Teaching with TPR/TPRS in the Block

Many of the existing materials for TPR/TPRS are written for classrooms that see their students 5 days a week (i.e. vocab preview, story-telling, story-asking, embedded readings, writing day and novels). This can be more difficult to apply in the block, not to mention exhausting. Here is the overview of how I survive in the block.

My block set-up

My current school is set-up on an A B day block schedule where each class is an hour and twenty-five minutes. Each level of Spanish is one year (requiring passing at semester to continue).

I have taught in a 4x4 block, each class is an hour and a half (4 classes per day) and I saw them every day. A full year of language was done in one semester.

CI: Comprehensible Input

This is pedagogy. Students acquire language through meaningful input that they can understand. By keeping things within a clear frame of reference, students truly internalize meaning instead of rote memorization and rapid deterioration of vocabulary.

TPRS: Teaching Proficiency through Reading and Storytelling

This is methodology. This uses the idea of CI by labeling vocabulary “in-bounds” and using lots of repetitions to increase exposure and create true acquisition. This is done through readings, telling stories, reading novels, asking stories, and personalizing content to make it engaging for students.

Challenges

Using TPRS in a block can be exhausting. To keep students engaged for a whole block is innately a challenge. When you then take into account that TPRS pretty much requires you to be on point and turn into the crazy charades lady… I’ve never been called that (lie).

It is also hard to keep up a 5 cycle rotation when that takes two weeks, minimum, in your planning time (assuming no breaks or PD days, yay).

My Tips

I try to never let one focus in class last more than 25 minutes. Then we brain break, move seats, play a round of BANCO! (see post on time fillers here), something that shakes it up and gets their blood moving. *Exception: if we are MovieTalk-ing, story asking or telling and they are engaged and into it, we keep the momentum going. I had a handful of classes where the story asking lasted for the whole period and the bell rang at the very climatic ending. My quiet kid yelled  “Qué lástima” in protest. 

Read and write every day in some capacity; even if it is student work being peer-reviewed or read. This helps you transition and prepare for the next lesson or activity. Have them write a review of what just happened. Sometimes you need a break to get water to wet your whistle, or you need to find that class set of copies you made this morning and then set down over there, maybe?

Monthly self-talk is important, especially for the 1^st and 4^th years. Have students write themselves a note and file it away. Pass the notes back out at the end of the year. They can clearly reflect on their own progress. It is fun watching them become language snobs.

Don’t forget to make lesson plans. I know many teachers say things like “this seriously but down my planning time and paperwork”, “one day predicts the next”. I found that in the block, this is true to an extent. If I don’t have a plan, it is easy to feel “done” and let the last 20 minutes of class not be as impactful as they could be. Write those plans in a very short summary on the board to keep you on track. Here is a link to the free sample pages for my lesson planner I created to help me (there is a fully assembled version that runs August-June).

Set a timer or give a student the job of the clock watcher. They will help you remember to transition to the next thing (going from story-telling to writing to reading to oral summaries with a partner). If we need 5 or 10 minutes more, I just hold up one hand or two to my clock watcher and they know it is like hitting snooze.

Have back-up plans ready at all times. We all have that class that seems like a karmatic result of a wrong-doing from a past life. They drain you. Or, maybe you have a sick kid at home and you were so tired you left your coffee next to your lunch on the kitchen counter. If you practice certain activities or skills with your students, sometimes you can get them to self-direct a little better. Also having plans like this keep you from dipping into your sub-plans. 

Have themed days. These days are not related to a sequence of instructions, but rather to the “incentive break” of the day. If kids have you on Tuesday and Thursday of that week they can look forward to cloze listening or sometime of music and then game time.

