More Thoughts After ACTFL

It's amazing - I went to ACTFL this year feeling worn down and like TPRS and Comprehensible Input just can't fit into my mandated curriculum anymore.  After all, the absolutely wonderful novels are not on the approved reading list.  Free and Voluntary Reading is discouraged, and I am supposed to keep my students on grade level reading and writing Common Core standards, even if that means leaving the target language and reading and writing in English.  My storytelling has gotten lackluster, my questions are predictable, my students won't participate... and I wondered "why do I keep fighting the bureaucratic machine"

Now, here I am, a few days post-conference.  The difference is amazing.  I went to some great sessions.  (The trick is don't feel guilty, if a session doesn't seem to fit your needs, leave and find a different one that does!  Another trick is, if there is a time slot with no interesting sessions, hang out in the exhibit hall.  I think I set up camp at the TPRS publishing booth!) 

Randomish thoughts:

I went to a session on writing and the Common Core.  I figured I needed to see what other people are doing.  Well, they advocated staying in the Target Language and *supporting* the standards but by getting our students to be proficient in reading, writing, and thinking in our target language.  How refreshing!  Now if I can just communicate this effectively to the "higher ups"

I already mentioned the embedded reading and cultural reading sessions.  I keep thinking how much more accessible reading will be with the layers of reading.  Start small and build up.

The last session I went to, on Sunday afternoon (yes I got kicked out for last call) was about making homework meaningful.  

I have fallen into the trap of, I guess flipping my classroom in a way.  The high school teachers here all use traditional language learning models.  My students leave my classroom and have to take daily vocabulary and grammar quizzes.  No longer is it about acquisition or communication.  And I have struggled to find a way to balance my beliefs and research with the expectations of my district.  The final exam is also very much based on grammar rules and vocabulary memorization rather than acquisition in the language.  Some of the questions come directly from the student workbooks.  And so, since I do not use the textbook or workbook in class, I assign workbook pages as homework in order to familiarize my students with the layout and expectations of the book's author (and therefore the exam), as well as their future teachers.

Which brings me back to the session.  The presenter used backward planning starting with those "can do" statements in the program (My textbook says things like "students will be able to order food at a cafe") then planning backwards to figure out what instruction with actually be able to get the students to that point.  Her homework reflects that same philosophy.  Rather than assigning the grammar activities because they are there, and are expected, she has students prepare for the oral classwork the following day.  She asks students to "be ready to____" and such activities as "discuss three things you own" in this case, students will be using the verb tener (to have), but the homework focuses on the skill of using it in context rather than isolated lists of verb forms, and students are pressured into doing the homework because they have to stand up in class and speak.

I woke up at five o'clock this morning thinking about homework, my curriculum, and how I can get my pedagogical philosophies to match what I am teaching again..  (I am such a nerd!)  How can I get my students more involved in what they are learning, more vested in it, etc.  Also, if they are truly able to acquire this language, in theory they should be able to do as well on the test.  @martinabex.com @embeddedreading.com

a new year, a new level of slowing down

I think I am finally learning how to go slowly. Or maybe, I already knew how to go slowly, and I’m finding a new level of understanding in it. Part of it is probably that I feel more comfortable with myself as a teacher and with being the odd man out in the department. But, part of it is students who are willing to be honest with me. I’m starting the second week of school now, which means I am going on lesson three (block schedule), and every day I find myself slowing down again and again. I have been using TPR with my level Is (TPR and circling with balls with level II), and one of my classes has been very slugglish in response. I was just chugging away and suddenly I heard Susie, or Ben, or some wise sage whispering in my ear that boredom means they don’t understand. I stopped then and there and asked for a show of fingers – not for how much they understood, but to see if I was going slowly enough. Man, I was getting one’s and two’s all over the place. I slowed down, got through half of what I thought I would, but at the end, there were mostly four’s and five’s (I do a count of five fingers, not ten, so this was good.)


In another class I heard somebody grumbling. It sounded like a complaint about having to do the actions all class period. So, again, I stopped. I asked the class if they felt like they were learning and if I should continue working like this, or if they would prefer a more traditional approach. A resounding reply to keep going. So, I slowed down again. I’m checking for comprehension two or three times a class period. I’m not quite in the range I am aiming for yet, and it really does feel painfully slow. I keep reminding them that I’m the only one in the room who speaks Spanish, but I keep forgetting that. I use a word ten times and I think they have it. I think I can speed up. They don’t and I can’t. A student hesitantly volunteered today, and somebody chuckled and said that I should give her “hard ones.” I stopped. I put on my concerned teacher face, and a Time Out signal to speak in English. I told them that I would never try to trick them. That I am not trying to see how much they have forgotten, or how much they didn’t learn. I told them that my job is to make learning so easy that they don’t even realize they are doing it. I don’t think I was imagining the look of relief on people’s faces, or the more relaxed atmosphere in the class. I am shocked by how little people were understanding me, even when I thought I was going slowly, and I thought I was recycling my words enough. Back to the drawing board for me!

