Day one

I'm bursting at the seams with excitement about starting TPRS in my classroom! This is my third year teaching, and I've been absolutely frustrated with how little my second year students remember coming back from summer break. Getting J'ai and Je suis mixed up makes no sense to me... They are so different! I've never been a huge proponent of grammar-based teaching, but I wasn't sure how to meet my class objectives without somewhat focusing on verb charts and academic vocabulary. Enter TPRS:

I believe that this method of teaching replicates the language learning process experienced by infants and toddlers learning to speak. LOTS of input....little or no output for a LONG time. I've always considered myself a success if the students can conjugate verbs correctly and remember to add an e or an s to an adjective to make it match the subject. But how many students will spend their nights writing long pieces in French?? Not many. How many will travel to France or Quebec or any other francophone country for a week or two and need to remember how to find the bathroom? And how many of their listeners are going to care (or even know) if they don't add the e when spouting "La tour eiffel est tres jolie!" So I'm back to the drawing board...here's how I started.

I've been reading, no, make that devouring, all the information on www.benslavic.com. I'd already read the Blaine Ray book, but it was never clear to me how to jump in...what specific skills I needed to learn to make this a success. Ben Slavic has wonderful ideas and makes it easy to implement in my own classroom. I also watched a video of him on youtube that was very helpful. Now, I've ordered his book and video set to help me on my journey...but I'm way too impatient to wait for the books to try my hand at transforming my classroom.

Today, I had a block day with my 1st year class (one hour and 30 minutes with the same kids...yikes!). I have already taught them basic introduction vocabulary and lots of classroom objects. They are super involved in the class and excited to learn so far. I started the class today by explaining to them that we'll be trying something new in class from now on. I will write our target words/phrases on the board at the beginning of class and we will work together to come up with an easy way to remember it (Thanks to Mr. Slavic for the idea). This worked amazingly well. We laughed, sang, danced a little... Then, I started in on my circling. I was able to stretch this out to about 45 minutes before the kids started glazing over. A few pluses: the (aaahhhh) I required after the key statement woke up the kids who were beginning to stray, singling out one student to talk about made the other students jealous (and hopefully excited for next time), and when I asked them in English about the story at the end, they knew all the answers, so I know that they were able to comprehend my French! Now, the questions/problems... How do I keep my kids from getting bored with the circling in the beginning when they don't have very much vocab to make the stuff exciting? What other activities can I do to infuse variety in the classroom so we're not always circling?

All-in-all, I was very pleased with how things went today. It will take a while for me to feel comfortable, and I can't wait to get my book and DVDs so I can get more ideas. If anyone ever reads this...and really, who would??...feel free to comment and help me out!! It's all about helping each other, right??