Category: TPRS/CI

Tweaking a pre TPRS cooking unit – again…..

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For the second year in a row, I finished with a cooking recipe instead of a story for the year 6/7 classes. This cooking unit is a tradition with my year 6/7 students and it is the only pre TCI/TPRS unit I haven’t binned! This is for several reasons: Firstly it is a food based theme which students constantly love and therefore hopefully is becomes a memorable final unit for my year 7’s before they head off to high school and secondly it ties in nicely with our annual end of year school pasar (market).

As this is a unit I have done with my upper primary students for as long as I can remember, it has been tweaked significantly over the last 2 years as I continue to make it more TCI friendly. Last year was my first attempt which you can read about here. This year’s tweaking though was much more successful (in my opinion) which I can only put down to my ongoing reading and listening to all things TPRS/TCI.

The biggest improvement came quite simply; tweaking the recipes that the unit is based upon.

I always begin this unit by asking each class to brainstorm for recipes they would like to cook. Then the class votes on them all, knowing that the recipe will  be cooked twice; once for students to eat and enjoy themselves and then again to sell at the pasar.  Students suggested dishes are usually based on food they have enjoyed at previous pasars’ or dishes they enjoyed eating that had been made by visiting Indonesians. This year the 3 6/7 classes chose 3 totally different recipes; mie goreng telur Ala Ibu Mia (yummy savoury noodle pancakes), dadar gulung and klepon.

Once each class has decided on what they want to cook and sell at the pasar, I find a recipe for it because the unit of work for each class is then based on that recipe.

This year when I dug out the recipes, I was horrified with the amount of unfamiliar vocabulary each recipe uses! This became my first job – to pare down the recipe to its most basic form and to incorporate as much acquired language where ever possible. Unfortunately with recipes, what cannot be altered, is the list of ingredients and one recipe had 10 ingredients, most of which were unfamiliar!

Here are the stages that the method part of the dadar gulung recipe has changed over the past 3 years:

Pre TPRS  Dadar Gulung Recipe:

2014

  • Aduk kelapa, gula jawa, air dan garam. Goreng sampai air hilang.
  • Taruh tepung, telur, pewarna, santan, garam, santan dan air. Aduk sampai halus.
  • Panaskan wajan. Mengisi sedikit minyak.
  • Tuang 2Tb adonan dadar. Goreng sampai dadar kering. Angkat.
  • Ulangi sampai adonan dadar habis.
  • Ambil satu dadar. Mengisi satu sendok makan intinya. Terus lipat dan gulung.
  • Ulangi sampai dadar dan intinya habis.
  • Selamat makan.

 

Post TPRS Dadar Gulung Recipe

2015

  1. Campurkan air, garam, gula dan kelapa. Goreng dan aduk. Angkat.
  2. Campurkan tepung, gula, garam, telur, pandan dan susu di mangkok besar. Aduk.
  3. Panaskan minyak.
  4. Kasih satu sendok besar campuran dadar dan goreng dua menit.
  5. Balik dadar dan goreng satu menit lagi.
  6. Angkat.
  7. Ulangi.
  8. Taruh campuran kelapa/gula di dadar. Lipat dan gulung.
  9. Selamat makan!

 

2016

  1. Aduk kelapa parut, gula merah, air dan garam di wajan. Goreng, sampai tidak ada air. Angkat dan taruh di piring.
  2. Aduk tepung, telur, pewarna pandan, susu dan garam di piring.
  3. Panaskan wajan. Kasih sedikit minyak.
  4. Kasih 2Tb dadar. Goreng. Angkat dan taruh di piring.
  5. Lagi
  6. Ambil satu dadar. Kasih satu sendok inti. Lipat dan gulung. Taruh di piring.
  7. Lagi sampai tidak ada dadar atau inti.
  8. Makan

 

With the 2016 recipe adaptation, my focus structures became taruh (place/put), aduk (stir/mix), piring (plate) & wajan (frypan). Words like ‘inti’ are not high frequency, so I simply had the translation for that and other such words posted up on the baord to assist comprehension and reduce confusion.

