After yesterday’s learning lab, three teachers, all ninja level storytellers, asked me why I kept looking back at the script during the creation of the story.
The first answer I gave was that the script is emotionally reassuring to me. I always know that when the big circling and all the language and energy created from one sentence dies out and I don’t quite remember what is going on, I can always go back to the next sentence in the script. I read it, and say, “Oh yeah!” The next sentence is a signpost that tells me where to go from the just completed (acquired) last one.
The other answer is that when I don’t feel the jerk on the leash to go back to the script, I could end up anywhere, and usually do. I forget the structure that I am trying to say in each utterance, and say other things. It’s like a little mental battle in those moments when I look at the script. If the kids knew more French, we could go into a real cool area, but they don’t, I resist the desire to go off the tracks, and I go back to the script.
Since I have started doing that, about a year now, I find that I stay much more in bounds than I used to. Before, at the end of each class I used to have 25 (at least) or more pointed to and paused at words in disarray all over the board. Now, in one class during the observations yesterday, I had two. In another I had four. That is the way I think it should be done.
If the video comes out from yesterday and again today with Dr. Krashen, Diana and Dr. Mason I will be able to voice over the parts where I return to the scripts and describe how I just avoided going out of bounds again. I am definitely going to keep the leash tight. I don’t want to go out of bounds on Krashen today. That would be embarrassing.