Wednesday, December 4, 2013

Golden Rule: Never assume!

As I stated before, this is the 2nd year that I have been teaching using CI/TPRS.  This year I have a Spanish 3 class with students that I had never met (even when I taught the traditional method.)  I assumed that they remembered Reflexive Verbs and today, as I had planned to have a quick review to prepare them for the awesome lesson plan with Movie Talk that Martina Bex created and posted in her blog found here, I stopped when I realized that they were looking at me with a blank stare.  Then I asked:  do you know what is a Reflexive Verb?  No! they responded.  I assumed they did, because last year, with my Spanish 1 and 2 classes we used them regularly, and to my content they retained it over the summer. When they looked at me scared, I told them that they would know when I showed them, because we have been applying them via CI from the start of the school year.  I listed a few on the board, and when they realized that they were familiar, they relaxed. 
Then, I proceeded to use some TPR to introduce some of the most used to describe daily routines.  After doing gestures and sounds, I used PQA (Personalized Questions and Answers) to develop conversation and have students listen to the other forms besides first person singular.  We sang and did motions for  "La Rutina Diaria" .  The "review" that I had was longer than I expected, but this experience only reinforced my belief that if we teach students a bunch of isolated vocabulary words, and teach them lots of grammar rules to memorize, they will succeed in their tests at the moment but they will not retain the material unless we personalize it and make it meaningful.  Tomorrow we will reapply all of that and expand with the activities for the Movie Talk.
What big "a-ha!" moments have you had lately?

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