My second task was to introduce the list of ingredients. With dadar gulung, there are 10 ingredients! In order to get as many repetitions on each ingredient, I created power points, showed students the ingredients, let them taste, smell & handle the ingredients where appropriate (tasting coriander was not very successful but it sure helped them to remember it), Plickers & played the drawing/matching game I outlined in my 2015 post.

I love using PowerPoint when introducing new target structures. I go crazy with the transition features whereby you can have a picture/word on the screen and then with a touch something is added or changed to the page in a quirky way.  Most pages have 3 items which with a touch are layered onto each page. This included the English and Indonesian word for each ingredient and a picture to clarify meaning. The order that each came up on the page varied but generally the English word appeared last. The PowerPoint is then not only useful for introducing a list of new words but also for reviewing the list. To keep up the interest, pictures can be changed, slides rearranged and transition styles altered. Including pictures of past students is popular although can be distracting! Here is a link to the PowerPoint I used for dadar gulung.

While the main target structures for all 3 class recipes was ‘aduk’ and ‘taruh’,  ‘piring’ and ‘wajan’ were purely support/minor target structures, I was amazed to discover at the end of the unit how the acquisition of the former was sketchy and needed a few gesture prompts yet wajan and piring needed no such prompts. In fact students were using them in their English discussions while cooking!

For the first time ever, on the day of cooking, I only handed out the Indonesian version of the recipes to groups. The only person who received an English version was the group support person if they had one. Groups that invite a support person (older family member/friend) are permitted to cook elsewhere in the school which I encourage as it reduces the power load in my classroom and hence the overload switch cutting off power! I was so impressed with the groups that remained in my room and their successful comprehension of the Indonesian recipe.

Unlike last year, I was extremely pleased with how the cooking unit progressed this year, especially considering it is such a busy time of year. Reducing the unfamiliar vocabulary down to just aduk & taruh made such a difference. While aduk isn’t high frequency at all in the classroom context, ‘taruh’ certainly is and consequently I have already started incorporating into my lessons with the younger students.

I’ve also thought about the idea of having a year 6/7 cooking text that younger students work towards in Indonesian class during their 7 years of primary school, so that many of the words like ‘taruh’, ‘lipat’, ‘gulung’ can be built upon in a more challenging text.

Dadar Gulung

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Mie Goreng Telur Ala Ibu Mia

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Klepon

 

Awesome Preposition Indonesian Brain Break – Mi, Mi, Mi

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One of the fantastic things we learned last week from our AIYEP visitors was a hand clapping rhyme that my middle and upper primary students absolutely loved.

Farah typed out the tweaked lyrics and I put them up on the smart board.

Mi, Mi, Mi

mi atas, mi bawah

mi depan, mi belakang

mi satu, dua, tiga

mi empat, lima, enam

mi ciyo, ciyo, ciyo

mi gulung, gulung, gulung

gulung-gulung kasur

 

I firstly asked the students to watch  Kak Farah, Kak Ricky, Kak Oscar & Kak Rini. They paired up and demonstrated the hand clapping rhyme. After a few repetitions, I then asked for volunteers to come forward and have a go with the ‘kakaks’. The aim was to get as many repetitions of the rhyme as possible before the students did it themselves and this would increase both their confidence and chances of success!! Again, the volunteer students had 2 goes with their mentor kakak’s.  The class then looked at the lyrics briefly. This was to purely show them what had been chanted and also to quickly translate to explain most of the hand movements.

Students were then asked to choose a partner (student or kakak partner) and be ready to start. We all together chanted satu, dua, tiga, (1,2,3) then began the hand clapping rhyme following along with the kakak’s. There was much hilarity while students had a go for the first time with a partner. Again, for the final time, students were asked to repeat the rhyme with this partner. Then to ramp it up, I asked everyone to change partners, ala Pak Iriantos’ workshop at ASILE. We continued chanting the rhyme and changing partners over and over again, after each run through. It was a great way for students to get repetitions on the rhyme with new partners in a fun way.

