This is to introduce a teacher from South Dakota. Like that other one. You know. Susan Gross. That is a good sign! And she mentioned the name of her school, which is cool.

Ben,

I am looking forward to reading the blog as an official member! I began using TPRS in the fall of 2009 after deciding to read up on it and see what all the fuss was about.  I had been out of the teaching profession for over ten years and just came back in the fall of 2008 (French teachers are not in high demand in western South Dakota.)  The whole philosophy makes so much sense to me and it is such a relief to have made this change in my way of teaching.  I have been able to attend a few sessions with people such as Susie, Blaine and Carol Gaab, and have read your books.  I’m just a beginner, but when I decided to make this change, I just jumped in feet first. I teach in the local Catholic high school and, since I am the only French teacher, I am pretty free to use whatever materials and teaching strategies I feel work best.

I think I began reading your blog shortly before you withdrew it! I subscribed to it as an RSS feed.  I was surprised and pleased when your blog returned and I have now continued to read it on my Google reader list.  Although not all aspects of the blog are accessible, the new posts are still available as an RSS feed without re-subscribing.  I didn’t know if you were aware of this. [ed. - I am looking into this as we speak and will get back to you, Jo]

I am happy to continue reading and possibly join in the discussion at some point.

Jo Benn
Saint Thomas More H.S.
Rapid City, South Dakota

My two highlights this year were:

- Staying positive with a girl who has experienced abuse all her life at the hands of her mother. She fought tooth and nail not to be included, for about five months, until, as per John’s comments about Pepe, a point was reached somewhere in January where she knew that she was safe. It took me a thousand bite-my-tongue moments, but look how it ended up. Yes, John, if we don’t let them know that they are liked first, we can forget everything that this way of teaching offers.

- There is a song called Aicha and in the beginning of the year a Latina came up and acted out that role with such precision and dignity with a guy who handled his role almost equally well, that it kind of blew everyone away. There is a part in the song where the male suitor implores Aicha to look at him, listen to him, stay with him, speak to him. That is one hell of a song for teaching those verbs to a French 1 class at the beginning of the year is all I’m saying. Lots of buy in. (They don’t have to know everything in the song, of course, to get that one stanza.) The only other thing that I saw this year that was even close to that moment was when Dominique over at George Washington (I was visiting Joseph Dziedzic that day) did the MJ dance move, ducking his head under his arm to show fear in the middle of Kayley Delinger’s establishing meaning for “has fear”.

Share some of yours!

Teenagers are trapped. They can’t go back to the joys of their younger days, which were squeezed out of them somewhere between 4th and 7th grade. They can’t go forward either. They’re stuck.

Oh, but what wouldn’t they give for a break in their day from the endless boring tasks that led Tolstoy to describe his own school days as filled with mindless drudgery and pointless tasks. I can’t find that quote and if anybody knows where it can be found I would love to know. It’s a zinger.

But wait! Isn’t that what we do with CI – give our students a break? Don’t we present our students with a right brain/whole brain experience instead of the more boring but typical of American schools these days left brain analytical stuff?

When our kids walk into our rooms, don’t we ask them to imagine movies of things magical, impossible, illogical, and wonderful? To use Jason’s term, don’t we “co-create” imaginary worlds with them every day, through stories and reading?

The by-product of this creation process is that, since it is done in another language, something the students are not even aware of if the teaching is properly done, they learn the language.

Krashen says that we learn languages unconsciously and I should devote a blog a day just to that one premise because we don’t get it, not really, at all. We don’t get that, we don’t remember it, and we don’t apply it.

If we did, we would assess in a completely different way, in a way that would reflect Robert’s currently posted ideas about assessing in terms of the three modes of communication: interpersonal, interpretive and presentational, none of which belong to the world of analysis and data collection but are part of a much larger, much more fluid, universe.

I take pride in offering to my students an option, a way out of, the hell of being in a tell and test environment. Even if my efforts reach just a few of the kids, embracing Krashen and Ray’s ideas has been well worth it. It was the best thing to do.

