that it might be sillier to tell the whole thing from the monster's perspective.

If I did this right, here's the presentation for the monster story (part 4):



To make a copy of the presentation, click here to see it through my google drive!

TPRS year 5 - Cultural reading - los niños no acompañados

I realize that for our students, things that are novel are more interesting.  I'm also aware that one of the best experiences I had with my classes (ever) was being real with them in Spanish about a discussion where I was prepping their understanding of the words "las cosas pequeñas"(the small things) before listening to a song, "Las cosas pequeñas" by Prince Royce. (see blog entry)

While we prep our Spanish 2 students to be able to read Noches Misteriosas en Granada by the wonderfully talented Kristy Placido.  

And so a friend and I had decided to create a breakdown of new vocabulary per chapter for the novels so we would know how to pace ourselves and what/when to pre-teach structures.

This has been very helpful to determine which words we could teach through different contexts.