I finally remembered to do the awesome activity that Betsy shared at our last monthly TPRS gathering, and it was incredibly successful! Here are the steps that we completed leading up to the re-tell: We created a class story (one class did ¡Siéntate! and another did ¡Saca el boleto!) I typed an abbreviated (bare bones)…
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What is Teaching Proficiency through Reading and Storytelling (TPRS)?
Since I blog about TPRS so much, I should probably stop and explain what it is. Teaching Proficiency through Reading and Storytelling, or TPRS, is a teaching method developed by Blaine Ray. It’s a method that focuses on providing students with lots of comprehensible input through the co-construction of stories, and Blaine developed it out…
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Expanding a writing piece
This makes for a great activity to include in sub plans or a filler activity, and is a way for students to create their own embedded reading. Begin with a short story without many details. I usually type up one of my student’s Free Writes and give them credit for it at the top of…
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QAR
Note: I first heard about QAR in a workshop with Carol Gaab during our 2011 AFLA Conference. I began to dig into it and published this post soon thereafter. Imagine my surprise when my principal brought in consultant Susan Van Zant just two weeks after I published it, announcing to the staff that this would…
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Class Storybook Illustration
After every class story that we tell (well, at least every story that isn’t totally lame), I like to have the class make a storybook to add into the class library. They are great to have when students stop in with friends or come in for conferences with their parents. I made 10, 14, and…
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New Versions
Blind Retell
Betsy Paskvan shared this fantastic activity with our Anchorage PLC last Friday night. (For any of you that haven’t heard of Betsy, she the an amazing Japanese teacher in our district that co-taught a Contrastive Grammar session at NTPRS with Susie Gross this past summer.) I love this activity because it is simple and effective!…
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Team Responses
The Alaskans For Language Acquisition Conference was last weekend, and we were blessed to host five incredible speakers for the weekend (Carol Gaab, Terry Waltz, Laura Terrill, Hiroko Kataoka, and Uwe Kind). I spent much of my time in the sessions presented by Carol Gaab, president of TPRS Publishing, Inc., as three of them focused…
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Pobre Ana Chapter 1: Cornell Notes
Today, one of my classes read the first chapter of Pobre Ana, and we took Cornell notes in English (1) to organize the information and (2) to demonstrate understanding. You could have your students take the notes in Spanish if you’d prefer, but it’s easy to fill out a notes sheet with Spanish information without…
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Re-tell using pictures
An excellent speaking activity (or assessment) for your students is to have them re-tell a familiar story using only picture cues. (This is not a revolutionary idea for most of you!) Today, for example, my Spanish II students read a new story in pairs or groups of three. At the bottom of the page, I…
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