A few months ago in a comment I mentioned the following nineteen steps as a kind of sequencing guideline for getting through an auditory CI class, something a newer teacher could print out and refer to during class to keep things running along smoothly. This passage is actually a draft from a chapter I am adding to Stepping Stones to Stories about super mini stories (a big stepping stone). Of course, the sequence could be used for stories, Look and Discuss, MovieTalk, and all of the other auditory strategies we use, many of which are listed in the previous Big Ideas post here. Perhaps someone may benefit from this list:
Printing out these nineteen steps and putting them somewhere you can see them when you are just starting out with super mini-stories could serve to keep you on track as you start learning how to teach this way:
1. Establish meaning for each structure. (Just say, “Class, this means that”. That’s how you establish meaning. It takes five seconds.)
2. Ask the students to show you a gesture for each structure.
3. Practice the gestures a few times in a spirit of fun and amazement about how clever they are.
4. Ask some personalized question about the three structures. Keep things light. If the students are tight lipped during this time, use PSA.
5. In super mini stories, work with seated students as actors or you could even bring actors up in front of the room.
6. If the first sentence in the script is “John wants to buy a car!” (“John” and “car” are the underlined variables and “wants to buy” is your target structure), ask the class to replace John with the name of the student or a name that the class makes up for the actor.
7. Say that “John” “wants to buy” (try to remember to gesture it when saying it to make it easier for the class to understand you).
8. Ask what “John” wants to buy. With beginning CI students, always laser point to the question word on the wall when you ask the question.
9. You now have a personalized sentence along the lines of “Class, Big Eddie (student in your class) wants to buy a nutcracker!”
10. Now don’t go to the next sentence right away! Spin whatever details you can from this sentence using Circling. Remember what is happening here – the class is focusing on an image that they think they have created but you are focusing on getting as many repetitions as you can on “wants to buy”. Don’t forget that you can circle in questions about the subject, the verb, or the object. In addition, you can also constantly personalize the questions by asking parallel questions about other students in the class as described above.
11. Do the same process whenever a sentence in the script gets exhausted – just go to the next sentence and the next and the next and work your way through the story. You don’t have to work hard to remember everything that the class suggests – everything is being recorded by the story writer.
12. With the story now created, ask for a round of applause for the actors.
13. Now is the time to process the artist’s work done on an iPad or just on a sheet of paper for the document camera. Ask lots of questions about the images – they provide greater and greater amounts of repetitions, which is the entire point of storytelling, to drive the language deeper and deeper into the minds of the students. (The link on using an iPad in this step is called “Interactive Whiteboards” in the category list to the right of this page.)
14. During this time of processing the artist’s work, remember to give ample happy praise for the artwork. Also try to get into the habit of asking for rounds of applause whenever merited. How many teachers require students to applaud their classmates in class?
15. An option at this point is to use the image created by the artist to ask for a retell by the class – led by you using a cloze technique – or by an individual student retell – not led by you.
16. Give a quick quiz (see category) on the story at the end of class. Remember that these are yes/no or true/false questions. Avoid asking questions that are not y/n or t/f unless you have a lot of extra time to grade the quizzes. When we ask for y/n or t/f answers, we save ourselves lots of time. We give the quiz at the end of the class and not the next day because the information is still fresh in the students’ minds and success on quizzes is key to student buy-in in this work. I love that we in this work are changing the face of testing to be honoring and not shaming to students. As the students leave the class, collect the quizzes and the story in L1 from your story writer. Don’t forget to toss the quizzes in the trash if you are busy that day. Only keep and grade quizzes when you need a grade. There is no contract with your students that requires you to grade and enter a quiz into your grade book. Workaholic teachers, of course, can ignore this suggestion.
17. The next day, having written up the super mini story in L2 (this takes about one minute to do that for super mini stories), present the reading to the class using Reading Option A (see Appendix D in Stepping Stones to Stories).
18. At this point another quiz option is to ask the students to translate the story for a really easy grade. This builds confidence and trust in the students that you are on their side. It will pay off in higher enrollments later. And when the students are older and doing real stories, you can ask them to write possible optional endings to the story in the TL.
19. If you want yet a third grade at this point, throw in a jGR self-evaluation at this point.
Note that these nineteen steps are nothing but one way to expand the Three Steps of TPRS, which provide us with the basic sequence of instruction that makes comprehensible input work in our classrooms. They are the key to everything we do. Over time with the Three Steps as the core sequence, teachers will develop their own way of using the Three Steps – the above is just the way I do it.
The Three Steps are the core of this work, but applying the strategies found in this book is the work. It is recommended that teachers know where they are in terms of the Three Steps at any point in class as a kind of reference point. With the Three Steps as a reference point, and as long as we are doing comprehensible input in the form or listening and reading with our students and waiting for output in the form of writing and speech to occur when they naturally emerge, we are doing this work and we will see the results in the form of greater course enrollments and in greater job satisfaction.