Optimizing Immersion

The joys of floating. I feel like the characters in the Wizard of Oz sometimes. If I only had a room…I’d have word lists all over the place, my question words would be clearly visible to everyone, I’d have my own set of whiteboards even if they were sheet protectors with paper stuck into them. […]

It’s way too easy to forget that the kids know perfectly well what they like. Sometimes I feel unprepared to teach stories because I don’t know the top stars or celebrities or characters that enchant the prepubescent mind of the 11-year-olds in my classes. But it really doesn’t matter. If I remember to let the […]

They’re different. We as teachers have the advantage of seeing “the big picture”. I know what vocabulary is on the curriculum for the year. I know that what we’re doing in class addresses those items. I know that I wanted to spend far more time and effort on speaking and listening than on reading and […]

This is the second  day reading Anna Mei Banfa with the Chinese 1’s, and we also had a visit from our superintendent (I really ought to keep my calendar more organized so I’d realize these folks are going to stop in!) Of course we often have people around as Chinese is a new course this […]

All TPRS is is comprehensible input plus endless varied repetition plus personalization. The first one lets the brain understand the language; the second cements it in the brain, and the third gets the kids to “buy in” to listening to all that input. So, tell stories, use a book, use actors, don’t use actors, read […]

We had an in-service session yesterday afternoon that was supposed to be about differentiation. I admit to not being terribly excited about it. I attended another session a few weeks back that was rarefied to the point of practically draining all the oxygen from the room. It was practically impossible to listen to that presentation […]

I had a post-observation conference today with one of the administrators who observes my 6th grade Chinese classes. It was pretty ordinary, really, and the comments he had were pretty much like those brought up by others who have observed the classes. The thing that really caught my attention, though, was the way he *got […]