I have become a fan of TPRS because I do believe it is the most efficient way so far to help students develop both fluency and accuracy in Spanish. However, I am new to the techniques and although I read the Big Green Book: Fluency through TPR Storytelling, I guess that my biggest worry is that I won’t have enough worksheets/activities for students to do during my lessons because I have become so used to producing tons of resources in order to keep them busy. Needless to say I have found out that my students can actually stay engaged while listening to comprehensible input and that I do not need to have tons of worksheets ready for just one lesson. And this is what I love about this method: it does not require a lot of preparation but at least three key structures to repeat!

And here is one fun activity that came to my mind just before my lesson with 6th graders started. I quickly wrote this mini story on the board as a mean to circle the key structures “tiene“, “abre” and “hay“:

After circling the structures, I asked my students to create their own mini stories by changing the words underlined. I left them one minute to think silently about their mini stories. There was no writing required because I wanted them to speak. After the one minute had gone, my students had to tell their stories to another classmate. Some of their stories were actually so much funnier than mine and I was amazed by their accuracy at such a beginner level. This nearly took the whole 40 minutes period and my students were happy because although the class was in Spanish all along, they understood everything and they could communicate too.