Ben Slavic’s TPRS Training Blog

I just added a Rule #7 to my list of rules on “posters, etc.” on this site. I didn’t do it until I gave it a lot of thought and applied it a lot in my classroom lately. It says:

#7 Welcome periods of silence.

It is a good rule because there are times when nobody has any ideas, and yet the question was a good one. It allows everyone to relax and think about things. After a period of silence is a great time to do a retell. Then you will see things pick back up again.

This idea is further developed in TPRS in a Year, Skill #22 on p. 54. It is about developing trust in yourself, in the students, and in the process that Blaine has developed. Trust is a really good thing to have in storytelling.

go to the movies
on foot
pays
 
Tim and Alex go to the movies.  They go on foot (slowly, quickly, etc.)   The man at the movies says:  “It costs 5 cents.  Who is paying?”  Tim says, “I’m not paying!”  Alex says, “I’m not paying!”  No one pays!  The man says, “Leave the cinema!”
 
Tim and Alex go to a restaurant.  They go on foot.  In the restaurant the waiter asks, “Who is paying?”  Tim says, “I’m not paying!”  Alex says, “I’m not paying!”  No one pays.  The waiter says, “Leave the restaurant!!”
 
Tim and Alex go to the pool.  At the pool a merman says, “Swimming costs an arm and a leg.  Who is paying?”  Tim says, “I’m not paying!”  Alex says, “I’m not paying!”  The merman calls Alex’s mother. She comes to the pool and pays the merman an arm and a leg.

Blank Version:

_______ and ________ go to the movies.  They go on foot.  At the movies _________ says, “It costs _______.  Who is paying?” _____ says, “I”m not paying!”  _____ says, “I’m not paying!”  __________ says, “Leave the cinema!”
 
They go to a restaurant.  They go on foot.  In the restaurant the waiter says, “Who is paying?”  _______ says, “I’m not paying!”  ______ says, “I’m not paying!”  The waiter says, “Leave the restaurant!”
 
They go to______________.  At ______________  _________ says, ” _____________ costs ___________.  Who is paying?”  ____says, “I’m not paying!”  _______ says “I’m not paying!”  _______ calls _______________.  (ending is up to you.)
 

[Credit: Anne Lambert, who adds - “…you can really embellish this, by discussing what movie they want to see and what they eat at the restaurant, etc.  It’s funny, with one of my German 1 classes we do a lot more detail than with the other.  Depends on the class.”]

This may be a level 2 or above script:
 
together
celebrate
in the corner
 
The hippy policewoman and the Man in a Skirt wanted to celebrate Mardi Gras together.  They wanted to celebrate in a nice restaurant together.  So they went to Taco Bell together. 

They were given a table in the corner.  But there were already people at the table.  It was Troy and Renee.  The hippy policewoman said, “But there are already people here!  What are you celebrating?”  Troy said, “We are celebrating because the sun is shining, and you?”  The hippy policewoman said, “We are celebrating Mardi Gras.  We should celebrate together.”  So they celebrated together.  But they burped so much that the waitress brought them to a different table in another corner. 

There they burped so much, that the waitress threw them out.  She said, “Leave the restaurant!”  But they did not leave.  They stayed and kept celebrating and burping.  The waitress called the Burp Police, who came and said, “Leave the restaurant!”  So they left the restaurant.  They stood outside on the corner and celebrated.  It was so much fun, they all said, “We should celebrate together every year.”

[Credit: Anne Lambert]

I may have figured out the comment glitch. Robert or someone who has been unable to comment can you please try to post just a word or so to see if it works now?

Teachers also have microscopes, of course. The old kind, the ones that came with the book so long ago. There are actually teachers who still use both!

But the idea of looking at a kid through one of those old microscopes, detailing their editing errors and analyzing what they can’t do, is just so over.

