Free writes

I have been doing more experimenting with the free writes this semester. My first thought was to go paperless. I had the students set up a free blog on the web through tumblr.com. This has worked pretty well and the students like typing in Spanish.
Sometimes, though, the computers are checked out and I do it [...]

Creating a Story with the class

Today I decided to experiment with creating a story on a word document with the class. They really enjoyed seeing their details on the screen and it was a change in pace from just listening.
I also had them write out the story on a piece of paper. This was good for accountability and helped the [...]

Actors are instant success

I discovered the power of actors today. We were going along telling the story and the students were on the acquisition train. Then all of a sudden I brought actors into the story. It is amazing what visualization can do for the kids. They had all acquired the target structures, but were lacking a total [...]

The importance of the retell

There are a couple of different opportunities for a retell. I used to think that it was something that only occurred during the story. This is incomplete.Another important place for retells is at the beginning of class; if you are continuing with a story from the day before.
The first two periods today, I was really [...]

Students need to think for themselves

There is a Love and Logic principle that I have been trying lately. It mostly comes up when students ask me a question about Spanish outside of class or during brief independent work. When they ask me a question about what something means, I usually respond with, “What do you think?” I don’t say this [...]

To defend or not defend

There seems to be a lot of TPRS teachers who have to defend what they do. In some ways, every teacher is accountable for what they do and should be ready to give a well grounded answer at any time. What concerns me is that the teachers who are really teaching, or rather at least [...]

A TPRS friendly environment in Holdrege

When I first accepted the job here at Holdrege, there were a lot of uncertainties. The biggest one was whether or not it would be a TPRS friendly environment. I knew that there were a lot of teachers out there battling on the front lines of TPRS and I was ready to be one of [...]

Teaching multiple tenses

Today I started the road to teaching multiple tenses. It is freeing to me to present the language as a whole and not in segments. The wonderful thing was that the student completely understood the difference. It seems terrible to me that people would say, “Oh, they can’t learn that yet. They are not that [...]

Don’t let the movie bug in/my sub plan.

Last semester I really learned to not let the movie bug in. A teacher will have days when they cannot be in class; this is unavoidable. I never really knew what to do for a sub plan, so I just played a movie in Spanish. This was good because it kept the class occupied quietly [...]

Working Through Circling

You know, circling is not as easy as it sounds. I had a rough morning with my circling. The class was not really buying what I was selling and it felt like I had little to no engagement. These questions kept ringing in my head. What can I do? What am I doing wrong? And [...]