NTPRS 2019

The AP Language Exam is no longer a grammar test! The new exam tests our students for proficiency. Teaching with Comprehensible Input is a key way to prepare our students for this test starting as early as Level 1. This session will give practical strategies to use in the lower levels that will build proficiency and lay a foundation for AP Exam success.

Reader's Theater helps students see pictures in their heads instead of reading and translating and decoding. The steps for successful Reader's Theater and any level with any novel. Selecting a text, pre-teaching for higher comprehension, coaching actors for high impact reader's theater and killer techniques for making reading come to life.

You know the basics of asking a story, but juggling all the pieces can be hard!  This presentation will include how to keep track of multiple stories in multiple classes, the basics of using a TPRS (or Matava style) script, managing responses, procedures to make it go more smoothly, and more. We will also be watching a video and using some observation strategies to see what it looks like with real kids.

Research tells us that learners need to repeatedly interact with comprehensible language, but teaching students who crave novelty means that a teacher must be creative in order to figure out how to provide input in interesting ways.  The purpose of this session is to offer a range of strategies that provide high quality comprehensible input with little preparation and learn how to apply them to existing lessons. An added benefit of these strategies is that they can be implemented in flexible groupings, allowing teachers to meet expectations for interactive classrooms. After modeling a simple text in English, participants will engage in a series of comprehension based drawing and reading activities to model several strategies and brainstorm how to use the same basic tools to create more input based activities. The presenter will model setting student expectations for managing these types of activities as well as how to use movement, flexible groupings, and physical space to provide input.