Big Bad Boy Two Week Lesson Plan

2 thoughts on “Big Bad Boy Two Week Lesson Plan”

1. Eric Herman

   September 24, 2015 at 7:22 am

   This year I’m having success doing a hodgepodge of CI activities per story/theme. Despite what some TPRS teachers say, that TPRS alone is enough, I, the teacher, get antsy for something different, and I’m sure the kids do, too! We continue to apply TPRS skills/strategies in every activity. I’ve been sticking generally to this order, sometimes including a step more than once in the sequence:
   1) TPR
   2) One-word image
   3) TPR Live Action Series (Gouin Series)
   4) A short MT
   5) Personal interview charts
   6) TPRS Step 2
   7) TPRS Step 3
   8) Spot the differences (TBLT information gap activity)
   9) Authentic Cultural Interviews (I filmed Honduran kids this summer)
   10) Speed reading + listening with extra credit output test
   11) Review test
   8th graders are getting 10 minutes of FVR per day. And I have learned that the teacher’s main role should be to go around the room checking with kids that they comprehend! Sure, we can model some reading, too, but I now think our most important role is to facilitate comprehension. I do that by sitting with a kid and we translate a page: I read a sentence in L2, the student translates to L1. I am stressing that no more than 5 words should be unfamiliar on a page and that there should be a speed/ease of comprehension. For about half of my kids I’ve had to recommend they change books, which they do.
   Younger grades are reading a book as a whole-class activity, spending 10-15 minutes per day on the book.
   Kids are not doing any writing 🙂 And most of the input is listening.
   This is the first year I’ve decided to give a comprehension-based test at the end of a theme (a story is a theme). But the test is more CI. In fact, it’s input that the kids try hard to comprehend! It only took 20 minutes. And the review of the test is also more CI! Check out our first exam here:
   https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B6n9VA2R4h9IUGw2UGRsUHg1MHc/view?usp=sharing
   75% of my 8th graders got an 80% or higher, many kids scoring over 100%.
   There was a greater spread of scores among the 7th graders, so I won’t enter the test as a grade. This was also the first time the 7th graders were doing a speed reading, so many tried going to fast and sacrificed comprehension. My 8th graders did 10 or more speed readings last year.

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2. Diane N.

   September 24, 2015 at 9:50 am

   “Despite what some TPRS teachers say, that TPRS alone is enough, I, the teacher, get antsy for something different, and I’m sure the kids do, too! We continue to apply TPRS skills/strategies in every activity.”
   Thanks, Eric, me too.

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