Here is Sarah Downey’s bio from Savannah, GA:
2 years ago I decided to put the textbooks in the closet and I started to use Look I Can Talk. Even though I now know more about PQA and CI the responses I got from students where outstanding. They were describing stories by looking at illustrations, they were answering my questions and reading page long stories and all with only a semester of Spanish in 6th grade!
As it pertains to grammar I used the phrase me gusta, te gusta,le gusta, me gustan,… (I like it, you like it, he/she likes it, I like them…) with no grammar explanation. Students were able to use the phrases and recognize them with ease. These phrases where difficult for students to learn and understand when I was working with the textbook Realidades. ( I believe all the gustas where worked on for about 2 chapters in the textbook- it was awful) One of my favorite complaints from the 7th grade teachers was that as they went page by page of the textbook and introduced what they thought would be new concepts they got tired of hearing their students say, “We already learned this in Mrs. Downey’s class.”
I will have my first EOCT this year. I have taught two years of 7th grade, then 2 years of 6th and this is my first year teaching a high school Spanish class to eight graders. We have to give the students a state mandated SLO (Student Learning Objective- worst acronym ever!) by the end of the month. It is writing intensive, “standards based” with no speaking interpersonal portion, so we’ll see how that goes.
What might have seemed like a “hard road” was well worth it when seeing the leaps and bounds students made without having to battle with grammar, nightly homework (that was rarely completed). Students were able to use phrases and combinations of words on their own.
To think that by personalizing my class and working with what I learned in TPRS in a year could make my class more relevant and make the students more successful is so exciting to me.
Sarah