Some teachers, even, don’t even know how the microscope works, yet they use it anyway. They look through the wrong end! The resultant distancing of the student from them is the natural result of thinking that developing editing skills is more important than reaching the kid with live and interesting language.

None of this use of the microscope in our nation’s foreign language classrooms is to be overly condemned, however - these teachers were given them to use in their teaching and they used them.

But now, with the information we have lately, it is time for the microscopes to be crushed under the big boot of teaching for communication, which does not shame kids, but rather, lifts them up to higher ground.

Administrators look at teachers to feel needed. Parents look at teachers to protect their kids’ interests. Kids look at teachers because they have to. We are not just under a microscope, we are under three of them! And who said teaching was easy?

Administrators are best dealt with by giving them exactly what they want so that they can be happy. Same with parents. What do they want? Strangely, they want the status quo. I guess it is a human trait to avoid change.

Even those parents who at parents night proudly say that they took four years or whatever in high school or college but they can’t say a word, STRANGELY don’t actually get out and kick up a ruckus about the failure of the old methods on them. Status quo.

HOWEVER, the part that we CAN change, where the status quo is NOT accepted, except at D’Evelyn High School in Denver and a few other schools around the nation where change is not allowed, is with THE KIDS. We can change the kids’ view of us through their microscopes by changing their experience of learning because we have stories.

As long as we are skilled enough at stories, and don’t misrepresent it (which sets off fireworks which “must be put out” by the gallant and wonderful intervention of those ever watchful microscopeurs, the administrators and parents), we can reach the kids by offering them 100% bonafide acquistion in the form of stories.

So, it seems that whenever fights break out in school buildings over the political hot potato that so many traditional teachers love to throw around and kvetch about, TPRS, we, as TPRS teachers, need only do the opposite - ignore the big eyes in the microscopes - we can do nothing about them - and instead make friends with the eyes in the microscope that the kids are looking through.

I don’t know about anyone else, but I did not go into teaching to deal with administrators and parents - I went into teaching to reach kids and share Saint-Exupéry and Rimbaud and Mr. Kool Aid, the hero of last Friday’s story, with them, in French, because I love French.

Once stories get going and the trust is there, the great camaraderie built with stories becomes a thing of beauty and wonder, and, as a fine first year colleague told me tonight, the old critical teachers will retire from the field and new ones will increasingly carry the banner of communicative based methods, and the change will happen.

So don’t get all bummed out because it is a Sunday night. I personally have been through 1,152 such Sunday nights (32 years x 36 weeks per year). Administrators and parents will always look at teachers - it is their job and they do it well, and they will do it forever. So let’s just get comfortable with those folks, shall we? Most of them still embrace the editing of languages as acceptable instruction - they are just plain not ready to accept the change toward communicative based instruction.

But, when the kids are happy, and discrete item testing (i.e. shaming) is a thing of the past, and we finally get aligned with ACTFL’s standards (written in 1985 and still shat on), only then will teachers take back their mantle of respectability and will the profession return to its original state of great, non-microscopial, respect.

We must not forget - the current situation in foreign languages took a long time to come into being. It is not the way people learn languages. For a century and longer, it has been an aberrational thing, characterized by darkness and negativity, and, yes, corporate greed.

If we can remember that, then, as we bring light back into the profession, rebalancing it, we can just ignore the other big eyes in the microscopes, the eyes of people who have no idea how languages are really acquired. We can remember that this darkness is temporary.

We can know that soon, very soon, our professional dignity will begin to come back, quickly and sooner than we think, and the birds will sing, maybe even chant on certain days, and things will be the same again, as they were long ago, when people were happy.

That is a good reason for us to get up tomorrow morning and go to work.

