Chill

Carol sent this with my comments back in italics:
Following all of the information on this thread is like trying to corral the mercury from the broken thermometer that’s scattered on the bathroom floor!
We all have such varying backgrounds with this stuff. (What do we call it? TPRS? IBI – Input Based Instruction? KBLI – Krashen Based Language Instruction?) Anyway, the recent major threads here of 1) students creating scripts (Michele) and 2) embedded readings (Laurie) must absolutely be discussed as if we are all a bunch of two year olds. Not because we lack talent and experience, but because all of this is new and therefore must be kept in clear and well defined focus lest it morph into the general confusion that has defined TPRS for so very long now. Sorry to be a little direct here, but we can’t afford to be vague on this stuff. Everything must be clear as we learn together. (At least we’re no longer discussing if this stuff works or not like we were a few months ago. Defending Krashen is not necessary; either you get it or you don’t – now we seem to be finally into focusing only on teaching techniques and training that will support our alignment with Krashen, which is the purpose of this blog. Carol again and sorry for the digressions:
If I am understanding Diane’s blog entry, she uses someone’s materials. So I can just throw out three structures like le corbeau a faim, il se cache derrière l’arbre, laisse-moi tranquille and let the kids write up the skeleton of a story using the structures. Remembering first to establish meaning with the TPR, a little PQA and circling, of course. The simplicity is astounding. EBR seems to take the pressure off us to try get the story to take off or to try to lead the kids to a story – they hand us the story; we provide the structure. They are totally engaged and I am not sweating bullets when my story is going nowhere and I am getting the look of total ennui! Do I get the concept?
Yes but Carol please comment back here on what you mean by “EBR seems to take the pressure off us to try get the story to take off or to try to lead the kids to a story – they hand us the story”. My understanding was that EBR is not about kids creating scripts but about how we do reading with kids. I am confused about the difference between these two things. Do they overlap? For me, when I am doing a story on Monday, and give them three structures (or maybe they could even throw out structures in English to start class, which would really engage them but might be messy and waste CI minutes) and little squares of paper on which each group then creates a story using the structures as per Michele. Then, when the story is done, after classes on Monday, I write a generic story to be read and discussed by my students on Tuesday. I can embed that story with any levels (I think of them as “stacks”) of new vocabulary but, Laurie, I am not sure what that looks like in terms of planning the week. So the above needs clarification. At least for me. Not only that, but to make me more confused, I just spent a week backwards planning a song and learned a ton about how to do that. One of my superstars, after we actually heard the song yesterday, came up after class and said that she really likes the way we worked all week to decipher the song, but that she prefers stories, because they are more silly and wacky, and I thought of maybe combining the two, by doing a two or maybe three week backwards design around a single piece of poetry, music, or non fiction, but with little student generated stories erupting in the middle of the three weeks like tornadoes form from a hurricane. So I am just trying to write out what I am thinking, it’s the only way I can figure it out. Anyway, back to Carol:
 
Since you shared these structures
(from the now famous home run story script of all time by Anne Matava about being afraid of a package)
a few weeks ago, I thought I’d pass this on. I just read the story using the same structures on the Maine folks’ website. Using the afraid of the package vocab, this is the story my French 3 class came up with. They were terrific and we had a great time – Mike the Situation, from the wildly popular “Jersey Shore” program, was their idea. Without Mike the Situation, the story may have not gotten off the ground!  Talking about Mike’s package (hee hee) made their day!
 
Best,
Chill
Bob Saget avait peur d’un colis
Français 3, le 19 février 2010
Il/elle a reçu un colis
Il/elle voulait l’ouvrir
Il/elle ne voulait pas l’ouvrir
Il/elle avait peur
Il y avait un homme qui habitait à San Francisco.  Il s’appelait Bob Sagat. Il était riche mais timide. Un jour il a reçu un colis de Mike La Situation. Mike La Situation habitait à Jersey Shore et Bob Sagat avait peur de lui et son colis. Il en avait peur et il ne voulait pas l’ouvrir.
Bob Sagat a décidé d’aller à Seattle où il voulait rendre visite à Jeannot lapin (Easter Bunny). Il y est allé en auto-crapaud. Quand Bob Sagat a trouvé Jeannot lapin à l’Aiguille Spatiale, il était content, mais Jeannot lapin n’était pas content. Bob Sagat lui a demandé d’ouvrir le colis parce qu’il en avait peur. Bob Sagat lui a dit, « Bonjour, Jeannot Lapin, j’ai peur d’ouvrir ce colis de Mike La Situation. Peux-tu m’aider ?  Jeannot lapin lui a répondu, « Non ! »  Oh non, oh non ! Il y avait un problème.  Ce que Jeannot lapin n’aimait pas c’était Bob Sagat. Jeannot lapin aimait Mike La Situation et il n’avait pas peur de lui et il n’avait pas peur du colis. Enfin, Jeannot lapin ne voulait pas l’ouvrir ! 
Pauvre Bob Sagat. Il était triste et il pleurait. Il a décidé de voyager à Jersey Shore. Il y a voyagé en avion normal mais en classe affaires. Quand Bob Sagat est arrivé à Jersey Shore, il a fait la connaissance de Snookie, une femme bizarre. Elle était en train de manger des cornichons français. Elle les aimait. Elle mangeait des cornichons tout le temps.
Quelle chance ! Snookie aimait Bob Sagat et elle n’avait pas peur du colis ni de  Mike La Situation. En fait, elle voulait l’ouvrir. Quand Snookie l’a ouvert, tout d’un coup, elle a vu un énorme cornichon kosher de Carnegie Deli à New York. Il y avait aussi une belle photo de Mike La Situation. Bob Sagat n’avait plus peur de son colis.
O.K. so why did this work Carol? When you say “they hand us the story; we provide the structure” what exactly do you mean? Could you write back as a comment below exactly what they handed you? Then we can see how all of this fit together for you. Unless we are all together in the same room, this stuff gets confusing and I really want to know about kids writing scripts (I think it is a blockbuster new idea for us that deserves much discussion and experimentation) and what EBR looks like, thank you Laurie and sorry for being so obtuse. Dang this stuff gets confusing! We want to avoid the “mercury effect”….