A repost:
Vortex Image
If you feel intimidated about PQA, don’t do it. You don’t have to do PQA, and you don’t even have to do stories. It’s not about PQA and it’s not about stories. It’s about comprehensible input.
Test the waters of comprehensible input instruction first before worrying about PQA and stories. Just get little scenes of a few minutes of comprehensible input going on first in your classroom. Here’s what you can do:
First, teach (translate and gesture) three phrases:
dessine – sketches
un dessin – a drawing
montre – shows
Then connect the phrases to a student in the following simple way:
Class, [a student in the class] sketches!
The key here is in the circling. It is in the circling that new details emerge. Think of a vortex/funnel cloud. You start at the top and begin circling down until it gets so tight at the bottom that no new details can fit. When you reach the bottom point of the vortex, you know it’s time to move on to the next question.*
[*credit: Blaine Ray – this vortex image is how Blaine explained to me how he conceives of circling in a story. He told me that you just go down deeper into the vortex, circling away, adding details, parking on one level of the vortex, adding another detail and dropping down another level, etc. Then, when the thing can’t be circled anymore, becomes it is too tight to add new details, you just circle something else. Later, in stories, you will learn at this point of saturation of the circling how to add in a new character or event, and with that new character or event the story will go off in a different direction.]
Don’t forget that in this vortex work you have options about what part of the sentence to circle, as explained earlier in this text. You may wish to start by circling the subject of your sentence:
Class, Jerome sketches! (ohh!) Class, does Jerome sketch? (yes)
Class, does Micky Mouse sketch? (no)
Correct, class, Mickey Mouse doesn’t sketch, Jerome sketches. (ohh!)
Class, who sketches? (Jerome)
etc.
Or you may wish to circle the verb:
Does Jerome sketch? (yes)
Does Jerome sketch or sleep? (sketch)
Does Jerome sleep? (no)
That’s right, class, Jerome doesn’t sleep. Jerome sketches! (ohh!)
Class, does Jerome vomit? (no)
No, class! Jerome doesn’t vomit! He sketches!
etc.
Just remember to change up the circling when you sense that the class understands so that you don’t bore the kids with needless circling.
So far, all you did was teach the kids a few words and circle one sentence consisting of a subject and verb. Not that challenging!
Now you could stop here or you could go to the next level – adding another sentence! This means dropping one level down in the circling vortex image given above. In so doing, you are not committing yourself to a story and all that that entails. You can bail out at anytime! Just add any sentence that might naturally follow the one just circled. Example:
Class, Jerome has a drawing!
Blaine has made it clear that every sentence should be circled to some degree, so you circle it, choosing perhaps to circle the subject first:
Class, does Jerome have a drawing? (yes)
Class, does Jerome or Anthony have a drawing? (Jerome)
Class, does Anthony have a drawing? (no)
That’s right, class, Anthony doesn’t have a drawing. Jerome has a drawing! (ohh)
etc.
Or you may wish to circle the verb:
Class, does Jerome have a drawing? (yes)
Class, does Jerome have or eat a drawing? (have)
Class, does Jerome eat a drawing? (no)
That’s right, class, Jerome doesn’t eat a drawing. Jerome has a drawing! (ohh)
etc.
Or, since this second sentence has an object, you might want to circle it as well:
Class, does Jerome have a drawing? (yes)
Class, does Jerome have a drawing or a pencil? (drawing)
Class, does Jerome have a pencil? (no)
That’s right, class, Jerome doesn’t have a pencil. Jerome has a drawing! (ohh)
Class, what does Jerome have? (drawing)
Who has a drawing? (Jerome)
etc.
Again, remember to circle enough to get a lot of repetitions but not so much that you bore the kids.
By this time, if you have circled just two sentences as suggested above, you will have shared a lot of the target language with your kids. They will have understood and responded to 25 sentences. You will have gotten 25 sentences from two.
So, if you are intimidated by the whole idea of doing a story, don’t! If PQA intimidates you, wait and do it later! But you certainly can circle a sentence or two as per the above.
You don’t have to get all bogged down with telling the kids you are using a new method. They don’t care. Just tell the kids that you want them to hear some French and start circling.
In time, you will find more and more cute little details merging into and transforming the sentences you started working with. This is an organic process. Two sentences will become three. The sentences will be cute if the students have been trained in what it means to provide cute answers into the classroom process as per the Classroom Rules. This way of teaching assumes that students were made to provide cute answers and laugh at how clever they are.
Each time you act astonished at how clever they are, they create more cute answers. In a flash, once they know what their job is in the game, they become masters of transferring your old boring adult questions into marvelous new things.
They can transform Jerome’s drawing into a drawing on the whiteboard of Michael Jackson’s face in seconds! They can do anything, if you ask them questions and encourage cute answers from them! You can set it up by stopping a few of your more conscious students in the hallway or after class and simply ask them to help you when you ask questions by making up cute answers. They can’t read your mind; they need to be told how to play the game.
And then you can see the alchemy of TPRS, without even doing any PQA or stories.