It’s weird how we can work with this comprehensible input for years and not see things right under our noses. The idea of doing R and D as per recent comments here by Jody, where we just compare characters in novels to kids in our class, is something that I knew about, because I had read articles by Jody here over the years saying to do exactly that, but I never really did that bc I was thinking only that R and D meant you read the text, and this applies mainly to novels, and then talk about it and then went back to the reading again and not spinning the discussion into talking about the kids. I know that I tried to avoid spinning too much lest I end up giving short shrift to the reading, and so maybe that is why I did it. But doing a creative five minute spin out as per Jody if you have the right kid who is willing to “go there” can be a wonderful thing and add much interest to an R and D class, kind of making up for how boring the novel is. Such R and D including this kind of contrasting characters with the kids in our classes can, in fact become a kind of backbone to the R and D discussion. And what was it that was limiting my thinking on this idea? The fact that for some reason I thought I had to create an entire parallel novel in that way, which I don’t have any time for now by any stretch of the imagination. Now I know that I just don’t need to do create an entire parallel novel. Honestly, the idea of doing a parallel novel has been messing me up. I don’t think they are even possible because we do so much already in the little time we have in a week of instruction using comprehensible input. So the Jody personalization spin idea in R and D is a keeper.