Michelle commented on the use of verb tenses at level 1. I thought it was very interesting:

… you need to use both tenses, with a predominance on the past, so that kids have the chance to acquire it, so the system of teaching in the present for PQA, talking about kids in the class in the present, and telling in the past works really well, if only to keep the rotation solid …

I’ve been trying to watch when I use present tense, as opposed to past tense in real life, and I find that “informational” writing, like this, is in the present, but all the narrative - the stuff of life, including gossip and telling my family about my day - is in the past, except, of course, when I’m complaining about what someone “always” does. It would be really interesting to find out how much we use each over the course of a week! I guess that when kids are getting to know one another, especially young lovers, they are telling each other everything in the present. Hmm. Maybe that’s something to use in stories!

Of course, if you haven’t read it, Von Ray’s study on the use of verb tenses offers great insights into the use of verb tenses at level 1. Click on Athenian Study on the home page of this site for that.

This is the longest of over 700 entries on this blog. Obviously, I feel it important enough to include here in its entirety, so if it is too long for you, don’t read it. It is a letter to a possibly fictitious teacher who may have been heavily attacked by an administrator for doing TPRS. I guess the administrator had too much time on their hands, and wanted to impress someone with how much they knew about language teaching, but, really, they just embarrassed themselves. I explain why below:

Dear _______,

When administrators try to coerce professionals in the field of foreign language acquisition into doing things in a certain way, it is like the hospital adminstrators who suddenly became super-qualified surgeons. Every time, the losers will be the patients, the kids, and if you allow this person to tread on you, you and your school district will also become the losers.

Usually, when TPRS teachers are attacked by well meaning administrators, it is because they have been “reached” by those who oppose you. Certainly, this person has no true concept of foreign language instruction. That is bad for you.

Do you need to defend yourself? Hell, yes! Do you need to attack back? Hell, no. Your (necessary, but not aggressive) “defense” is best built around reaching higher ups at the level of their perception. In my opinion, it would not be a good thing to try to convince anyone of your position, which they can’t understand.

For the past few years in our district, which definitely reflects national trends, each year of school has been more and more ALL ABOUT the memorizing of discrete vocabulary. Teaching for acquistion is not really on anybody’s menu.

Susan Gross came to my district, Jefferson County, CO, last June and again in August. Ours is the eighth largest school district in the nation, one awash in top-down regulations. Recently, we have developed, district wide and in all teaching areas, “pacing guides” - which in foreign languages are all about the learning of discrete vocabulary items at the expense of real teaching.

Susan expressed to me on one occasion an incredulity about these pacing guides. But they are there, in place now, pulling us into teaching discrete vocabulary. The only good thing about them is that, in the same way that they pull us away, or try to, from communicative instruction, they also force pull the book teachers out of the book. At least, now, those teachers can’t teach “chapters”, they at least have to teach words.

But what you are experiencing is pure bullshit. Clearly, there may be people behind the scenes at the next level, those teachers you feed, who are tattling these things as an indirect blow to your success with TPRS, since they can’t, nor do they have the courage, to meet you with their concerns face to face. In fact, they are afraid of your success, because they don’t know how to handle the overprepared kids you send  them.

They are herders of sheep at the high school in that way. They don’t know how to blend kids as gifted as yours with the other ones - it upsets their grammatical applecart, so to speak, and now they may have gotten the ear of this uninformed administrator. Your message to them is going to have to be SIMPLE.

It is unbelieveable. Somehow, under the influence of those grammar teachers who have reached this administrator, they see your position of resisting the teaching of discrete vocabulary as wacky right brain stuff, hippy stuff. By defending and illustrating Blaine and Krashen’s position, you have been egregiously victimized.

I personally have completely had it with people who try to rope me into a discussion of the various merits of different methods. There is enough misinformation going around in such discussions to sink a ship. All I know is what I know, which is my version of Blaine’s vision. I do know that it has worked beautifully for me after a quarter century of futility with the old way. That’s all I can know.
 
The way I see it, you have to dismantle their current perception of you. They are genuinely believing that your application of  Blaine’s methods is a dangerous thing.  They must strike out at you because you are letting too much light in the door. Bless you for your courage, for prying that door open and letting all that light in. However, now you have to save your job, so the conversation must change. How?

