Currently experimenting and working through Breaking the Sound Barrier by Gianfranco Conti and Steve Smith. If I (ever) have time, I will write a blog post reviewing how I have started implementing some aspects of his teaching methodology. Hopefully one day I will be able to Conti's workshops one day if he ever comes to the west coast!
The biggest piece of advice from Conti is paring down the content for the students, front-loading a lot of vocabulary at the beginning and constantly recycling language structures throughout your teaching to enable students to increase their fluency in using a particular structure.
I'm looking at my Year 5 program and sequenced it very differently than before.
Rumah Saya, Kota Saya, Rumah Makan Saya dan Toko Saya.
All units featured the following grammatical items:
possessive Saya (my)
di (at/in)
ada (has)
dan (and)
tetapi (but)
paling (the most)
Measures of success
All students know "dan"
Most students have a good handle of how to say "my ..." now.
They still struggle with "ada", but are getting the hang of it.
I would say 90% of my students feel they are learning and improving. 90% of them are willing to participate in speaking practice and have much better recall, despite the numerous interruptions that is Covid. The weaker students feel more confident to contribute even if they still struggle with any recall tasks. The Sentence Builder has been absolutely wonderful in building confidence in all of them.
Evidence
Comparing Term 1 writing to the end of Term 3 writing has been astounding for me.
They are writing coherent and interesting paragraphs of text from memory!