Prior to this year, I’d been familiar with TPRS Storytelling in language acquisition classes, but I always assumed it was for younger students. Everyone I knew who employs this method teaches either middle or elementary school world language courses, so I always kind of dismissed it as someone who has taught pre-AP language and literature courses.

However, I follow a rather large French Teachers Facebook group and there has been a ton of buzz lately regarding TPRS Storytelling (Sidenote: this Facebook group is seriously the best PD I know about! As a non-native speaker, I can ask a nit-picky French grammar question to literally thousands of teachers and get an answer within minutes, peruse other member’s materials, and upload my own materials to our shared Google Drive. I totally encourage you all to join a group like this if it exists in your field!).

Several teachers have begun sharing their experiences with storytelling and simultaneous drawing to help learners visualize and understand. I’ve been reading their articles with interest, but still maintained my initial skeptical and dismissive attitude thinking my ~30 freshmen (a predominately male class, mind you) wouldn’t take to this method since it involves sitting quietly and listening at times and active participation in French at other points in the class.

Now that I’ve gotten my bearings on my life as a new teacher here, I figured I was ready to take the plunge after reading success story after success story on the Facebook group page…

I dipped my toes in the water for my first story, a particularly average story about two students, their likes and dislikes, life at school, and after-school activities. My stories involved new language students hadn’t yet learned. I wasn’t sure how they’d react, but they were responsive, attentive, and inquisitive the entire time. They helped me name the students, gave me their schedules, and determined that they were twins at Carondelet and De La Salle. Flash forward a few weeks, and imagine my surprise upon learning from their unit evaluations that nearly every student enjoyed the activity and wanted more!

So this morning, I got even bolder with my story. It has a crazy twist at the end and the class erupted in laughter (after hearing me speak only French for 20 minutes!). I followed the activity up with oral True/False questions in French and had them draw scenes from the story. The kids totally knocked it out of the park; I was so impressed with how much they were able to understand and respond to, and I think they were too.

I’m already scheming follow-up activities, dreaming up ideas for how to weave stories into my French 2 curriculum, and I am hoping to build my repertoire of stories and seek out further PD that will help me grow in this methodology!

Maybe my drawings will also improve along the way…. 😅