Here are my theme days for my classroom. I love a good alliteration, it that is wrong, I don’t want to be right.

locura en lunes-We tend to play large-group games like BANCO!, board races, Simon Dice, Navegando, Spanish Partner Programming, Pasa el Bolo, and various others. Here is my post about whole class games that work for me. 

música martes- We do cloze listening activities (I keep a running doc folder with popular songs and lyrics pre-saved. This way I can blank-out vocabulary that related to our current stories, key words, or the frequent flyers and then print them as needed). I also let my upper levels, generally better relationship and I know if I can trust them, explore new music and report back (they draw a genre or country they have to look for).

muévete miércoles- I have always tried to find various dances to use as brain breaks but never thought to organize it. THEN, I went to the fantastic IWLA conference in 2014 where Allison Weinhold presented about baile viernes. I decided to jump in her conga line and organize mine midweek (it fits nicely with our early out days etc). If you are hesitant or worry about “wasting class time”, poohy. My kiddos haven’t noticed my dirty little secret: we start class with the dance, Zumba, or workout series (in Spanish) and then I never leave the TL and/or focus on difficult concepts (stressing grammar, addressing explicit grammar in English, pushing old vocabulary words, and requiring responses). They love it.

juego jueves- Depending on what the day looks like, they get 15-20 minutes to play games, in Spanish, with each other. Uno is super popular, my homemade Manzanas a Manzanas, conversation Jenga, Guess Who (I used one games and replaced the pictures with photos of other teachers), and Scrabble. They stay in Spanish; I expect it so they do it. If they veer off track, the time ends and we go back to normal class.

video viernes- Movie Talks are popular more frequently on these days. I also try to make their project work days fall on here. We have done music video analysis (pointing out landmarks, comparing the English version to the Spanish version, other cultural key points).

My CI Classroom- what it looks like

I have started several posts about the amazing #CIIA16 conference and haven’t been able to do it justice. So here is my start.

I was listening to, and had, several conversations about what various CI classrooms looked like; the physical space. Some teachers travel, many had their own rooms, most “have to” contend with rooms filled with desks and seem disappointed. Here I am going to address what I have been through and what I am doing now (with pictures!).

Big Classes

When I taught in several large districts, large classes were the norm (I once had 32 students enrolled in one class and 28 desks, turns out to be less of a problem considering the truancy rate). In these classes I always started and ended class with desks in a line (typically a grid) just to keep the peace. My behaviorally challenging classes that needed separated from each other  never knew their seating was different from the other classes (I originally had a hard time believing high schoolers needed to be separated, turns out it was true).

Once a report was established I changed my lines to face each other and that was successful (desks stacked 3 deep on each side, in lines that ran perpendicular to the board). I moved desks almost every class period to accommodate my plans and the class’s needs. Still, every student has his/her own desk. This provided them with a defined space to call their own and offered me a sense of organization in small rooms with no windows and wall to wall desks.  

Trick: I had students transition desk arrangements when they started to get restless, changed activities, or they were getting sleepy. This let them think we were “wasting” class time by moving desks and it give me the ability to regain focus of a large class while getting their blood moving.

In these classes my CI strategies were often “turn to a partner”, in “barrios” or teams, acting in their seats, and lots of drawing/story boards. The activities that worked best with large classes were ladder stories, blind draw, madlibs, and stations. Sometimes I would do actual story telling, reading a children's book that was big and well-illustrated. It amazes me to this day how mesmerized they are by this, even if they don't understand the story very well. They look like giant kindergartners sitting in a semi-circle, half on the floor and half in desks (also keep in mind that several of your students may have never had this experience growing up, offer it now).

Required 1:1 Desks

I have worked for administrators that make me keep all the desks in my room regardless of class size.  While this may seem to clutter the room, take up valuable acting space, and be monotonous for students, you still have options.

I have stacked desks against a wall to open up floor space, formed collaborative tables (with desks of the same height, somethings I can’t handle), brought in my screwdrivers to lower desk legs to create floor tables and raised them to make standing desks. Trick: Get your students into a routine of “putting the room in order” before they leave and do what you need with the furniture during each class.

Before You Make Drastic Changes

Remember that desks serve a great purpose; testing. This can apply to any paper tests you give but also state and district required tests. You need to keep enough desks to accommodate whatever your school’s testing looks like.

