Cross Curricular Connection

In the fall, my seventh grade students read a book called "A Long Walk to Water" by Linda Sue Park.  It follows two storylines, one about a young girl who has to walk a long way for water for her family daily, and the other about a young man named Salva Dut.  Salva was a lost boy in Sudan and had to walk many many miles in order to find salvation from a war torn country.
Here is a blurb from Linda Sue Park's website-

The students really enjoyed the book, and were able to skype with the author.  They did some fundraising as well, to support Salva Dut's efforts to bring clean water to South Sudan.  The students connected with the story, and Salva Dut.  They were excited to watch a live streaming video where the author, Linda Sue Park, and Salva Dut answered questions that children across the country had sent in.

Now here is where Spanish class comes in.  Remember, this is their first year of Spanish, and we meet every other day.  So in reality, the students had only had about fifty days of Spanish class at the point where the following story was written.  I shared the following with the English teachers to explain:

The students in my White A block wrote this together. We sat in a circle, and each person had a paper, they wrote for a minute, then passed the paper.  They had to read, and then continue the story started by the previous student.  We did this for about 10-12 rounds, so the following story is a combination of many student writers.  I’ve included the English translation for you to see, and I cleaned up the spelling a little in the Spanish version. I was so impressed by the students retelling Salva’s story in Spanish!  After reading this to them, I shared some irony with them- in Spanish, the word “salva” means “he saves”.  The kids love that, since Salva is now saving lives with his iron giraffes.

Hay un muchacho.  Muchacho se llama Salva.  Salva está furioso.  Salva no agua.  Salva está muy triste porque no tiene agua.  Salva quiere agua.  Salva vive en Africa.  Salva está triste, Salva quiere un taco.  Salva no tiene un taco.  Salva no come.  Salva quiere agua, no quiere taco.  Salva muy triste.  Entonces, Salva no vive.  Un ratón come Salva.  Ahora, un ratón está feliz, y Salva no vive.  Un ratón corre muy rápido, está feliz.

There is a boy.  The boy is called Salva.  Salva is furious.  Salva no water.  Salva is very sad because he has no water.  Salva wants water.  Salva lives in Africa.  Salva is sad, Salva wants a taco.  Salva doesn’t have a taco.  Salva doesn’t eat.  Salva wants water, he doesn’t want a taco.  Salva very sad.  Then, Salva doesn’t live.  A mouse eats Salva.  Now, a mouse is happy, and Salva doesn’t live.  A mouse runs very fast, he is happy.

Yes, it takes an odd turn at the end, but overall I was so impressed with their ability to make a connection to what they have been studying in other classes, and bring it into our classroom. You can even see that a student tried to bring it back to Salva's story by saying, "..quiere agua, no quiere un taco." You can see the original writing here:

I truly believe that teaching through Comprehensible Input, and Teaching Proficiency through Reading and Storytelling gave my students the ability and confidence to write that story. In the past, when I strictly followed a textbook, focusing on grammar and verb charts, my students never would have been able to write such complete thoughts and formulate them into sentences this early in their Spanish learning process..

I'm so excited to continue on my journey of improving my teaching through TCI and TPRS.

It works!! Success of TCI/TPRS

I just finished my second semester of a purely (attempted) Comprehensible Input and TPRS class! It's been a struggle, especially being the only teacher in my district to embrace this method fully.  But as I was grading final exams on Tuesday, I jumped for joy and ran around to share a student's work with other teachers.  I had my "a-ha!" moment, my "maybe there's something to this" moment, my "it works!" moment.  I couldn't be more proud of one particular young man's journey into learning Spanish.

I had this young man in the fall of 2014 in my new course "Spanish Language and Culture" which was designed as a 2 year course, taught through TCI/TPRS so that students who would not be successful in a "traditional textbook driven class" would have a chance to be successful learning a language.  My class was filled with students who had learning disabilities- mainly language based- as well as behaviorally challenged students, who had failed the textbook driven class.  This particular student, we'll call him by his chosen Spanish name- Miguel, came to my class with no prior experience.  He had recently suffered from a brain tumor and it left him with short term memory loss.  He wanted to take Spanish, even though he would have a terrible time trying to memorize vocabulary, verb endings, etc.  His special education contact recommended my new course and he signed up.

Miguel did very well in that course, retaining words/phrases throughout the semester, even though he daily had to ask me where he sat, who is partner was, and what class he had after mine.  Miguel ended the course with an 85 average.  That course ended in January 2015.  Miguel did not have Spanish class in the Spring of 2015, and then obviously not over the summer.  He showed up in my Spanish 2 class this past fall (2015).  (Unfortunately, my Spanish Language and Culture 2 year course was not continued, but my admin worked to get all of my students into a Spanish 2 class with me as their teacher).

