When In Doubt Personalize

These last few days have gone so-s0. Today, I really decided to go after it with some of my classes. Last night, I took a look at Dale Carnegie’s How to Win Friends and Influence People and I was reminded again of how much people really like to talk about what they like. They don’t care about what I think is funny, they care about what they think is funny. Well, I decided to take my questionnaires to the battlefield with my backward planning sheets and it really worked. The combination of the two really helped to pull this week out of the ditch. But the whole reason why I did it was because of one kid I have in my afternoon class.

“J” is an interesting student. He is very capable and also very creative. Most of the time”J” uses his creativity to put down others. He does this because he is very self-conscious and has low self-esteem. He covers up for it by putting on an image that promotes being tough. He is an interesting case because he doesn’t like getting positive attention. He thrives on negative attention because that is the image he has created for school. At least, that is my analysis. I have found that it is important to try and see things from the student’s perspective rather than just label them as a problem. I need to ask myself, “What is behind this problem and why do they feel a need to act this way?” Perhaps if we view our students in this light we will be able to reach them rather than despise them.

Well, I decided to personalize “J” today and see what would happen. With courage I took a step closer to him and constantly told myself, “Don’t be upset if it blows up in your face. Don’t worry about it.” This is not an easy thing  for a teacher to do because it requires that we see our problem students as people. It wasn’t perfect, but I think that we took a step closer to creating a different image for him in class. I could see that inside he really liked that he was the one we talked about all class long. Even the quiz had his name all over it and there is something powerful about kindly saying someone’s name — it’s the sweetest sound to that person.

Today was such a good reminder that ultimately students want to talk about things they like.  But more than that, they want to be successful and important. It was also a reminder that if I am ever in doubt about a class that is starting to sink, personalizing will keep it afloat and bring a vitality to your class that is uncommon in education today. If we can fuse this together with CI, we have an unbeatable combination for acquiring language.

Don’t Forget the Good Ones

Today, I had a mixed day. Some classes went better than yesterday and then I ended it all with a class that didn’t want to do anything. I am sure you know how the feels. It just ends the day on a sour note and you feel like you are terrible.

This year our school is taking a moment a couple times a semester to say, “Thank You” to people we are grateful for. I wasn’t expecting to get any from students, but I did. It is nice that students are happy to be in  Spanish class and they really feel like they are learning something. It reminded me that I didn’t want to forget about the good ones.

Sometimes I have a tendency to only focus on that small 5% of my classes that is probably negative about everything and I forget that the majority of my classes are full of students who enjoy coming and feel like they are learning something. It’s a good thing to remember for the hard days.

Thinking About Taping

When I was a trumpet performance major in college I spent hours listening to different players. So much, that my sound began to sound exactly like the people I was listening to. Not only was I listening to others, but I also recorded myself from time to time and found it to be beneficial. I would record something that I was really proud of and listen to it in the car on the way home and consequently found numerous errors as well as shining points. There is something powerful about observation of others and self that helps to transform what we do. Some of it may even be subconscious and we have no idea what affect it has on us.

Well, I have spent hours watching other tprs teachers. I started with the mainline teachers, Blaine Ray and Susie Gross. After my initial experience with it I decided that I needed to get out there and see more teachers in order to find my style as a teacher. So, I visited Ben Slavic in Denver and boy did he give me a lot to think about. My first year of teaching I expanded my viewings to the fluency fast DVDs with Von Ray and again Blaine. I started to really see how people have success with tprs with totally different personalities. Not everyone has to be loud and in your face all the time. It really is a personality thing. This summer I expanded to Bryce Hedstrom and Jason Fritze as well as Linda Li. The stability of Bryce and the energy of Jason really had a huge affect on the way I am teaching this year. I hope there is more! I will get down to see Joe Neilson this fall and I have no idea what that will bring, but I am ready for it. All in all, observation has really transformed my thoughts of tprs and has given me so many ideas that I almost don’t have time to do all of them. But I am forgetting about observing one more person. A person that I am not sure I want to look at for fear of what I might see…myself.

It’s true, I wonder what I will see. I know that I will eventually tape myself, but really I have been hesitant about it. Why? I know it will help. I often say things like, “I just don’t have time.” That is a pretty valid argument, but I am finding that I have more time than I used to and I think I am ready for it.

So I will begin the journey of video taping and I may post some of it on the web for advice or comments. Be gentle. I am hoping that this step of watching tape will take me to a new level. A place where students acquire Spanish like never before in my class. It may be a painful road, but I am willing to take the first step.

Floundering today

I wish I could say that every day is a homerun day, but I don’t think that is the reality for many tprs teachers. I know that the students just came back from a long weekend and are a bit sluggish, but I feel like I am floundering a bit today. Perhaps, I am having a sluggish time from the weekend, too.

The storyasking today has been good at best and I have really not taken off. I know these days happen and some times worse days happen than this, but I  still find myself asking what I can do to make it better.

I continue to tell myself that there needs to be a good problem and it needs to be more personalized. Today we were talking about the itouch, but it needs more than that. It needs to have more conflict and problem. I know I will get this after more experience and eventually it will be on the fly, but now it is a bit sluggish.