Ask your students. I did. Out of 162 students, 15 said they like having the desks and chairs. I also had a varied response of students who would prefer to stand, sit on floor pillows, and have room to sprawl and take notes. (I asked: When you study and are productive, what are you doing, where are you sitting, and how are you learning? PS- being comfy and falling asleep is NOT learning.)

Introverted, shy/new, and students with sensory processing disorders or behavior plans may need a desk and chair to succeed in your class. By offering a few to all your classes, you won’t isolate students or single them out.

My Classroom Flex Seating

This is new this year. I was given an opportunity to make changes while our building is transitioning leadership. This sounds sneaky but is not intended to be; I am really just comfortable about knowing myself and the needs of my students and am ready to change the classroom environment. 

If I can give advice to brand new teachers: keep desks your first year. This will help you with classroom management and establishing relationships and expectations with your new crop of students. I have worked in a variety of schools and none of them have the desks and chairs have been bolted to the floor. Move the furniture and make room as needed for reenactments, reading-time spaces, and project work.

This year I intended to open my classroom up for more creative spaces and things that are easy to move to accommodate games, acting space, projects, conversations, etc.

 

You can see (the mess my own children make during the summer AND) my super cool Spanish doormat from Target that fits perfectly under my door (because they have everything). This is my physical representation of the transition to “Spanish World”. 

Out of habit I have my desk in direct line of view from my classroom door; I can see the door and be the super protector... or something. If I had my way, I would shrink my desk by half and have a traveling mini desk on wheels… added to: future projects. 

My “almost SmartBoard”, as I call it, is hung on the wall to the right. It pretty much serves as a projection screen. This wall is also all a “cork” wall where I can pin things: meet the Word Wall for when school is in session. (When in school I write the Spanish first and then English, verbs are in red, nouns in blue, and adj/adv in green). 

I have a collaborative table of desks and chairs behind a pair of single desk/chair combos. I think 5 is the max number of high schoolers that can sit together and be productive. The single desks/chairs are closer to the board so I can also use them as behavior monitoring seats. The set of desk/chair combos behind my desk are in process of a makeover; they will soon have testing huts to help make-up quizzers/testers or students that just need to focus and block others out.

 

In the middle of my room is a triangle of chairs (five in total; two in front and three behind) without desks. I will have clipboards for them. Behind the desk-less chairs are another set of 3 individual desk/chair combos that can easily slide together to form a group of 3. Behind these three is a large open space. There will soon be a standing whiteboard table 5’x6’ (I am building it currently and hope to have it done in the next week). 

 

I have my corner of classroom computers (that I can see the screens while out-and-about in the room) and storage for class sets of headphones, blankets, floor pillows, etc. Next to my triangle of chairs are a set of desks that I modified. I used my handy tool kit and lowered the legs as short as they go. They are now perfect floor-height tables for sitting on a floor pillow and still using the space to write or collaborate. Behind this, along the wall, will be my “Oprah” space with two semi-comfy chairs and end tables. Tip: Avoid fluffy seating and rugs. These harbor germs, crumbs, bugs (bed bugs), and are difficult to clean. I try to always have hard-surface seating or wipe-able options (pleather). 

All of my seating options face forward to see the open front space and large whiteboard (which houses yesterday, today, and tomorrow’s dates and weather; I also have all my question words above the board, mini whiteboards with important dates for each level, and my real-life Pinterest board). Keeping desks oriented in one direction seems to appease administrators and gives your room a “center” to help find itself after those story asking days that get a little more out of hand than you planned… because that’s never happened (or every time). 

I also have a set of school shelving in the front where I keep dollar store baskets of supplies labeled in Spanish (glue, scissors, fat markers, thin markers, colored pencils…). I tried to do the shower caddies for each group last year and it (I?) failed miserably. Students just know the routine to get supplies quickly and not drive me nuts.

CI/TPRS in My Classroom

The spaces I provided this year offer students and myself options. They can take notes as wanted, work on storyboards, quick quizzes, and rearrange the room as necessary. This also provides me with distinct spaces to create more CI by LABELING EVERYTHING: explicit vocabulary with a visual reference. This also leaves me with wall space to make it student-centered and helpful with reminders and key phrases.