Here’s hoping that Robert’s recent post on assessment takes us further down the road that Krashen originally designed. I want to cut a hole in the corral that all those kids get herded into every day, where Promethean boards and the latest in data collection await them, ostensibly to help them but – in languages – no.

Since we’re starting to think about next year . . .

I still have seven weeks of school left, but I’m already thinking about next year. My goals for the summer are 1) revise and resubmit my AP syllabus [required because of the new AP German test]; 2) develop a suggested curriculum organized around the use of readers and music as end products for backward planning of CI via PQA and stories to present to my district; 3) refine a standards-based assessment model organized around the three modes of communication.

My district is emphasizing standards-based grading and insisting that study habits and citizenship not be part of an academic grade. Homework is to count as no more than 10% of the final grade. I happen to agree with this emphasis, but many teachers are simply disguising homework, study habits and citizenship by calling them something else (e.g. homework becomes “formative assessment”).

The tension I have felt in this grading system, though, has been the relational nature of CI/TPRS teaching. How should that aspect enter into a grade? Isn’t it just another name for “participation”, which is normally a disguised citizenship grade? I have been using a categorization and weighting system based on Scott Benedict’s work – it’s really pretty good – but felt that it didn’t cover all the aspects of teaching in a way that works for me.

Recently I’ve been doing some reading in the CA State Standards as well as 21st Century World Language Skills and had an epiphany of sorts. I think it will address all of my concerns. What is it? The application of the three modes of communication. So, here is what I’m thinking. Rather than applying standards (usually graded as Advanced, Proficient, Basic, Below Basic, Far Below Basic) to the skills of listening, reading, speaking, writing, culture and language manipulation, I will apply them to the three modes of communication: interpersonal, interpretive and presentational.

To me it is more than a matter of semantics but rather a different way of applying the standards. ACTFL supports the idea, indicated by this quote from the World Languages Skills Map: The language teaching community has reached strong consensus regarding the goals of a language program: to develop students’ language proficiency around modes of communicative competence reflecting real life communication. (I first became acquainted with the skills map through an ACTFL web page.) As I see it currently,

1. Interpersonal mode is the heart of language acquisition. It is defined thus: Interpersonal mode is active oral or written communication in which the participants negotiate meaning to make sure that their message is understood. If a student isn’t actively negotiating meaning (sitting up, shoulders straight, focused eyes, cute answers, choral response, no private conversation, no distractive behavior, etc.), then he is not meeting this standard.

2. Interpretive mode is based on command of the “receptive skills” (hearing and reading) as well as an understanding of culture and language structure (albeit at an often unconscious level). It is defined as follows: Interpretive mode is the ability to listen to or read a text and interpret the meaning. If students are unable to tell what a text means (e.g. give an English equivalent) or state what has been happening in class discussion, they obviously are not meeting the standard of the interpretive mode.

3. Presentational mode is based on a command of the “productive skills” (speaking and writing) as well as a certain facility in language manipulation plus an understanding of culture. Presentational mode is written or oral communication in which the presenter must take into account the impact on the audience since this is one-way communication with limited opportunity for feedback. This would include fluency in writing (e.g. timed writing), accuracy in speech and writing (both grammatical and phonological – at the appropriate level, of course), use of idioms and more. Obviously it is the most difficult of the modes and the one acquired last.

At the moment I am pondering how to fit other aspects of the Standards into these three modes and what kind of weight to give each mode. My initial thinking is that at level 1, interpersonal should be weighted anywhere from 50% to 75% and presentational weighted somewhere around 5% to 10%. At each level the percentages would change because students would be more capable of both interpretation and presentation, but interpersonal should always weigh more than either of the other two.

Ben, these are just some preliminary thoughts of mine, and I’m using your blog to do some ruminating out loud. If you think there’s merit, I would love to see this start a discussion about grading, if for no other reason than it would help me refine my own thinking.

My kids schooled me yesterday on a Susan Gross point. Susan has always coached us to make sure that we “believe the story” as it unfolds. I never worked at that. I was too busy with all that other stuff, right?