Now Miguel was in a Spanish 2 class with 20 other students from textbook driven classrooms.  He was actually the only one with a TCI/TPRS background.  Within the first week I could see that he had retained most of our target structures from the previous fall.  I was impressed.  But the real "A-Ha!" moment came at the end of the semester-- Miguel's final exam.  I've posted a picture below, and a link to a PDF here.

This short story may not be super complex and the sentences are short.  But, he has only 2 errors, used complete sentences, used vocabulary from September 2014 (as well as new structures from this semester), and told a very creative story! I would actually say that this was the best story I read while grading final exams, even better than the girl who used complex compound sentences.

It brought tears to my eyes to see what this young man accomplished, even when he wasn't supposed to be able to.  I truly believe this story shows the effectiveness of the TCI/TPRS method.

Embedded Reading: La Lista by Aldrey

After creating this embedded reading for La historia de Juan by Juanes for my high school Spanish 2 students, I decided to try to do something similar for my 7th grade students.  This is their first year of Spanish.  I only see them every other day, so even though it was November when I used this with them, they had only had about 25 days of class time.  This was a perfect activity to do leading up to Thanksgiving, since it was a short week (2.5 days).  I probably spent a total of 3 class days (80 minute blocks) on this song.

I did have to give the students a lot of vocabulary up front, and it may not have all been comprehensible.  But it gave them the resources to make each reading comprehensible.  I shared the document with students through Google Classroom, so they could do it online.  Some still prefer paper.  The online version gave them the active links to read a little about Aldrey and watch the videos.  You can find the packet here.

We went slowly, allowing them plenty of time to read each version, do the associated assignment, and then review as a class.  After doing all of the versions, we finally listened to the song, while they tried to fill in the blanks. I didn't show the video at this point, only listened.  This assured that their focus would be on listening.  We listened to the whole song through once.  Second time, I paused every once in a while to make sure all were still following along in the right spots.  The third time we listened, I paused after each blank (or maybe a couple depending on flow of song), and together we reviewed the missing words.

I really felt that students had a good understanding of the lyrics by the time we actually watched the video.  I had them sing along as we watched.  We watched this video, with the lyrics in it the first few times.

The next day we watched this video, which is more story-like and matches the lyrics.  Then I asked "¿Cuál video prefieres?  ¿Por qué?" While they could understand these Spanish questions, most did have to answer in English because their Spanish isn't very far along yet.

As an extension activity, students wrote their own "listas".  They wrote goals for Spanish class, the school year, and life in general.  Then, they took 1 from each list and created a poster.  Students illustrated their goals so that other students could understand what they were.  I asked them to write them in Spanish, but let them figure it out on their own, so some were very hard to comprehend!  I didn't grade these, just let them write and draw.  They presented the poster to their partner, and partner had to guess the English based on the picture.

Overall I enjoyed doing this with them, and I think the students enjoyed it too - I still hear them singing it occasionally in class!

Embedded Reading: La Historia de Juan (Juanes)

I was lucky to meet Laurie Clarcq for the first time at TCI Maine in October 2014.  She talked about this “embedded reading” idea.  It seemed like a great way to increase the comprehensible input.  I had only recently started attempting to teach with comprehensible input.  I did make an attempt at an embedded reading shortly after that conference, but didn’t feel too confident.  When I found out Laurie would be presenting at a school in Massachusetts in the Spring of 2015, I dragged most of my department to learn from her.  She talked about the importance of reading in the Foreign Language classroom, and of course, the importance of making it comprehensible.  At the TCI Maine conference in October 2015, I saw Laurie for the 3rd time.  She is an amazing teacher, and her students are lucky to be able to learn from her.  If you haven’t heard about embedded reading, check it out.  And if you ever have a chance to learn from Laurie, take advantage of that opportunity!

I usually use the song “La historia de Juan”  by Juanes in Spanish 2 to go over the preterite tense, after “teaching” the preterite according to the textbook.  This year, I’ve ditched the textbook for my Spanish 2, but still wanted to use the song, and introduce the past tenses.  How could I make the song comprehensible to students?  A-ha!  Embedded Reading!  I wasn’t 100% how to create an embedded reading, but I gave it a try.  You can see my finished packet here.  There are 6 versions of the song, and activities to go with each one.  

My plan was to use this reading/song during the short week of Thanksgiving.  We have 2 and a half days of school.  That means 2 full classes of about 80 minutes, and then a 40 minute class on the half day.  I wasn’t sure how long this would take us, but I left the 3 days open for it.

