James sent this about TPRS and Rigor. To me, it is a big red flag, a big one:
Ben, not sure if you saw this on flTeach. It’s part of somebody’s response to someone asking, “How to increase rigor?” Notice just how badly TPRS is really understood by some people:
…as far as increasing the rigor of a whole course, one of the teachers I did practicum with decided that her first year curriculum didn’t move fast enough, so she decided to skip it. She teaches the most important vocabulary from the first year in the first 9 weeks of school. Then she moves on to the 2nd year curriculum. 2nd year curricula always review the material from the first year anyway, so she teaches everything from the first year, just accelerated. She uses a TPRS curriculum, and has verb conjugation charts that students get to use on the quizzes. Students aren’t required to memorize conjugations of anything outside of the third person singular and the infinitive the first year, but most students had picked up the present tense conjugations pretty well anyway. So far they have learned to use present tense, imperfect, tu commands, and a little bit of subjunctive….