This content is far too long, taken from TPRS in a Year! but I post it here, for those who have the time and are inclined to read it, because I feel that a kind of tension has made its way into our discussions among those who feel the need to target vocabulary and those who don’t. There is no one way to do this work.
I now personally prefer targetless CI, but I haven’t always felt that way, and still now after all these years of doing TPRS I may on any day choose to target some structure or structures if I wanted to, with or without using a story script.
Those word, “if I wanted to”, are the most important ones in that paragraph above. I won’t teach some structure because the district makes me. I don’t think they have a right to tell me what to teach because most Scope and Sequences are based on textbooks tables of contents which have no, as in zero, basis in any research and are therefore wrecking balls for language gains.
Now, the text below discusses some experimentation with targeting structures in a different way. It is a story done a long time ago when I was still feeling as if I had to target structures for district documents, when I still believed that people could tell me what to teach.
I publish it here because it makes perfect sense and therefore shows that both ways of doing stories works, that there is no on right way, that we get to do what we want, that there is no TPRS police force, and that we therefore need to avoid labeling “ways” of doing this work, which is something that Leigh Anne indirectly alluded to in a comment here earlier today.
I am concerned that some people in our group think that I am going all hippy on us on them and, even though I joke about it, I am actually very careful in my lesson planning, just not in the traditional way. Matthew Dubroy said it best when he referred to this kind of planning as being in “broad swaths” (can’t remember the exact term he used).
Jim Tripp also just today described what I am trying to do very effectively, and I need to tell this to Linda Li and thank you Jim:
…Janice Kittok saying that even intuitive chefs still have and utilize their favorite recipes (scripts/lessons). I think this is right-on!…
Anyway, here is the idea – a blast from the past – that I wanted to share for those who have the time to read it:
Instead of Step 3, Reading, growing from a story, could it be of value to hold off on the creation of the spoken story until after the reading? Can that be done? This story explores that question.
The idea came to me when I was looking for a way to insure that my students learn certain district benchmark vocabulary words. What if they just read them first in a story? I wanted my students to have ample time seeing the vocabulary in a meaningful context, which to me meant a personalized context.
The few teachers I know who have tried out this idea have found that stories are easy to create when they are based on an entire written story, and that this idea is a bona fide option to the normal order of the three steps.
Some teachers even report that they feel much more at ease during the asking of the story when this order is used. In fact, the kids exhibit a real excitement at having such knowledge before the spoken story. They exhibit confidence because they are empowered with stronger vocabularies going into the story.
My students and I worked with the following text, which focused on food vocabulary, for two 53 minute class periods before trying an actual story. We read it, wrote about it, took a dictée on it, and worked in a more traditional way. The kids were engaged in these activities and exhibited enjoyment in the process, because the text I wrote was about them.
The background is that Josh and David skate a lot and hang around with their friends in front of a local mall, Southwest Plaza. Paige has a huge Great Dane that has shown up in some of our other stories. Sarah is a student who just likes to be in stories:
Josh and David viennent de quitter Burger King. Ils sont devant Panera Bread à Southwest Plaza. Il est six heures du soir. Il neige. Il y a un chien sur le trottoir. C’est le chien de Paige. Le chien dort à côté de la porte. Paige tient un parapluie au dessus son chien.
Josh and David just left Burger King. They are in front of Panera Bread in Southwest Plaza. It is 6:00 p.m. It is snowing. There is a dog on the sidewalk. It is Paige’s dog. He is sleeping next to the door. Paige is holding an umbrella over her dog.
Josh and David ont un sac qui contient le restant de leur repas. Il y a de la viande, de la confiture, du pain, du beurre, une petite tarte aux fraises, du lait, des biscuits, cinq pommes, du raisin, trois tomates, un jus d’ananas, et dix-sept frites dans le sac. Le sac est grand et très lourd, alors les deux garçons appellent un taxi.
Josh and David have a doggy bag. The doggy bag contains meat, jam, bread, butter, a small strawberry pie, milk, cookies, five apples, some grapes, three tomatoes, a pineapple juice, and seventeen french fries. The bag is big and very heavy, so the boys call a taxi.
Le taxi s’arrête devant le restaurant. Sarah, le chauffeur du taxi, descend et prend le doggy bag de Josh et David. Elle le pose dans le taxi. Josh et David donnent un pourboire à Sarah. Pendant ce temps, le chien de Paige saute dans le taxi. Paige et son parapluie tombent par terre. Le chien aboie à Sarah, “Démarrez!”
