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Circling with Balls Ramble
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14 thoughts on “Circling with Balls Ramble”
Hello teachers
I just joined this community today. I’m a newbie TPRS teacher… and a feral one – I’m not a qualified teacher and I don’t teach in a high school. I an EFL teacher who did the Cambridge CELTA qualifaction (1 month intensive) for teaching adults. My background is journalism and I’ve taught business people writing.. and run a creative writing group and a songwriting group – if that’s at all relevant here.
At the moment I’m teaching freelance, small groups in Bangkok. I’m also teaching part time a writing course for IELTS students adults. The tricky one for me is some kids I’m teaching – I suppose because I’ve not done it before…
So here is my question – how do I get TPRS to work for private classes – for students who are already doing English in school and want extra help? They already have a vocabulary – I’m not sure how big though. I would like to buy the textbooks for TPRS – the mini-stories etc… to decide structures to teach etc … but I don’t know what level the students are at in TPRS terms. Is level 3 intermediate? or is it really advanced level?
And how do I teach a mixed ability small elementary age class – I’m beginning to regret agreeing to teach my Thai friend’s 2 kids English…. I have 2 classes with them. The upper class is 2 girls (age 9) – I think elementary level – done 3 years of English. And 1 girl (12 – older system of one of them) I guess she’s done 6 years. I think pre-int / lower intermediate… feels likes she’s ready for graded reader type stories… and writing her own stuff… talking etc… wheareas they are reluctant to… and they have a short attention span… not that interested. Want to run around and play ball.
In their 2nd lesson I tried giving the 12 year old excerpts of some graded readers to look at – princess diaries and wizard of oz… to see if she likes them because I hear she reads English comic books. The idea was to get her to read some at home and then write a summary of it for me and then in the class she can tell the younger girls the story… it was a way to cater to both levels…. but the parents say they don’t want their kids reading – they want the classes to be about speaking and listening.
I’ve been reading Ben’s fantastic books. He said start with the balls…. so First lesson I had all the key vocab up on the wall, question words, emotions pix, with thai translations, I had Ben’s crazy questionnaire with Thai translations for them, and i started with my name card and a pic of ukelele… circled it… these kids looked bemused…. and then I got them to do theirs etc. I tried circling that… and got blank stares. It emerged they understood – they just couldn’t understand why I was asking crazy questions… like “do you play basketball or a banana?”
Anyway I soldiered on… didn’t really get to the balls thing… I did the one word images…which was hard work. I got them to answer their forms – which I’d glued onto cardboard gingerbread men cutouts… I got one mum to say in Thai that the answers could be fun and made-up. Because as Thai kids they said “nothing interesting about me” or “I dont have anything I don’t want” etc. Anyway half the answers were “may ru”, or “May mee” in Thai – which is “I don’t have” /”I don’t know”…
Then I showed them the wolf and crow pictures and got them to decide what order the pictures go in, identify the animals. Taught them cactus desert etc… and then they told their version of the story.
Near the end I set up a basketball net pic on the wall and got them to aim for the centre with a tennis ball… they loved that! I got them to do the gestures we’d learnt for the 3-4 vocab items as they left the room.
The second class they seemed to know a lot more. I did a game where they had to do a gesture for the words we’d learnt in the last lesson. They got restless with the one word images and they seemed to know a lot more… it emerged they seemed to know all the words on the wall and they were reluctant to the do the 1 word images – the 9 year olds that is. They were shuffling around and then asking to leave for a glass of water…
I wanted to get them to be more imaginative on their gingerbread forms so I wrote my version of the form – with some crazy answers… and then pictures of 10 of the things…:something I have but don’t want” – pic of a wrinkly woman… etc… the 12 yo got hers all right in about 1-2 mins. The younger ones enjoyed it – took about 10 mins. Then I had a card game for them – I’d made simple – they loved that. I got them to glue some of the cards together – wow they really got into it. It’s a yes/ no game where I had made the questions – many using the same structure of “do you like sthg / doing sthg”.
It seems games is the way to go with the 2 younger ones – lots of games… but this isn’t TPR Storytelling, is it? Can you direct me to a TPRS course book to use with them?
I was going to try them out with some penguin graded readers in tomorrow’s class – I’ve bought some at level 1. I know one girl would love to have black pet horse – and I found Black Beauty at level 2… it might be a bit hard but I think she will love it.