If these people ask to meet with you, avoid getting into side details or theory discussions about TPRS. Always keep in mind that they don’t “get” any of what you would say. It does not mean that they are stupid - their intentions are good.

How to simplify your position so that they understand you and vote in your favor? To me, that means getting a big list of exactly what they want taught and telling them how you plan on teaching it.
 
I joined the vertical writing team that came up with the aforementioned pacing guides a year and a half ago. My purpose was to at least try to have one person on the team representing Blaine’s work. Dale Crum was on the Spanish team as well. [Dale has also been attacked for doing TPRS, yet, in a strange irony, was also voted the best teacher at the 2007 SWCFLT conference, which represents thousands of teachers from at least ten western states - what is going on?]

As I said above, these pacing guides laid out certain leveled vocabulary to be taught at a certain date. By last September 15th, for example, all level one French teachers in the district were required to teach the colors and numbers from 1 to 30. This, of course, lacks rigor, but to the administrators who bought into the model, it is important, so I do it. Here is how:
 
I took the pacing guides and wrote down one very big list of all the words that my district wants taught in French 1. I organized them in what I call “French Thematic Units” (see my posters, etc. page for that, and make sure you look at the French version, not the current Spanish, because it explains the details. You are always free to download and use ANYTHING on my site for your own use).
 
I also have made CDs of all of these words. The fact that they are arranged by thematic units is a fairly useless thing to us in TPRS - we don’t think that going to France and being able to recite the alphabet at the Place de la Concorde is worth much, nor is being able to stand on that pedestal in front of the Place de L’Opéra (sometimes occupied by mimes) and recite the colors in French.

But the list of thematic units is impressive enough to those who believe that we learn languages by memorizing lists. I make copies of the CDs and give one to every student at the beginning of the year. Actually I only make twenty and then the kids proliferate them so that by the end of the first week of school each kid has a copy of every words they need to know for the year in Jefferson County French 1 classes.

My colleague Guadalupe Garcia has made these for Spanish. The reason I am going into such detail here is because this is an opportunity for you to actually help your district standardize a required vocabulary list for all the kids.

You want to give them the perception that you want to work with them, and not come from a defensive standpoint, from which you will lose. You can tell these people things like, with this way of teaching vocabulary, after you align with the book vocabulary for your stories, this CD program assures that the kids learn all the words and are prepared for the next level.

Plus, it has the advantage that if a kid transfers schools, the kid is not caught in another book, behind or ahead, which always happens when teachers use different books in different school programs. I will be happy to send you the CD’s that Lupe made. Just get me an address.

A side thought here is that you can always use Amy Catania’s Cuentos Fantasticos/Contes Fantastiques TPRS series, because they are organized by thematic units (Classroom Objects, Body, Family, Numbers, Food - there are in all 16 of those chapters) in a TPRS format. I don’t know of any other TPRS materials that align with thematic units, but there may be some.
 
It is now time for you to find the common ground with these people that will satisfy their appetite for blood. You can do it. The fact is, we really don’t have any common ground with them. I now strongly dismiss those who say that we need to “find common ground”. Why? Because we do easily what they do, but they can’t do what we do. What is there to talk about?
 
Ok, so how do you assess with the thematic unit lists? The following will impress them! On the 8th of each month, the kids, who have spent about ten minutes a night for that entire month preparing for the big test, take a big 100 point translation test that counts as a full 50% of their grade. It is cumulative, so the kids have to know all of it.
 
If they blow preparing for it off (about 15-20% do), you “have” those lazy kids and you “nail” them with the F on half of their grades. Since those same kids love stories and do so well on the story quizzes you ask at the end of each story (last five minutes of class), they still emerge with a C. But you have made your point - vocabulary counts in this classroom! By now, the number of kids not preparing for these monthly tests is down to 5%.
 