Here is a snippet showing you just how much fun it was:

Inaugural Australian TCI/TPRS Conference: QLD & SA

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Have you heard our exciting news yet?? For the first time ever, a TCI/TPRS conference will be held in Australia! How exciting is that!  Terry Waltz has accepted our invitation to work with us in both Brisbane & here on the Fleurieu Peninsular. This is a dream come true for all Australian TPRS language teachers who for many reasons have yet to fly to America or Europe to attend one of the conferences held there. We are so thrilled that the internationally recognised Terry Waltz will be leading us at the Australian inagural TPRS conference.

terrywaltzauthor

The two conferences will be very similar however a couple of major differences need to be noted. Firstly, the conference on the Fleurieu Peninsular does not include lunch. We plan to include a 2 hour lunch break to give participants the time to walk to the nearby main street with sufficient time to  network and discuss specific details before heading back to begin the afternoon session. Annie attended the Agen conference in July and found this time so useful. Another major difference is that we are limiting the total number of participants to 50. This is for several reasons but  mainly because we wish to recreate the community atmosphere Annie experienced in Agen.

The Fleurieu based conference will be held at Port Eliot Primary School from January 19 – 21. While the program is still being finalised, registrations are open and there is an early bird option available until 9th December 2016 for the South Australian conference. Follow this link to access the registration form:

https://drive.google.com/open?id=0BxtA-NkdsB6hSVhFQ2ZlSDlUMGs

It will be a 3 day conference with the first 2 days relevant for all language teachers regardless of sector or language taught. On the 3rd day participants will be divided into 2 groups:

Group 1 = (Non Roman alphabetic Languages eg Chinese, Japanese, Arabic, Russian) will work with Terry Waltz who will cover specific TPRS topics relevant for scripted languages such as cold character Reading, TOP tonal spelling, directional gestures.

Group 2: (Roman Alphabet Languages. eg Indonesian, Spanish, French) will be invited to attend  & participate in skills labs that focus on specific TPRS skill development. Time will also be available for participants to work together to create the resources necessary for implementing TPRS in their classes from day 1 of the school year.

If you are keen to attend, download the registration form asap. The early bird registration for the Brisbane venue finishes 19 November and for the Port Elliot venue, it finishes 9th December. Once you have completed the registration form and emailed it off with payment, we strongly encourage you to investigate accommodation options. The more popular ones book out early, so be quick.

If you have any questions, either write them below or contact us via the TCI TPRS Teachers Australia group on Facebook.

We really hope to see you at either one of the conference venues. I guarantee you won’t be disappointed! 

Teaching Spanish w Comprehensible Input- Haste Not Waste

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An awesome blog written by Señora Hitz. The blog includes many awesome suggestions and those I believe are appropriate for Aussie teachers can be found on my TCI activities pages found on the home page in the top right hand corner. 

Posts like this, for me, help me to stop and reflect upon an important aspect of TCI/TPRS teaching. They help me to remember and appreciate what second language acquisition is truly like for my students. I hope it helps you too not only with understanding SLOW but also the many facets of SLOW. 

Read and contemplate the truths of ‘Haste a Not Waste’. 

Behaviour Management for Junior Primary

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Earlier this year at one of our PLN get togethers, we talked about a behaviour management technique found on Pinterest.  I refer to it in my classroom as the nakal/pandai (naughty/clever) system. Read here for a quick refresher! It has been such a success in my classroom with  younger students that I want to post about the way in which it works for me.

I have created 2 A4 posters from images from Google and sticky taped to the back is an old fridge magnet to make it easier to put up and down on the whiteboard. The nakal poster looks like this:picture credit:

The pandai poster  looks like this:picture credit

I put them up side by side on the white board like this, with a blob of blutack in the middle:

Using these posters significantly reduces the amount of English I need to use for behaviour management with my active bearcubs (love this term from Catharina to describe young’uns!)