Any advice ideas? I’m flailing around a bit here – lesson planning is taking ages as I am doing lots of research. The other idea was to give them one of the computerised vocab tests from http://www.lextutor.ca... still not sure if the 9 year olds could do this because it’s written and it’s hard for them reading English – because Thai has its own script.
I won’t even get on to the 7 year old… I think that’s going OK – we did a song with actions – Everybody wave hello. And then I got her to draw a picture. She drew herself so I drew a speech bubble and wrote “Hello. My name is xxx. I am wearing green shoes and a red top… etc” She is learning the alphabet so I marked the letter “a” and got her pointing to the words as I said them. She liked that. I will try a similar approach with her class tomorrow (3 x 7 year olds)
Tomorrow I was going to get them to do a collage each from magazine pictures – anything interesting they like. Then we can describe the pictures… colours etc… and maybe make some stories out of them. I thought of this cos the 9 yearolds loved the gluing last week. Another thing was to do the locations thing. Where I can get them to choose 3 favourite locations from Ben’s list… and get them to draw pictures of hte locations. Then use them as the 3 locations in a story….
Sorry this is long and garbled. If anyone can navigate me towards good sense and clarity please do….. thank you.
I’m waiting for Ben and others to jump in, but wanted to welcome you and tell you how amazing it is that you discovered TPRS. Also, having had a month of the Cambridge training, it’s crazy that you’re even considering TPRS! (I mean crazy good, not bad.)
That said, it’s a lot different to teach individuals with TPRS. I’ve only used it with one private student, but I had to explain to her that I knew this would be different from any other approach, and I had to teach her “the rules” of engagement: she would have to answer everything I said with “Yes,” “No,” an enthusiastic “Oh!” or the answer to a question, unless she told me she didn’t understand. Now she attends my adult classes and teaches everyone else to do that.
Reading your story, I flashed on memories of many of my Korean, Thai, Chinese and Hmong students, who counted on me to teach them the way they’d always been taught. They didn’t want to have opinions that I hadn’t given them. It has always taken a while for them to get “into” the TPRS program. It doesn’t make sense to them. When I am talking to a group of Chinese teachers, I don’t do the silly stuff right away, because even giving options from regular life is enough. It doesn’t have to be crazy. You will figure out your best stories: life, or a mix, or totally made up.
Next, I wonder whether your pair of girls are sisters, or good friends. If so, they aren’t going to be amazed by what you tell them about each other. The usual “Class, do you know that Katie has a miniature poodle?” does not have the same potential for amazement. (Still, remember that at least in America, kids that age are usually happy with talking about candy and animals. That’s my stock topic area for the middle-school age.) You might have to talk about playing ball, and sorting out the rules for their favorite game. “Is this the ball, or the bat?” “Is Katie about to throw the ball or throw the bat?” “What is Katie going to hit?” You might go through the motions of a game, and find that you’ve morphed into asking a story. All that matters is that the input be comprehensible and compelling.
Reading is key, but someone else will talk about that here. You can pre-tell the stories in short snippets or tell what we call parallel stories in advance (or during or after). Explain to the parents that reading will give the kids their vocabulary.
Follow the kids’ interests. Don’t stress yourself with so much preparation, but read Susan Gross and Bryce Hedstrom and many posts here. There are some ESL TPRS folks, and someone here will guide you to them.
Most of all, give yourself some time. It takes most of us a while to learn this. You are brave and brilliant for finding and deciding to adopt this path!
You addressed a lot of it Michele and thanks. The individual instruction is very hard since we haven’t really tested what we do in really small groups. It lacks the energy that a big group has and Katherine I am surprised that you haven’t quit in frustration with those girls. The fact that they know each other, as Michele pointed out, enters strongly into the equation. The setting itself is a roadblock to CI. You ask:
…it seems games is the way to go with the 2 younger ones – lots of games… but this isn’t TPR Storytelling, is it? Can you direct me to a TPRS course book to use with them?….
There is so little that is concrete with little kids in our agreed upon pedagogy. Most of us work in schools with larger classes – people like Leslie Davison and Erin Gotwals and TCI teachers who are accomplished with younger kids should be the ones to answer these questions, if they can be answered.