Of course, this approach of nailing the ones who are too lazy to learn the words at home placates the little study robot kids who need to lord it over those less “smart” (i.e. less anal) as they. It also has excellent PERCEIVED benefits by those who pay your salary:
 
1. by shaming the lazy ones with F’s, you are “teaching them a lesson.” Shaming kids is a very big part of American education, although, as I understand it, shaming kids is exponentially worse in countries like Japan. Shaming kids is up there with shaming teachers in American schools.

2. you are also showing your principal and any one else interested that you “mean business” and that your students WILL LEARN THIS VOCABULARY.

3. when the parents see the F in the computer under (district vocabulary test - 50% of grade) and call you up to challenge you on why you have been “so hard” on their big darlings, you can tell them that you are required by your district to teach these words so that they can be ready for level 2, and that, since they have the words on line to study, as well as the auditory version of the words for kids who “need to know how they are pronounced”, you were disappointed but had to fail their little Fauntleroys because they only got 3 words correct out of the 100 that they had to study for that month’s test, and you are sorry but the responsibility lies with their kids. What can they say to that?
 
How do I relate all of that to TPRS? Simple! Since we know that languages are actually acquired by hearing the language in various interesting and varied contexts (this is best done with stories) over and over and over, I just took all of the thematic vocabulary and arranged it randomly on big “word lists” that I put up monthly on my wall.

Find those word lists on my site under “Word Lists” - not up yet in Spanish but they are in French. I put those word lists, about sixty-five words per month on a big, really big poster and during stories we just keep working with those words in different ways (see my “handouts” link, blue text for examples of how to do that), and, by the end of the year, the kids know all the words! So that is how the thematic unit district lists work hand in glove with my use of storytelling in my classroom.
 
By the way, here is a letter you can copy and paste if anybody wants a letter of support for the method.
 
To Whom It May Concern:
 
My name is Ben Slavic and I have been teaching foreign languages for 32 years. I have been the recipient of two Fulbrights and was a Rockefeller finalist as well.
 
Over those years, my research into foreign language pedogically has continuously led me to conclude that the best way to learn languages is in a communicative setting, in which the language being studied is actually spoken, instead of just being spoken “about”, which is what grammar study does.
 
To support this point of view, I offer a recent wording of a draft by the California legislature that will become the norm in the next few years to describe what states want from their language teachers. This draft includes an amazing statement, one that needs to be read carefully by all administrators so that they are not left out of the loop on the coming changes (ital. mine):

“We can no longer afford to simply learn about languages and cultures but rather, we must provide students with opportunities to learn languages and cultures by participating in communicative interactions that prepare for real-world language use and global citizenship.”

This means that we need to teach for communicative outcomes and that memorizing lists of vocabulary and grammar rules is no longer going to cut it.

This, of course, is exactly what the national parent organization of ALL foreign language teachers has been saying all along, since 1985, in fact, when they created the national standards, which are built around proficiency outcomes and don’t mention a word of grammar or the memorization of words in the form of lists.

Administrators please take note so that you don’t end up looking like an idiot by attacking teachers who are aligned with the national standards and supporting teachers whose methods are stuck in an outdated model.

Just because there are more teachers with one foot in the last century does not give you call to support them. If you do, and if you fail to educate yourself about what is really happening in foreign language education in our country, it could turn around to bit you in the butt.

