Hi Ben! I had an amazing time at NTPRS this summer and when I looked back through my notebook (yes, paper and pen) I felt like I had a collection of gems that I’d like to share with the blog. So…here are some of my takeaways from a few of the incredible sessions I attended..but first I also want to say that we, as a community, really need to stop treating Latin teachers as if they are somehow different. A lot of Latin teachers felt singled out, patronized, laughed at, and otherwise misunderstood. Latin is alive and well in TPRS classrooms! There were like 46 Latin teachers at NTPRS! They are doing the exact same work as any other language teacher!
Jason Fritze:
That story is a home run – it teaches itself!
TPR sequence 1. Say and model/gesture the action. 2. Say and delay the modeling 3. Say and remove the model. 4. Use novel commands.
Students perform commands “like a robot, like a monster, like a princess”.
TPR commands: cry…cry more! laugh…laugh more!
If you see one person uses the stop gesture, then everybody does it. Solidarity!
“I’m not teaching colors, I’m using colors. I’m not teaching body parts, I’m teaching has”.
The foreign language profession has done a lot of shooting in the dark.
Fill in the blank is the most powerful tool you’ve got. Gesture to the students and have them fill in the easy stuff.
Don’t be afraid to break down a sentence and then put it back together.
Give instructions in the target language one piece at a time.
Make laminated speech bubbles you can write on with white board markers and put magnetic tape on the back of them so you can stick them on the board.
Parking: Stop and ask a ton of questions. The actors keep it interesting.
Subscribe to the Univisión school of dramatic arts! Watch Carol Burnett.
1 or 2 actors is good, but it’s difficult to coach 3 actors at the same time.
The best props come from Petco in the dog toy section…they squeak!
Backward plan from songs.
Blaine Ray:
We keep working until we see confidence.
Breakdown is when students can’t answer with confidence.
The response to breakdown is to either circle or add a character.
Once you have mastery, then you can work on the story line and add more info.
Teach sentence by sentence.
It is not our goal to finish anything. We teach a sentence for mastery.
It’s about falling in love with your students, glorifying them and giving them the gift of fluency.
Start with a character, add yourself, add somebody else…that gives you a lot of places to go in your circling.
You can get so many more repetitions when you add yourself as a character.
Compare and Contrast, Compare and Contrast.
Stephen Krashen
We have school and we have the brain…which one can we change?
We don’t get better by practicing speaking.
Many heritage speakers suffer from language shyness because their more fluent relatives have made fun of their output attempts.
All of language acquisition is gradual.
There is no research to justify flipped classrooms.
Linda Li
My job is to make Mandarin comprehensible to you.
Your job is to slow me down if you don’t understand.
Remember, you don’t have to say anything. I will be your voice.
Sit back, relax, have fun learning Chinese.
For teaching “they” and “you” plural…put students into groups and then ask questions about them (everyone who wants to eat pizza in this group, etc…)
Betsy Paskvan
TPRS is not teacher centered, it is text centered.
Blind retell activity: #1 student faces the text on a screen, #2 faces away. #2 attempts a retell while #1 coaches and/or feeds them lines as much as necessary.
Craig Sheehy
Lower the expectation of output and be grateful for everything you get. Then the student feels like they are constantly getting extra credit.
Piedad Gutierrez
I don’t teach a food unit….it’s a “cooking and eating” unit!
Questions need to be clean, pure, transparent and simple. Don’t ask a fake question.
First construct, then deconstruct a sentence. “I don’t care how long it takes because we are not in a hurry.”
Teaching is an exchange of effort.
You ask questions….you want answers.
We are not in a hurry. We are never in a hurry.
How long do you park? You park until they get it.
Put up a wedding invitation or a concert poster and practice question words. Ask about it. This is what parking is about. Just stay there.
Mike Peto (everyone loved this gem of a presentation about FVR…check it out on https://mrpeto.wordpress.com/2015/07/24/ntprs-2015-my-presentation-on-fvr/ )
There’s a difference between being able to read and being a reader.
About “Coraline” by Neil Gaiman…I’ve bought this book so many times because it has been stolen so many times!
The grade for FVR is based on whether they read. As long as they actively read, it’s 100%.
Bob Patrick (I was the only non-Latin teacher at this incredible overview of Bob’s program novice-AP. Everybody who missed out can learn about it https://aclreadingplus2015.wordpress.com/ (scroll down to find it) , but the pp doesn’t quite do justice to the live version.)
We run “no fail” classrooms, but we cannot do this with AP as our goal.
To a student who has written no words on a timed write: This is not failure, this is your own personal benchmark.
Scope and Sequence becomes Comprehension and Community. Comprehension = they understand. Community = they trust us, they work with us.
Outline an essay together. He’s convinced that this is better than having them do it on their own. Then the student writes the essay.