I can’t worry about it, but I just need to learn from the experiences and move on. This year has already been way better than last year and I am hoping that it will continue to get better.

How Well Do They Really Know It?

When I first started using tprs I had the idea that if we used a phrase or structure in class, it was acquired. I have since learned that this may not necessarily be the case. As I work with students more I observe that there are different levels of acquiring a language. I have come to experience that a student may be able to identify a word in print and know its meaning, but not necessarily be able to use the word on demand or have the word freely come up for use when the right time comes. This means that a student needs more repetition on the word.

On the yahoo moretprs list Blaine Ray comments about recently teaching an upper level class. He mentions that although the students were in an upper level class, he found that they all benefited from the repetition that was in the story the class created that day. I found this to be very interesting.

Perhaps we underestimate the amount of repetition that students need and we should keep recycling previous structures all the time. Many teachers already know this, but this is a good thing for me to remember. I need to remember that the students more often than not need more repetition.

Prediction Is Needed in Stories

The other day in class I was setting up a story with the class taking my time with some of the details. I decided to see what would happen if I just kept adding details. The students were into it for a while and they had fun creating their little donkey named “Cacahuate” who always ate beans and was secretly hated by the mom in the family. However, there came a certain point where we needed to move the story forward in order to keep the attention of all the students. If there is no drama in the story then the students have a void and feel like the story is a bunch of random facts. It must have that drama to make it suspenseful.

I really feel that the reason for this is because of the prediction element in stories. Think about it, we are constantly predicting what will happen in life. Sometimes we are right and other times we are surprised by the outcome, but it is this element of prediction that keeps things alive. It is also necessary for the brain to keep processing what is happening as it constantly reviews the facts that are in the story. We need this element of prediction in our stories or the students will drift into the unknown fog of daydreaming.

Some ways that we can bring prediction into the story is through drama, emotion, a problem, conflict between two characters, or something that causes a sense of uneasiness about the future. With this in mind, the stories will begin to sail and forge the way for more details which provide the opportunity for personalized information from the students. This combination of drama with details will make the storytelling experience more meaningful, but one without the other causes students to find something else that will keep their attention, a common tragedy in our schools today. If anyone has the opportunity to help students find meaning, it is definitely us.

PAT Builds Classroom Community

One thing that I have noticed lately is that the PAT time on Friday is actually building the community in the class. I didn’t know this was going to happen, but I am very pleased about. Now, I did mention something about being a good sport and encouraging the other team, but I didn’t know that they would take it to a new level. Some teams even encourage the other team when they don’t get it by saying things like, “That’s okay, that was a hard one or You’ll get it next time.”

Since the classes are getting to know each other better through these games, the stories are actually getting better. More classes are participating and offering more creative answers because they know that they will earn more PAT points for Friday. More classes are being possitive during the week because they know that negativity looses points. Also, there is almost no aural English, which is damaging to any classroom based on aural acquisition — like tprs.

I have really been pleased with what PAT has done for our classroom and I am curious to see where it will continue to go. It is nice to be able to increase my expectations because the students always want to earn more points. So far it has worked in all the levels I teach, which is 7th – 11th grade.

Backward Planning Clarification

A few weeks ago, I wrote a blog about backward planning and tprs. Check it out if you get a chance. It is entitled Backward Planning Ideas. In that blog I outline what I have been doing with it, but here I will give a little more clarification. Here is what I do:

1. I read a chapter from the novel that we are reading in class.

• I do this a week or so before we actually read it in class

2. As I am reading, I think about words or structures that I know my students will either need to acquire or will need more repetition on.

3. When I find a structure that I want to write down, I write down on a template specifically designed for backward planning. The template is arranged according to the question words [interrogatives] so that I can easily use them spontaneously in class. I will put an example of the template at the bottom.

• The structures have the most powerful effect when they are used as the class supplies a need.

4. As I write them down on the template I designate which words I will use first, according to the order that they come in the chapter.

• I may do this by highlighting them, circling them, underlining, or using different colored font. Each color is associated with a different page in the novel, so I know which words I should use first.

• This allows me to know how far I can read in the novel without getting into territory that the students haven’t encountered. I don’t want to work on words that appear later in the chapter if we will be reading the beginning of the chapter because the students won’t be familiar with them yet or may need more repetition. If I get into incomprehensible territory, the motivation for reading the novel decreases. Nobody wants to read books they don’t understand. It makes you feel stupid and as we know, “Nothing motivates like success.”

5. I look at the words for a few minutes and think about possible stories or situations that could be interesting.

• This gives me a few ideas before heading into class, just in case the class doesn’t come up with anything. I don’t stress out about it. Just whatever seems natural and mostly believable.
• It provides me with a parachute and also frees me to go with whatever the class creates that day.
• I mentally group the words into possible scenarios. For example: learns, course, and movie could be a story about a guy who goes to the university, takes a movie course, and learns about something. There is the usual interesting problem that needs to solved. Maybe the course is full or he can’t concentrate in class because Megan Fox is sitting next to him, etc. It should all revolve around whatever the students are interested in.