Also, the different spaces can also tell me more about my students: do they typically sit alone and are now with a group? Does that student normally stand and is now barely awake at his seat? If I think about these questions and recognize patterns it can help my identify students at risk (is he now working the night-shift to pay bills and is tired? Is she now dating a boy in-class and need to be aware of proximity?). This will also help me engage my students into roles in the classroom they are ready for. (I know if I’m super tired, you better not call on me to act or take notes during the story telling.)

Summary

I feel that these spaces are welcoming and appealing to students (time will tell). Given the number of physical seats, I have 22 available in my room with 14 student desks. Having students sit on the floor and standing there are a possible 30 student spaces to physically write. Luckily, I seldom have over 23 kids (this will change this year since this is my 3^rd year at this school and my retention went way up). I also have a stack of chairs in my teacher closet; I do have a total of 27 chairs if needed. 

Once I have the thumbs-up I will hang things back up and re-post pictures.

Level Up- TPRS/CI in level 3 and 4 courses

Comprehensible Iowa 2016- presentation

I am beyond excited to attend this conference tomorrow. I am presenting about using TPRS/CI methods and still preparing students for the traditional college courses.

If you don't know about CIIA, you are missing out, my friend. Visit their site here and prepare to come next year... I haven't been told they're doing it again, but wishful thinking goes a long ways.

You can find my PowerPoint presentation on my TpT for free, it is likely not super helpful if you weren't there, but you'll get the gist and I am happy to entertain questions on what I do (please, don't confuse that with expertise).

Edit:
This was an amazing, uplifting, joyful experience. My teacher-nerd was fulfilled and I left spinning with philosophy and practice questions.

Also, there was a suggestions for next year form, so I am going to assume we get to do this again.

Here is the link to CIIA's Pinterest Page where they have beautifully organized presenter blogs, presentations, and recordings:
Comprehensible Input Iowa Pinterest Page

Grading: Philosophy and Reflection

Grading, the double-edged sword in teaching. It is necessary and a useful tool, but it takes a lot of time and causes a lot of stress.

Many teachers have district or school-wide grading scales, policies, and common assessments. This can be beneficial because it is a pre-established system for teachers. However, we understand that sweeping policies are often reactionary and don't always account for content and level differences.

For those of us who work in smaller districts or departments, we often have to establish our own grading system. This allows teachers to reflect on their teaching, assessment process, and to develop a system that clearly communicates to students, parents, and themselves! However, this also leaves teachers with even more work within their limited planning times. This can also mean the teacher has little backing or support from administration when problems arise if it is not a school-wide policy.

No matter your circumstance, I strongly recommend reflecting on your grading policies and really think about what your grades are supposed to communicate versus what they actually communicate.

Grades should communicate:

Student development. Period.

This is multifaceted as a high school teacher. The purpose of high school is to educate students so they become productive members of society in a capacity they choose. I believe simplifying grades to "knowledge acquired" is not a complete picture. It is a very important part, but students are also learning life-skills and social skills. Doing this while balancing content is impressive, and they deserve credit for that.

This hidden curriculum is very trying in high school. Students become more autonomous, navigate social and professional relationships, and they study 6-8 courses at any given time.

I believe students should receive credit for effectively balancing their work load and working on course content (i.e. completing work in a timely manner, working effectively during class, etc.).

Grades should be communicated:

Clearly and frequently.

Grades are not effective tools for progress monitoring when completed three weeks after completion. This is not helpful for parents, students, or you (more on managing paper load later). If you continue to assign work and progress on your calendar without knowing if your students are proficient in the previous work, you are creating a giant headache for yourself.

Your grading policies should be crystal clear before the school year starts. Write a welcome letter and send it out or offer it at "back to school night". Hit the highlights, assign first homework that adult and student sign it, record that grade, then file it away. TALK TO YOUR ADMIN about it first. You can frame this as a 1) This is what my grading policies look like and I want you to have a copy, or 2) Here is what I am thinking for grading my grading policy, can we talk over it?  This provides you with clarity for yourself and for your administrator. Proactive is way better than reactive.

