Reflections on the meaning of life...

...or this last week of TPRS. I said earlier that I was having a hard time staying jazzed about TPRS. This week I tried some new things and got my mojo back. It feels so good to be able to laugh again. I think I just got bogged down with classroom management and was so down on myself for not being better at it that I spent most of the hour being mad at the kids.

This week, I used Michele's suggestion (I think it was Michele) that I use Monday to talk about the weekend. I was wondering how I could find enough words to be able to talk to my first years for an entire class period... I tried with my "experimental" class and it went really well! We were able to fill the 45 minutes and the kids really enjoyed talking about themselves. The next day, we stretched our question of the day to 45 minutes as well...or almost 45 minutes. On Monday, I was having trouble with kids wanting to translate out loud and answer me back in English instead of trying to use French. So yesterday I started class and said, "You guys have 3 minutes to speak all the English you can. After that, class will be in French. You may use up to 3 English words in a row, if you have to." I timed them for the 3 minutes and then we started with our question: What do you like to do? The first girl who answered started off "J'aime...I don't know what I like to do." So I kindly smiled and pointed to the door and asked her to wait in the hallway. After the next student answered in French, I let that student come back in...so each time a student spoke too much English, they were only out in the hallway for maybe 5 minutes at most. The door was open, so they could still hear what was going on in class. It was a miracle!! The students all spoke French for the entire time...they were engaged in listening to the others because if I caught them whispering or chatting in English, they'd be out! When every student had finished, there were still 2 minutes left in class. I asked the class if it was worth it to have the extra time to be social and then really speak French. They were all very positive. I'll definitely start this in all my classes because it's very easy for me to be fair about it. If I hear more than 3 words of English, they are out in the hall. They understand that they're not in trouble because I'm smiling and yet they are still sort of part of the class. Very effective.

I'm also really enjoying the re-tells that my students are doing. They are able to speak French for up to 5 minutes at a time without resorting to English! Some are (of course) better than others, but it's so awesome. I just can't wait for some of my barometer students to attempt the re-tell. That will be a happy day, for sure.