But, one day last week, the kids made it plain that, even if I wasn’t believing it, they were – a lot more than I thought. It was toward the end of the class and I was just looking for some way to end the story and I saw a kid in the back with major attendance problems but a good ear for French.

So I sent the actor back and, as she was going back up to this guy, it popped into my head that I wanted to make sure that I had taught the word “bisous” (kisses) this year, so, running out of time, I just said that the kid in the back gave the actress 14 bisous.

Mistake. Right away all the kids jumped on that. They said no to the idea and how disgusting and embarrassing it was for the both kids. That the two didn’t know each other well enough or something.

Two kids even stayed late to admonish me after class. I tried to say how I meant nothing by it, that I was just trying to end class, but they wouldn’t have it. It was a big deal to them.

Next time, I’ll try to believe it more. Good grief, this stuff can be complicated!

Andrew’s blog entry made me think about next year again. The most effective CI that I do – and crucial to getting the year off on the right foot – is the Circling with Balls cards:

http://www.benslavic.com/documents/Workshop-Handouts-1009.doc

I said about a month ago here that I might just try to possibly go completely through the entire year with only the cards, to just spin and spin and, of course, spin it all into stories, but to base the whole year on the cards, just to keep all of the CI personalized all of the time.

But I was on a bike ride today and I was listening to this song

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2-4KTdxEmtk&feature=related

Now, let’s make no mistake about this. If I’m a girl and I’m sitting in class, and my teacher just spent about ten class periods backwards teaching via PQA each expression in that song – without mentioning that it is a song - and then one day I walk into class and I totally unexpectedly hear the song and am blown away by

- the stunning fact that I can understand it.
- the great, uplifting power of the music and words. 
- the equal rights piece (“…keep your treasures, I’m worth more than that, bars, even of gold, are still bars, I want the same rights as you, with respect each day…”.)

then I am going to want to come to this class because it’s about me and because I understand everything and because the content reaches my heart.

So, hmmm, next year, what? Gotta have the Circling with Balls to start the personalization and establish the rules as described elsewhere on this site, but hey, what about that music that cuts right through to their teenage hearts (and mine)?

The answer is simple, of course – do ‘em both. One day the cards, the next day the backwards establishment via PQA of the song structures. Done. I’ll add this to the “Beginning the Year” category.

However I start the year, one thing is certain – next year I am going to focus less on the method, and choose stuff that grabs the kids, and try to get to higher and higher and higher levels of personalization with them instead of focusing on stuff that may not be that interesting to them.

Related:

http://www.benslavic.com/blog/2010/09/27/asking-personalized-questions-about-a-song/

It seems like a lot of the new CI based teachers are around 30. The other day, Diana and I found ourselves sitting at a table with some of our TCI group and Joseph (30), Jesse (29) and Erin (27) were sitting all right across from us. And now here is another blog bio from Andrew, who is 31. Hmmm. This is a very very good thing! Meet Andrew:

Hi Ben,

My name is Andrew Graff and I am in my third year of teaching at the secondary level, having taught post-secondary for a few years as a grad student in my early-mid twenties (I’m now going on 32.)

I teach German and French — at the moment, I teach one class of German I in each of my district’s middle schools, and a class each of German 1 and French 2 at our high school.

I came to TPRS via many whispered hopes of reaching more students more often, and also keeping my sanity.  I began to try my hand at TPRS after my first real encounter: a day workshop with Carol Gaab at NECTFL 2010.

I am lucky enough to be in a district where I can inject as much TPRS/CI as I want, as long as I am convincing: the kids, in turn their parents, and in particular the administration.  My colleagues are open to what I am trying. 

To be honest, I believe that their tolerance is far more due to a shared vague/weak long-standing dictum of “we all get ‘there’ in different ways, we all have different methods” than to any abiding interest in a better teaching paradigm.  But I’ll take it. 

