When we have the time to write up stories as readings (Step 3), we embellish the original story line with personalized details about kids in the class. They want to know what they did and they read the text very closely when they see their names or their friends’ names in the text.
We add interesting twists to the content of the original (spoken) story as well. It is easy to do, since the kids’ vocabulary and knowledge of the text is so strong as a result of their recent experience of the story. It makes for better reading.
We not only vary the story line for personalization, and to introduce new content, but we also vary it to inject new and varied grammar/vocabulary points. Instead of saying the boy, we introduce demonstratives by writing out “that boy”, or we use the the pronoun “celui”.
We change details as well in the reading. If the story happened at noon on a Monday, we make the reading happen at midnight on a Saturday. We do these things in the third step of TPRS because we can never read enough – and reading is of more value to learning in TPRS than even stories.
Doing these things is basic to step three in TPRS – we work from a base story and expand on it in all sorts of ways. It is an effective thing to do. Of course, we don’t always have the time to create such readings, and I often default to Blaine’s books as read and discuss material. But it is best when I take the ten or twenty minutes at the end of a day of stories to knock out a reading.