Once it hits us about what comprehensible input really brings to our teaching, some of us tend to push hard to get it going in our classrooms and in our buildings. That’s my tendency and over the years good advice from the group, advice of recent note from Judy which I will post as an article here, has helped me cool my jets a bit on this. The general and best advice has been indeed to cool it with others, give them time to get their eyes focused amidst the brightness of the change, close our doors and teach, and let them adjust their teaching in a natural way at a manageable pace because they want to and not because we want them to, even if it takes years.
That advice is especially applicable when there is a district person, who may or may not in fact know how people acquire languages, breathing down our neck with all sorts of stupid advice (stupid is the right word), and who has the power to send messages to all kinds of people about our very competence at teaching. I find that a truly absurd reality that our Michele Whaley has had to contend with (search her name in the search bar here for the details). So those in a position like the one Beth finds herself in below are strenuously advised to read what Michele says about her own current situation. I frankly can’t believe that Michele has had to go through this, since there may not be as competent, intelligent and gifted teacher in the entire country. The reader may remember the details over recent months as Michele has reported in on them. The advice she offers Beth is invaluable.
Beth Heuermann:
I want to thank everyone for all this discussion recently. Now I get it! We were told by our district that we have to write curriculum to match the state standards, and they paid some of us to attend a 3 day workshop at the end of school in May to start working. They brought in a consultant (who I think is affiliated with ACTFL) who told us that we had to develop 6 curriculum units for each level with thematic themes using authentic texts, and several of us have been thinking “Where did this come from?” Four of us in the dept. are using TPRS, and I at least am in a panic thinking, “how can I do this? How can I find authentic texts that students can actually understand that is interesting/compelling?” And it seems like SO much (extra) work! This discussion has given me the shot in the arm I needed to try to resist the thematic units curriculum writing project.
Michele Whaley:
Beth,
I only read what you wrote about the consultant just now. Be careful. We had one too. (And that’s one of the possible reasons I’m on the way out.) You can write these and be faithful to TPRS, but it will take some creative work. If the consultant has come to your district, the times are probably changing. Don’t fight openly.
If you can, use some units that are already prepared, or use the examples that the consultant gives you, and tweak those to fit you. Remember that some examples of authentic texts that you can typically find for many themes include pictures, artwork, songs, poems (both of those last two can be for children), advertisements, cartoons, infographics, posters, blogs, emails, restaurant/hotel/park/cafe reviews, and others. I can find many of these for Russian at the drop of a google search.
We used what we already had or what was quickly identified as examples, knowing we would not necessarily have to use them behind closed doors. (Laurie says to use the first reasonable item you find in a search.) We limited the vocabulary very strictly so that we could use it over the whole year.
We had to lead up to the AP themes by the fourth year (that’s why there are six themes). It was extra fun to mix in the IB themes. We looked at those and made simpler themes for the first year and a half. As we’ve said here, we don’t need themes or units in TPRS, but we have those themes, because they’re true of life.
If I were home, I could send you part of the examples, but truly, think about it: almost every story you’ll tell in class has stuff like: families and communities (generational disagreements), science and technology (health: drinking and eating, wanting to eat too much chocolate, falling asleep in class, using computers or phones), public and personal identities (how do our characters act in public and private, what’s the back story), and so on. You just have to look at the six big topics (ugh, see p. 27 of this http://media.collegeboard.com/digitalServices/pdf/ap/11b_3435_AP_SpanLang_CF_WEB_110930.pdf) and you’ll know how to dial the topics down. We used one of the Masha and the Bear cartoons to fit almost every one of those themes: working with others, cooking, technology of washing clothes, what we expected the bear to want to do and what he did…
Look at the requirements with a creative eye, and you’ll be able to do the writing without the angst and the negative attitude that might have been part of what cost me my program.