The thing about their vocabulary can create deception. I personally think that if a child has a big vocabulary it matters little if they haven’t heard the language as it actually occurs. So they think they know some English but if you reflect on it they don’t. They know practically nothing if they can’t follow a sentence and respond with yes/no answers.
I am also unsure if these girls are aware of the social responsibility they have to you. Since there is no group to be responsible to, you become the only one who can create the quid pro quo necessary to make the class work, but clearly, they don’t feel any responsibility to you. That is not good. I’m not blaming them – I think it would be this way with anyone in any place in this kind of setting. I’m saying that in my opinion the setting you are in can’t work.
I can tell that the educational system, as rigid as it is, is affecting their ability to just have fun with you. They are bringing the 19th century to you. No surprise. You could get really frustrated at this and I think I am hearing Michele say, and I am saying, that you may want to just look the thing in the eye and try to decide if you are willing to continue in such an awkward situation. Just my opinion.
What we do works with classes and hasn’t been proven to work with individuals in my own experience. That, again, is just my opinion. We need groups to make this fly.
…is level 3 intermediate?…
If the kid is a CI kid, yes, but if traditionally trained, there is no way. This is true in spite of the fact that most traditional teachers vastly overate their kids, and those are the 4%ers being overated. I don’t care how four percent a kid is, if they haven’t heard the language for thousands of hours in ways that are meaningful and interesting to them, they don’t really know anything more about the language than how to memorize something and take a test.
Assessment is bogus, really. Traditional teachers use written tests and memorization to show gains that, in terms of CI, aren’t really there. The real assessment is with what input they can understand, when they listen and when they read.
You have raised a lot of good points. I hope others respond, however briefly. But those are my thoughts in general. You probably need more specifics and maybe we can address that here as well.
Thank you so much Michele and Ben
I just read your really useful comments now after I got back from the class. I will definitely follow this advice for future classes. And funnily enough yes I’ve quit it! So it seems you are prescient.
The class was my friend’s elder girl Cheng (9), her sulky school friend Elmo (9) and Elmo’s sister age 12.
For the 3rd lesson running Elmo was sulky, won’t look at me, when I speak to her or ask her a question she ignores me. Her and Cheng talking in Thai a lot. During the card game for them they were just talking in Thai and not saying their answers of “Yes /No” etc so I told them off. I told them that the 6 year olds were speaking more English in their class than these guys were. I said this was an English class and if they didn’t want to speak English they can talk to their mum and stop coming to classes.
After the class I felt sooooo drained and, frankly, pissed off. My back was killing me. So I called my friend and told her the situation and explained that I didn’t want to teach sulky Elmo again. It’s like trying to teach a lump of dough. I also told her that sulky Elmo is a bad influence on Cheng and that Cheng is quite naughty in class.
That point about lack of social responsibility is true. Ben I’m wondering what you mean when you say the setting I’m in can’t work. Do you mean any private classes? Or that particular private class?
Anyway the class of 3 x 7 year olds did well with their class – completely different thing. They were interested and cute.
The point about the Thai school system is so true – learning by rote. Though you know with older kids and adults, in private lessons, they’ve got it. And they’ve run with it. Thais like to have fun. I did Ben’s questionnaire with an IELTS preparation writing class for adults – mostly aged 18-24 and they’ve come up with some silly things… nothing amazing but at least having a go…
Thank you so much for your wisdom and encouragement.
Hi,
I normally just read on here, but your situation is similar to mine so I thought I should comment. It is possible to get places with even small groups, but if the said group doesn’t want to play at any time then there is nobody else in the class to take over the reins, and no peer pressure on them to restrict their resistance So some small groups might be a dream from the start whereas some might never take off for you.
There are other problems with teaching small groups apart from the different group dynamic though. There is also the question of how often you see them. A lot these private tuition things are done on a once a week basis, rather like having piano lessons. You see the teacher for 45 mins once a week, get given a whole lot of practice exercises to do and then come back and show the teacher where you have got to. That model doesn’t really fit the CI idea of learning very well, and although I have heard of once a week groups that have some success that is one more aspect of the typical TPRS scenario that is absent from the private group one hour per week arrangement.
A further problem is that if you take people on just as they ask you, you end up teaching people who have had all sorts of different start dates, are in all sorts of different situations and are therefore all on a different page. That makes your work much more diffuse and it becomes harder to keep track of where you are with all the different small groups you are dealing with. This situation is also much different from the school scenario where everone starts on (more or less ) the same page at the beginning of the year and your responsibilities and workload are going to remain relatively predictable for the year.