TPRS in a non TPRS department

TPRS in a non-TPRS department


There are 9 teachers in my department. I am the only teacher who is trying to use TPRS. I have taken a softer, gentler approach this year. Meaning, I have not advertised my use of TPRS, nor have I chastised the other teachers for using the methods they do. Instead, I have sought to find places and times where what I believe can be shared in an open way. For instance, I shared a participation rubric that Ben Slavic posted on his blog. I have shared strategies for reading skills.

I discovered that in my case, it is not that my department is anti-TPRS, it’s that the bureaucracy of the district I teach in requires a high degree of lock-step teaching. We are expected, district wide, to be on the same chapter as every other teacher within a few days.

It is also a lack of familiarity. When I have made comments, such as referencing the top 100 words used in spoken Spanish, or that “even stupid kids growing up in Spain learn to speak Spanish” that my ideas are listened to. I even brought up the topic of homework not having an impact on learning. One of the teachers decided to try an experiment with her students – and she is the most traditional teacher in the group. Not everybody agrees with me, but that’s ok. I didn’t become a teacher to have everybody agree with me. It’s enough that we can all listen to each other with respect.



Now, I don’t share everything. In part because TPRS sounds so fuzzy and not well prepared if you don’t SEE it. I mean, telling other teachers that you aren’t too worried about grammar just rings all sorts of alarms. And it isn’t even true. But, it’s hard to put into concise words what we do. So, mainly I share in small bits and pieces.

Towards the end of the year I gave up and taught the old way. The kids had to have a certain amount of information in order to be able to pass the standardized exam, and I didn’t have enough time to cover it all in a traditional TPRS manner (we lost 11 instructional days this year to snow just for starters) and the amount of vocab and grammar just cannot be acquired in that time. So, I used all the time-worn strategies of language teachers everywhere. A lot more of my students failed the second semester than the first, and my exam grades were consistent with first semester grades.

Sooo... now that I am on break I am plannning to use Backwards Designing to map out my own personal TPRS curriculum that aligns with the district pacing guide by semesters next year. There is a rumor that we might be able to keep our students for the whole year, which would ease some of the stress too. I would have a whole year to get students to where they “belong.”

building blocks

I have an image in my mind of language as building blocks. Maybe it's because my own kids love building towers, castles, and race tracks with these brightly colored and oddly shaped pieces of wood. There are squares, rectangles, triangles, arches, cylinders and quarter circles of various sizes and colors. Depending on a person's creativity and skill, a person can build many things. We have had towers that have reached as tall as fingertips stretched over head. We have also had race tracks that have been half an inch high. "Don't knock over my castle" I am told as I walk into the bedroom and see an outcropping of blocks. A few minutes later, the castle is a jail for misbehaving race cars. So much of what my kids create is based on what they can imagine. But there are also very strict rules governing their creations. For instance, no matter how hard they try, they cannot reach above their own height to place blocks, unless they use a tool. So, the height is limited. Even stricter (since there are chairs and step stools) are other laws of physics. Balance and placement become so important.

But, I never sat down with my boys and explained these laws of physics, balance, proportion, placement... I never told them, practice stacking two blocks together until you get them perfect, and then practice with three... No, their understanding of the rules of building blocks has come about through play. They have built, and toppled, and built again.

I never told them that before building we had to take an inventory of every block and study its characteristics. Although, the grammarian in me has taken inventory, and does want to organize the blocks into nice neat categories...

Teaching a language is a lot like playing with the blocks. I can teach my students to inventory all the blocks - the words, the morphemes, the grammar... We can study the characteristics of each one. And then we can practice putting two blocks together. Once we get that right, we can move on to two new blocks, or string three blocks together. Or, we can just build. Yes, we will make mistakes. The blocks will fall down. But, when we let creativity take over, the things we can build if we just try!

Cereal again?

I was just talking about how some of my former students still discuss events from our classes last year, and even years before. Then what happens? These very same students started a debate about a word we had used in one of our stories on my facebook page. 