Here is how I use the nakal/pandai system in my lessons with my R-2’s.

The students walk in the door and sit down immediately in front of the white board. Students who do this quickly and quietly, receive immediate positive feedback with a smile and a verbal compliment, “pandai’. I then point at the pandai sign, look back at the student, smile again and then add a tally point. I then turn back to the class and give a thumbs up sign to the student before stating to the class, “Jack pandai! Bu Cathy kasih kelas Warner satu poin! Bagus Jack” (Jack is Clever! Bu Cathy has given your class a point. Well done Jack) If anyone does the wrong thing ( rolls on the floor, starts chatting in English to a friend etc), I look at them with a sad face and then do the nakal finger shaking gesture and turn around and tally a nakal point. The beauty of this, is that everyone knows exactly what the problem is and no English is necessary. I used to rely on English to get explain this, but it is no longer necessary!

After calling the roll on class dojo in Indonesian  (Bu Cathy mengabsen), I turn to the class and say, “Bu Cathy mau satu stik!” I hold up their class pot of paddle pop sticks (huge shout out to Natalie Bond for writing the names of all our students on the sticks for me!) and ‘randomly’ choose a stick, looking at the name to check that firstly the student is here today and secondly that they haven’t yet had a turn – each stick is marked afterwards with a dot. I then put the stick in the blutack between the nakal/pandai signs, name side downwards so no one knows whose stick it is. Students have quickly learned the colour of their own stick which is something I will avoid next year by allotting a different colour to different classes.
 Throughout the lesson, I tally whenever students demonstrate successful learning behaviours (pandai) or behaviours that interfere with thir own learning or the learning of others (nakal). The students watch this avidly and cheer when a single tally changes the balance from nakal to pandai!!

With 5 minutes of the lesson left, I invite students to sit in front of the board by saying, “Ayo kelas Lacey, menghitung” (Lets count, Miss Lacey’s class) and together we count in Indonesian. After each, I write the number under the tally marks and then turn back to the class and say, “Show Bu Cathy sembilan.” The students then hold up the corresponding fingers before repeating the process for the second tally marks. Next term, I feel my JP students are now familiar enough with this routine and are consequently ready to learn the word ‘kasihlihat’ (show) especially considering that they know both kasih (give) and lihat (see)! We then get repetitions on each number by saying the 2 numbers one after the other starting off slowly and then getting faster and faster with students trying to keep up with their fingers!! It always ends in hilarity!! We then turn back to the tallies and I ask, “Pandai besar atau nakal besar?” (Clever is big or naughty is big?) and the class generally answer with the correct answer. Some students recognising that the stick on the board is the wrong colour to be theirs will usually try to trick me by attempting to convince me that nakal is larger than pandai!! I then ask the class, “Mau lihat stik?” (Do you want to see the stick?) to which they cry out ‘Ya!”I then become goofy and suggest ridiculous statements like, “Nama saya ular! Nama saya Bu Lacey, Nama saya Spongebob!” (My name is snake. My name is Ms Lacey. My name is Spongebob!) After a couple of these incorrect suggestions, I read out correctly, “Nama saya Lisa.” Lisa jumps up excitedly. I ask her, “Mau lihat treasure box?” to which, of course she replies, “Ya!”

While she is looking in the treasure box (Is there a simple catchy Indonesian  word for this?), the class sing the goodbye song which is generally enough time for ‘Lisa’ to choose something from the treasure box, put the lid back on and then rejoin the class in time to line up ready to leave with the class teacher.

Another added bonus of this system has been student acquisition of numbers! It has been a successful and meaningful way in which  to introduce and consolidate knowledge of numbers 1 – 20 and without a doubt, my receptions this year have the best grasp of numbers than any other previous cohort!

Do you have a behaviour management system that works for you? Please feel free to share below by adding a comment!!