I can’t be sure, but it seems that you are a relative newcomer to your situation which is good because as yet you haven’t tied yourself up with obligations too much. If you don’t have family responsibilities either, that that should give you space to try and find or create a working situation that is closer to the TPRS norm.
You need to try to find or set up groups of 10 or more adults or children who are willing to see you at least 2 times a week, but preferably 3. That way you get to be able to do things the TPRS way, you get to charge less but still have a higher income (because the per hour income from a group of 10 is greater even if they are paying less) and you get a more focused professional development scenario for yourself. I believe it can be done but you have to be patient and willing to say no to people whose needs don’t fit yours even if it means turning away income. You also have to be prepared to sell the method and explain to people why you only want to work this way, which is a leap of faith if you have only just started.
I’m speaking from personal experience because I used to have an all over the place schedule that never worked for me, and I’m finally managing to sort it out.
Henry
…you need to try to find or set up groups of 10 or more adults or children who are willing to see you at least 2 times a week, but preferably 3….
I agree so you get more energy as Henry said, people to pick up the slack, and also your brilliance is not wasted on a few kids. Harrell and Drew and Doug Stone, being in the California Reality, routinely handle classes over 35. Doug has 55 in some of his classes. Hey, I have an idea, let’s teach 55 kids about direct object pronoun agreement, shall we?
…Ben I’m wondering what you mean when you say the setting I’m in can’t work. Do you mean any private classes? Or that particular private class?…
A little of both. I got the vibe from what you wrote that the kids simply don’t have the social capacity needed for this kind of instruction (you are not alone in that, as most kids have lost their creative and playful selves in schools by 6th grade, as we all know). But mainly I meant that the small group has very limited information to play with, not enough information, and to ask two or three kids to rise up to and maintain an interesting level of verbal interplay with you in a culture that is all about rote learning seems an impossible task. It’s like putting a soccer team on the field with only two mediocre players – they have no ability to make interesting passes and create, which is a word they actually use in soccer, to create plays. Size of group must be bigger for what we do to work, is my opinion, so why work so hard trying to make it work? I might add that my recent meditation on this work in general is whether it can even work in schools. So many kids really don’t have the quality of open heart needed in these robotic times. This is the time of closed hearts. Then you have people like Bob Patrick and John Piazza and so many others in our group here who go out there every day and reach deep to bring the heart quality into their classes (this method is the best way to do that because of the humor) and I just wonder if it is worth the effort. I wonder if we are all on some level needing to be in some kind of alternate setting with adults or whatever, which we know works wonderfully bc the adults want the instruction and can be taught to play. I don’t want to see my colleagues gunned down by that feeling of “Oh, I suck at TPRS because I can’t reach the kids” when in reality it has nothing to do with any flaws in the instructor but rather is the result of the backdrop of metal and judgement and sadness that defines and describes every corner of our schools these days. Laurie would have to say something about this topic, bc among teachers I have met in my career, she seems to care the least about the limitations of her students in terms of being able to play, she just brings open heart and love every day. If you want some good stuff to read on that and are new to this site, just visit her site Hearts for Teaching and you will read some things that aren’t often brought to light among teachers. Laurie represents our way of teaching as well as anyone out there bc she solidly connects Krashen’s ideas with not just the mind but the heart, which is a powerful thing:
http://www.heartsforteaching.com/
mmm.. thank you Ben. Looking back I did lose faith in myself in this class because in the 2nd class the 2 9-yr -old friends were getting restless, refusing to go with the TPRS flow of things, and so then I doubted myself/ my use of the method. I thought “oh I’ve pitched it too easy. They don’t need to do 1 word images because they know it”. And actually something else was happening – the two 9 year olds were trying to wrest control of the class from me. They want the class on their terms. For over a year they had another private teacher who was sweet but couldn’t control the class. So they have learnt bad habits.
The other point that these Thai kids don’t have much free thought is true. This is a culture of uniforms for everything – I mean university students all have uniforms. The Thais love them. And when I asked if one girl was good at basketball, is she the best? They all replied, “oh no. Just normal”. The same for them all. Not wanting to stand out or be proud. And they know each other. So the circling with balls was limited.
