Brian’s back and for that we are happy. He sent some questions that I thought I would post here instead of placing them in a comment field within that thread we had going on PQA here about ten days ago at:
https://benslavic.com/blog/2012/01/30/bummer/
Brian’s questions below are about the overall nature of PQA, and when to use PQA in stories, stuff like that.
Thanks Ben for the reorienting my focus a bit. I miss that ‘blank slate’ feeling that is the beginning of the school year: I’ve veered off course a bit (to be expected I suppose, knowing my tendency to always create, recreate, and then, once lost or disappointed, return to the basics again) and now I’m finding it hard to clear the air and start anew. Nevertheless, the boots are strapped on…
Obvious points that I am taking away from your reflection:
The three steps of TPRS and the importance (how could I forget) of auditory input before the reading. Tis is my top priority now…bringing this back as the backbone of my weekly plans.
The quagmire that is my mix of students. Natives speakers mixed with many, many studnets who do not speak it that well but understand it from their home lives, mixed with only some (thats right: out of 30, only some) students that truly should be there…I have no control over who is there, and no way to send them out to the library on a regular basis. This is why I am feverishly working on my next language so that I can teach a language that none of the students at my school know already…
Anyways, back to my focus for now: the three steps. I need an update:
Step one: Ben, still believe in your thoughts on the NEW PQA? (as per you post a month or so ago?). Sound great to me. Moving beyond just 3 structures to PQAing whatever you need for a story, right? Just wanted to hear your thoughts on that some more.
My response: Yes, completely. I love the way you said it, too – “moving beyond just 3 structures to PQAing whatever you need for a story”. I PQA anything new that comes up in a story if I need it for the story to work and if it lends itself to PQA. To repeat, we PQA or just get reps in the story on anything that the kids don’t know that they need in order for the story to work.
Last Wednesday I got almost through the entire first location of the story, but there was still one structure “cannot stay” that had not been PQA’d on Monday. So I did that one for Krashen’s group the next day. It didn’t lend itself to PQA in the first place (this is key), so I just got my reps during the story. It provided the most energy, by the way, because it was brand new to the kids and in a crucial point in each location, which is thy way Matava builds her stories for maximum interest.
Dude, this is one of those topics we need to be talking about in person with a paper to draw it all out.
Step two: Story. Do you swear, Ben, by scripted stories, or do you have the urge (that I have, but maybe need to control) to want to fly a bit more freely and have the students create stories simply by good ‘story asking’ technique? If you think that works/could work, then could we – back to step one here – just PQA whatever we feel like, nerf gun style?
My response: as I mentioned when the teachers were in my room last Wednesday for the DPS learning lab, 3 of them asked me pointedly after the sessions why I kept looking back at the script during the story. I told them I have an egregious tendency to go out of bounds. For years I just went way too wide. Now, I know better. I stay with the script. I can still fly.
Flying can be done in bounds. Moreover, why should I litter the board with newly pointed to and paused at words? I don’t even like the work of Jackson Pollock. And, bottom line, it is more than the kids can remember much less acquire. Now, don’t misunderstand.
On Monday or at the beginning of the year whenever I am doing PQA I can go as wide as I want. Pure PQA (there are two kinds) is much different in its scope and object than when it used in stories. Steps 1 and 2 are the two different wheels of the auditory TPRS/CI cart.
So my response to this question is a resounding “stay with the script”. For me anyway. The only exception I can see on that is at the higher levels of instruction, and in those cases I would need to be the teacher of record since level 1, because that instinctual knowledge of what my kids know and don’t know is almost a requirement before thinking of going wide with upper level kids. Hope that makes sense. Let me know if not.
Step three: Reading. How did the dust of that whole November blog discussion on scaffolding settle down? Do you write your reading texts any differently now?
Of course, my responses on the reading thing are, as are all of my comments here, my own opinion. I need to say that from time to time lest we think that there is a certain way only to do comprehensible input. I share what works for me here. And mine is a bias towards simplicity.
So, everything that I do with the reading piece is simply laid out in my “Additions to Option A” blog post. It took me over ten years to come up with that, as it took ten years to come up with my rules. That’s a lot of field testing, and field testing that reflects my own personality.
Michele and Laurie are experts at scaffolding and embedding. They gave me a very good insight, during those November blog posts that you mentioned, that often, always really, I tried to embed too many new words too soon. It’s because of the old melted AP teacher I used to be scratching up at me from the floor.
Michele and Laurie made it clear to me that the scaffolding should be done much more gradually for the kids not to be confused by it. So, to anwer your question, yes, I changed my readings to reflect that key point. But, for me to design three to five layers of scaffolded text is just not the way I think, plus it messes up my simple weekly schedule and my own sense of what is by far most precious to me in all this – simplicity and balance.
Yes, I’m in for the long haul. Still a believer! I struggle with the need (healthy, I am sure) to innovate, create, etc…but that urge – especially as a beginner (Strider or not) – gets me off track often…how then to steer my 180 students back on track and not show that I’m essentially lost and loving it! Or show it. Who cares?
My response: Stay free on the PQA and fly all you want. But explore the two kinds of PQA and learn the differences and how to do them when you are in either Step 1 or Step 2 of TPRS.
ps Hi Kate! Thanks for the warm welcome back 🙂
P.S. Brian all I did was go off track for the first seven or eight years of learning this. I went way wide. My TPRS train hit the sand hard at 70 mph and plowed a big chasm in the desert next to the CI tracks, off towards the mountains. It is only in the past few years that I have settled on things that I KNOW work for me, which emboldens me to presume to share anything that I have come up over the years with others in this venue.
Each of us will grow into this work in different ways that reflect our personalities. It is more than a job, for sure, right? For me, it is a pilgrimage to greater unveilings of who I am not just as a teacher but as a person. So, experiment away, lose your way, find it again. The method is so big, there are many options, as many options as there are people. My big fear, a real one, is that the very beauty of the wide possibilities that are there are for us will take some of us so wide that we won’t recognize the approach after awhile. That is actually happening now, a deep topic for another day.