Dear Parents of Elementary French and Spanish Students:
Welcome! Bienvenues! ¡Bienvenidos! We hope that you enjoyed the time with your children during the summer; we thought of them often and are eager to hear of their experiences. We both remained in the United States this vacation, but we still found many enjoyable opportunities to practice our French and Spanish. As we begin a new year with your children, we are excited about the explorations ahead and the return of Mr. Fain.
We have observed great student success with the application of TPR (Total Physical Response) and TPRS (Teaching Proficiency with Reading and Storytelling) methodologies in our classrooms and have continued to hone our skills in these areas. It is exciting to watch students who are actively engaged, using only French and Spanish to communicate. We encourage you to visit our classrooms during the school year to experience this for yourselves.
In TPRS, “students receive a tremendous amount of input in the target language from the teacher: first through TPR (as they silently respond with actions) and then through storytelling or TPRS (when they begin to respond to questions and eventually give more lengthy output in the form of student retells, etc.). In order to maximize output, we must maximize the input first and not encourage students to speak before they are ready to do so.”*
We are honored to share in the privilege and responsibility of educating your children. We are delighted to be able to include French and Spanish among the tools with which they can explore and understand their world. The learning of a foreign language in the elementary grades is an essential element in a Paideia school and the knowledge of at least a second world language is increasingly important in our global economy. Chattanooga has recently welcomed the French power and transportation company, Alstom, the German car manufacturer, Volkswagen, and a growing number of Spanish-speaking businesses. The future begins with your child.
Sincerely,
Deborah Tucker & Jennifer Raulston
French Spanish
*Jason Fritze (www.comprehensibleinput.com)
About Deborah Wiltsee Tucker
Education: B.A. in Comparative Literature, The University of the South; M.A. in French, UNC-Greensboro; Universite de Haute Bretagne; Universite de Nantes; Universite de Franche-Comte; Georgia State University K-12 teacher certification
Why are you at CSAS? CSAS is the most exciting, professional, and philosophically sound public school in the Southeast.
Family: Jim, my Renaissance man of a husband; Andrew, my son the physicist at CERN; Molly, my soon-to-be married stepdaughter in London; Allison, my fellow teacher stepdaughter in Georgia with her family; Jamell, our wonderful adopted son and computer whiz; Ben, the feisty horse; Padre, the Great Pyrenees; Moga, the "lesser" Pyrenees; Lazlo, le chien boulvardier; Shrodinger, the huge fluff; and an open-door policy for the world.
Hobbies: Biking, riding, gardening, cuisine, watercolors, conversation, travel, reading.
Favorite sport: for me, biking; to watch, baseball and the Cubs.
Favorite book: The Four Quartets by T.S. Eliot is my favorite work of literature, for the words and images speak to me in new ways with each reading.
Favorite quote: "It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eyes." Le Petit Prince by Antoine de St-Exupery
Favorite subjects when you were a student: History, literature, art, and French, although I always thought that I'd be a vet or a naturalist.