The basic story is this:

Mike Tyson is famous. He is strong. Lots of people like him. But, he has a problem. He likes to eat people's ears. It is illegal to eat people's ears. The police come and arrest him. He goes to jail.

While he is in jail, he has an idea. He has to wait, because he can't do anything about his idea when he is in jail.

When he gets home, he makes Tyson Puffs - a cereal shaped like people's ears. Now he can eat ears and it isn't illegal. Now he doesn't go to jail. Now he is happy.

The debate was about the word "Puffs". One girl said it was Pufs, another thought it was Poofs, and one boy said it was Puffs. It turns out, they were all right. In the English translation, we had written "Puffs", as we asked the story, we pronounced it "poofs" and when we wrote it in Spanish, we wrote "Pufs" to keep the pronunciation.  But really, it has been more than a year and a half, and here they are debating, literally the semantics of our story about cereal, body parts, and jail. 

And, it's on my facebook page!  Which means one - these students have become autonomous learners of the language; two - they are making connections and using the language outside of school (ACTFL standards); three - we have succeeded in building relationships with each other; four - the students have truly acquired some of the language; and five - I now have to explain to my family and adult friends why my students think a story about eating ears is hilarious.  :)

Oh! The connections... this all came up because I told my son I was going to eat his ears.  :)

Back to basics

I started back at work this week with fresh resolve to get back to the basics in my classes.

I had a story script I followed in three of my four level one classes. (In the fourth class, our discussion about the blizzard was too interesting to leave.) I made sure the script included lots of repetitions of the key structures.

But, where I really focused my energy was on only adding one detail at a time, and circling a structure until I was getting a strong response. I think I totally blew it. But, I was much more conscious of the entire process than I have been up until now. I would say a sentence, ask one question, add another sentence... And then I'd realize "Oh no! I've just added four details back to back. I'd better slow down."

And then I would go back and circle. I have formally asked students in several of my classes to be my barometers and to slow me down whenever I go too fast. I told my principal (who is scheduled to observe me next week) to expect me to call on the same student multiple times, and why. I told him that I observe my students, and then I select the student who is processing information the slowest, but who is still trying, to be my "barometer." So I ask that student for comprehension checks, etc.

It's amazing. When I am concentrating on slowing down, I am looking in their eyes. I am thinking so many thoughts, and that slows me down too. Because I have to take the time to select the thoughts I want to entertain, and then watch their faces. And then circle.

I completely bombed in one class. I decided to tell an anecdote, in English, that had nothing at all to do with the story. It fell flat. And all I could think of was Ben's no English project, and how breaking into English destroyed the class.

Things I have really focused on this week:
*I have been adament about being respectful of each other. And also that nobody talk while I am talking. I am trying Susie Gross' idea, just looking at the kid until he/she is quiet and then saying thank you and continuing with my lesson.
*Comprehension checks. I've done a fist to five several times each class period.
*Spontaneous assessments of acquired knowledge (pop quizzes).
*Prompting students on my expectations, but in a non-judgmental way. "I know this is a new class, and we haven't seen each other much because of the weather, so I'll remind you that when somebody says hello, the polite response is to say hello back. Let's try that again." "I expect everyone to answer the questions. That's part of how I know you understood what I was saying. If I don't hear everyone answer, I'll assume you didn't understand, and I will repeat the information."
*Circling. I still suck at this. I know from my experience with Mandarin this summer that there is no such thing as too slow or too repetitive. And yet, my mind balks at asking too many questions. I ask two or three, and then I feel I *must* go on.
*Adding one detail at a time. Again, even though I know I cannot go slow enough, I just get these urges to move on. The kids must want more.

Today, I slowed down more than I thought possible. And I almost felt students following what we were reading. We got almost nothing accomplished... but I felt this invisible pull where students were engaged in the reading and understanding what was being said.

Not a complete success. And yet, a success. Next week I go back to the drawing board, I teach to their eyes, and I circle the crap out of the structures. :)

honoring our students as people

I posted the following over on Ben Slavic's blog a while ago.  If you want to see the original discussion, click on the link in the title to this entry.

I had some truly amazing students last year. Amazing intellect, amazing creativity, amazing personality. Truly, I was blessed as a teacher to have some of these kids. One boy borrowed a grammar workbook to study at home. He came back to me a few weeks later to report that “I’m not quite sure I understand the subjunctive.” This was in the 8th grade. As far as our stories went… out of this world.



