Q. How do I stay in bounds when new words keep emerging all the time? A. The students need to understand the message, not the individual words. We are teaching language, not individual words. I have come to see after all these years that it is not what words we say, but how we say […]

Q. What about lesson plans with the Invisibles? A. The Invisibles approach is really a sequence of activities so nothing can be planned out. We just follow the sequence for building stories and for reading. We open our teaching selves to see what happens in each activity, and it is different in each class. This

Q. You mentioned using your hands to work with “clay” in building the one word images. Can you elaborate on that? A. In the same way that a sculptor puts her hands in water and then steps over to a big lump of clay and sculpts the image, we also craft our image right there

Q. I can’t get my kids to really listen to each other. They are always blurting over each other. A. You have to use the Classroom Rules with the smile. Every time. Each and every time there is blurting or talking over, simply take a deep breath, walk calmly and slowly over to the Classroom

Q. But what if the character is really good and falls flat, even with a good emotion and a good reason for that emotion? A. I am quite happy to provide the students with boring instruction by providing worksheets for them. I know what you mean – classes can get like that. I am very

Q. What if a character falls flat? What do I do then? A. It always goes back to the fact that the quality of the artwork and thought that went into creating the character has to be of a high quality. Boring characters with little visual appeal make for boring stories and boring classes. I

Q How would you define a balanced character? A. I would say that it would be one with four or five details. That is as much as I feel works for me. However, I do sometimes like to add one random outrageous detail. For example, a snowman who hates carrots and coal might have a

Q. You spoke about how the word chosen for the one word image should come from the class. What if the class simply cannot come up with anything interesting? A. Oh that happens! But I am always ready for such classes – the ones that give us the snarky “look”. What I do is, on

Q. If you are trying to limit the length of the story to the overall 25 – 35 minute desired time frame, wouldn’t the transportation scenes add time to the story and “blow it up” too much? A. Yes it would. But I think it would be fine in that case to have a story

This is from TPRS in a Year! – Whenever an actor needs to go to another location in a story, the potential for a humorous mode of travel exists. The conveyance can be merely described in words, or it can actually be put into action, which the kids love, because they get to act as

Bryan seems to have put his finger on exactly where TPRS is these days, in my opinion: “I’ve been thinking about how circling as it is usually taught (at least to beginning TPRSers) really is so unnatural, particularly when the goal is to get a student (or even an entire class) to remember a particular

Tina told me this: The teacher has to do CI according to what they think is best for them as an individual teaching artist. One person likes targets as they are used in conventional storytelling, the next prefers a more free-wheeling style of CI, like emergent targets using the Invisibles or Story Listening. We all