ASILE 2016 – Games & Activities for Language Classes

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One of the workshops we attended on Sunday was led by Pak Irianto Ryan Tedya. It was a very enjoyable workshop with songs and games, 2 of which would be ideal as a brainbreak or for TPR.

The first game he shared was ‘dam dam sut’ which is his own variation of ‘suten’ (gajah, orang, semut). This game reinforces the target structures:

  1. Kita seri (we draw)
  2. Saya menang (I won)
  3. Saya kalah (I lost)

Each with their own hand gesture:

  1. Hands crossing left to right horizontally palms facing downwards
  2. Hands up in the air, fingers splayed
  3. Hands down wards, palms facing opponent.

The game is played in partners and together players say dam, dam together while clapping and then together say sut and on sut, players choose to either do:

gajah (elephant),

orang (person) or

semut (ant).

When first introducing the game, Pak Irianato recommends just focusing on;

  1. Gajah beats orang (elephant steps on person)
  2. Orang beats semut (person steps on ant)
  3. Semut beats elephant (ant gets into elephants ear and irritates the elephant – ant is small yet powerful)

Pak Irianto asked us to play 3 times with a partner and then swap partners choosing someone new. When he judged that we had mastered that, he asked the whole class to synconize our games; meaning that the entire class clapped & said dam, dam, sut at exactly the same time, starting very slowly and encouraging everyone to keep the rhythm.

Once this is mastered, I would introduce the above target structures yet Pak Irianto encouraged us all to use it right from the beginning. One participant suggested the following rhyme sung to Frere Jacques to consolidate vocabulary:

Saya menang

Saya menang

Saya kalah

Saya kalah

Kita seri

Kita seri

Marilah bermain!

Marilah bermain!

All up, it was a fun game and I loved the way that the game increases in complexity which makes it appealing to all ages of students.

The final activity he did with us was awesome and perfect for TPR. This song could be adapted to any verb. I love the idea of asking students for action suggestions!! I was thinking of how much fun ‘menangis’ (cry) or ‘jatuh’ (fall) would be. Pak Irianto first taught us the song and actions then suggested adding the jumping left, right & centre afterwards to add a further challenge.

I didn’t take any notes, just this video!!

Kursi Luar Biasa – Jawaban Benar atau Kreatif? (True or Creative Answers?)

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Usually in Kursi Luar Biasa, (literally – the amazing chair [special student interviews]), I ask students personal questions about themselves (age, likes, pets etc) followed by a quiz. The quiz is a benar/salah style quiz. I began at first by asking students to stand if the statement I said about the ‘amazing student’ was true or sit if it was false, however I soon discovered that this became a sheep following exercise; if one stood/ sat then the majority followed suit without any thought. So the quiz became, stand if it is true for you and sit if it is false for you – as this requires greater focused listening & personal accountability. So if I say, ‘Susan tinggal di Victor Harbor’ (repeating one fact that Susan had told us about herself), the students who also live in Victor, stand. If I say, ‘Susan tidak tinggal di Mount Compass’, then all the students who don’t live in Mount Compass would stand, while those who do, sit!

As Kursi Luar Biasa (KLB) is largely a short one on one conversation with just the occasional questions addressing or about other students (to ensure comprehensibility and/or to encourage listening), engagement levels from the older students have decreased noticeably this semester. I have racked my brain for ways to ramp it up. I scoured Bryce Hedstrom’s Persona Especial posts for suggestions appropriate for this age level as well as being suitable for Bahasa Indonesia (the Indonesian language) and tried those that had potential (see past posts) but there were still students using this session as a zone out time. As they are generally quiet, I’ve accepted it because it has allowed me to focus on the ‘awesome’ person and to keep the spotlight right on the student who chose to sit in the chair! I also justify it to myself with the thought that while they are not listening with the intent to understand, they are still being exposed to Indonesian.