I started with a little background on Juanes.  The students watched some commercials with Juanes, and tried to fill in the transcript.  Kara Jacobs introduced me to using commercials in class.  Here is the activity we did.  I didn’t expect them to understand it all, or fill in all of the blanks, it was mainly something to introduce them to Juanes so they could learn a little about him, see him, understand his popularity, etc. Once they knew a little about Juanes, we were ready to begin reading.  We spent the 2 1/2 days before Thanksgiving working on the packet, and about 30 minutes of the following Monday.

Overall, I think the kids enjoyed it.  They definitely understood the song by the time we got to the reading of the actual lyrics, which I think helped them enjoy the song that much more.  

Just found great resources here from Barbara Kuczun Nelson as a follow up activity.

Fall 2014 Semester Reflections (part 1)

As I sit here on the 5th snow day in a row, watching El Internado, I thought it would be a great time to reflect on the Fall Semester.  More specifically, to reflect on my Spanish Language and Culture course, which I taught through TPRS/TCI.

Now, I went into the semester with very little training.  I'd gone to a 2 day workshop with Blaine Ray in September 2013, and a 1 day workshop with Carol Gaab in January 2013.  I'd done (and continue to do) a lot of reading online, blog posts, tweets, etc.  But didn't feel really ready.  In October 2014 I attended the Maine TCI conference, and that helped build my confidence.  I know coming back from that  conference I was finally starting to feel more confident in my class.

It took me some time to get going with TCI methods in September 2014.  I wanted to ease myself, and the students into the process.  The first unit I taught was called El Mundo Hispanohablante.  This unit was a basic introduction to the Spanish speaking world.  Was it authentic TCI/TPRS? No.  But I felt it was necessary to introduce students to the alphabet, some basic phrases, and to learn a little about the different places in the world where Spanish is spoken.  The kids seemed to enjoy it, and loved doing partner work to practice speaking, or the alphabet.

After that unit ended, with great success on the part of the students (I think I made the final assessment too easy, and offered too much extra credit!-  How would I know the kids would have learned the geography of the countries so well!?!).  Even the listening and speaking assessment went well.  Here I was with a group of 12 kids, 8 on IEPs and 2 on 504 plans, and they all had grades in the A-B range!  That was only the beginning.

I had been looking through TPRS Publishing's curriculum with Cuéntame Más Textbook, but couldn't quite grasp how to teach with it.  I read through A LOT of Martina Bex's curriculum mapping, hoping for inspiration.  (I actually did use some great resources for sub plans early on in the semester, and I was shocked at how well my students were able to do!) However, I just didn't feel like I could teach any of that very well..... so I ventured to try my own story.

I chose 3 structures I wanted to focus on, and decided to use kids from the class, a penguin (they love my stuffed pinguino that we toss around), and Wiz Khalifa- a rapper.  My second unit was a success!  No quiere un pinguino had the kids reading, writing, speaking, and listening to stories in Spanish! They could even retell the story from pictures!  They could illustrate chunks of the story! They could write the story from pictures! I was floored by the progress they had made, and how well they were able to use the structures on which we focused, as well as a lot of the little detail/extra vocab that we werent focusd on!

The success of that unit gave me the confidence to try the first chapter of the Cuéntame Más text. I created a Google Presentation (example) with the new structures and pictures for each mini-story. This helped me prepare for PQA (Personalized Questions and Answers). so that I felt comfortable in class.  I am working on being more spontaneous and improvisational, but as a beginner, I still need my training wheels.  The students really got into each mini-story.  They especially loved doing a class story after the PQA.  Being involved as characters or just contributors to the story gave the students a feeling of ownership, personalization.  All semester long they were still able to recall the stuctures we used through the stories, as well as the hand gestures/movements we did. We had a lot of fun with "el lobo", "la oveja", and "el pastor."  Many of the special education teachers working with my students in the Learning Center would comment to me that they too are learning a lot from helping their students.  Day after day, these students (some of whom had been told they "shouldn't" take a foreign language) continued to surpise me in their retention and ability to re-tell the stories.  I was seeing great results in their reading and listening skills, as well as speaking and writing. (I know, I know, I shouldn't force output, but I only see them for 4 months!! I had to!)

I will save more reflections on my third unit El Muchacho Pastor (Chapter 1 from Cuéntame Más), reading the short novel Esperanza from TPRStorytelling.com, and my last short unit Busca a una novia for the next post. I also have to reflect on the final exam I created for my students.

Hasta Luego,

Alison

First blog post- Journey into TPRS/TCI (from April 2014)

(From older blog account)-  originally published on 4/14/14

Well, I'm new to this whole blogging thing.  I had created a blog back in November 2013, but can't seem to locate it now.  I think it was on a different Google Account.  Oh well, here we go again.

I've been on Twitter for about 2 years now, and have learned so much from some amazing teachers.  I've also collaborated with people I've met on Twitter and presented workshops at two difference conferences last fall.  Some of the things I've learned about are using authentic resources in the classroom, TPRS (Teaching Proficiency through Reading and Storytelling) and CI (Comprehensible Input).  There is so much more too, but I'll keep it limited for now.

