Teacher Talk with Scott Benedict

After all of the sessions, I felt like I still had a bunch of questions that needed answers (and I was actually trying to find the beautiful Laurie Clarcq), so I headed upstairs to the coaching/teacher talk room.  It looked as if I was out of luck when Scott Benedict walked in the door and said that he was supposed to be working!  Hooray!  An expert to answer all my questions in a no-holds-barred manner.

First, we talked about how to assess my new students, since I will be walking in blind.  I have no idea what they learned/acquired last year.  I asked if he uses a test and he said "Not if I can help it!"  He does what I did last year (good to know my instincts were right) and has them do a free-write as close to the first day of school as possible.  He does this for all levels (even level one) and keeps them in a file so that the students (and parents and administrators) can SEE their progress throughout the year.

Second, Scott gave me a good reason why my students are producing accurately in writing.  He said that all French needs to be given orally and visually AT THE SAME TIME so that students make those connections.  He said that this isn't as important with other languages with phonetic spelling, but in French, there are too many silent letters.  This makes grammar pop-ups so much easier.  Thank you Scott!  I thought I was a failure or that TPRS didn't work because my kids just couldn't spell some words in French.  But now that I think about it, it was those words that I didn't keep up for them to see.  They needed more time LOOKING at the word.  So exciting.

My next question was about creating curriculum/choosing what to teach.  For next year, my new colleagues and I spent a LONG time working on curriculum for French 1 and 2 (which I already feel pretty confident teaching) and virtually no time on 3-5, except to explain the IB test and give me the basic outline and the textbook.  So I am feeling overwhelmed with these two huge textbooks, plus the novels that we are supposed to teach each year.  So I asked Scott to guide me (again) through the basics of adapting a text for TPRS.  This is what he said:

1. Find a French frequency dictionary (luckily I have one already) and look through the vocabulary presented in the book.  If it is in the top 2000 words, the students should be expected to produce those words in speaking and writing in an upper level class.  If it is between 2001-5000, they should be able to recognize the word in context.  If it is any higher than that, it shouldn't be taught unless it is relevant to the students.  (I'm thinking of Carol Gaab teaching her students all the baseball terms.  Essential for her students, but not necessarily for mine)
2. Look at the grammar points and decide if it is something I would use daily.  (I have to admit that I struggle with this because I have never been able to produce those higher grammar structures.  I have always tried to work around them...  So I'll have to be tricky when figuring this part out.  I'll talk to my native friends)

And that was it!  Very super helpful information and I thank Scott so much for being willing to share all of his knowledge with us.  Awesome!  He is making ripples, I can tell you that!  One of my new colleagues even asked me if I had heard of SBG and said that she had heard of this guy Scott Benedict who has given presentation on SBG with WL, have I heard of him?  Great to be able to say that I've spoken to him face-to-face!