One skill maybe to focus on after the break would be to milk statements more. Anyone who has done CI knows that roughly every tenth thing a class says, or maybe every twentieth, is different (i.e. funnier, more interesting, of a higher quality in sound or meaning, etc.), and gives us pause and makes us appreciate it internally as a very cool idea or sound in a sentence right there in the middle of the story.
It’s just the “right sentence” to play with, and we can say it in different ways, not doing all that repeating to teach meaning because it’s not a target but just to play with the sound, the coolest “language sound” in the story so far, on which we can maybe even throw down some Director’s Cues.
Why not? You can do stuff like this now that you are not “teaching [name of language]”. (Because you have released yourself from the incorrect notion about how languages are learned because you know that all you have to do is deliver comprehensible input to your students). Play! And what better thing to play with during a story than a cool sounding sentence?
It’s the same as in real conversation in real life. Don’t we wait around patiently in real life for someone to say something interesting in the midst of the incessant drone of words that we hear during our days? We may not be consciously aware of it, but we are constantly on the lookout for cool things in language – it’s a human trait; we want to be entertained.
Thus, really tuning into a story to wait for and pounce on and milk the “right sentence” (for meaning or sound) is the game we should play when creating a story with our students. It is just a question of being aware of the language beauty that surrounds us (in the form of meaning and sound) during our classes.
When there is attention to beauty, there is a reduction of ignorance, and the most clouded souls in our classes come alive. They will become alive because language beauty, properly milked, is irresistible.