Reflection on Comprehensible Input

I haven't updated my blog for a while now, and as I am taking a break due to my fourth baby coming at the end of September, I wanted to reflect on my last school year. I was teaching Spanish from grade 6 to 12 and I decided to turn to comprehensible input and TPRS since I was never fully satisfied with the traditional way to teach languages.

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How to encourage students to produce comprehensible output on sports

 

 

 

 

 

 

My grade 7 students (12-13 years old) did comprehensible presentations about some popular sports in Hispanic countries. First, I wanted to model a presentation because whenever my students produce Spanish output,

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How to use a mini story in a Spanish beginner class

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,

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Spanish story: El chico cansado

This story comes from a French story on The Task Magic blog: Bob est fatigué. I wanted to recycle the structures "debe", "tengo que" which my students already learned with Los niños prisioneros de Bolivia and I also wanted to use "está cansado".

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Cultural input: the prisons in Bolivia (or how to engage Spanish learners)

How to get students engaged and producing a lot of language???? Well.... I recommend purchasing Martina Bex 7-day lesson plans about Los niños prisioneros de Bolivia as it is truly worth the investment! Not only did it save me a lot of prep-time, it also made my students had a meaningful discussion in the target language!

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Speaking activity: giving opinions about TV programs and films.

This is a fantastic idea from one of my emails from the mflresources@yahoogroups.com: "I show the students some clips (2-3 mins each) from YouTube and they play the role of critic - after each clip they get 30 seconds to write their opinion of each clip and then a further 30 seconds to share their opinion with their neighbor.

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Reading activity: una televisión para los perros

I believe reading in the target language is crucial because it promotes fluent reading skills which then leads to fluency in the other language skills such as speaking and writing. Fluent reading means reading without a dictionary, which can be challenging if students read an authentic text or a book.

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