Hey Ben,
I’m really liking the beginning of the school year the way you shared with us this summer. Since my students are all so keen, I feel like they’re ready for more stuff. We’re finishing almost the third week of school and we’ve created 3 characters that are quite developed, and we’ve done card talk and a write and discuss using all the info from our card talks. I’ve got the ongoing vocabulary list and the OWI document that we just keep adding to. I’ll do one of those for our stories too, once we get there. We started SSR this week and they love it. They 10 minutes fly by and they all would like more!
Question:
When you do Story Listening, how often do you do it? I’d like to use it as a supplement to the storytelling and characters.
My response:
I would say once or twice a week, less with classes that can’t handle it and more with those that can. With good groups I would increase and do it a lot. It is the best. I would start with very short stories, just a few minutes. Expand to whatever limits you perceive as best. I think Beniko’s stories go for a pretty long time.
Giver them all the time they want to read during SSR. Next to SL, that is the best way to spend instructional minutes. I would place the Invisibles in at third.