6. I print out the template and place it on my podium, ready for action.

• I choose three structures from the specific color I am using that day to put on the board.
• These are the three structures that I brainstormed about earlier when I was looking at all of the designated chapter words.
• We do some TPR to make the structures familiar and establish meaning.

7. After I establish meaning, I go into the story with my backward planning words ready to insert wherever the action makes it meaningful or creates a need.

• It is planned, but also has a spontaneous feeling because you never know where the structures will end up in the story. It could be anywhere.

Here is an example of the template I have been using:

Pobre Ana – palabras importantes

PA capítulo 1 – palabras importantes antes de leer

¿Qué?:
come     pone     quiere     camisa     ayuda     ropa     comida     le gusta     busca     encuentra     contesta     compra

le dice   tiene     chocolate            fruta      se ríe     toma     le da      va a

¿Cómo? / ¿Cómo es?:
alta     pelo largo[castaño, rubio]     azul     se llama

¿Quién?
toda     hermano     se ríe     está triste
¿Dónde?:
vive     centro comercial

¿Cuántos? / ¿Por cuánto tiempo? / ¿A qué hora?
tiene __ años

¿Cuándo?

después de
otras palabras
también     con     siempre/nunca               su

* I just pasted this from the word document I created it on.

I am not saying that this is perfect or even the best way to do things. I have only been trying it this year with outstanding results. I always wanted to be a tprs teacher that did not have to use a script and had a program that was focused around reading. This is where I am at for now. The backward planning allows me to not need a script and just ask students questions. I don’t have to worry about going too wide from the script and trying to figure out how to get back. It gives me a plan, while at the same time allows me to be free with a story line.  I can just go with whatever the superstars bring for the day. The great thing is that more and more superstars keep sprouting everyday. This makes the class much more involved and excited about what we are doing together.

Bobby McFerrin demonstrates the basics of teaching

Take a look at this Bobby McFerrin clip. Then if you have time watch it again and think about how he teaches and what makes him a good teacher.

We as language teachers have a lot in common with music because music has many similarities to language. In fact, many would say that music is a language. The interesting thing is that by the end, the whole audience knew which pitches to sing and when. Here are a few other common themes I noticed.

1. There was a sense of play

• You notice that it was not just the students, but also the teacher and there is a healthy amount of laughter.

2. Minimal grammar

• At the beginning, he didn’t say, “Okay everyone today we’re going to learn the major pentatonic scale. It consists of scale degrees 1,2,3, 5, and 6. Let’s begin on scale degree one in the key of C. Now we will write out the major pentatonic scale in all 12 keys. Okay, everyone got it? Good. Now you will write some songs that I have created to help you drill the major pentatonic scale. etc. etc.”
• The grammar was meaning based. The audience experienced the language of the music and it just flowed. It just made sense. Why? Because language makes sense to people when it is meaning based and not grammar based. Meaning-based grammar is the most that students want to know  and are ready for in the beginning.

3. Repetition

• He went over the notes several times to establish meaning and fluency so that later the students were able to have quick recognition.

4. The students are doing most of the work

• He runs with them for a little while and then eventually they are doing most of the work. He is just there to make sure they have a plan.

5. It is a story

• You may be thinking, “What?” It is true, they told a musical story. It went here and there, up and down, there was a direction and eventually it had an ending. In this case the ending made sense, but it still had a noticeable story line. We as humans are story beings and this is what makes sense to us.

6. He kept them focused

• At times you notice that the people are having so much fun that they start laughing and he keeps them on track by keeping the storyline moving. Water is the same way. If it is stagnate impurities start to find their way into the water. We remains pure by being in a current or a flow. So, we as storyaskers need to keep the plot moving in order to keep them focused. If we focus too much on the details, the story gets stagnate.

7. There was a community

• As they were playing and laughing there was a sense that people were engaged in what was going on and apart of something special. The audience was willing to come together to play and learn with each other. This is the way it should be in our classrooms. A time where the class comes together and faces  in the same direction toward a common goal.

At the end he makes a comment that everyone gets the pentatonic scale wherever he goes. I think that is because we all get language when it is presented in a meaningful way. We are all made to get language, it is innate. Why would we deny our students of this experience in the language when it can be so powerful? I hope I can strive to have this in my class. The possibilities could be grand.

Shorter Reading Approach to Novels

I must confess that I have struggled with how to get the novels in and at times I wonder why the kids think it is so boring. Well, I have asked around about how people do it and tried a bit of what people suggested in class today. It was vastly improved. I think the secret to keeping the novels interesting is two-fold:

1. Only read for 10-15 min.

2. Keep a parallel story or personalize it to the class

Today, I kept it short and personalized and man it was so much more fun. Infact, I could notice a feeling from the students that said, “Okay, we’re done now.” At that point I just said with enthusiasm, “Okay, great work today!” and moved on to something else.

I am hoping that this will help keep the class more enthused about reading and that we will actually finish a novel. I am going to try to do this a couple times a week. I think that they need the feeling of continuing with a book. If you only read once a week it can be hard to finish the novel, plus the students don’t remember the plot as well and eventually loose interest.  The key is to always have the class on a hook, always eager to want more. I hope to get there some day.