I have moved on to another school, and so have they. And, I am seeing what they are saying about Spanish. Oddly, they post about Spanish frequently on Facebook. Sometimes, they quote random lyrics or story lines from our classes last year. More often I see complaints about how boring and endless the verb conjugations are, powerpoint vocabulary lists that never end, worksheet after worksheet on topics they already understand, and homework.


These brilliant kids who could write novelettes in Spanish with minimal errors last year, who voraciously read through three Blaine Ray novels and Mira’s Piratas, are now defeated by the monstrous verb conjugation task at hand. They report that they are only now beginning to understand the preterit (although they were successfully using the preterit and imperfect in class last year) and they are feeling dumb that it is taking them so long. Two of them discussed their recent mid-term exams and how they spent so much effort trying to remember the rules for i->y and “basement verbs” that they were unable to answer a simple question “How do you say ‘they are singers?’”

And, oddly given all the complaints I got last year about how “boring” the Ana books were… they are begging to read “Real Books” like Pobre Ana again.


At first, reading through this recent discussion of theirs I too felt crushed. I didn’t prepare them properly for high school. I should have taken the time to explain the grammar… Then I felt angry. Who are these teachers who crush these absolutely brilliant kids? Why must we take these confident children who can speak and communicate in Spanish and force them to pay attention to such minutiae as whether or not they spelled a word correctly with an i or a y and thus convince them that they have not learned what they thought they had, and that they are not good at it. And then I felt pride too. Here they are, a year later (some more than a year later) posting to each other from multiple high schools, IN SPANISH, talking about Spanish, remembering our stories, reading Ana…

Then I wrote about a conversation I overheard in the hallway between a former student of mine and her new Spanish teacher, my colleague.  It broke my heart.  This girl is habitually tardy, she draws on herself in Sharpie, she smokes, she probably drinks, and she doesn't do homework. She has been suspended several times this year, which doesn't help her spotty attendance. She is also very introverted. It took me weeks before I got a glimpse of the beautiful person she is inside. The person waiting inside like a butterfly in its chrysalis.  She was never a superstar student of mine, but she did have a role to play in several of our stories. She is amazingly creative, and I honored that whenever I could.
 
So, there I was working madly during my planning period (back in the days before the double blizzard when I still went to work) and I heard a heated discussion in the hall. I glanced up. This girl was standing there, head hanging down, and her new teacher was telling her that she should go withdraw from the class because maybe a foreign language wasn't for her. She was telling this beautiful person that she could not pass if she did not try harder, that she was guaranteed to fail, that she wasn't cut out for languages, she should withdraw before it affected her transcripts.
 
And, it seemed to me that I could see her retreating back inside of herself to a place of safety and warmth where before I had seen this beautiful person near the surface ready to spring forth. It seems to me that this child has something much bigger on her plate right now than her grade in Spanish class.
 
What does humiliating children do to them? Does it make them want to try harder? Do they respond by showing their brilliance? Or do they retreat to somewhere we can't reach? Do they withdraw and then decades later tell others that they never could learn that new language, they must not be good at languages? 
 
I just want to call bull____.
 
I know how I respond to humiliation. I threw a pen at my professor and withdrew from a class I loved.

TPRS

I woke up in the middle of a dream. Not quite sure what the dream was about, probably my thesis.  But the first thought I had was this: TPRS is not really a methodology, it's a philosophy!

TPRS encompasses everything: how to handle classroom management - we never humiliate children, we relate to them as human beings, we never allow them to put other students down, etc.; what to do with the use of L1 (students' first language) - we don't allow it to be spoken in the classroom except for brief grammar lessons lasting no more than a few seconds, we use L1 to translate new structures on the board, etc.; every facet of second language acquisition in a classroom setting is covered.

Which leads me to another rambling thought. I love Dr. Krashen's work. I think he hits the nail on the head regarding second language acquisition. I love his newest thoughts about transparent language rather than 100% comprehension, and about the organic growth of language rather than planned structures in stories. I believe these are ideal situations for language acquisition. But, I don't believe they are ideal in a classroom setting. If I were to truly follow Dr. Krashen's beliefs, I would not be able to teach in a public school.  Because, in a public school, I have a curriculum I am required to follow, lesson plans I must write, I have colleagues who inherit my students every semester and an expectation that they be at similar places as far as the language they have been exposed to. I have 32 students in each class, maintaining +1 for each student while ensuring that the class is comprehensible to all the others, is a daunting task.

