What if we had something more concrete to work with than stories? Is there a way to make asking a story more simple? Story Option, described below, is a way to make the Three Steps of TPRS come to life in a different and more potentially powerful way than stories, because it is simpler.
Before considering this option to stories, first we should review how the Three Steps of TPRS work:
1. PQA –
a. The first part of PQA (Personalized Questions and Answers) is establishing meaning. We start with a few expressions and tell the class what they mean, using English. Then we gesture the expressions. Doing both of these things in the establishing meaning phase takes just a few minutes. This is the only part of the Three Steps in which we can use English.
b. Once we have told the students what the expressions (called target structures) mean and done a bit of gesturing, we then begin to get reps on the target structures by asking questions and personalizing them to the students in the room.
Notes about PQA:
1. The questions we ask should all have one of the target structures in it.
2. What I do is first ask simple questions that are not personalized to the students in the room. I just ask the most obvious low level questions. If the target structure is “resembles”, I would ask if one book resembles another, before talking about any kids in the room. That’s just me. I like to build up to interesting personalized discussion about a structure, following the cues that naturally present themselves in the PQA process. I ride that pony as far as I can and never stop a strong personalized discussion around a target structure. During this time, of course, my PQA counters are busy counting with their baseball counters.
3. A way to guarantee a good discussion is to use PSA, Personalized Statements and Answers. See https://benslavic.com/blog/category/psa-personalized-statements-and-answers/
4. Note that there are two parts to PQA. It’s not just PQA. It’s establishing meaning and then PQA.
2. The story –
We extend the PQA into a story. Stories can naturally flow from PQA (rare) or we could abruptly just start a story if we have in front of us a story script that has been written that includes the three structures (it is more common and best to work from a script, because you stay in bounds much better that way).
The business of writing a story script based on the three structures is one of the main things that I feel has been forgotten in the nuclear expansion of the method from TPRS to CI. If we want the best bang for our buck, we work from a story script.
3. We read and discuss what we created with the class. The focus is not on the discussion of the reading but on the reading itself, because the students already got a big helping of discussion in Step 2. (We should do 50% speaking to our students mixed with 50% reading in our comprehension based classes – that is our current position in Denver Public Schools). I personally use ROA for Step 3. See https://benslavic.com/blog/30190/
Having reviewed the Three Steps of TPRS, I would like in the next article on this topic to suggest an option to Steps 1 and 2.