From Bryce:
Ben,
What follows is part of a recent ongoing discussion with a teacher from back East whose school is developing an AP class. I am excited about helping them because 73% of their students are eligible for free and reduced lunch, 96% are African-American and 4% are Latino. I want to help them and I think the strategies I have used to help my low academic rural kids do well in AP Spanish can help those kids too.
[ed. note: this is also very close to my own heart. I am as much if not more interested in the Achievement Gap than in teaching using comprehensible input methods. It’s a personal thing with me that goes back a long time to my career in South Carolina.]
Perhaps these answers could be a series of blog posts. The teachers are learning how to use comprehensible input based teaching in their upper level classes and they have a lot of really good questions. My responses to their great prompts might be useful to teachers on the blog. It overlaps with the piece I wrote about stories in AP a while back, which in turn was based on one of the days that you and Jenny [ed. note: Jenny Kelly from Valdez, AK] came to visit last spring. I have since edited and added a bit to that piece. If you want to run that as well I am sending you the updated version.
This is a lot of information. More like a workshop. But it might work as a series, maybe you could chop it into one question at a time. [ed. – I’ll do that but Bryce keep me on track because I can see that there is a lot of information here…]
AP Post 1 –
Hi Bryce!
I hope your school year is going well. I took your workshop at NTPRS last summer about teaching upper level classes. It was very helpful. We are in the process of planning for next year. We use TPRS in all levels and are looking to marry TPRS and AP next year. I wanted to see if you could give us some insight into level 4 and AP.
AP Post 1 –
Hi Bryce!
I hope your school year is going well. I took your workshop at NTPRS last summer about teaching upper level classes. It was very helpful. We are in the process of planning for next year. We use TPRS in all levels and are looking to marry TPRS and AP next year. I wanted to see if you could give us some insight into level 4 and AP.
1) Any information/suggestions you could provide would be helpful.
2) Do you have videos of your AP or level 4 classes that we could view to give us more of an idea of how things look in the classroom?
2) Do you have videos of your AP or level 4 classes that we could view to give us more of an idea of how things look in the classroom?
Thank you so much!
Hi L,
Good to hear from you. I would be happy to help however I can. I do not have any videos of my classes, but I do have examples, explanations and transcripts that may be of some assistance.
I am attaching an example of a class session for level 4/AP that may help to show this. [ed. note: I will post that as a separate post to follow this one – Bryce On AP 2.]
The main thing with upper level is to keep on using and reviewing the basics while pushing the upper limits of grammar and vocabulary. We especially tend to focus on idioms in the upper levels in my classes.
Keep in mind that large-scale vocabulary growth comes from reading a lot and the incidental learning that accompanies it.
Good to hear from you. I would be happy to help however I can. I do not have any videos of my classes, but I do have examples, explanations and transcripts that may be of some assistance.
I am attaching an example of a class session for level 4/AP that may help to show this. [ed. note: I will post that as a separate post to follow this one – Bryce On AP 2.]
The main thing with upper level is to keep on using and reviewing the basics while pushing the upper limits of grammar and vocabulary. We especially tend to focus on idioms in the upper levels in my classes.
Keep in mind that large-scale vocabulary growth comes from reading a lot and the incidental learning that accompanies it.
[ed. note: I can’t resist commenting. Just Friday in a meeting when we were going over our new state standards (almost the same as the ACTFL guidelines), Diana Noonan said the same thing. Reading is the key to all of it. If you haven’t yet read The Power of Readingby Stephen Krashen this summer would be a good time. If you can’t get to it, I can summarize it in two words: Read more. Or in five words: limitations in reading are about poverty and proper access to interesting books.]
Read over the attachment and we can keep talking as you generate some more questions. OK?
Bryce
Bryce