The use of students' L1 in a second language class

Over at Ben Slavic's blog there has been a discussion of using English (L1) in a second language class.  We all know L1 is to be avoided. It says so right in district, state, national standards, research, methodology textbooks, etc.  But, it's that 800 pound gorilla. How do we get rid of it? The students speak it. We speak it. It seems so easy to just slip into English for a few seconds, share a story, explain something, go back to Spanish...

Ben is discovering that, as he experiments with a radical expulsion of English in his French classes, his students are paying more attention, they are using less English themselves, and in fact they are happier and more engaged. We always slip into English thinking we are adressing *their* needs.  But, what if we aren't?  What if English just kills it all?

What if the answer to kids speaking in English is simply for the teacher to speak more in L2? (while maintaining complete transparency, in other words staying always in bounds with the class.)

classroom management

One of the things I have struggled with the most since starting TPRS in my classes has been classroom management in general and specifically the no-negativity rule. The no-negativity rule or the no-put-down rule is that we do not allow students to express any negativity towards each other or the class.  It has been my Achilles Heel.

I have an image in my mind. TPRS is like paddling a boat. If the students are positive and participating, we are paddling with the current and we go amazing places. If the students are being negative and fighting the process, we are paddling against the current.

So, back to my revelation.

Karen Rowan wrote in the "Green Book" that if a student is negative towards one of his/her peers we simply point out that he/she *must* be mistaken. Obviously he/she is thinking about a *different* student in a *different* class because this student is obviously very smart.

I love this approach. It doesn't humiliate the offending student, and yet it allows no room for negotiation. No wiggle room.  Way better than me getting mad and huffing and puffing that I will not tolerate this kind of behavior.

Backwards Design

I am thinking...

This whole year I have felt so hampered by the requirements of my pacing guide. What if I use Backwards Designing to plan out a TPRS curriculum? I can use the exam dates as my points in time from which to work, figure out what material is actually expected to be learned by then, and build those structures into my stories.

With that and the slowing way down... I should be able to cover the same material in a similar time frame. I can place my stories in the countries that we are supposed to be studying. Make sure my structures use the grammatical points I am supposed to be teaching...

The only problem is the ridiculous vocabulary we are expected to teach. Yes, there is an insane amount of vocabulary to cover, but it's not even practical vocab most of the time. Heck, I don't even know some of the words.

School is closed until at least Tuesday because of the blizzards (another one being forecast for Monday) so maybe I have time to work on a plan here.

Back to Basics

I am reading "the Green Book" Fluency Through TPR Storytelling by Blaine Ray and Contee Seely. I picked it up again to begin researching in earnest. (My thesis topic has been approved!)

I am amazed by how much the basics have been escaping me. In my quest to get a story going, to grab the students' interest... I have been going way too fast for many of my slower processors.

The biggest thing I have not been doing is circling enough. But just behind that one is the idea that we should never introduce more than one new fact at a time. I introduce a fact, ask a question, then introduce another fact. I don't give anybody the time to savor the new idea, to truly acquire it.

So, whenever this blizzard ends, I'm going back to the classroom with a renewed sense of purpose. S-L-O-W.... I don't care how many times people say it, it always applies.

I think "slow" and I slow down my speech so students can hear my individual words. I point and pause at the board. But I don't go through the story slowly enough. I rush through as if the end of the story is the goal. As Blaine points out, it isn't the end, it's the journey.

the joy of reading

I think it is so important that our kids read just for the sake of reading - no workbooks, no tests, just time to read something they want to read. I wrote in an earlier blog that this kind of reading in our classrooms in a key to reducing the achievement gap, and I truly believe that. Which is why it is so sad to me that both times I have been observed this year my administrators have commented on how great everything was, but I should perhaps have a follow-up activity to the SSR, so the students recognize the academic rigor of it.

How do we teach people to love something by testing it?

Top 100 words in a language

In TPRS, we focus heavily on the words that are most often used in communicative language. There is a frequency dictionary for the Spanish language. Blaine Ray tells us that if he had it his way, he would design the curriculum around the 100 most frequently used words in a language, and once those were acquired, he would go on eventually to the 1000 most used words. Of course, he does throw in the silly and unexpected words too, like blue cockroach and flying elephant. These words are mostly to keep interest high - I tell my students the crazy stuff is mental super glue - they make the rest of the words stick in our minds.

The first time I read through the frequency list for Spanish, I was shocked at how many of these words that are used daily are not found in our textbooks. Some, like algo (something) are found in upper level classes. And many are just too common to omit, like el (the). Still, I am wondering how far down the word itinerary is, and why oh why I have to teach it as if it were vital to communication. Most of my students don't even know what an itinerary is in English!

