Roommate musings-with Andrea Schweitzer & Julia Stutzer

My first year of NTPRS, I went with my husband and we made a week of it, taking off every evening to see the sights and meet up with friends.  My next year, I stayed with a friend in St. Louis to save on hotels.  In Dallas, I discovered the wonder of having "strangers" as roommates and really eating, breathing, and living TPRS for the week.  At this point, I think even if NTPRS is in KC, I'll get a hotel room.  I've made amazing friends by sharing a bed!

So, this year I had two awesome roommates...Andrea from Dallas and Julia from Anchorage.  After day one, we were too jazzed up to sleep, so instead we sat up talking about what we've learned, what we do in class, etc.  Even after we turned off the light, we would get an idea, and start to share it...turning the light BACK on, even though it was well after midnight.

Here are a few of our favorite games to use in class:  Andrea said that she uses a game called SOFA, which we practiced with real people in the War & Peace room the last night.  In this game, chairs are set up in a circle with one empty seat.  Four seats are labelled as the SOFA.  This works best if you have equal number boys and girls so that teams are obvious, but you could give them necklaces or hats or something to distinguish between the two teams.  Starting with the sofa and going counter clockwise, alternate team members (boy, girl, boy, girl for example) until the empty seat is to the right of the sofa.  The person to the left of the empty seat calls someone over to the empty seat.  So, in French, it would be "Pierre, viens ici" and then Pierre has to move to the empty seat and the person to the left of Pierre's old seat picks the next person.  The goal of the game is to get all of one team on the SOFA.  It really helps to see it in action so you can see the strategy of the game.  Andrea says that once the kids get that, she'll add to the dialogue so that they are always practicing new stuff.  I love this game because everyone is engaged at once and nobody ever gets "out".

Then, Julia piped up with her favorite game...The Newlywed Game.  She sets up partners and then basically plays the Newlywed Game, asking level-appropriate questions.  So, it might go like this:  Students are paired and Mike is student A and Johnny is student B.  T asks "What is student A's favorite color?"  Johnny, as student B, guesses what Mike's favorite color is.  After every B student has made their guesses, the A students (who have been in the hallway??) show their answers and points are awarded for matching answers.  I love this idea!  Just imagine the possibilities: Who would your partner say is their biggest celebrity crush?  What do you normally do on a Saturday night?  What will you be doing in 5 years?  Some of those would be hard to match, probably, but you could be kinder with the judging on those. 

I'm so glad that I got to meet these two ladies and I can't wait to see them again!!  (although the chances of me making it to Alaska are pretty slim...)