As additional support for the benefits of communicative teaching, I offer just a sample of results my students have achieved on national exams (in this case the National French Exam and the AP French Exam) using the TPRS method:

 2004 National French Contest Top Rank/Colorado and Wyoming
     
Level 1

TPRS Student           70/70 1*      Summit Ridge Middle Ben Slavic   
TPRS Student           67/70 2*      Summit Ridge Middle Ben Slavic
TPRS Student           63/70 3*      Summit Ridge Middle Ben Slavic
TPRS Student           63/70 3*      Summit Ridge Middle Ben Slavic
TPRS Student           62/70 4        Summit Ridge Middle Ben Slavic  
Name Redacted        62/70 4        Cherry Creek High Meredith Jacob
Name Redacted        62/70 4        Cherry Creek High Meredith Jacob
Name Redacted        61/70 5        Mullen High  Amy Samson    
Name Redacted        61/70 5        Boulder High Linda Wood
Name Redacted        61/70 5        Centennial Middle Suzanne Penner
Name Redacted        60/70 6        Cherry Creek High Meredith Jacob
Name Redacted        60/70 6        Cherry Creek High Meredith Jacob
Name Redacted        59/70 7        Mullen High Amy Samson
Name Redacted        58/70 8        Cherry Creek High Meredith Jacob    
Name Redacted        58/70 8        George Washington Elizabeth Ward
Name Redacted        57/70 9        Loveland High Toni Theisen
Name Redacted        57/70 9        Cherry Creek High Meredith Jacob
TPRS Student           56/70 10      Summit Ridge Middle Ben Slavic
*Nationally ranked scores

2003 National French Contest Top Rank/Colorado and Wyoming
     
Level 1

TPRS Student           76/80 1*      Summit Ridge Middle Ben Slavic 
Name Redacted        74/80 2        Cherry Creek High Meredith Jacob
TPRS Student           73/80 3        Summit Ridge Middle Ben Slavic
Name Redacted        71/80 4        Cherry Creek High Meredith Jacob
Name Redacted        70/80 5        Baseline Middle Michelle Wojno
*Nationally ranked score
 
Other results:
 
In 2005, TPRS students placed 3, 6,7,9,10,11,12 in the National French Contest in Colorado/Wyoming. A 9th grade TPRS student scored 4 of 5 on the AP French Exam as well. This student had no prior background in French. Normally, using the old methods of memorizing discrete vocabulary items and studying grammar in the classroom, which are important but much more effectively taught in a communicative setting like TPRS, five years is required to earn scores of 2 or 3, and very often, in spite of many tax dollars being invested in those scores, students are deemed woefully inadequate by the College Board with scores of only 1 of 5.

Indeed, if it were a business and not a public educational tax sponge, many foreign language teachers would be fired. I write these words as a public school teacher who believes in public education enough to ask administrators, when I have opportunities like this one, to please get rid of the dead wood, not the live wood, and hire teachers who, via their communicative successes with the kids, end up with increased, not decreased, enrollments. Languages are not just an option any more, they are connected to our national security, so things have to change in our nation’s foreign language classrooms.
 
I also would like to refer you to the work of Stephen Krashen and Bill VanPatten on the point of foreign language methodologies. Both researchers are of gigantic importance in the world of foreign language acquisition. Administrators, again, risk being left out of the loop if they don’t grasp the importance of, especially, Krashen’s work. Please give your close attention to the following synopsis of their work:
 
Stephen Krashen
 
If one takes a close look at them, it is clear that many of Krashen’s hypotheses fully support communicative activities in the classroom. They imply that reaching, and not just teaching kids from a book, is a key factor in building fluency:
 
1. Communicative Competence, for example, is defined in sociocultural terms, meaning that interacting in L2 is more than just a mental exercise, but a participatory, social one. Robots cannot converse.
 
2. The Affective Filter Hypothesis states there is a “filter” or “mental block” that keeps L2 from “getting in” – the lower the filter, the easier it is to learn L2. Thus, human contact of a relaxed nature, i.e. reaching kids in a way that is meaningful to them, increases acquistion of L2.
 
3. The Affective Hypothesis states that factors of motivation, interpersonal acceptance, and self-esteem deeply affect learning L2. Thus, we reach students by focusing on them and valuing them as human beings in our classes.
 
