Another report from a teacher who is new to comprehension based instruction, Inger Moran:
For the past three years, I have been teaching French, usually split between two or three schools while attending graduate courses at night to finish my M.Ed.. I’ve struggled with using the textbook series and my own style. I never could reconcile the one with the other.
Now that my graduate course work is finally done, I felt that I had the time and energy to do something else. I had heard of TPRS before but I couldn’t find any workshops near me when I was available. So I just bought a bunch of Ben’s books with gift money I received. It couldn’t have been better spent!
In just two weeks, here’s what I notice: My students are having fun and I am having a lot of fun too. I am doing PQA with my students questionnaires. We are focused on “he or she is” and “he or she goes.” That’s it. I’m working on SLOW, Point and Pause and Staying In Bounds.
I think I am getting the hang of it but I am also reading and re-reading the PLC site and books to be sure I am looking out for the pitfalls. This feels so natural to me that I am almost sad that I didn’t have the guts to do this when I began teaching. But I’m starting the year off feeling like 1) I can sustain this (especially with this support) and that 2) my students will reap the rewards.
I am on an island, though. I don’t know of any other teacher in my district who uses CI. Perhaps I will get some converts eventually! I’m hoping that a side effect with be an increase in enrollment so I can finally be full-time in one school. How I crave to have my own classroom instead of hauling things from one school to another!
Inger