And there’s hope – at a countywide language-teacher dinner shindig during World Language Month, a TPRS/CI-fellow from a college in NJ spoke, beginning with a TPRS Dutch lesson and  introducing a wide variety of CI activities.  Ironically, I was not able to attend, but many of my most diehard packet-preparing colleagues were there.  And they raved about it for days.

My weakness and ever-present area-of-opportunity is classroom discipline.  Your clarity on this matter, and your clearly delineated reasons for the teaching-to-the-eyes and demanding complete attention, were an inspiration throughout the year, albeit one that I did not live up to. [ed. note: me neither]

My goals for the coming year:

1) articulate a level 1 curriculum for German which a) is drenched in CI  b) provides many examples of CI-masked-as-fun-games  c) assesses as oft as possible in short, targeted, ideally self-grading ways, likely with regular tech use: homework on Wordchamp/Quia/GoogleVoice and quizzes on Quia [in addition to the end-of-class quizzes based on the day's CI] 

2) have all of #1 set up for next year, so that I can concentrate as much energy as possible on facilitating the CI.

3) articulate TPRS tenets with the book “Teach Like A Champion” – which is being embraced by my district.  Happily, the book’s ideas are very TPRS-friendly: teach to the eyes, demand squared shoulders and visible cues of attentiveness, assess frequently and with varied means, teach for mastery. 

4) be convincing and get the enrollment way up!  Garner support from as many corners as possible to ward off the program-chopping-block.

I’m thrilled that your blog is back. 
Sincerely,

Andrew Graff

Michele Whaley and Janice Gullickson have made available an excellent new resource:

http://asdworldlanguages.ning.com/group/comprehensibleinputclass?xgi=383yXWRWHOX52a&xg_source=msg_invite_group

You can also find this site in the list of links at the bottom of the right side column of this page as “Michele Whaley 2″. Other links are welcome – send ‘em on!

Our table was right in front of the podium at the (U.S Congressman) Jared Polis Awards Banquet last night. Fifteen of the most effective teachers in Colorado were honored, among them a member of our Denver Public Schools TCI (Teaching with Comprehensible Input) team, Joseph Dziedzic.

Paul Kirschling was there and also DPS World Languages Coordinator Diana Noona, along with a few of Joseph’s friends and family, and Joe’s principal at George Washington High School, Loan Maas. There was great food, a nice short speech from Jared, and a good feeling of celebration all around, as it should be at this time of year.

Diana presented Joseph and it was awesome to hear her take the opportunity to explain in detail what Joseph actaully does in his classroom, to wit - speak in the target language 95% of the time. Her speech cut through a lot of the old pre-Krashen ideas about what it meant to teach languages.

Diana made it clear that the award went to a teacher who does not speak English in the classroom, who does not base his instruction on the book, and who builds community by putting knowing his kids as people first, before anything. Diana made that clear.

At one point, Congressman Polis was nodding in agreement. Then Joey, in his typically unassuming way, thanked everyone, and another blow was struck for the idea that teachers can actually speak in the target language 95% of the time in their classrooms.

I am glad that what we are doing in Denver Public Schools reflects a kind of fierce solidarity amongh our TCI group to make Krashen’s ideas work in the classroom. Sometimes, especially now at the end of the year, my stomach is filled with a kind of weariness from the battles of the year.

But when I looked at my colleagues Diana and Joseph and Paul (those of you in LA will remember Paul from his presentation on using paintings and the visual arts to make CI come alive), I forget the trials of the year and I am filled with a pride of community that I had never experienced in my long career – when I felt so alone – until now.

Congratulations Joey. Dr. Krashen’s brilliant work over all those years, without teachers like you walking the walk and bringing them to life, doesn’t mean much, really. You actually make Krashen’s  ideas work in changing the lives of kids so that they feel that they, indeed, are actually good at learning languages.

Ben,

I am still working on the Rejoinder pieces. 

I dug this up the other day.  These are the interview questions that we asked applicants for a Spanish teaching job at my school a couple of years ago.  I wrote most of the questions and the committee took turns asking them.  The committee consisted of two foreign language teachers and one social studies teacher.  we reported our findings and gave our recommendation to the principal, who had his own interview and made the final decision.  The answers are those of the candidate that got the job–my student teacher that year. 

