Workshops

TPR Storytelling® Workshops
Download a complete 3-day workshop description.

TPRS stands for Teaching Proficiency through Reading and Storytelling. It is a useful method for helping people learn languages. Originally started by Blaine Ray of California, it is ever-evolving and highly successful at getting students to understand, speak, read, and write (in other words, become proficient) in a language.

The teacher's primary concern is to provide abundant comprehensible input that maintains student interest. This comprehensible input is most frequently in the form of reading material or conversations (sometime fanciful, sometimes factual, usually a combination of the two.) In order to maintain student interest, the comprehensible input is adapted to the personal interest of students. Grammatical accuracy is developed via the meaningful, natural language of the stories and conversations.

By using TPRS, teachers can teach a wide range of students in the same class.

TPR Storytelling® workshops can be 1 - 3 days. (More content in longer workshops.)

  • The theory and research behind TPR Storytelling®
  • Demonstration of a TPR Storytelling® lesson
  • How to teach for acquisition
  • How to teach grammar using comprehensible input questions
  • How to motivate students to want to learn a language
  • The importance of continual assessment
  • The importance of student rapport
  • Grading and testing
  • How to teach upper-level classes using TPR Storytelling®
  • How to make students care about accuracy
  • The importance of reading in a second language
  • Practice planning and teaching a TPR Storytelling® lesson

TPR Storytelling® in levels 2 - AP (half day)

  • How to teach upper-level classes using TPR Storytelling®
  • How to get complicated grammar to sound right to students
  • The importance of reading
  • Essays, homework, AP preparation strategies

Advanced TPR Storytelling® workshop (1- 2 days)
This workshop is for teachers of all levels (K-university) who are experienced using TPR Storytelling® in the classroom. The workshop is designed to improve teaching strategies and to make TPRS instruction even more effective.

  • How to personalize
  • How to engage students
  • Levels of correction
  • How to implement continual,leveled assessment
  • The importance of student rapport
  • How to implement a variety of state changes for maximum learning
  • Homework, grading, and testing
  • Practice planning and teaching TPR Storytelling lesson

Promoting Fluency in the FL Class
America remains a monolingual nation because typical language classes emphasize behaviors that impede rather than promote fluent language use. This workshop gives concrete examples of acquisition principles and how applying these principles produces students who use the language with ease and accuracy.

Promoting Fluency workshop includes:

  • What is fluency?
  • Why does fluency interest us?
  • Is fluency something that can be taught?
  • What classroom practices improve student fluency?
  • What classroom practices are deterrents to developing fluency?
  • How does fluency relate to state and national standards?
  • What kinds of assessments are available for assessing fluency?

The Power of Reading in the FL Class
The most effective language-learning practice is reading. Students who are provided with a well-rounded reading program demonstrate higher scores on tests of reading comprehension, writing style, vocabulary, spelling, and usage.

The Power of Reading workshop includes:

  • How a reader develops
  • Research that proves the superiority of reading
  • What materials are essential to develop a student body of readers
  • Classroom activities that promote reading

Make Grammar Meaningful
All teachers want students to use the language accurately. However, by following the grammar syllabus of a typical textbook, teachers become frustrated at having to continually review, re-teach, and remind even the advanced students about things that were “covered” in the first two years of language study. This workshop explains why this happens and how to restructure your grammar syllabus to be more “brain-friendly.”

Make Grammar Meaningful workshop includes:

  • What research says about grammar teaching
  • Error-correction: when, why and how to do it
  • The natural order of acquisition and its implications for language teachers
  • Five typical grammar practices and why they are counter-productive
  • Five effective grammar practices and how to implement them

Classroom Management
Teachers in every school in every state face issues of class management. The symptoms of ineffective management manifest in disrespect, inattention, boredom, anger, hostility, negative atmosphere, distrust, resistance, uncooperative students, failure to do homework, and sometimes out-and-out aggression.

The Classroom Management workshop includes:

  • Using partners as the foundation for class management
  • Recognizing and celebrating the diversity of students
  • The importance of a positive atmosphere
  • How to build rapport with students
  • What boredom really means
  • How teachers inadvertently send the opposite message
  • Balancing teachers’ responsibilities and students’ responsibilities
  • Making respect a two-way street
  • How improved student performance impacts student behavior
  • Teaching to the eyes

TPRS Coaching Workshop
This workshop offers step-by-step instruction in how to do four TPR Storytelling® skills:

  • Effective questioning (circling) for maximum acquisition
  • Personalization for enhanced student involvement
  • Frequent short (pop-up) grammar reminders to encourage accuracy
  • How to allow stories to wander and expand (birdwalk) without losing focus

Participants work with each other in groups, practicing the skills by adding one technique at a time. Following the workshop, teachers can take the coaching formula and use it in their classes at their individual comfort level, stepping up to the next technique as they feel ready.

Increase Student Participation and Use of Target Language
This workshop is hands-on, involving the teachers in actually practicing the skills that produce a language-rich environment. It is good follow-up workshop after a basic TPR Storytelling workshop.

  • Learn cutting-edge teaching strategies that enhance language acquisition for all students.
  • Practice outstanding strategies that you can use immediately!
  • How to improve grammatical accuracy by teaching grammar in context.
  • How to more effectively and easily immerse students in a language-rich class.
  • How to maximize classroom use of the target language.