TPRS year 2 - Junior High problems

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.

year 2 - TPRS - one word image

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. :)