Here is a nice update from Jim Tripp about how his year has been a bit different, how it has evolved for him so far and what he is focusing on:
Ok, so it’s not a novel idea, but one that I’m glad I’ve remembered and stuck to this year so far. I am progressing much faster this year, I think mostly because I am “sheltering vocab” to an extent.
I have been going into my classes (90 min.), since the first week, and picking one kid to talk to that day. (Usually, half of the class is spent reading/discussing the previous day’s situation, and the rest of class developing a new situation.) I have been using Ben’s “name cards” and less often the questionnaires (it seems I rarely need them, maybe because I work in a smaller district and the kids already know each other well).
Once I have the kid, I pick the structure. The structures so far have been verbs, with an accompanying preposition/noun or two. (Examples: pesca, quiere -r, juega al…, puede -r, tiene.) Of course, to break it up, I’ll throw in the couple of minutes of mini-PQA/chant/song/TPR to do numbers or body parts or simple action verbs or prepositions or etc.
Once I have the kid and the structure, I figure out from what I can get a rise out of the kids for a short while. Today, I started class with “se llama” and took an idea straight from PQA in a Wink and named a kids “Pencil Man” because one day he came to class with about 10 pencils. Like Ben, it made me really chuckle to myself. “Se llama” was kind of an extra structure today, not my focus.
My focus structure was “esta/n,” but I could have just as easily used “pone” or “guarda” or whatever to talk about where the pencils are (or where he “puts” or “keeps” them). Turned out, in our class with Pencil Man, 16 pencils are on top of his desk, one is in his bellybutton, and the rest (9) are in his best friend’s (Will Ferrel, a character in class) hair.
Obviously, the potential for repetition on this are huge, and the introduction of a couple of prepositions natural. Plus, when we introduce these, we can take a brain break and TPR the prepositions (I do this by making a fist (stationary object), and using the other hand to move around that depending on what preposition I use.
Also, by focusing on just one student, I am developing a character for them, and a situation they occupy, that will naturally allow for future “problems” in class once we get to stories. I can already see it, Charlie “needs” a pencil, and where is he going to “search” for one? Es obvio!
I am also having individual students take home these mini-readings and illustrate them with drawings/photos/whatever so they can go in our class book and up on the wall, and scanned to computer to discuss via projector for review in future a la Dirk.
My comment: Focusing on one kid per class, building off of one structure, keeping things simple and focused on only one kid for as long as possible, an entire class, and letting funny things naturally emerge in relationship to that one kid, is very wise. It is a kind of narrower and deeper personalization process. It accurately reflects the first two steps of TPRS, but over months. Think of the stories that will come out of this work after Christmas, when any little event in an emerging story script will have a higher chance of finding some relative bit of personalized information from that gathered this fall. If you want to increase your personalization process, now’s the time and making funny stuff up about one kid for an entire period sounds like an excellent way to do it.