TPRS Post - Judy Debois

Great post on the MoreTPRS goup from Judy Debois that I didn't want to forget!

Interesting questions, Deb. Here are some of my thoughts, for whatever they're
worth.


IMHO vocabulary lists will help some students, those who as you say have visual
memories and those who are interested in languages, as Dr. Krashen says. I
don't see how they can hurt the others, who will ignore them anyway, right? 
Unless you tell them to memorize them, in which case they will waste a lot of
time and effort that will not be very productive. Memorization is by definition
short term. I prefer to give my students a story, maybe a new story, that uses
the vocabulary in question. If they read it through they'll get revision in
context, which will give them new associations to help them remember the
structures. Once they have enough associations, the word/structure will be in
their long term memory. You might ask students who are artistic to illustrate
the new story, which will give even more associations, visual ones, with the
structures. So basically, you have to decide whether your limited time is better
spent making up three categories of vocabulary lists or making up a new story
for the most important vocabulary. (And you can cheat by giving them a story by
a student/students in another class using the same vocabulary.)


Illustrated student stories, written and illustrated by students, are a good way
to build up a library for FVR. It's a struggle for us to make the language
simple enough, but they do it automatically with the limited language they have.
In a small school like yours I'm sure they'll recognize the author's name and
will find it "compelling".


I think you're doing it exactly right when you "echo" what a student has said. 
This is what "caretaker speech" does all the time. Baby says "peas" and you
echo back "please". Student says "la verte voiture" and you smile and nod and
say "Oui! La voiture verte!" The student may catch what you changed and take
note or they may not catch it, in which case it means that they're not ready for
that yet. But they won't feel humiliated because you pointed out that they had
made a mistake, which will make them think twice before speaking up again.


As for "correcting" written work, I prefer to "edit" it. I've explained this on
my blog, but my examples are from small groups of students. With a class I
would choose three papers, one very basic, one more complex and the best paper
of the lot. Then I would "edit" them so that there are no mistakes. I type the
three papers up, and bingo! You have an embedded reading. (I understand that
this is how Laurie Clarq first started doing embedded reading.) When you return
their papers where you have underlined in green everything that is correct, you
also give your students the three edited versions, telling them that they were
written by students in the class but not giving the names. You will see them
reading them closely. Each time I'm amazed at how attentively students read
texts written by their classmates and how willing they are to read the same
story three or four times. I call that compelling comprehensible input. I
answer any questions about structures and vocabulary, smiling like the cat that
ate the cream because I know that they're going to retain my answers to their
questions. If there were frequent mistakes that you corrected and no one asks
why, it means they're just not seeing them yet. You may want to target those
structures in your next lesson.


Basically, one thing that I have learned from horse riding is that it's much
more effective to teach a horse how to do something right than to spend time
teaching it not to do something wrong. Pointing out mistakes is teaching
students not to do something wrong. Giving them correct models is teaching them
to do it right.

Writing a class Story

NOTE:  This is NOT TPRS!!

We've been trying to figure out activities that might work better for the class I'm subbing in.  By "work better", we mean finding something that they're motivated to do as well as helps them learn something valuable.

In a collaboration between me and the para who's been working with these kids for a while, we came up with an activity we're going to test out this week and I'm really excited about it.  As this is a language lab to support native English speakers with their language arts skills, we're not trying to promote fluency, but rather get them the skills they need to succeed in their regular classes.

Originally, this started as a way to get the kids to buy-in to the paragraph edits that we've been doing with limited success.  The kids just seem like they're in agony over them.  Rather than giving a copied off paragraph activity, we're going to have them work together to write a class story to edit.  Not only do we achieve our original goals, but hopefully we'll do even better by correcting the errors that the students are making while helping develop their creative writing skills.  Even better?  The way we're going to do it will make it so no one knows what the other person wrote.

