The end is near…

I gave an assessment last week and graded over the weekend (and on Monday…). I was sooo happy with the results. The story I had them translate into English went so well! I was so proud of my students! Some of them I was EXTRA proud of! I kind of wanted to cry! the comprehension level of everything we’ve done this semseter was great! The production of the Russian structures was not as high, but I didn’t stress that at all. I wanted to allow the production to come naturally, so that was never my focus. Next year, I will allow for more arenas for the natural spontaneous production to happen. I have a feeling I will be pleasantly surprised!

This TPRS experiment has been such a great experience! I can’t believe how much Russian I have been speaking in class, how much my students are spontaneously producing and using, their accuracy, and even how much I have learned through the semester! I can’t wait to start a year off with TPRS after a summer of reflecting, growing, learning, and hopefully going to a workshop or two!

(I’ve never been so sad a year is coming to an end!)

Welcome back!

Ура!  I hope everyone had a great spring break!  I know I did a whole lot of nothing.  It’s time to get back in the groove and finish off this year.  Let’s get ready to move at the speed of natural language aquisition and an appropriate amount of comprehensible input!  Woot1  Check the different Russian period pages for today’s story.  Soon I will put up the stories I wrote based on what we’ve done so far this semester of TPRS.

Update coming soon…

A big SPASIBO to my students who have been faithfully trying to do their homework by checking my blog. Of course, I haven’t done my 50% and updated quite yet. It will happen this week end, I promise! Until then, don’t forget to buy a turnabout ticket to benefit our afterprom and have a great weekend!

And we’re back!

After a little time off from TPRS (a “unit” on early Russian history up to Peter the Great) we are now back in the groove.  This week has been (and may be) a short one.  We had Monday off for Presidents’ Day, then Tuesday was an unexpected snow day.  As of today, Friday’s looking kind of shakey, but we’ll see.  Speaking of shakey….

My stories today were not as strong as would have liked them to be.  Russian 2/3/4′s story started off really, really shakey, but ended up pretty well.  Shout out to Елена for her input today!  I love the энергия!!    Спасибо!!!

I just made a new Voki. See it here:

Фу!

Here are some former Start Russian students on Red Square walking toward St. Basil's Cathedral

Today was an uplifting day!    Everyone (including me!) had a lot more energy than yesterday.  I ran out of juice yesterday because I stopped early with my tprs and did a mini lesson on verb endings (eeeeeeeekk!)  It was so funny; as soon as I wrote the verb endings on the board and started to talk about the differences between “Iwait” and “He waits” in English (and compared it to the Russian endings) everyones’ eyes COMPLETELY glazed over!  LOL  The only thing that got them interested again was when we made a little paper fortune teller game with the verb endings inside. 

Today, was SUCH a different story.  (After a full night’s sleep) I had a blast of inspiration and came up with a pretty intersting story outline for all of my levels.  My upper levels enjoyed making a story about Christina Aguilera going to Belle Tire and my Russian 1′s were introduced to plurals with Jennifer Aniston and Angelina Jolie.  «Фу!»

I’ve also been spreading the word of how I’ve dived headfirst into TPRS.  I’m really proud of myself so far and hope I can continue to keep it up.  I wish I wouldn’t have missed the 50% sale on teachforjune.com over MLK weekend!   Darn!

Tired Wednesday…

My sickness is trying to slow me down, but unfortunately I can not. It’s really hard to keep up the excitement in my classes with TPRS when I’m so tired. But, it does help when a student comes up to me and says “Can we do this more? The you-saying-no-no-no thing when you ask us for ways to describe stuff and then say ahhhhhh! thats it!” We can do it! (Just maybe not as well on a lazy wednesday)