Even if you are not sending home grade reports every few weeks with your school, send out a short email updating parents about important dates and the skills they can expect to see from their students. This also reminds them to check on the students' grades. See my sample email to parents here. There is also a free template on my TpT site here.

Grades should be reflective:

If you use weights or points, make sure your assignments and skill/standard are labeled very clearly. Most computer-based gradebook systems allow for subcategories within major categories. By organizing your gradebook correctly, you can quickly identify if a student is struggling in one specific area or if struggling sporadically.

Is Norma doing well in all areas and then magically is a low-performer on the "oral communication- production" area? This lets you identify that you need to talk to her; does she have a speech impediment and is very shy? does she have crippling "stage fright" and need a 1:1 opportunity to talk?

Is your 2nd period class notoriously difficult and it seems they all do poorly on "listening practice"? Is this because your assignments are too difficult/easy and they find other ways to entertain themselves? Do you need to rework your seating arrangement? Do you need to ask an administrator to come in and help brainstorm? Do you need to practice expectations with them during class, after school, with their adults present?

You should NOT be the only one reflecting on student grades. Help teach them to reflect on their own grades. Provide print outs of their class progress, have them fill out a reflection slip on big assessments, talk to them 1:1 (even quickly) during work time. This will also save you headaches later on.

Grades should have a back-up:

Keep a paper back-up. This will save you one day.

I will post a photo of my paper back-up and how I use that to monitor students in a different post here.

Music in Spanish Class

With the wide variety of tools and discussion about implementing CI/TPRS in the world language classroom, I decided I will focus on various aspects of my classroom and how it works for me.

Music

Music is a go-to tool in my classroom. Most of the music in my class is streamed on YouTube. Music provides my students with: cultural points, different sounds of various Spanish accents, authentic vocabulary and grammar, and the ability to understand what power music truly holds.

I use music as guided listening activities, background noise during projects, rhythms in dancing brain-breaks, and as a formative assessment.

Listening Activities

Cloze listening is a "fill in the blank" format for students to follow along. The lyrics are printed out and you can strategically blank out some of the words. It is helpful to pick out words of a certain verb tense, vocabulary grouping, or words of cultural significance. I try to find at least one song every two weeks that applies to what we are studying. Always study the words in advance or make sure student are familiar with the topic. *Side note: remember that lyrics repeat and if you don't want students to "cheat", make sure you blank out all of the same words in both choruses.

Background Noise

During creative work time I play a current play list from YouTube. I keep the volume low. If students want to hear it, they have to stay quiet. This is providing them with valuable listening... for their mouth. Hearing sounds and the way words are pronounced has really helped my students acquire the "Spanish sound". I contend less and less with que pronounce "K-uE".

Brain-Breaks

I teach classes in 83 minute blocks, every other day. I can't focus that long, how can I expect my students to... after lunch... in a chilly room? I make them move. I have salsa dance lessons (basics) that we work on in class at the beginning of the year and they dance during breaks to whichever song I play.

Oral Assessment

You read correctly. Oral assessment. For out of class work (the only "homework" I give), they can choose a song and listen to it and try to identify lyrics (or just words). Without asking, students will start singing during the creative work time music, or even in the halls. I use the cloze listening time to watch which kids are "lip reading" or trying to shout out the words they do know.

Last year, Bailando was the song for my Spanish 2 kids. I had it playing when they walked in, played it as they walked out, kids were making up "chair dances" they could do in their seats whenever it came on. If I wanted their attention (a group of 27 very rowdy, strong-willed high schoolers), I played the song. Every single student sang along. Every single student sang along. Even the quiet ones. I could hear how they were working the works, where they stumbled, and how it increased their aural reading abilities and confidence.

I would give them one point for participation in the song if everyone truly sang. I would make a dot in my book for any student I needed to work with a little more on whatever sound I was listening for. I would hang around their group work a little longer and give that group more input. Doing this, I could see who consistently struggled and who was "always" okay.