TPRS vs standardized teaching

I am in a quandary. I am convinced that TPRS is the best way to help students truly acquire the language. I am so convinced, that this is the primary focus of my upcoming thesis. And yet.

And yet, I am not teaching with TPRS at the moment. Why not?

It just feels like such a fight. I have to give quarterly benchmark exams in which students are expected to have mastered banalities of the language. I lose my students at the semester and will have to retrain them all to TPRS. I am tired of defending myself to my colleagues. I am tired of fighting students who want the "easier" way of filling in blanks from the textbook rather than sitting back and doing the "hard work" of listening to a story.

I am in the process of giving the first benchmark exams, and it seems that even had I not stopped the stories, my students would have succeeded phenomenally. So, it's back into the trenches I go.

the achievement gap

I’ve been thinking a lot about the topic of how to close the achievement gap lately… it's a hot topic both in my graduate work, and in my school district and I’m thinking that a TPRS classroom is a wonderful solution.

First, we do not expect students to come to us with certain pre-set study skills. They do not need to know the typical classroom game to succeed.

Second, we expect each student to come to us as he or she is, and it is incumbant upon us to get to know them. When we personalize the classroom, we are breaking down some of these stereotypical role models that have been forced upon us as a society.

When we allow our students to have input into the discussions, class is relevant to them. I cannot begin to explain how much I have learned this year alone about different artists. Lil Wayne is the cutest thing many of my students have ever seen. The fact that I do not care for him is of no importance in a TPRS classroom, my students do and so we talk about him.

In a TPRS classroom we don’t have all the preformulated activities in which we ask students to discuss and write about the physical appearance of all the white students with different colored hair and eyes.

Storytelling is one of the most powerful ways to convey culture and language. Stories are universal - every culture tells stories. We are able to step outside of the boundaries of school and step into something familiar.

And, I think, TPRS is an excellent way to sneak in some of the skills our students have missed along the way. Critical thinking skills? Sure, let’s talk about what is going to happen, or why did this event happen, what could have happened instead, how did the other person feel, etc. Reading comprehension? Sure, let’s go so slowly that everybody knows exactly what we are doing. Here’s how we read. Pleasure reading? Well, if we are doing SSR or kindergarten day, then our students are exposed to reading for the sake of reading. No exams, no notes, just reading. And on a simpler level than what they are expected to do in other classes. Here we have pictures, and props, and we circle until everybody understands everything. Here we don’t allow for failure.

Does it solve every problem? I sure wish that teaching through TPRS could solve all the world’s problems. Sadly, problems and tensions still exist. But how much more compounded would those problems be if we asked students to sit still for 86 minutes at a time and open their books and complete activities 4, 6, 11 and 17 in their workbooks without ever asking them who they were or how they were and never caring if they failed? If we just assumed they were failing because they are too lazy to study?

New Teacher Orientation

I am sitting here trying to wrap my brain around what was discussed during our New Teacher Orientation this week.

Apparently, Grammar Translation and ALM "don't work anymore" and the cutting edge theory is the Monitor Theory. So, we should adjust our teaching style to reflect this. We were also asked if we had ever heard of "the Natural Approach."

I am feeling like I have been in a time warp or something. Because, I swear, that the Monitor Theory is at least twenty years old, and that the results of Grammar Translation and ALM were never very positive, so to say they "don't work anymore" is a bit hard to swallow. Cutting edge is a 20 year old theory???

And then, when I mentioned a strategy I use to lower students' affective filters on day one, they looked at me like I had three heads. I thought for sure if they were referencing the Monitor Theory and the Natural Approach, they must be at least passingly familiar with Dr. Krashen's work. But, sadly, they didn't understand what I meant with affective filter.

We have pacing guides which spell out exactly how long each lesson should take and in which order we should teach them - 1 day to establish classroom norms; 2 days to teach greetings and basic introductions; 2 days for... etc. And we MUST have a warm-up activity because kids "thrive on routines." Great. I asked if my Free Voluntary Reading time could be considered their warm-up activity. The response I got? "That sounds like a private school thing." Because, obviously, public school students can't benefit from the thing that research shows is the best indicator of language acquisition? It isn't in my curriculum and it's a little dangerous for me to use it. I wonder if I show them copies of my books, which all have Dr. Krashen's name on them, if it might make a difference? See, here is the Monitor Theory, that was Dr. Krashen 20 years ago. Here is the Natural Approach. That was Dr. Krashen too. Here is what Dr. Krashen says about reading...

