August 30, 2009
TPRS
TPRS is a big subject — much bigger than I can even begin to address in this blog. If you are not familiar with TPRS, you may want to skip this step (for now). However, if you are interested in finding out more, I recommend looking at Blaine Ray’s site and Ben Slavic’s site. Also, joining the Yahoo Group moretprs would be a good idea.
In the meantime, here are a few thoughts on using TPRS with my music:
Most of my music is story-based. I find that students are far more interested in singing if there is a character with a real point of view. Since there is a story already built in, many of my songs lend themselves to fun TPRS discussions.
I turn off the music, pass out the lyrics, and we dissect the song as though it were regular literature. We translate together as a class and then do circular questioning. Here are the three types of questions, along with sample questions for the song ¿Puedo ir al baño?:
- Questions about facts written in the song
- ¿Quién necesita ir al baño?
- ¿Quién ya fue al baño?
- ¿Adónde quiere ir el chico?
- Questions that allow students to invent new story details or that create a parallel story
- ¿Cómo se llama el chico?
- ¿Necesita ir al baño o quiere ir al baño?
- ¿En qué clase está el chico?
- Personal questions of my students relating to themes in the story
- ¿Quiénes necesitan ir al baño ahora?
- ¿Cuál es el mejor baño en nuestra escuela?
- ¿Hiciste tu tarea?
- ¿Vas a lavar mi pizarra?
TPRS is the real meat and potatoes of the learning process. It serves to help students learn (and memorize) the song, but more importantly, it helps to merge new and previous knowledge. Before using TPRS, I found that students could memorize a song perfectly, but few students would know how to draw on phrases from the song in a real life context. It’s as though the lyrics from the song were impossible to access unless I played the song itself.
This is a major point, whether you use TPRS or not. Music is wonderful for memorizing information. It has a way of sticking in our heads like nothing else can. However, when students successfully learn a song, there is a temptation to believe that the phrases in that song are now mastered. Absolutely not. You need to create a bridge to previous knowledge. Otherwise, that knowledge will only remain accessible within the context of that music.
- Page 1 - Introduction
- Page 2 - Lyrics Sheet
- Page 3 - The Performance
- Page 4 - Concrete Instructions
- Page 5 - TPRS
- Page 6 - Verbally Fill in the Blanks (and a game)
- Page 7 - Karaoke Videos
- Page 8 - Closing
Too much clicking? Combine everything onto one page
Gracias Sr. Wooly,
Your tips are great. We have been enjoying your songs in class and the students request it daily, but now you offer some great advice and I look forward to applying them. Especially the “crawling all over the desks” part. jejeje.
Keep up the incredible work.
Sr. Kent de la Chalupa
I fully agree with you about setting things to music that you want them to remember. My principal last year in one of his visits, took up some maracas and sang with us. He reminded me this fall that he still knew “fui, fuiste, fue.”
I found that some verbs can also be learned with the Mexican Hat Dance main refrain music. Verbs like “Estoy, estás, está…” fit to the rhythm — but only if one includes the vosotros form.
I do admit to the kids that they’ll hate me forever, but music works!
Thanks for the great ideas! My students LOVE “Guapo”. We draw Victor and talk about what he’s really like. We sing it and the boys take turns acting out Victor’s role and the girls are the “Victorettes”. This quarter I think I’ll have them bret out into groups and perform the song with props of course, as a presentational assessment. They will videotape it and then we’ll watch them all in class. Gracias Sr. W!
One of my classes found an explanation for “Sam” not having enough time to get to el baño before class…he was talking with friends at the supermarket while looking for a special pink apple that could “rap” “Feliz Cumpleaños” to give to Mr. Bill, his math teacher. He finally found the special apple at Disney World, where a vacationing classmate sold him the apple for $250. Mr. Bill estaba muy contento…pero Sam no tenía la oportunidad para ir al baño antes de la clase de español. Now that you know the background, you can see that “le traeré una manzana” is quite an offer from Sam! Thanks for the inspiration!
Hi! I just wanted to share something that has worked really well in my class. We did the invitation song and after listening and singing the original, I put them in pairs and then they changed the lyrics to other vocabulary words–like jugar al futbol, ver la tele, etc. Then they presented to the class–with fake phones, props, etc. It has been so fun!!!!