I decided to ‘report more’ about our Chickasaw service learning trip last weekend. As Lori mentioned, we had the privilege of observing lots of things over the weekend, including a language club for kids as well as a high school Chickasaw class. As Lori also mentioned, the class used Total Physical Response (TPR) and Teaching Proficiency through Reading and Storytelling (TPRS). Basically, the high school class was full of hyper teenagers just as we might expect, but these strategies of teaching take a lot of energy from the teacher and the students, and it went well overall.
The class began with the teacher reviewing and teaching some phrases to the students in general. Then, along with the help of American Sign Language (ASL), the teacher taught some ‘question words’ in Chickasaw. I’m not sure what I think about bringing ASL into the mix. On one hand, it helps the learner put a gesture with the target word (i.e. the teacher would say a word in Chickasaw and complete the sign to help give the students a cue about the word without having to speak in English). On the other hand, not all the signs are simple, so it’s like the students are having to learn two things (the Chickasaw word and the sign) for every one English word/translation. Any ideas/suggestions about this? Anyway, the last part of class was made up of the students helping ‘tell’ a story. The teacher asked questions (using the words they learned), and the students answered and the story was born and went on and on. At the very end of class, the teacher asked five comprehension questions (in quiz form) to see if the students understood the story.
Overall, I thought the class went well (though I have to say my classroom management style would be quite different) J. Not all the students were ‘there’ and participatory, but most were. And they really were comprehending well! The main thing I noticed (and I assume it’s like this with any TPR class) is that the students didn’t produce much. I’m not sure if they weren’t able to produce or if they just weren’t producing during the class, but almost everything out of their mouths was English. Interesting. How can we get students to produce, even in a TPR classroom? Is it even possible?
This is interesting that the teacher was using ASL rather than English! While I see many parents doing this with very young children, I've not really seen it in an adult classroom. With babies, the advantage is that they can use gestures even though they can't actually articulate the words yet. But is there some advantage for the adult learners? For some signs that are more iconic than others, I can see this making sense, because the sign represents a concept that the student already understands and can recognize, but do the more complex signs offer another advantage?
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