One other disturbing thought for me was when we were asked to be self-reflective and ask "what if" questions of ourselves, such as "what if I were to teach the subjunctive using TPRS?" At least I know they've heard the acronym.

input vs. output

As much as I believe that we learn through input and not through output, we are scored on the output of our students, and our students are judged by their output. Dictations and Free Writes my way of appeasing those who believe spelling and grammar are the be all and end all in foreign language education, and it is one less thing to fight about.

TPRS students, and the method itself, are frequently judged by how well the students can jump through these hoops that have nothing to do with communication. As I explain to my students at the beginning of the year:

When my toddler tells me "Mommy, look my foots." The fact that he is missing a prepositional phrase and has incorrectly conjugated an irregular verb does not impede my understanding. In fact, my comprehension is not bothered at all. In fact, a foreigner can come up to me on the street corner and ask, "Where hotel?" And although the questions contained no verb, I can understand the phrase completely. On the other hand, somebody could approach me and with perfect diction say something like, "Appear! It is ruling on the west! We should take blankets now before it strikes us and we are watered." The verbs in this section are conjugated correctly. The pronouns are correct. There are no missing words. And yet, communication has been lost.

Students in output oriented classrooms are lauded for their diction, for their conjugation, for their flawless subject/verb agreement. But those things are worthless if the underlying message doesn't make sense. (2 extra credit points for the first person to figure out what I was trying to say in that quote above).

Students in comprehensible input oriented classrooms, on the other hand, are encouraged to stay silent until they are comfortable. They are allowed to make mistakes without fear of reprisal. They say things like they have two foots. But, they say things (which is probably yet another blog).

And then, when they leave my classroom, and they go to Mr. Grammar's class, they are told that they have not learned Spanish because they cannot conjugate and they cannot spell. (Mind you , they can write a 120 word essay in 10 minutes flat and they aren't scared to put themselves out there and try to communicate). And then, Mr. Grammar goes back to the teacher's lounge and says something like, "See? I told you this TPRS thing didn't work. Can you believe these students still say two foots in their second year?" And then, sadly, the kids are slowly weeded out of foreign language.

So, I give dictations, and I use the vocabulary from the textbook, and I teach them their verb charts (kind of), and there are a lot of good things that come out of these activities, but I wonder if I might not see the same gains in spelling and grammar if I just let the kids have fun and read?

Dictados

I want to make it very clear that I stole everything I know about dictados from Ben Slavic. I also want it known that this is NOT TPRS. It's pretty much very focused output. There is a lot of comprehensible input going on here, and I have seen a lot of gains (especially in confidence) from it, so I will keep doing it, especially since it really doesn't take up more than ten-fifteen minutes of class a week.

I keep my dictados to 5 sentences. They are always recycled from the stuff (stories, readings, etc.) we do in class, so there is no new information in them. The students can focus entirely on writing the information, not on comprehension. It lowers the affective filter a lot. I tell my kids that I only expect them to give me ten minutes a week of undivided, focused work time for spelling and grammar. (Which is really a lot, but that's another blog entirely.)

As in any dictation, the students have a piece of notebook paper, and they copy what they hear me say. However, I have them leave two blank lines between every line they write on. So, there is a line of text, then two blank lines, then another line of text.

I read through the five sentences very slowly. I usually read them through two times, although I will offer more, especially if there are complicated structures or long sentences in there. After I have read the dictation through and students are ok with it, I project the correct version of the dictation on the board. (I was lucky enough to have an interactive white board last year which made this all very fun.) At this point I go through the dictation again, but letter by letter, accent mark by accent mark. I point out all the tricky things, but I do it via pop-up lessons and circling. "Class, Did you notice the accent mark here? Why do I have an ía at the end of this verb? That's right! It's in the past tense." Then I keep going.

While I am going over the correct version of the dictation, my students are following along on their papers. Their assignment is to underline all their errors, and on the line immediately below the error they are to copy the correct spelling of the word. I print out hard copies of the dictation for students who have difficulty changing their focus from the paper to the board and back.

When I grade the papers, I only grade on what has been corrected. So, every single student regardless of his/her ability to spell can earn an A+. Talk about lowering that affective filter! I just removed all possibility of failure.

But it isn't just an easy A.

First of all, I am picky about accent marks and punctuation, because I am giving them the corrections visually and orally. So, the first mistake brings them to an A. After that, every second mistake drops them a letter grade. I write the new corrections directly beneath the mistake, so either on that second or third line.

