Again, I prefer SOA over stories because it is simpler and easier to stay in bounds. Whenever I did a story, and I have done 14 years worth of them, I never knew quite what was going on. Working from an image locks things down a bit more.
The downside to SOA is that it may lock things down too much, where the action is stifled because the image is so static. So the images must be well chosen.
What about the use of the question word “Why”? Asking for a back story (Why is this bearded man going fast in a boat?) is to me dangerous because it takes us way out of bounds. I would never do that. We must remember that stories only work because the scripts we use never stray from the three structures.
Staying in bounds is a comprehension based instructional strategy that is too often forgotten as most of us tend to forget and use vocabulary that the kids don’t know. Not staying in bounds, along with SLOW, is probably the most egregious mistake we do in stories. We should never ever use a new word that is not one of the structures. This keeps the image from evolving into anything complex, which is the fastest way to lose a class. Simplicity wins in the comprehensible input game, and it should take precedence in our instruction over creating interest.
Once the real life image with the student actor starts to lose power (in two minutes or two hours), I would ask for a retell maybe. Then the next day I would present a slightly more complex idea of the story in the form of a Step 3 reading, using ROA again as the reading strategy (not R and D, which works best with novels), and then give the Quick Quiz. The story would be given to me by the Story Writer. I would probably not need the Story Artist in SOA, as we already have an image. At this ending point of the SOA process I may choose to use any of the other strategies (textivate, voice recognition work, etc.) that we have been doing here over the years before ending the class.
This is an idea in progress. I know one thing – I welcome feedback. Without having proven it as a strong idea, I still feel it has the potential to be better than stories, which are like riding a bucking bronco. It’s nothing new, of course, just a refabrication of ideas from past years, just like most of what we do is some variation on TPRS. If it passes muster over the next few weeks of testing, I will add it to the Big Ideas page, which is the most important collection of strategies that have proven to really work for us over the years:
https://benslavic.com/blog/return-to-core-values/