4. The Comprehensible Input Hypothesis states that the learner can only acquire language by connecting it to prior knowledge. Language that is not understood is just L2 noise. Thus, we cannot just teach students, we must reach them by making sure that we speak to them in a way that they can understand us.
 
5. The Monitor Hypothesis states that the learner unconsciously corrects his or her speech to conform to the correct spoken and written speech of fluent speakers. Thus, we reach students by speaking to them in the target language, not by speaking to them in English. By speaking to them in L2 in ways that carry meaning and interest to them, we reach them.
 
6. The Natural Order of Acquisition Hypothesis states that structures of L2 emerge in much the same order as they do in L1, an order that cannot be re-arranged. This implies that the mind is selective and learns what features of a language it wants to learn when it wants to learn it, as it hears L2 on a daily basis. This calls into question the “grammar syllabus.” Thus, we reach students by offering them the target language in forms that it can grasp, and not in ways that confuse them. 
 
Bill VanPatten
 
Bill VanPatten’s main point is that in order for input to be successful in teaching languages it must be of a communicative nature, which means that the focus must be on meaning. In this sense, he supports Krashen’s concept of comprehensible input. Another major aspect of VanPatten’s message is that language acquisition is different from any other kind of learning. VanPatten suggests that the brain treats language differently from normal human cognition and therefore should not be studied cognitively, which is how it is typically taught. 
 
Please contact me if you wish. I can be reached at benslavic@yahoo.com. Thank you for being open to understanding how things are changing, very rapidly, in the direction of communicative teaching methods in foreign languages. 

It doesn’t matter that you are reading this because you want to make sure that your job is secure in the incredibly rapid shift now taking place in favor of communicative methods - you can just say. rather, that you are absorbing these new ideas because you are an enlightened administrator! Good for you! We in the communicative teaching game are going to work together with you, and not against you, because we believe that divisiveness in education is only going to negatively affect the kids. This sounds like real change to me!

Sincerely,
Benjamin Slavic
Summit Ridge Middle School
Littleton, CO

One of the most annoying aspects of working in schools and having to be a language teacher in a school setting is the hubristic attitude of some administrators who claim to know, just because they administrate, what good foreign language teaching looks like.

It is kind of like a surgeon being told how to operate by a hospital administrator. Whatever.

I started one story today with

Class, there was a boy.

In another class, I started the story with

Class, there was …

We ended up with a Kool Aid Man.  Guess which story was way better?

Then I asked where the Kool Aid Man was, again leaving things more open ended than in that other class, and somebody said Jamaica, so right away we had

Class, there was a Kool Aid Mon.

It was amazing how the image of the Jamaican version of a Kool Aid ”Mon” grabbed their attention. Music popped up in my mind; a reggae beat was in the room somewhere in the invisible world. I was taken during the story how for 50 minutes this one image seemed to drive more and more cute answers.

Soon there was a Kool Aid Chick whom the Kool Aid Mon saved. He wanted to save her, because she was in the water off the coast. He grabbed her by the handle and pulled her onto the sand.

Then she saw that he had lost his Kool Aid (grape) and she offered him some of her Kool Aid (strawberry) and begin to tip her strawberry Kool Aid head into his emptied head but he refused because he preferred chocolate (last part chanted).

I later wondered if so much action could have been engendered without this one striking image of the Kool Aid Mon. And then that made me reflect on how we need to do so much during a story, especially to remember to:

- develop details
- keep the action going
- include a lot of (sung and chanted esp.) dialogue

After that class today, I can’t help but reflect on the value of the right striking image as a major force in successful stories. True or not, we’ll be drinking more Kool Aid in that class, for sure! Kool Aid Mon has won the hearts of 30 thirteen year old kids, and he will be back a lot more this year.

Note that this fantastic story would never have happened if we had an absolutely No English rule. It worked precisely because we could use the English words Kool Aid, and because we did pausing and pointing, where we wrote but did not say the English on the whiteboard during the story, guaranteeing comprehension by the entire group of kids.