So, I intended to post on Friday or Monday about my week of doing structures all on my own. Sin curriculum or anyone's borrowed lesson plans. Today's Thursday so I'm a bit behind. Monday was a holiday so you can bet I didn't do anything productive. Tuesday we had a professional development day and I got to learn about reading strategies for THE Carol Gaab. I'll save that for another post. Wednesday I had jury duty (yay). So, here we are.
Last week was actually very successful. Everything went smoothly. Monday ended up being a review day. Tuesday I did circling and PQA. Wednesday and Thursday are block days at my school so we used our words to come up with a story. I had a student write the story in English while we were telling it (a great a idea from a co-worker of mine) so that I could go back and type up each classes unique story in Spanish. On Friday we read the story and did some different activities to help students understand the reading. The students really seemed to learn a lot and I felt really confident as a TPRS teacher. Yay!
Thursday, January 24, 2013
Monday, January 14, 2013
Circling and PQA
Tomorrow I will start my journey on my own. My goal is to teach 3 structures. I'm going to start off tomorrow by circling and doing some PQA with my kids using these structures. You can find more info on circling here and on PQA here.
The good thing about both of these techniques is that it involves a lot of repetition of the structure so the students have an easier time acquiring it. PQA is great because it makes it relevant to them. I always find myself struggling with PQA and coming up with questions to ask my students to keep conversation in the target language going and to keep it interesting to them all at the same time. It's definitely a skill I'm working on. I think it becomes more natural of a process the more you do it. It's incredible to see some of the teachers who are practiced, like Ben Slavic, (did I already mention I got to observe him? i did? i'm just bragging you say? let's move on) do some of these techniques. You just watch and hope that someday you can get to the kind of level they're at and your students can be at the level that their students are.
I'll let you know how it goes.
Happy Monday!
The good thing about both of these techniques is that it involves a lot of repetition of the structure so the students have an easier time acquiring it. PQA is great because it makes it relevant to them. I always find myself struggling with PQA and coming up with questions to ask my students to keep conversation in the target language going and to keep it interesting to them all at the same time. It's definitely a skill I'm working on. I think it becomes more natural of a process the more you do it. It's incredible to see some of the teachers who are practiced, like Ben Slavic, (did I already mention I got to observe him? i did? i'm just bragging you say? let's move on) do some of these techniques. You just watch and hope that someday you can get to the kind of level they're at and your students can be at the level that their students are.
I'll let you know how it goes.
Happy Monday!
Thursday, January 10, 2013
On my own...
Happy Thursday. This week is almost over and I'm nervous/anxious/excited for next week to begin. All last semester I've been leaning heavily on books/curricula to help me with my TPRS journey. It's hard enough when you're trying to learn a brand new way of teaching while coming up with all new material. I've been so grateful to my co-workers for helping me find already made "lesson plans" so that I can focus on my delivery more than what to teach. Next week I'm going to begin and do things on my own. I'll be taking vocabulary structures from the list of 100 most commonly used Spanish verbs. I'll be taking all of the things I've learned last semester and putting it to the test next week.
The structures I'll be teaching are: hace (does, makes), sabe (knows), and llega (arrives)
I'm going to take these 3 structures and focus on only them throughout the week. I'll teach students nouns that go with these adjectives. I thought party items seemed to go well so I'll be introducing words like cake, drinks, party, gifts, etc.
I took a great idea from a fellow teacher of mine to help me remember some of the stories we come up with in class so I can use those stories and turn them into reading practice activities or even quizzes. He suggested I do a composition book and pick one student who knows what's going on to write down the story (in English) as we go. This person will be known as the "story-writer." Like I said in my previous post, I'm trying to give jobs to my students. I want my students to feel a certain ownership over what goes on in class. With a sense of ownership I believe that students will invest a little bit more into their learning. Other jobs I have implemented so far are:
Counter - This person is in charge of keeping track how many times I say a certain word. My goal is usually between 70-100 times.
Experto - This person is the "expert." Whenever my students and I are coming up with a story, ideas are tossed around and people can't agree on one. This is when I turn to the experto who, with a sense of authority, tells us which idea we will use for our story. Then I go on and on about how wonderful/creative/smart the experto is and that his idea is genius. Once again, ownership.
I'll update next week about how my week "on my own" is going. Have a great weekend!
The structures I'll be teaching are: hace (does, makes), sabe (knows), and llega (arrives)
I'm going to take these 3 structures and focus on only them throughout the week. I'll teach students nouns that go with these adjectives. I thought party items seemed to go well so I'll be introducing words like cake, drinks, party, gifts, etc.
I took a great idea from a fellow teacher of mine to help me remember some of the stories we come up with in class so I can use those stories and turn them into reading practice activities or even quizzes. He suggested I do a composition book and pick one student who knows what's going on to write down the story (in English) as we go. This person will be known as the "story-writer." Like I said in my previous post, I'm trying to give jobs to my students. I want my students to feel a certain ownership over what goes on in class. With a sense of ownership I believe that students will invest a little bit more into their learning. Other jobs I have implemented so far are:
Counter - This person is in charge of keeping track how many times I say a certain word. My goal is usually between 70-100 times.
Experto - This person is the "expert." Whenever my students and I are coming up with a story, ideas are tossed around and people can't agree on one. This is when I turn to the experto who, with a sense of authority, tells us which idea we will use for our story. Then I go on and on about how wonderful/creative/smart the experto is and that his idea is genius. Once again, ownership.
I'll update next week about how my week "on my own" is going. Have a great weekend!
Monday, January 7, 2013
iBienvenidos!
Welcome! My goal for this blog is to document my learning process at I attempt to become a successful TCI teacher! What is TCI you ask? TCI stands for Total Comprehensible Input and it's kind of the way we do things here in Denver Public Schools. TCI means that instead of speaking in English ABOUT the language, we just use the language and have fun with it! It's meant to help students acquire the language more naturally, rather than forcing them to memorize conjugation charts and lists of vocabulary. Classrooms that are taught using TCI are conducted in the target language 90% of the time. The difference is that all the language we're using is comprehensible to the students. They understand it. We, as teachers, have to put the effort in and be purposeful with the language in order to make it understandable. Many (not all) of the language teachers that you may come across from DPS teach using TCI.
This is my 3rd year teaching, and my 1st year using TCI. It has been quite the learning curve. I started with DPS in August and have been submerging myself in all things TCI to help me learn how to become one of these amazing teachers I have the privilege to observe on occasion. It's incredible to see how much the kids learn, and how much fun they can have while learning. I have been reading books and blogs, watching videos, observing other teachers, and attending professional development to help grow the TCI in me. So far, I've learned a lot but I know that I have a lot left to learn.
I'm hoping to keep track of new things that I learn as well as ways to improve things I already know on this blog. I'm changing a few things this semester. I plan to adapt Ben Slavic's rules into my own classroom and well as some of his jobs for students. I have had the awesome opportunity to observe Ben in action and I'm pretty sure my jaw was just chilling on the floor of his classroom the entire time. Pure magic. I've changed around my seating chart a bit to help students have a little bit more elbow room. I'm also hoping this year to go off more from high-frequency verbs rather than use Karen Rowan books as a guide. Nothing wrong with Karen Rowan books by the way, (we just finished the 1st novela in my classes) I just want to try and go off of the structures alone and see how I do.
I'll continue to (try) to keep this updated throughout the 2nd semester with new ideas, frustrations, and encouraging outcomes. In the meantime, check out some of these videos on schooltube that show some DPS rockstars using TCI.
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