I began following teachers that share great ideas or ask great questions in relation to these themes.  Every Thursday night there is a #langchat where many many Language teachers share ideas and answer questions around a different theme.  There have been many dedicated to TPRS/CI versus teaching with a textbook, and also how to do TPRS/CI and still follow a textbook.

One of the teachers I met on twitter also offers workshops.  I was able to attend one in January of 2013 in Waltham.  Carol Gaab presented an introductory TPRS workshop, and also promoted her TPRS Publishing short novels and TPRS curriculum.  I was hooked.  Another teacher that I follow on Twitter, Martina Bex, has a wonderful blog where she shares her journey to TPRS/CI teaching and the curriculum she has created in her journey.  There are many other teachers that I've found on twitter who have their blogs full of resources.  It can get overwhelming sometimes!!

After attending the workshop with Carol Gaab, I ordered some books from TPRS Publishing and I am trying to see how to fit them into the current curriculum.  I also searched high and low for more workshops to take, and found one in Providence in September 2013.  I attended that workshop, led by Blaine Ray.  Blaine Ray was a leader in the TPR development back in the 1980s, when TPR stood for Total Physical Response.  That idea was to get kids moving as they learned the language.

TPRS now is Teaching Proficiency through Reading and Storytelling.  It encourages stories to be created in class, or short novels to be read by the class.  The key to this method is all about repetition.  You use a low new word count, and try to repeat the word 100+ times in the class period.  The more the students hear the word, they more likely they are to pick it up and use it on their own.  Most teachers focus on 3 new structures per lesson.  CI is Comprehensible Input.  The idea of CI is that students need the input (what they hear/read) to be comprehensible to them.  This can be accomplished by using simple sentences, and repetition.  Many authentic texts and videos can be used, even in a low level class, by making it comprehensible to the students.

This post is long enough for now!! I'll continue my rambling thoughts later.  I'm hoping to really get going on my new curriculum over April vacation.

Hasta Luego,

Alison

How well prepared are TCI/TPRS students?

This is my first year of teaching with TCI/TPRS.  I haven't had much training, just personal interested and I've attended two short workshops.  I'm currently sitting at my 3rd workshop in Maine with amazing teachers such as Carrie Toth, Laurie Clarcq, Anne Matava, Sabrina Janczak, and more!  It's been an awesome 2 days, and I am feeling very refreshed and enthused about TCI.  I'm feeling more confident.

But I am fighting an internal battle.  I've taught with a textbook for 12 years.  In the past few years, since jumping on twitter and following creative, enthusiastic teachers, I've grown in my thoughts and beliefs. I very much dislike the textbook style teaching, but I'm not sure how to change.  How can I change my class, if the kids are going on to the next teacher who expects them to know ALL of the vocab, grammar, etc. from the text?  Slowly, I've tried a TCI lesson here or there.

Then, I happened upon a great opportunity.  My district would be making 2 years of a Foreign Language a high school graduation requirement.  Beginning with this year's freshmen, the class of 2018, all students must take 2 consecutive years in order to graduate.  My department talked about a special course, with only 2 levels, aimed at students who struggle to learn in the traditional textbook/grammar driven classroom.  That's about the time I started really hearing and reading about TCI/TPRS.  Fast forward to this year- I am currently teaching 12 students, 9 on IEPs (Individualized Education Plans) mainly for language based disabilities, some for behavior, attention, etc.  This course was listed in our program of studies as Spanish Language and Culture 1 and 2, with a description based on TCI/TPRS, music, novels, videos, etc.  It was supposed to be a slow moving pace, with reluctant, or struggling learners.  

My district purchased 3 novels from TPRSPublishing, and a teacher edition of Cuentame Mas, so I could use the TCI/TPRS approach in this "special" class.  

I started the year with a unit I created based on 3 structures (tiene, quiere, hay), and then jumped into the Cuentame Mas text.  So far so good! I am still getting my feet wet, but the more I play around with it, the more I find it to be a natural way to acquire language. My students impress me every day with their thirst for more Spanish! They always try to answer in Spanish, using our current structures, or drawing back on things we've already learned!  It is amazing to me, these students who supposedly "can't learn a foreign language" are reading, listening, writing, and speaking in Spanish!! It may be limited right now, but it is more than they could do September 1!

My only concern would be what would it be like for these students to move on to another teacher next year, in a textbook driven class?  Would they lose their thirst for Spanish? Would they become lost and never catch up? I hope we don't have to find out.  I hope I can convince the other teachers in my department to implement TCI/TPRS and we can create a community of students who WANT to learn another language, and graduate as young adults, capable of communicating with native speakers.