Here is Panel 7:
Plan and teach around a theme.
In this panel, the Georgia teachers who wrote this plan for teaching languages gave a fine example of some written student work on the theme of endangered species. It was great. It was also written by a superstar.
Let me think about this – teaching in L2 to fourth graders about endangered species. In the target language. Hmm.
No, that’s out of touch. That is remotely possible with maybe 4% of the kids (I doubt even that), but we don’t teach 4% of the kids, we teach them all. That is why teaching around a theme can only work if the theme is the kid and their life and their interests and their friends and anything they think of, not what we think that they “need to know”.
No one in foreign language education can argue that one of the great contributions of TPRS to the general good of furthering comprehensible input in our nation’s classrooms is the personalization of the classroom. The theme we need address in our classrooms is the kids. Let’s wait on endangered species until the AP or college levels.
I say we change the wording of Panel 7 to:
Plan and teach around the kids.
2 and 5.