A gem of a field report from Kevin:
Hello all. I’ve just rounded out week 3 of the year, and have to extend a big thanks to all those who have posted/commented here. I’ve gleaned so much already in just a few weeks time, and I know that its helping me each and every class to be a better teacher.
A few comments on my first experiences with TPRS this year. With my upper level classes — 11th and 12th grade — I’ve created embedded readings for the first passages we are doing in each class (thanks John Piazza for directing me to this wonderful technique). I’ve done my best to scaffold these based on grammatical structures, so that prior to the next level up we can spend an entire day working a few structures and circling them as much as time allows. This is a big change for my guys, who are used to parsing each sentence to death, but the response has been overwhelmingly positive. We have a lot more fun in class, especially on days when they get to offer the ‘cute’ answers.
My freshmen class is the best, simply because it is all new to them anyway, so they haven’t had to transition from my (and another teacher’s) past methods. We have yet to crack the book, and it is so refreshing. I shamelessly stole Bob Patrick’s TPR suggestions to start off the year (thanks Bob), and we all had fun ordering one another about the room and doing various tasks, all in Latin. We got on the topic of siblings one day, and so I used this as an opportunity to introduce “I have” and “do you have?” with “brothers” and “sisters.” Naturally they wanted to be able to know how many and this led to numbers 1-10. I spent time inquiring of some students, modeling questions and then stating that “James has 4 brothers and 2 sisters” and so on. The next few days we came back to this, and they interviewed one another (in Latin), and then reported back to the class about one another’s families. They were intrigued to find out these little details about one another’s families, and the whole time we did it in L2. We’ve since done more PQA along these lines, with much success.
The class I am having a great deal of difficulty with is my sophomores. Last year we marched steadily through a third of our text (for those Latinists on the list, I use LLPSI), which I will be continuing this year. This particular class has such a disparate range of ability/interest, from a handful of students who did almost no work last year and barely scrapped a passing grade to a few really gifted individuals who last year were handing me 2 page short stories in Latin that had me rolling in the floor in laughter they were so well written. We will be moving into new material in the text this week, but I’m struggling to find solid footing. I’ve already heard from a parent that her son is bored and that everything is too easy for him again, and she is worried about his actually being challenged by the class (note: this student had prior Latin experience before entering my Latin 1 class last year). I also recognize that some guys in my class barely remember anything we did last year (the ones who every other word we’ve read are mumbling to / asking their neighbor “what’s that mean”; “what is that”; “man…Latin sucks…”; “this blows”; etc.)
Any suggestions on helping a group transition into TPRS? Any thoughts on how best to keep the advanced guys challenged/interested/focused and how to convince the ones who think it’s all just a bunch of crap to start putting forth some genuine effort?
One final comment: I’ve never had so much fun teaching as in the past few weeks. I have had more positive (and real) interactions with students in class and outside of it than in the past few weeks. Huzzah for TPRS and for teachers like you all.
-Kevin