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TPRS vs. Georgia 2
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9 thoughts on “TPRS vs. Georgia 2”
This is going to be an interesting series of posts. My home state is Georgia! I studied Spanish in high school, not using TPRS of course. And, no, I am not fluent in Spanish and don’t remember much except trying to memorize a book of verb conjugations. 🙂
I heard Mr. Ray say, maybe on his DVD, that there is no justification for incomprehensible input. I agree — I have never seen anyone provide any justification for it. When I study my second language, I hate incomprehensible input — it’s frustrating, useless, and discouraging. Quick translating unknown words is the only way to go.
Wonderful clarification of appropriate L1 use!
How do you address using English for “pop up grammar”?
I do use verbal English during teaching. I use it for pop-up grammar, and I use it for my comprehension checks.
Yes on quick English for comprehension checks. “What did I just say?” is a very good question.
I prefer doing pop ups in reading classes only.
I still have questions about word lists. Ben, you have two kinds of word lists; one to satisfy your district where the words are listed with articles,etc. These words on red, green, blue lists are designed to placate the higher ups. The other lists have random words, not in any particular order where verbs are listed w/o il/elle and nouns are listed w/o articles. These lists are displayed w/o definition and are periodically discussed or chosen by design to spin a yarn? Would I have specific lists for each of the 4 levels I teach. Are these lists similar to Blaine’s 64 -65 most frequently used words? Ben has 6-7 pages listed. Is that complete for level one? Do you rotate the lists in and out? I think I have not been clear in my questions and I feel like I am missing something important! Thanks in advance.
chill
Yes, the random lists contain the same exact words as the district mandated list, but they are shuffled and mixed into a number of different posters (one is used each month) with random arrangements of verbs and nouns and other words so that they are effective in class. Those posters allow for spinning yarns, playing word chunk team games, building little images from single words, and the other activities I describe in the “handouts” link of this site.
I also like to start classes by presenting five of those new words each class period, before beginning a story or a reading class. I just sneak them in right there in the first part of the class. It builds their vocabulary.
Yes, you would need an entire set of both kinds of lists, district mandated (as on my site) and shuffled (as on the walls each month) for each level. I know that that is a lot of work. If I go to the high school level next year (a possibility), I will make them and slowly get them on this site, at least in French.
The students take Blaine’s 64 words and extend them as per district thematic wishes to the end of the year. It is the same thing but with a lot more words. Yes, all the seven posters are complete for what my district mandates. I know what is mandated because I spent the past three years on the vertical writing team that came up with those lists, which are called pacing guides. It was a start in pulling district teachers away from their utter dependence on the book in our district. Now, they can’t rely on book chapters because they have to teach a certain concept at a certain time. I have made those district documents available on this site but can’t rememeber where. They are somewhere.
Actually these are very clear questions to me because it is how I do things. Most people don’t do these lists, of cours, and it is hard to convey exactly how I use them through a single website like this. That is why that “handouts” link is so important. All I can say is that it works for me – I am able to satisfy district vocabulary requirements by requiring that my students learn all of those words at home, which totally frees me up for stories.
If a kid feels like they aren’t being prepared for the next level because I don’t talk about green beans and student desks in stories, I just remind them to go to my site and learn the words there, unless they want to do a story about a student desk. They can’t say anything to that, and I can truthfully say that the 60% of kids who really work with these lists at home are probably the best prepared level one students I have ever taught in my career by far, because they are getting mega CI in class as per storytelling and the district vocabulary is being learned at home.
Great! So I am assuming that most of the entries on the random list are w/o articles or subject pronouns is to get the student to focus on the word to identify as noun or verb? The lists – at least the first two pages – seem to have around 30 verbs, then mostly nouns with a few prepositions and adverbs. I am looking at Discovering French for my random word list since that is the book I use. Yours seems about the same. Need to get a laser pointer! It’s a weird time of the year to start all of this, but I am really going to concentrate on levels 1-2; my level 3 class are the high point of my life this year so I’d like tomove them in the TPRS direction and my French 4s are just getting back from Disney and have basically punched their tickets – all college bound, but TPRS might be a way to change things up before they leave for good. I am in a prep school, so I have a little more academic freedom than my public school counterparts, but you guys are really on the forefront of all this good stuff! Thanks again for all the pointers.
chill
PS Susie Gross was just in the area. I went to her workshop at Oakcrest HS. Jeff Forney and his colleagues are great TPRSers. Hope Susie will be back in August. She is an incredible resource and inspiration. You should come along!
Just to weigh in on how I do Ben’s word list. I went through the book (the only time I’ve used it) that the school has and I made 5 lists of 42 words. Substantially less than most schools’ “required” vocab, but in the past the teachers used one book for Level 1 (Chap. 1-4) and Level 2 (Chap. 5-8). I could get away without doing the extra vocab at my school (yeah, lots of freedom), but I do not know how long I will be at this school.
So, I went through the “end of chapter vocab lists” and picked random words and typed them up. Then I gave it to a student for some extra credit to write nice and neatly in Sharpie on a 3’X2′ colored posterboard with two columns. They only put the L2 on the posterboard. Then, I give students the same word list with translations so they have them to study at home. We spend about 3 minutes at the beginning of class like Ben, but we only do 3 words per day since we have less madated vocab.
With regard to the articles and subject pronouns, I do include articles. Sometimes, if the plural version of the word is irregular, I will put the plural version on there too (ex. la luz [las luces]). I was displaying verbs in an arbitrary conjugated form, but I have switched to displaying the infinitive of the verb. I’m not sure which is better. It may be helpful to have irregular verbs like “ser” or “tener” in a conjugated form on the word list, unless you have them conjugated on the walls in your room somewhere anyway, which I now do.
I would recommend not allowing students to have the vocab sheet out on their desks while you go over these at the beginning of class. They tend to just look at their list and not listen/participate as well in this short activity.