However I would like to counter your blanket write off of the method for small groups. Because take another example. I did a class of 3 – again 2 levels. This because adult student 1 liked the first class so much she decided to bring her 2 nephews and niece in for a class… of course they were different levels. Anyhow they did get the idea. They went with the crazy questionnaire and one claimed to keep a pet octopus, another a pet crocodile. The 17 year old guy also said he wanted to bring his ukelele to class – I asked him if he had any songs in English he said yes. And I said to bring them. These teens also said they really liked me and the fun approach. So this was all thanks to the set up of the name card, circling that, a little quiz I did off my filled in qnare, and then their crazy questionnaires to do.
I would liken these students to the camel in the desert – so grateful for any bit of juicy cactus we can give them. OK maybe I can’t give them the full experience they’d get if they were learning in one of your classes. But they get enough I think to inspire them. And other students are asleep – so unless they wake up we just can’t reach them. My solution is just to sack them;) And then we help the ones who are open to it.
I do think there’s something metaphysical about this approach… it’s almost mindfulness of language. It is throwing away the shackles of the analytical, conscious, right/wrong, ego-based mind… and diving into the the blue waters of the imagination…
Also another small group example – 3x 7 year olds (led by younger sister of 1 of the unreachable 9 yearolds)… I did “I like” with them and pix of icecream etc… what flavours… they like. And then they drew pictures of themselves with sthg theyliked. .. well these little uns were a dream… 2 did themselves with icecreams and the boy had himself with a giant potato (man falang in thai, which always cracks me up)… and then I do a speech bubble from each mouth “Hello. I am xx. I like xxx icecream. I am wearing a xxxx and a xxx” Probably too much language – though they do study english at school… anyway my point is with one of the girls she showed me how her pic had her with her tongue…. and so she was telling me that she was licking the iceream and to put that in her story. So I did and we pretended to lick the icecream in the picture. And the 2 others i got to do the same. They loved it. So you see – with that group the only limit was my technique / ability to do the method. The kids were right in it, on it, loving it. And their mums are going to read them their stories at home… this week I’m going to adapt the Dr Krushen has a coffe story.. to one of my kids has an icecream and the dog looks at it… and then the dog licks it…
I’m keeping going with this even for small groups – because I haven’t found anything better.
I hope you will take heart 😉 Thank you for the inspiration and practical direction.
I agree with the small groups. You are right. And thanks for that one paragraph:
…there’s something metaphysical about this approach… it’s almost mindfulness of language. It is throwing away the shackles of the analytical, conscious, right/wrong, ego-based mind… and diving into the the blue waters of the imagination…
I was re-watching the circling videos and I just got done watching this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y0ALDg1iTNE&feature=relmfu at the end you said the next video would be Norming the Class. Do you think you’ll be able to do this before the school year starts? Sounds like a goodie!
I got stalled right there. I don’t know. If not, we will be discussing that topic intensely in August. The main thing is to get into a good balance with the Classroom Rules and also getting the problem kids and doing some serious nipping in the bud work as we discussed all year last year in the Pigs series of posts and elsewhere. If I don’t get to it, and I doubt if I will honestly in terms of putting it on video by the fall, then just read as many articles as you can find in the Classroom Discipline category.
As long as we have a good discussion before school starts, I’ll be happy. I made a lot of classroom management mistakes this past year that I want to avoid this time around.
Oh yeah, me too :0 But that is why we have September, so we can try again!
The problem we will face here – and it will be fully a group discussion if it is to succeed – is in limiting all the ideas and keeping things streamlined. I think we can do it. I like your thinking. We must always remember that no matter what kind of elegance we can achieve with the method, if we have no classroom discipline it is all worthless.
But Chris instead of waiting to be instructed on what we discussed last year about this, why don’t you write below a summary of your own position regarding what you think is best for you to do? Write it up as a comment below, after thinking about it for awhile. Read the Classroom Discipline articles, take from them what resonates for you, make a bulleted list of the values you wish to instill in your kids and then we can make it into a post, categorize it under Classroom Discipline, and use it in those first few weeks before school as a diving board for our discussion.
Again, this really feels right, to begin to think about exactly and specifically what we will do next year re: the rules and discipline, and to keep it front and center for the first few months. The Circling with Balls and other Beginning the Year category stuff, and the document I mentioned to skip about those things earlier today, will succeed only if we have that discipline piece working on all cylinders right there in the first few days of school.