A blog entry like this may be timely with interviews coming up at this time of the year.  The interview is not perfect, but at least it will give teachers some ideas and may spark some good discussion and the generation of ideas.

INTERVIEW QUESTIONS FOR F.L. TEACHER APPLICANT

1. What role does grammar correction play in your classroom?

I think that most student take a foreign language class because they want to learn how to speak.  Learning another language can be a daunting task and that desire to learn can be squelched if grammar is constantly corrected.  Instead, I like to focus on communicative language teaching techniques. 
 
2. What is your opinion about grammatical accuracy vs. fluency?

Using correct grammar is important, but even native speakers of a language do not always use proper grammar when they speak.  Fluency is extremely important:  in context, meaningful language. 
 
3. On what research or model do you base your teaching methods?

Much of it is based on the research of Dr. Stephen Krashen of USC, which indicates that people learn language mainly by Comprehensible Input.  This kind of input happens in the classroom by communicative teaching (speaking) and by emphasizing reading. 
 
4. Describe a typical day in your classroom

Variety is important, and every day is different, so it is difficult to describe a typical day, but there are some commonalities in every class period.  I greet students in the hall on their way to class.  There is always a “Repasito” (a bell-ringer activity) on the board, so the students have a task to complete right at the beginning of class while I am attending to other duties like taking role.  Reading is a part of almost every class—even in Spanish I.  But in every lesson I incorporate the four language skills of speaking, listening, reading and writing, which are the core of the Colorado Model Content Standards for Foreign Language. 
 
5. How did you learn Spanish?

In high school, and at UNC.  I also lived and studied in Mexico and in Costa Rica. 
 
6. How do you maintain and increase your own language proficiency?

By speaking Spanish daily and by reading, also by corresponding with my “family” and friends in Costa Rica, by watching movies and television in Spanish. 
 
7. Should students with learning disabilities be included in world language classes?

Yes, definitely.  In fact, students with learning disabilities can excel the most.  I have seen these students have a lot of success in Spanish classes.  They bring a lot to the class, they are excited. 
 
8. How do you do that?

I look at the students’ IEP’s and accommodate where needed.  I differentiate my instruction.  I give them preferential seating, like in the front of the class, if they need it.  I also give them more time. 
 
9. How do you accommodate the various learning styles of students within a class?

I use different techniques to give comprehensible input to students with visual, auditory and kinesthetic learning styles such as gestures, acting, role playing and drawing, as well as reading and writing. 
 
10. Describe your preferred system of classroom management.

I am pro-active in my classroom management style and I try to head off problems before they begin.  By being involved with students and showing them that I care, I find that there are fewer problems to begin with.  I use ideas from the book Tools for Teaching by Fred Jones. 
 
11. What inspired you become a teacher?

I love the language.  I have connections with the language working at our family business.  My family also took many vacations to Mexico as I was growing up.  I took Spanish in high school and I loved the language but the Spanish program was weak. After three years of taking Spanish in high school, even though I got good grades, I couldn’t really speak the language.  I wanted to try to see if I could find a better way to teach kids Spanish than what I experienced. 
 
12. What do you like about Roosevelt?

The staff, the students, the positive environment.
 
13. What are some of your biggest strengths and weaknesses?My attitude is one of my biggest strengths.  Attitude affects everything.

One of my weaknesses is that I am a perfectionist.  I tend to spend too much time on things.
 
14. Was there one person that steered you into teaching?

It was a compilation of people in my life.
 
15. Where do you see yourself in five years?

Working at a quality school, teaching Spanish in a program that is developing students that can speak Spanish at a high level.

We must remember that, when we do PQA, we are trying to personalize the story that is waiting to be developed when the PQA is over. Therefore, we direct each PQA question directly at a student.

This means that, if one of the three structures is “drinks”, after we have explained what it means and gestured it, then we look at Laura and ask her what she likes to drink.