I've simplified this down to four parts of the story to focus on Monday through Thursday (Setting, Characters, Problem, Solution) and then read the stories and edit them on Friday.  On the first four days, we will discuss that story element and how we can write about it, then the students will write a paragraph about that part consisting of at least 15 words and 5 sentences.  They won't put their names on them, and, after I check that they've been completed satisfactorily, I'll collect the papers.  The next day, we'll do the same thing, except the students will randomly get stories that they haven't written on yet.  Each story will be a surprise effort by four students.  On Friday, I'll pick the best story (based on interest, appropriateness, creativity, and how well it will work for edits) to display on the board and we'll edit it, including grammar rules, clarity, and word choice, etc.  And, no one will have to be worried because no one will know who wrote anything other than their own part!

I'm excited to kick this off today - I'll update about how it goes!

Inter-class pen pals

Ever since we wrote to pen pals in my second grade class, I have always loved the idea of giving my students the opportunities to write to pen pals.  Particularly in Spanish classes, this would be a wonderful way for students to practice reading and writing Spanish.  While I would love to do this with students from other countries in upper grades! I think students in lower grades would be nervous about writing to fluenct Spanish-speakers and also have difficulty reading.  However, yesterday a teacher told me about how students at her school have inter-class pen pals!  I thought this was such a fantastic idea I had to write it down! Students would write letters to a pen pal using their curreent vocabulary and be paired with another student at the same level and therefore using the same vocabulary.  They would use their Spanish nicknames, so they likely wouldn't know who they were writing to, at least at first.  This gets students practicing their Spanish reading and writing as well as creating a community between classes.  What a great plan!  Moreover, I could pair students in a way that they could learn from each other as each student has their own strengths and weaknesses in their writing, and students would begin to notice what they're doing correctly and what they need to improve on by reading their classmantes' writing.  I imagine I would require students to write back and forth each week (citizenship grade!), and then reveal pen pals at the end of each quarter and assign new ones to get more variety.  I can't wait!

Classroom Story Books

While coming up with ideas for my class library for free-choice reading, I'm tackling the issue of providing materials that are interesting for students while still being comprehensible.  Using childrens or other books, particularly for beginners, is difficult because they often contain strange and unusual words or ideas that are really not necessary or even helpful for devloping fluency.  Mreover, students will get discouraged when struggling to read books meant for children much younger than them.    One solution I plan to use is by providing leveled readers designed specifically for second-language learners, such a Blaine Ray's mini stories and novels.  I fact, I've got an entire set of beginner Spanish books from his site on the way to read and select my favorites to order for the class!   I've also been toying with the idea of providing my own reading materials based on the structures and stories used in my own classroom, which led me to this idea...

At the end of each year, I want to type up and bind/publish a collection of all the stories created within a class.  We would record each story we tell and each class would have their own book.  I imagine that many students would probably want their own copy as well, which would be an excellent resource to show evidence of and review what they learned that year.  

I got even more excited when thinking about how to get these recorded - In a combination of ideas from the MoreTPRS listserv, I plan to assign three students each story day to re-write the story from class in Spanish (I might consider dong it in English for the first few weeks in Spanish 1) and create an illustration.  I would be willing to take volunteers for the three people assigned that day to do it to ensure I got at least one version back, but I would probably require each student to submit a mininum number of re-writes whenever they wanted to throughout the semester as part of their citizenship grade.

 Edmodo would be great for this (though illustrations would probably need to be turned in on paper) as students can submit their stories that night and I can provide individualized feedback on their writing.  The next day, for review, I could also edit/combine the stories and hand out correct versions of a few stories for students to read and review the story from the day before.  Ultimately, I would create one "master" version that I would combine with the illustrations to go into the class story book to be published at the end of the year.  I love this idea because we can do so much with it with listening, reading, and reviewing, as well as create so many personallized resources for the class and that students will love to have for themselves!

Input Modes v. Output Modes: An interesting Observation

During my first semester using TPRS, I made an interesting observation.  Because it exposes students to more "natural" language and grammatical forms (whether or not they know it), I decided to go ahead and tell my stories in past tense.  However, I didn't feel like I was working enough present tense situations into my input for students to acquire that part of the language.  So, at some point during the semester, I decided to have students read in present tense to get a nice balance.  This produced an interesting result when it came to their output....

The students spoke in past tense.  However, they wrote in present tense.

Hindsight is 20/20 and this only seems logical now.  Still, I'm only just beginning to understand what the implications of such a phenomenon might be.