The taxi stops in front of the restaurant. Sarah, the driver, gets out and takes Josh and David’s doggy bag. She puts it in the taxi. Josh and David give a tip to Sarah. During this time, the dog jumps into the taxi. Paige and his umbrella fall on the ground. The dog barks to Sarah “Go!”.
Le taxi quitte avec le chien et le sac dedans. Josh, David, et Paige ne sont pas heureux, mais le chien est heureux.
The taxi leaves with the dog and the doggy bag in it. Josh, David, and Paige are not happy, but the dog is happy.
Working with the text took the form of:
- reading the story (I gave copies with numbered lines and wide margins because the kids like to take notes during the translation work).
- orally circling questions and answers around the story’s details.
- writing answers (in their composition books) to the pre-written questions specific to the text. (Done on the overhead projector)
- asking Josh, David, Paige, and Sarah to answer oral questions about their roles in the unfolding of events
- writing a dictée of part of the story
- assessing the above
The reader will notice that the above activities include roughly equal doses of listening, speaking, reading, and writing. Obviously, this requires more than one class period to complete.
When we had finished with the above steps (fully two class periods), it was time to begin the creation of the spoken story. I just used the written story as a model for the new story, creating parallel sentences as is normally done and as was described in the first three sample stories above.
I presented these three structures, so now I was going to follow the story we had just studied sentence by sentence, while trying at the same time to get some good structures in. When and if I had the opportunity, I would bring them in. If no opportunity presented itself, I would just leave them alone.
est descendu de – got out of (a vehicle)
s’est approché de – approached
lui a fait la bise – kissed him or her
The circling, as expected, produced remarkably different story lines from the original, while at the same time using a lot of the vocabulary from the text just worked with:
Paris Hilton était dans un taxi. Elle est allée à Burger King. Il pleuvait. Elle a vu son père et sa mère devant le restaurant. Ils avaient trois pacquets.
Paris Hilton was in a taxi. She went to Burger King. It was raining. She saw her father and her mother on the sidewalk in front of the restaurant. They had three packages.
Paris est descendue du taxi et s’est approchée de son père. Elle lui a fait la bise. Elle lui a dit qu’elle cherchait son chien, Tinkerbell. Elle lui a dit, “Papa, où est Tinkerbell? Elle est dans un de vos paquets?”
Paris got out of the taxi and approached her father. She gave him a kiss. She told him that she was looking for her dog, Tinkerbell. She said to him, “Dad, where is Tinkerbell? Is she in one of your packages?”
Son père lui a dit que non. Paris était fâchée! Elle a frappé son père avec un des paquets et elle est allée au portier.
Her father said no. Paris was angry! She hit her father with one of the packages and she went to the doorman.
Le portier était à côté d’un banc sans parapluie. Paris s’est approchée du portier. Elle lui a dit, “Portier, où est Tinkerbell? Il est dans le restaurant avec la viande, la confiture, le pain, et le beurre?” Le portier, qui était stupide, lui a dit que oui. Paris était contente! Elle lui a fait la bise. Le portier était content! Il a fait la bise à Paris!
The doorman was next to a bench without an umbrella. Paris approached the doorman. She said to him, “Doorman, where is Tinkerbell? Is he in the restaurant with the meat, the jam, the bread, and the butter?” The doorman, who was stupid, said yes. Paris was happy! She kissed the doorman. The doorman was happy! He kissed Paris!
It is remarkable how the story that came out of the reading so little resembled it. I didn’t care, nor did I care that the food vocabulary words were barely included in the new story. They were learned. I figured I had done my job, or at least as much as I was willing to do, by teaching these words by including them in the original reading and then circling only some of them during the creation of the last scene of the new story.
Actually, the kids heard the food words to some degree in the new story, even though tomatoes and meat were the only words eventually included in it. This was because of circling. Though not evident in the above text, each food was circled in to the CI as we worked up to the decision that Paris’ dog was in the restaurant with the tomatoes and the meat.
Knowing that these were district list words, I pushed the circling as far as I could without losing touch with the (always more interesting) sequence of events around the story. If I wanted, I could still quiz the kids on the district vocabulary words on food by having the kids memorize the words for a test.
Much more impressive to me, however, was the fact that the students were able to so expertly “bend” the written story into something so different from what I had originally written. Clearly, the reading provided them, beforehand, with the vocabulary to do so.
By studying the story and dissecting it first, the students had a lot of power in the formation of the new story. With the scripted story’s sequence of events and vocabulary in their heads (the script was actually in front of them), they were able to follow the circling of the new story at a faster rate. Things moved faster. The students seemed to be filled with ideas for the new story.