So let me restate this change in what I consider R & D to be in its most effective form:
1. We address much less text to start class, just one short paragraph that has action in it. Again, if the text lacks action and power, if it can’t be TPR’s very well and if it doesn’t lend itself to Readers Theatre and PSA, then we just snowplow through it and get it off the road and out of the way.
If it is a long paragraph then we break it into two pieces so that we are never dealing with more than three or four sentences at a time in this new kind of R & D class. We go line by line with this new form of R & D, which means that we truly go narrow and deep in this kind of CI.
2. As stated, the discussion thus would center around three or four verbs and no more. It could be as few as one or two verbs from one sentence only. This is important because it allows us to manufacture all sorts of situations in which we are able to get massive reps not just of the verb as written in whatever tense it occurs in in the text but also to create PSA where we can move into practice with other verb tenses.
3. As stated, doing this new R & D gives new meaning to the term “narrow and deep”. Currently, we only THINK we go narrow and deep in our R & D classes. If what Sabrina suggests is true, and I know it is and that is why I am boldly making these changes in the way I do R & D, then, by limiting the amount of text we read to just a few sentences in the new R & D format, we get to completely new levels of efficiency in our SLOW repetitions of the text in thousands and thousands of interesting ways, thus launching our students forward much further in one class than was possible with the old version of R & D, which I think many of us can agree was just too shallow and wide.
4. HOWEVER, and this would not come as a surprise, it’s got to be the right paragraph, one that clearly lends itself to RT or in some other way carries interest to allow lots of TPR.
5. To repeat an important point, in this new version of R & D we must snowplow through large amounts of less interesting text, because if we tried to do Compact R & D all the time it would take up to twenty years to read one book.