TPRS/CI should focus more on teaching verbs. Can we improve our word walls so that they help our students gain greater success with the driving force of language – verbs? Can our students by mid year be much stronger in this key and pivotal area than they have in the past, if we turn our word walls into verb walls so that the overall effectiveness of those big sheets of paper we put up on our walls is greatly increased? (I know I am not the only one to waste wall space with big lists of words that are not really acquired by the end of the year.) The answer to these questions must be yes. Verbs, above all other aspects of language, determine the success or failure of our work using comprehensible input. Other parts of speech are just not that important and space is so limited. This idea is at least worth looking at.
A variation on this idea was offered by Catharina:
…how about keeping a laminated page with most frequently used verbs + connector words on the kids’ tables as a reference during free-writes? I picked up the idea from 3rd graders who use it to help write in L1. Each set of tables shares a sheet. May be useful for floating teachers who have no wall space?….
(My comment is that this could be very useful to observers/evaluators who still think that group work is necessary to learn a foreign language, even if no one in the group speaks the language. We do get observed and our evaluators do have to check off boxes…)