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)

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 Conference St Louis 2012

So a few weekends back, I was given the opportunity to co-present two sessions at Foreign Language Association of Missouri (FLAM) with Youtube's Spanish and Portuguese guru, Professor Jason.  It all started on twitter since I had seen him at last year's conference and thought, "Wow.  That's the guy from Youtube!"  I know it's silly since Youtube is one of those things that anyone can get on provided they have a camera and some video-editing software.  I hit him up later on Twitter and we decided to give some sessions about our videos to foreign language teachers in Missouri at the FLAM conference in St Louis.

He covered the first part mostly about the usefulness of videos such as ours in learning and education in the future.  We are seeing a major shift in how the global classroom is.  People can learn many things on the internet that they couldn't before.

In the second session, we presented on our actual process of video-making.  I took the chunk of time up explaining my process because as the years have gone by, I have continued to hone it and it has gotten much more complicated.  If you would like to see more or less what I presented, here are some videos I made for those who had to leave the session early or wanted to see afterwards, click here.

FLAM was ok this year.  I really was hoping for more TPRS-friendly presentations.  I was talking to the guy that I've been conspiring with this year (post about that later) and I thought we should try to present next year at FLAM a few sessions on TPRS.  I would like to do three sessions.

1. Session 1: an immersion into TPRS (a class conducted in TPRS)
2. Session 2: a TPRS workshop (where we can learn about some skills and practice a few)
3. Session 3: How we integrate TPRS into our classrooms (with examples, possibly videos of students, etc)

I think it would help.  There seemed to be a lot of interest in TPRS, but many didn't really feel comfortable enough to use it for lack of seeing it in action.  Let's hope I can present on it next year!