We then develop that fact to the extent that it has energy with Laura. Sometimes, actually very often, if the kids have been trained in supplying cute answers, we can get a lot of cute imagined facts built around what Laura drinks. Each fact is a seed that can potentially blossom in the story.

So, if we learn in the PQA that Laura drinks Raspberry Mocha Chip Frappuccinos, and the first line of the story script is “Chip likes to drink water”, then, if Laura is open to acting, Chip in the story script becomes Laura in our class who drinks  Raspberry Mocha Chip Frappuccinos (I would say that in English), then we have wedded the PQA with the story. (If Laura doesn’t want to act, there are usually lots of other kids who want to get up there in her place.)

PQA, then, can be said to be a sort of laying down of lighthearted and largely imagined personalized facts from the PQA session right on top of the story script, transposing the story script into a highly personalized story that therefore grabs the kids’ attention for the entire class period. We superimpose the PQA onto the story script, as it were.

Now, the second big objective of PQA is to get as many repetitions of the target structures as possible so that the story flows that much more easily. Personally, I have recently chosen to do PQA all day Monday and only start the story on Tuesday because I found that I couldn’t get over 60 or 70 reps (minimal in my opinion) in 10 or 15 minutes – I just couldn’t do PQA and a story in one 50 minutes classe period.

For more on that please see:

http://www.benslavic.com/blog/2011/04/13/the-three-steps-and-bloom%e2%80%99s-taxonomy-of-learning/

A few other details that I would add to the above about PQA are:

1. Each question directed at the kids should include at least one target structure. Often, we can phrase each question to include two structures, and sometimes all three. We cannot just talk about anything in PQA and go all over the place. In the back of our minds should be a kind of hammer action on each target structure, because when they really know the target structures then the magic of CI can happen. So we do all the personalization using only the three structures. So if you find yourself asking a question of a student that is merely tangiential to the structures, don’t.

2. As the PQA unfolds, you can crush it or let it bloom into funny extended PQA. This is called allowing the thread of the PQA to develop. So if Laura drinks coffee, you stay with that, asking her more and more questions about that specific fact. If the class is trained in playing the game by supplying cute answers to each question, you may end up with the fact that Laura drinks coffee out of tiny red cups with her pinky up in the air on Mondays. Establishing that could be a 30 minute or more conversation with the kids. In general, we follow the thread that is established by the class’ cute answers. We follow the energy that each successive question generates. The way to crush the PQA is to not stay with Laura but to ask each kid the same question. Going shallow and wide with the PQA ruins the party. PQA is all about going narrow and deep with each structure.

3. There is usually a moment when the story script, waiting its turn to become real to the kids in the room, begs to start. Some sentences in the PQA just lead straight to the story script. It’s like those little icons in the dock of imacs when they bounce up and down trying to get out of the dock. In that interest, since I always want a natural start to the story, I keep the script on a stool right in front of me and when that magical link moment occurs, when the icons are bobbing up and down, all I have to do is grab the script and ask the actor to sit on the stool and begin the story. So watch for that right moment to transition into the story.

4. The use of emotion in PQA is the last thing I wanted to share today. Many target structures contain a lot of potential for emotion – especially, of course, verbs. Today, which I have on film, the structure was “I warn you”. You can really launch into some cool stuff with that one! I may have overdone it with one kid when I shook my finger at him and told him with perhaps a bit too much theatre that I had warned him to not eat spaghetti last night but he did anyway. For a moment, this kid’s eyes got real big, which told me that he was not getting a clear difference between me teaching and me being pissed because he ate spaghetti last night. But, in general, if the kids know what you are doing and why, then they go along. Emotion in PQA and stories really helps to ”stick” the expression in their deeper minds. 

Anyway, the “Six Pack” of PQA, in my opinion, contains:

• repetitions.
• personalization.
• at least one structure in each question.
• follow and allow the thread of the PQA to develop on its own.
• watch for that right moment to transition into the story.
• use emotion as much as possible. (can lead to chanting)