Jen

5 thoughts on “Jen”

1. chill1019

   June 16, 2011 at 6:39 am

   After the weeping, you will be rejoicing. It’s this kind of feedback that will encourage you as you go into September. Like so many of us, going back into the classroom will be a pleasure. Way to go, Jen!

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   1. jen

      June 16, 2011 at 8:10 pm

      Yeah, I can already tell you are right about this. The end of this year has been soooo different for me. I looked forward to reading the exams because, as I told the kids “it’s an opportunity to show off how much you have learned,” and I really wanted to see them shine. Then, when I wrote up my grade narratives, I actually enjoyed the process because I felt more connected to the kids and how they were learning. I guess it was a bit odd and backwards to suddenly put a clamp on the output at the end of the year, but it was worth it because I could literally see and feel the kids relaxing into the language. I have a long way to go but I can see that I am on the right path, and it’s so reassuring to have all the support and encouragement from all of you 🙂

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2. Angela Williams

   June 16, 2011 at 5:23 pm

   Wow, great Jen! I can’t wait to use everything that I have been learning about TPRS in my classroom next school year. It seems so liberating and free! How did the students respond when you initially made the switch to teaching using CI?

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   1. jen

      June 16, 2011 at 9:06 pm

      Well, I pitched it as an adventure. I went in on the first day of 4th quarter with a handout titled “extreme makeover 2011.” I was honest. I admitted I didn’t really know what to expect but that I trusted the process because it made sense. One girl exclaimed “yeah, when you’re 2, your parents don’t follow you around with a grammar book, you just listen!”
      They were excited because 1) I was excited “It’s going to be so super fun!!!” 2)They didn’t have to lug around their 10-lb textbook 3) the homework expectation was reduced drastically and they had a choice of what to do 4) I wasn’t going to make them talk or write for a grade…huge sigh of relief on this one: they could finally relax and take in the language!
      It was harder for the super structured high-achiever analytical kids, but they got really into the reading. They felt a sense of accomplishment to be able to read and understand a whole book! And of course the “by-product” of this was that they read because they got sucked into the story and they forgot about getting hung up on individual words. A couple kids had real breakthroughs with this.
      Some still felt that they “weren’t really learning.” They were nervous not doing grammar worksheets, but at the same time I think they noticed the learning snuck up on them. In the last week of classes there was one girl who really wanted to spend the class breaking down the grammar. So I honored her request. I went through all the structures that they had been exposed to and had understood perfectly from the reading, told them the names of all the tenses, moods, etc. The girl took copious notes. The rest of the class stared into space and muttered “que aburrido.”I think it was worthwhile to do this once so that they could see that knowing the names of the structures, while interesting and even fun, did not help them understand a story or conversation.
      So yes, it is liberating and free and adventurous and very real!!! Definitely go for it 🙂

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3. frank jj

   June 17, 2011 at 6:26 pm

   Did your students say this stuff largely because you had explicitly primed their meta-cognitive pump before slaking their thirst for the non-bogus with the pure water of language acquired through interactively personalized CI? That wouldn’t be bad at all. Yet it would be even more impressive if they had arrived at at their epistemological positions entirely by unassisted induction from their own experience of the interactively personalized approach we call CI/TPRS.

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