Yesterday, a year 7 boy, J, changed all that! He had us all following closely his hilarious answers and the entire class was 100% engaged and following the discussion closely! After The interview  had finished (stopped by the recess bell), I asked the class for a rating out of 5 (using their fingers) and 98%  rated it 5/5 while 2-3 rated it 4/5. I got exactly the same score for overall comprehension of the entire conversation!  J began by telling us where he lived and about the people in his family (great opportunity to revise one of the new target structures from the story that lesson) and then when I asked him about the sport he plays, we learned that he plays centre forward for Goolwa Hockey Club and is the leading goal scorer (dua juta gol!). A student who actually does play for Goolwa, was shaking her head and making it clear with body language that J does NOT play hockey for Goolwa!!  He started wildly embellishing (when asked what team he plays in, he stated the under 18’s – a grade that doesn’t exist in our local association), he had everyone’s attention.  We also learned that he plays in the AFL for Port Power and after pulang sekolah (another target structure from the earlier story – go home from school), he eats and then goes to Adelaide to train! He also claimed that he was a talented surfer, almost as good as Mal (a fellow student who is an extremely talented surfer and has participated at the national level). This last claim had his friends rolling on the floor with laughter!! He also made ridiculous claims about playing in the NBL! It was the most enjoyable KLB interview I’ve had in a long time and one I encouraged the students in that class try again!

Previously, I have discouraged students from stating fictitious information about themselves because I’ve always considered this part of the lesson as an awesome way for me to get to know my students better. However, my brain is generally on overload and I am finding, I’m embarrassed to admit, that unless a student tells me something really unusual or moving, my back to back lessons all merge into a vague hodgepopdge and I forget who said what. Yet I still see a value in beginning this way, especially with the middle primary year levels. It is a safe way in which to support students with repetitions of the vocabulary and language structures needed to answer personal questions or to talk about themselves to others. It provides them with a solid foundation upon which, when they are older, they can start being creative and quirky!!

I am so looking forward to next week when I can encourage the other year 67 classes to be wild and wacky.

Two Introductory TCI/TPRS Workshops -MLTASA & CLTSA

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Over the weekend, Bu Annie, Ibu Sharon & I attended 2 conferences; 1. MLTASA (Modern Languages Teachers Association SA) in the morning and 2. CLTASA (Chinese Language Teachers Assoc) in the afternoon. When we first heard that both associations were holding their annual conference on the same day, we were incredibly disappointed as we were committed to present at MLTASA while Ian & Caitlin (2 TCI Chinese teachers from QLD) were presenting at CLTSA. Luckily our presentations did not clash and we were able to get from EDC to Napier House in good time. However the locked door into Napier House cut short our celebratory hand pumps and thankfully Ian had his phone on! 

The MLTASA conference began with a plenary by Sean Keenihan, who spoke about ‘the role and value of Languages education in schools – a business perspective’. Sean wears many hats and most relate to his Chinese proficiency, dating back to his high school days. When asked how to encourage students to learn a language he reflected with this: after graduation as one of hundreds of lawyers, he was the first from his year to be employed and this was entirely due to his bilingualism. His graphs illustrated recent growth figures in the SA tourism sector and he also talked about the growing state of global business. These two sectors are a just 2 of many that have a huge and growing demand for bilingual employees and thus being bilingual is giving many job seekers  an X factor, making them highly desirable in a competitive job market. Apparently only 30 of the 700 2015 SA lawyer  graduates were employed! I wonder what their X factor was? 

Our workshop, ‘Teaching Languages with TCI/TPRS’ was to be held in the larger room at EDC due to the large number of participants who had signed up for it. What an awesome way to begin!! We began by asking participants to bring their chairs to the front of the room and to sit in a semi circle facing the screen. As this was our first ever presentation and indeed our first ever attendance at MLTASA, we had no idea what to expect. One thing we were looking forward to was an audience of largely non Indonesian speaking teachers, who would experience our demo lesson from a student perspective and therefore hopefully feel the power of TCI even more dramatically than our Indonesian speaking colleagues. Our presentation began with introducing ourselves, outlining our TCI journey, and giving a brief explanaton of the acronyms TCI, TPRS & TPR. Due to the short amount  of time we had available and that we were a little late starting (domino effect of the 2nd plenary speaker running over time), our introduction was minimal. We felt that a demo would be more powerful than heaps of information. 