Second, I am differentiating my butt off here, and I'm not even breaking a sweat. Every student is getting a spelling lesson and a grammar lesson in EXACTLY what he/she needs to learn.

Third, I am getting true assessments from this. When I look at the dictations, which I do, I am noticing where students are making mistakes. If a word or phrase keeps popping up, and it is a high frequency word, I make sure to recycle it into future lessons. If it's a "throw-away" word, one that isn't used often but was in that story, I don't pay much attention to it.

As the year went on, I noticed that despite (or is that because of) the lack of fear about grades, my students were making fewer and fewer mistakes on their spelling. That was in the dictations, and in the free writes. They were nailing words that are often spelled incorrectly.

weekly schedule and dictations

Desiree said:
This will be my 3rd year teaching and 2nd year doing TPRS. I love your idea of a routine and wanted to get some input from you. You said Mon & Fri is free reading, Tues free writing and Thurs dictation. What did you mean by no normal class on Wed. (do you not meet)? I see my students for 50 min Mon-Fri so I was wondering how this would work. How long do each of these activities take each day? Also, do you give them a grade for dictations? In my first year I did a dictation every 2-3 weeks but I would do the dictation on Mon as practice and they would rewrite the correct version afterwards and Friday I would do the same dictation but this time taking it up for a quiz grade. I didn't know if you do something like this. Thanks for any advice you can give me. Thanks for your blog....it is great learning from master teachers.

I have really loved the idea of a routine. The kids always knew what to expect when coming in to class. My administrators loved it too. As much as TPRS is a fairly organic process and is not as easily planned as other ways of teaching, it always *looked* very organized and planned. Administrators would look at my board and see that today we were going to do Free Writes, and then a class story, and they never asked me for more detailed lesson plans. The students were happily writing, so obviously is was a well-planned and organized classroom. Heh. If only they knew.
Wednesdays were not a normal day because out here they have one day a week that is an early release day. That is, school lets out an hour and a half earlier and that’s when teacher meetings and staff development are scheduled. This past year we had all the normal classes, but at a much smaller clip. It was perfect for reading the novel, because we could spend the whole class time reading without getting overwhelmed. I don’t know how I will adjust my schedule this coming year now that I am on an 80 minute class every other day.
I’ve never thought to give the dictation again as a quiz grade later in the week. I do give a grade for dictations, and I counted it as an assessment. But, the way I did that was to give students a grade based on what they were able to turn in correct. I read the dictation straight through twice. Students wrote what they thought they heard. Now, I based my dictation on the class story or the novel we had been reading. As students were writing, they left two blank lines after every line of their text. When I posted the correct version on the board, students underlined any words they had not spelled correctly, and copied the correct version on the line underneath. This focused their attention specifically where they needed it. I actually really like the low-stress atmosphere of kids are only scored on what they are able to correct. Everybody can get an A, even if they are not the world’s best spellers. What a way to lower that affective filter, while still sneaking in that scary subject like spelling. By the way, I stole this idea in its entirety from Ben Slavic.
And, even though this is an output activity, and focused on spelling and grammar, I still think it is a valuable activity. For one, it reinforces the stories we have been asking or reading all week. For two, it builds the students’ confidence as they see that each week they are making fewer corrections on their papers. Students who have difficulty writing still get to build their confidence because they can earn A’s, even if spelling has never been something they’ve been good at in English either. The first few times, I had students staring at their papers in surprise, they couldn’t believe they had gotten a good grade. By the end of the year, their dictations were a source of pride. And finally, I know that when they leave my classroom, they have to transition into a traditional class where spelling and grammar are the focus of a lot of their grade.
This lets me focus instruction on spelling and grammar, but still doing it through comprehensible input – I just do pop-up spelling and grammar after the dictation. So, I don’t interrupt the dictation with the grammar or the spelling, but when I’m going through the corrections, I will often have the class translate the passage, and then I’ll ask why for instance, the verb ends in –amos.
I would print out a few hard copies for students with visual processing issues, so they had a person copy and didn’t have to keep changing their focus from the board to their paper. I was also very pleased with the whole dictation process because it naturally differentiated for every student’s individual needs. Each student only underlined and corrected the words that he/she needed to work on. And if when grading the dictations I noticed a pattern, I would make sure to incorporate those words in future dictations too. You know those tricky words that always catch up all but the best students (and even those students sometimes) we spend all year correcting students’ work and yet on that final exam they still make those mistakes? Well, my students nailed those tricky words this year, and they were able to grasp basic spelling patterns. I think part of that comes from the dictations.