First, it showed me just how much output that is heard (speaking) is learned by input that is heard (listening).  Similarily, output that can be seen (writing) is learned by input that can be seen (reading).  Again, it only seems logical, but it's easy to forget we're fluent in the language - to me, it all goes together, especially since Spanish is generally written exactly how it sounds (unlike English).  Maybe I never noticed because English is my native language and doesn't seem to follow any rhyme or reason when it comes to spelling, though I never experienced this when I was learning Spanish (probably because I was more focused on the grammar-based curriculum that was used to teach me).

Second, I realized that something is just not clicking when it comes to the way words sound and the letters used to spell them.  They must be just writing what looks familiar without thinking about the way they sound - we touch on this idea when we refer to speakers speaking based on what feels and sounds right- from this experience, I have to assume that students also write what looks right.  Again, it only seems logical!  I have to assume that students are "saying" the words in their head as well, but there was still a disconnect between the spelling and the way it sounds, so looking right must be more important at this stage whether or not they realize it.  I'm not sure that this is really a problem at the moment because students will learn with time how the sounds match the spellings, but it does have one more critical implication for when we do read: students need to hear what they are seeing, and they need to hear it correctly.  It's tempting to allow students to read silently and independently, especially if they're understanding what they're reading, but this prevents them from connecting the correct sounds to the letters.  Think about how often we were read out loud to as children by parents, teachers, librarians - I'm sure the list goes on.  Then, as we advanced, we were asked to read out loud as well.  Whether or not this actually fostered comprehension is a different argument that I won't get into here, but it did give educators the opportunity to double check that what we hear is truly connected to what we read.

In the true spirit of TPRS, it only seems logical at this point to be sure we're following a pattern of "natural" acquisition through read-alouds (first by me to model correct pronunciation, then by students ready and comfortable enough to read to their peers) and ensuring that students are continually exposed to all forms of the language in through both listening and reading.  I'm sure most of my students had no idea what they were doing, but the insights it gave me were priceless.

Sample Lesson Plan 3

Lesson Plan

• Date: March 12, 2013
• Class: Spanish 1
• Lesson #: 1.1.2 – Novel, Culture, and Assessment
• Objectives: Read a novel for 8 minutes and write a summary of the reading.  Sing the countries and Capitals of Central America.  Write in Spanish for 5 minutes.
• Evaluation: Students will respond correctly and appropriately to comprehension questions and sing along with the class with enthusiasm.  They will also count the number of words they can write in 5 minutes.
• Resources/Technology: Structure Cards, El Nuevo Houdini, Rapitals Powerpoint and Song
• State Standards: WL1.1.3.2: Recognize written forms of basic vocabulary.; WL1.1.3.3: Associate the written text with spoken forms.; WL1.3.2.1: Locate the areas in the world where the target language is spoken.; WL1.1.4.4: Construct simple sentences using familiar vocabulary and phrases.

Posted Agenda:

1. Pruebita
2. El Nuevo Houdini
3. CA Countries and Capitals
4. Timed write

Lesson Plan:

1.   Pruebita (10 minutes) - take attendance during this time

• On page 12 of your IN (Interactive Notebook), answer these questions in Spanish:
• ¿Cómo te llamas?
• ¿Qué tienes?
• ¿Qué quieres?
• ¿Adónde vas en la noche?
• Correct and graph your score in your IN.

2.   El Nuevo Houdini (20 minutes)

• Librarians get books for their group and open to page 1.  I translate and students chorally translate the next word when I pause.
• After 8 minutes, ask and answer comprehension and discussion questions in Spanish using structures.
• Librarians collect and return them to the shelf.

3.   Countries and Capitals (45 minutes)

• Display Rapitals powerpoint.  Present country locations, names, and capitals one by one, adding actions.  Each time a country and capital is added, sing the capitals with actions we've done so far up to the next one until the song is complete.
• Students stand and sing with the Rapitals song, including actions.

3.   Timed Write (15 minutes)

• Display structures on the board.
• Students open their notebooks to the appropriate page.  When I say "go", they begin writing.  When the timer goes off in 5 minutes, students put an X and count the words they got.
• Scores are graphed in their IN