Hi Ben,
I’m going to do two short class demos for a school this Thursday. The school offers Russian to every student at every level, K-8. This sounds great, except that new kids can come into the classes at any time through the years, and each class learns together by grade. That means that there can be kids with six years of experience with kids who are in their first year in the same lesson, and the teacher feels it necessary to start over every year with the alphabet and vocabulary.
I worked with the new teacher on TPRS techniques, but it didn’t really take. She is at her wits end with kids who aren’t motivated, and her evaluations aren’t positive. I would think that TPRS and CI techniques would be the only way to go in this situation, but having beginners always joining in would make it complicated. Kids who have come to me from this program have been very relieved to be able to learn at their own level.
I’ve asked her to give me some idea of what she’s doing right now, but she hasn’t answered. Since she hasn’t done TPRS, I can probably stun ’em with any simple story, but I wonder whether the group would have suggestions for me. The classes are 40 minutes, and will be fifth to seventh grades.
I plan to explain “norms” to them, and get a little information from them to PQA, and then go into a story. Other than that, I don’t know what I will do. If there’s a story that works well with that middle-school age group, I’d love to know it. I adore middle-school kids, but it’s been a while since I taught them. I’ll need to take question words and structure pictures…what else?!
Thanks!
Michele Whaley