Our demo focused on the Pleased To Meet You (written by Jim Tripp) story. We began with establishing meaning of the target structures (siapa nama, nama saya, astaga, berkata – what’s your name, my name is, OMG, said), before giving a circling demo on siapa nama & nama saya. Sharon then established the ‘Stop – I don’t understand!’ gesture before telling the story. Afterwards she did a comprehension check and everyone gave her a thumbs up!! We had a little time for questions and we were very relieved that attending MLTASA was a high school French TPRS teacher!! It was awesome to connect with Zelda who has been working alone for 2 years – we take our hat off to you! Zelda was able to respond to questions that came from secondary language teachers – a cohort we have had the greatest difficulty connecting with as we have no secondary experience. Our promise to them that TPRS was designed initially for secondary students by a secondary language teacher rarely helps. Zelda’s contribution and support was invaluable.  

It wasn’t till much later, that Sharon realised that in our nervousness, the reduced workshop time and our determination to leave punctually, we forgot to mention anything about the unit of work we had created around this story to help participants trial a unit in their classrooms!! Oops. So if you were one of those participants and you would like a copy, contact me via my learn link address on the handout and I’ll happily forward it to you. 

We arrived at Napier House just before the post lunch conference sessions were about to begin, to our relief. Ian & Caitlin opened the locked doors which gave us time to quickly introduce ourselves to each other and chat briefly while heading upstairs to the auditorium. The entire afternoon schedule had been assigned to Ian & Caitlin! Imagine your only time constraint being getting to the airport in time for your flight home! We were slightly in awe and also a teeny (OK- a lot) envious!! Maybe next year, we need to ask for a double workshop session? 

Ian & Caitlin spent the first hour talking to a powerpoint which introduced TCI/TPRS to their audience of Chinese teachers. The powerpoint thoroughly explained TPRS, outlined how it differs from traditional/currrent language teaching methods, included several short videos of Ian teaching highly engaged year 7’s, year 10 free writes (290 words) , cold character reading , students talking positively about learning Chinese via TCI methodology, students reading unfamiliar texts fluently and a short yet highly engaging demo by Caitlin establishing meaning for ‘wants to eat’. As a student, I could immediately see the value of having the target structures clearly written on one side of the smartboard page and on the other side were other necessary vocabulary just as Diane Neubauer does.I hadn’t actually understood the beauty of this until that point! I also think I need to investigate buying a clicker gadget next year – it would be so convienent to turn the powerpoint pages from wherever I am in my class room!  

Ian & Caitlin stopped talking after an hour to give everyone a break and they were immediately swamped with people asking questions! The amount of interest was brilliant.  During their presentation, I could hear teachers around me commenting to each other quietly but unfortunately it was all in Chinese. 

During this break, it suddenly became clear, that the next session would have to be shortened significantly to prevent Ian & Caitlin missing their flight home to QLD. Particiapants were quickly called back into the auditiorium to answer any last minute questions. In no time at all, they were being presented with bottles of SA wine and the mad dash to the airport began. 

Thankfully we had offered to take them to the airport as this provided us all with a precious window for solid 2017 planning. We all acknowledge the need to arrange high quality training in Australia asap and are keen to collaborate on this by inviting a guest out to Australia next January to provide us all with much needed expert training before the 2017 school year begins! It would be awesome if the person  who comes out, is happy to travel as then we could offer training in a few states which will be much more affordable to participants! If this all happens, would you be interested in attending and how much would you be prepared to pay to participate? Considering our only option at the moment is a flight to either America or Europe ($$), it would be considerably cheaper and so much easier if this eventuates! Please comment below with any thoughts. We need your feedback! The more interest, the better!