I’ve been struggling all year with a level four class that I had never taught before and that had done largely grammar from the beginning of their study of French – virtually no CI. I just assumed that the kids knew basic verb tenses. I assumed that they knew a lot more French than they […]
Martin Anders teaches French in Germany using TPRS. Here is a detailed look at how embedded readings worked in his classroom recently: Hallo Ben, I just would like to share my experience with embedded readings with my 8th graders. (Note that we start French already in 1st grade. But it is their first year with TPR and
Cara O’Brien-Holen teaches French at East Anchorage High School. She served in the Peace Corps – Mali, West Africa 1997-1999. I think that that is just cool. Anyway, Michele sent something Cara wrote as part of one of the Anchorage group’s teachers’ final course reflections. Michele said that she read this “as our final response person of the day,
Bryce ends his four part series on reading with this: Reading more than once is OK. Hearing it more than once is OK. Once is not enough. Reading a text over and over is good. We have to figure out how to get kids to do that. I think that there are other reasons
Go Deep! (Patricia va a California, Chapter 3, Part IV) Read More »
Parallel Stories — Further Explanation When students are given a situation and are allowed to be creative and smart I hear such good lines from them that I can hardly believe that I have not heard them before. Surely a brilliant author would have thought of that by now! And when it works, there is
Go Deep! (Patricia va a California, Chapter 3, Part III) Read More »
Bryce continues: There are many ways of “reading” a novel besides, just, well, reading it. These are some of the techniques I use to add interest and engage the students. Parallel Stories This is Blaine Ray’s method of teaching a novel. You simply tell a story about a student in the class that is similar
Go Deep! (Patricia va a California, Chapter 3, Part II) Read More »
I admit to a mild feeling of trepidation on Sunday nights, especially when I have, as Jody said, vacation head. Will my lesson plans work? Will I be in mental conflict with one or more kids? Will I reach them? How bad will the push back be? Will my instruction reach them? It seems worse on
Experienced TPRS Teachers, As a new foreign language teacher, I want to ask you all to please seek out student teachers to teach with you in your classrooms. For my student teaching, I ended up by chance in the classrooms of Rosa Santaiti and Cindy Price, two enthusiastic and experienced TPRS teachers, in a foreign
Here is some stuff about reading from Bryce Hedstrom. This the first of four parts: A few years ago, when I was more blissfully over-confident in my skills, I would push through all four of Blaine Ray’s level I novels in Spanish I. If it worked, I could get those poor 8th and 9th graders to
Go Deep! (Patricia va a California, Chapter 3, Part I) Read More »
Jeff sent these cool CI activities but the queue is so jammed up with stuff that I didn’t get it here in time for the NCAA tournament. Anyway, it’s great stuff for making the CI interesting. (Jeff, my apologies on getting this up here late, and to others who don’t see their stuff up here
A colleague recently sent me this. It is from a department chair in a school for which this colleague just went through an interview process. It speaks to the fact that not all schools want things done in the old way: It was truly a pleasure watching you teach and discussing my favorite topic, TPRS. We were all impressed
