It's that time of year!

August is back!

In my personal life, I've had a very busy summer that while fulfilling, was also totally draining.  For the first time in a long time, I'm headed back to school running on fumes. And I'm still committed to making changes--silly me.

Our first day back with students is August 23, and I've decided that I want to introduce TRPS (Total Physical Response Storytelling, trademarked and popularized by Blaine Ray) as my main method of instruction in at least one of my courses. I teach exploratory Spanish in grades 5 and 6, Spanish I in grades 7 and 8, an English research elective in grades 7 and 8, and ESL at all grades, so changing/adding/modifying anything tends to create a chain reaction of change that has the potential to get a little out of hand when I'm working with as many as six preps, multiple developmental stages and at least 3 languages a day, and popping in and out of four different buildings in the course of a week. I love all of the things I do, but it can get overwhelming from time to time.

So researching and developing a new curriculum from scratch in August on fumes is frustrating. But the more I read and think about TPRS, the more I'm convinced that it's the right direction to take all my language teaching - grades 5 through 8 Spanish, ESL K-12, everything. I'm going into my 9th year of teaching (WHEN did that happen??), and I cannot believe that I'm just now hearing about TPRS, just now getting more exposure to it and information about it.

The absolute basics of TPRS (and practicing teachers, correct me where I'm wrong!): 
1. Establish meaning.  The teacher determines a set of structures/vocab that students will need to learn in order to understand the story she is going to use.  Pretty much everything I've read insists there should be no more than THREE new structures in a story--this is because students have to understand and get comfortable with these structures to the point of automaticity, and three is about all they can handle at a time. So the teacher writes the new structures on the board, translates them into English, and establishes a gesture that the entire class will use any time these new structures pop up in the TPRS process.  She uses them in a statement, an affirmative question, a negative question, and an either/or question. There's lots of other stuff that can happen here, but that's the gist of Step One.

2. Ask questions. The teacher starts asking questions about the story (which students haven't read yet). Students should guess the answer, and all answers should be in the target language. (E.g., Is there a boy? Yes, there's a boy. Is there a girl? No, there's a boy). Alternatively, the teacher can make a statement about the story and then ask the class about the statement: There is a boy. Is there a boy? Yes, there is a boy. The point is that everything in TPRS is highly interactive, mostly in the target language, interesting, and engaging. The teacher should repeat the information in lots of different ways, predictably, until every student understands the basic facts of the story - she should use statements, then affirmative questions, negative questions, either/or questions, and open-ended questions.  The Q&A bit here is referred to in TPRS as "circling," since the teacher hovers over the same piece of information and asks about it in lots of different ways.

3. Reading.  The teacher will read one line at a time in the target language, then the class translates each individual line into English to ensure comprehension. This should also help them tie all that new information together. The most practice kids get, the less translation they'll need in the long run, but translation is a good way to begin a lower-level class. After choral reading/translation, the teacher can have students act out the story as she narrates, and she can pause to ask the actors questions (thereby introducing and practicing 2nd person forms).

There's lots and lots and LOTS of other details, possible activities, lesson tangents, and deeper learning opportunities, but that's the most basic outline I can offer. Here's why I'm forcing myself to make the change to TPRS, even though it would be much easier to just keep doing what I've done before:
 - I am pretty good at teaching reading and writing, since those are my personal strengths.  I am pretty terrible at teaching speaking and listening, though, and TPRS is heavy on both of those skills.
 - Despite speaking and listening being my weaker language skills, TPRS feels extremely accessible and doable to me. I feel confident that I can make this happen, and that it will immediately benefit my students.
 - My incoming group of 6th graders has a penchant for presentations and play-acting; this will play well to acting out stories, writing their own parallel stories, and contributing creative and interesting answers.
 - Everything in this method is customizable to individual learners. While I can use a set of mini-stories to guide the structures I introduce and the cultural concepts I want students to learn, they fill in the blanks with what they need and find interesting. I can ensure that they have the structures they need to communicate while they decide what to communicate.
 - From what I can tell, TPRS is suitable for the absolute beginner as well as more advanced students, and I love that it spirals learning - taking previous structures and using them in new ways, or adding depth to them. Spiraling has long been my most difficult challenge, especially when it comes to individual students. I know there is no magic trick that instantly levels content for all kids, but TPRS looks very promising.


So - here's my first attempt at writing my own TPRS story for 6th grade exploratory Spanish.  I plan to introduce TPRS after several lessons of the basics (name, origin, age, how are you, etc.) so there is some background knowledge for kids to work with. I make my own workbooks, so I've set up the mini story as a couple of pages that kids can go back and reference when they need to. I know I'm using more vocab/structures than is recommended, but I think I need to actually go through this lesson once to figure out how to fix it, so I've left them in for now.

Cuento Uno: Juan Quiere Comer

Write what each of these phrases means, then illustrate it in a way that helps you remember it.
This is your notebook, so be sure to jot down new words, too!

Quiere	Va a	Tiene	Le gusta
Hay	Comer	Comida

Try answering these questions for yourself (in Spanish, of course!)—remember there are question words posted in the classroom and listed in the front of your workbook:

1.       ¿Qué comida te gusta comer?

2.       ¿Adónde vas para comer?

3.       ¿Qué comida hay en la cafeteria?

Juan Quiere Comer

You’ll read this as a class – one line in Spanish, then you’ll help translate the line into English. Write down anything that will help you, especially the meanings of new words.

Hay un chico.

El chico se llama Juan.

Juan es estudiante.

Juan es de Perú.

Juan quiere comer un taco.

Juan va a un restaurante.

Juan quiere comer un taco.

Le gusta mucho comer tacos.

El restaurante tiene comida de Perú.

El restaurante no tiene tacos.

El taco no es de Perú.

Juan va a México.

Juan va a un restaurante.

Juan quiere comer un taco.

¡El restaurante tiene tacos!

¡Hay muchos tacos!

El taco es de México.

Juan come muchos tacos.

Next – Act it out!

After that – add/change details, then write your own story! 

I welcome any input from teachers who have experience with TPRS - how can I avoid common mistakes? What would you do differently? 

I also welcome input from other teachers, parents, and students--what do you think about this method of language learning? What are your concerns? 

My main source for everything above:
Ray, B. & C. Seely. (2016). Fluency through TPR storytelling. 7th ed. TPRS Books: Eagle Mountain, UT.

Edited to add this great intro TPRS guide from Bryce Hedstrom:
http://www.brycehedstrom.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/THE_BASICS_OF_TPRS2.pdf