Tag: challenges
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Fiestas and a Hard Lesson (For Me)
The day after our class fiestas was not really what I was expecting…
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Falling Into Place
This school year has been going for a month now and things are coming together. I wasn’t so sure that this would happen, though. I had a lot of changes this year, the biggest of which was getting rid of all my desks. I had a practice run of this last year with my half-deskless…
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On My Own, But Not Alone
One and a half weeks down The year has started and is in full swing. I am teaching all the kiddos again, K-8, and I have a homeroom this year, too. Seventh graders. They are goofy, loud, smart, boisterous, outgoing, friendly, and all the other things that 12-13 year olds can be (also moody, emotional,…
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A Recalibration: Finding the Positive Hidden in the Negative
1000 Days 1000 days ago (1001, to be exact) I wrote a post about having fun in the classroom. I wrote another one (about 870 days ago) about variety and avoiding boredom in the classroom. Somewhere along the way, I lost sight of these things. I got bored and I started being the kind of teacher…
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Loosening the “Teacher Grip”
As teachers, we want to control all the things the students are doing. It is in the nature of our profession to create perfect students who do things exactly as we tell them and give us answers that are exactly what we are expecting, but that’s not how kids work. They want to do things…
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Seeing With New Eyes
As a language teacher who sees the students in class every day, I find that it is so easy to take for granted the everyday language that students know and are able to use. My students are able to say a lot of things about themselves, they are able to ask this information about others,…
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Encouraging Student Interactions in Class
Since I attended the SCOLT conference, I have begun to implement a lot of new ideas into my daily teaching. Some of these things are a bit outside the TPRS mainstream, but I think that even if it isn’t “TPRS approved,” there can still be value. Specifically, I am talking about “forcing” student output. I…
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Falling Flat on Your Face
A lot of bloggers who write about using TPRS or any other CI method talk a lot about how great it is and how engaged the students are and how much more the students are able to do with the language with these methods. They make it sound easy and wonderful and like anyone can…
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Automaticity and Transparency
TPRS is awesome. It is powerful and it empowers students. It has also redirected my idea of what students should be able to do after learning language in class. Before TPRS, I didn’t know that language that students learned in class could be internalized. I didn’t know it could become automatic for students. My own…
senor fernie 