It is my goal to write some quick “AHA” Moments and Teaching Tips in this post about my experience acquiring/learning Portuguese this summer with Mike Peto. In my previous posts you can see 10 other “AHA” moments I have had, and many other summer reflection pieces.  

 “AHA” Moment ~ Day 11: Weekend Chat for Discussing Relationships

I realized that Weekend Chat lends itself perfectly to talking about friends and family. Since most students are doing something with others then these are great times to highlight family members and relationships. Again as I have also noted and really enjoyed, writing sentences on the screen / board during the Calendar Talk or during the Write and Discuss session helped provide me the needed visual input with correct syntax.  

 “AHA” Moment ~ Day 12:  Story Scripts and Retells

I love story-asking, story-telling, or the many iterations of TPRS/ TPRStorytelling. I know most folks reading this have experienced this process or watched others provide comprehended input in this way. I just want to reiterate that very often so many of us are using “story-scripts” or pre-written stories that we may or may not change details based on information from our students. So this being said, I just wanted to highlight a few places where you can get story-scripts because I still rely on them as a teacher and in our Portuguese class it was no different.

-Here are 6 free story-scripts on my resource page from 2021

–Ana Matava’s 97 TPRS Story Scripts. These classic scripts are cherished by many, and in fact, they are the scripts that Mike Peto has been using with us in Portuguese class. 

-For Vocesdigital.com digital series users or those who are thinking about using this resource, each story section of their Acquisition-Driven Series has 20+ story-scripts per title (I am proud to have written some of the scripts in the Nuestra Historia IV and in Puentes). 

 “AHA” Moment ~ Day 13: The Student Interview or Special Person Interview 

This “AHA” moment is a bit more developed.  

Since I am fortunate to often work in the CI / ADI and World Language community and I love learning from others, I attend a lot of professional development which always impacts my teaching. So often I go to a workshop and after it I want to incorporate so many new ideas into my teaching, but the reality is that there is only so much time. In fact for anyone reading any blogs, books, or attending conferences, sessions, and workshops – PLEASE know that you cannot incorporate everything new nor should you try. Always start with a bit and then keep adding to it. So Special Person Interview, for me, is one of those concepts I’ve learned about and even developed lessons around and still have never used it. Of course being in this Brazilian Portuguese class, I was able to experience it as a learner.

During this interview time Mike only focused on one student, and I think this is one of the things that has always kept me from using this way to deliver CI in class. Using this approach leaves one student’s experience as the content of the class, which is very special for that one student. In time we do know that many if not all students will be interviewed, and so each of their own experiences will become the content of the class. 

My “AHA” moment here is this activity could include interesting and compelling questions. When I thought about doing this in my own classes, I stuck to simple questions in Spanish instead of interesting questions in Spanish. Mike prepared five questions for this interview that were compelling and not focused on basic questions like the ones I had prepared: How old are you? Where do you live? etc. Instead he asked questions like How many hours do you like to sleep at night? & What do you like to do on a rainy day? He was able to explore so much more with that student and make connections. It is important to remember the goal of this activity was NOT the interviewee’s language production. She was able to say anything she needed to say in English and he then told it to her and us in Portuguese. 

I continue to see this theme of realization and “AHA” for me, which is not being bound or trapped by tense and time frame at certain proficiency levels. The Student Interview was yet another context in which I saw and experienced good modeling in practice of the limits that I have set for myself as a teacher.  

 “AHA” Moment ~ Day 14:  Greetings and Expressions of Courtesy and Goodbyes

Greetings and expressions of courtesy and goodbyes have been included throughout our Portuguese learning experience. Never has there been a day when the learning focus was “I can greet others in the target language,” but the language to do so was included in our classes. This is good and impactful teaching for long-term retention and the brain. Since this is a one month course, more of these types of words and expressions were included, but in my own practice, I just include a new one or two each week, and continue to recycle them in my daily class input.  

 “AHA” Moment ~ Day 15: My First Free Write 

On this day, Mike surprised us with a 5 minute free write. He actually was mirroring what he does with students approximately every 3 weeks (perhaps not with the novice low students until week 5 or 6). Still providing us a slide with the Sweet 16 to 25 Verbs, we were told to write about anything for 5 minutes. We did not have a prompt, nor at this low Proficiency level did we have to try to make our sentences cohesive. Well, I must say for my first time writing in Portuguese I wrote 72 words in 5 minutes. I was pretty proud, and I know after doing it for the 5 minutes that I could have gone on for much longer without the 5 minute time requirement. That was pretty impressive for my first 15 days/hours of Portuguese.

I am still not finished with this reflection series. There will be 8 more AHA Moments I have had this summer. Subscribe below for an email notification when I post them. 

Gary