Students Taking the First Step

Lately, I have been noticing that some of my quieter students have been putting themselves out there and making suggestions. When I see this, I almost always choose the answer and I do this with a lot of enthusiasm.The reason I get so excited is because they are expressing trust in what we are doing [...]

Questionnaires and Backward Planning

Starting last week I took a new direction with Backward Planning. I decided to pair them with the questionnaires that the students filled out at the beginning of the year. The results have been wonderful. Of course they will pay more attention when the class is completely about them. I already knew this, but some [...]

A Surprising PAT

My two PAT choices for today were “mono loco” and “movie day.” It was a big step for me to do the “movie day” because last year I really minimized how often I played movies in my lower level classes. I never saw a huge benefit from movies because I teach lower level class and [...]

It can get too weird

One thing that my wife has mentioned is that I am weird. Okay… I confess. It’s true! I love to have fun with certain situations. Well, this can be a good thing, but in teaching it can also not be a good thing.
I learned that when things start to get too weird, then you start [...]

Keeping it Personalized

I have discovered that it is essential that a language is personalized. As soon as I start talking about something that they are not interested in I begin to loose them. When I add a new detail, it sparks the interest again. I need get better at circling so that I don’t loose the kids [...]

Following the rules

I realized today that rules are brilliant when you enforce them. It can be easy for teachers to just let it slide, but today in class I really enforced the rules. When I did this, it wasn’t in a harsh way. I simply just stated the rule to class when I saw that someone was [...]

Extending PQA

I was doing some reading in PQA in a Wink and I think that I started to finally understand what Extended PQA means. It is basically when we take the information gathered from the PQA [Circling w/ balls, Questionnaires, or just talking to the kids in the target structures of the day] and we spin [...]

Just try to enjoy yourself

I was watching a movie the other day and there was a scene where two guys were playing golf. The first guy was having a really hard time and was not placing the ball where he wanted. The second guy had no trouble and was putting the ball exactly where he wanted. The scene ended [...]

False Beginners

When teaching a language like Spanish I am bound to run into the idea of false beginners. There will be so many different levels of Spanish with my students when they enter the classroom. A false beginner is a student who has prior knowledge of Spanish, but is in a class with true beginners, who [...]

Fluent in Karate

I have made a new TPRS friend, Dirk Frewing. It is really great to be able to collaborate ideas and to learn from others. I don’t think I could do this without it, to be honest. Dirk made a comment in an email the other day that really got me thinking. He said:
So much of [...]