Hola Jalen.
I purchased your lesson plans for my 8th grade Spanish 1
class. I have decided to solely use TPRS
this year with your lesson plans. My
students like the stories so far and are acquiring the language quickly. We have only done two stories at this point.
My questions are:
1. Do you get
through all 27 stories by the end of the year?
I wonder if I'm going too fast. I
see my students daily for 40 minutes.
This is the 3rd week of school.
2. After only
acting two stories, the novelty seems to be wearing off a little bit. I am trying to do other activities in
addition to the ones that you have in your plans. Since I'm new at circling and TPRS, I'm
trying to improve so that my lessons aren't boring even though they're
repetitive. Do you have any suggestions
for me?
Thank you in advance for answering my questions. I have really enjoyed your curriculum.
Liddia
Hi Liddia,
Glad to hear things are (or were) going really well with
the first couple of stories! To answer your questions:
1. Each of my lesson plan books is designed to fill up
one semester of Spanish, so 1A would be the first semester and 1B would be
second semester, but, no, I don't always get through all of the stories in a
given semester or year, and it works out okay. But if you think you're going
too fast and are worried that you won't have enough stories to fill up a whole
year, you may have to space them out and alternate with a reading, games,
and/or culture day here and there.
2. Yes, I do have a suggestion for what to do about the novelty wearing off of doing skits. Don't do circling. I don't do it because it drives the kids (and me) nuts. Just narrate
the skit all the way through with actors and a few props, then sit the actors
down and do Q&A all the way through the story in Spanish, coaching them to
respond chorally. That plus the reading (which I now put off until the
following day’s lesson, first thing after the warm-up quiz) is enough
repetition for my expectations of how much Spanish my students need to
learn in a given year. Also, in my classes the skits themselves are more fun if I have
the class choose the actors. For more info on exactly how I do that, see my
blog posts on Getting Actors part 1 and part 2.
Another suggestion - don't do a skit every single day if
they start acting bored with it. Break it up with the ideas I mentioned above.
A third suggestion - I also have a blog post on 25 Ideas for Extending the Learning With Each Story that might add some variety and
spice to what you're doing.
Give yourself time and compassion as you're learning to
pull off excellent skits in class. It takes a lot of trial and error to
figure out how to make it fun every time, and even then, there are simply going
to be some "off" days with students. Don't let it get you down. Next
time you do a skit, act like everything's great and the skit they are going to
act out is awesome!
Hope this helps, and let me know how it goes.
Jalen
(Thanks Liddia for the great questions! Everyone else, feel free to chime in with other suggestions that work for you!)
