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Carol Gaab in Denver
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14 thoughts on “Carol Gaab in Denver”
I know it may seem insignificant to some of the big ideas already mentioned, but I thought that your weekly schedule helped give me a good framework to work with and kind of helps me from wandering off the CI path. It helps me squeeze more CI time out of a tight schedule.
OK I’ll make sure that the Weekly Schedule is on the final PLC Gold list. I agree. I wouldn’t know what to do without it. Probably the same insane all-over-the-place stuff I did before I had it.
Another goal I am trying to keep front and center is to be more mindful of purposefully recycling old structures.
I will look forward to Readers’ Theater information and discussion. I think it’s probably like what I’ve been doing instead of “live” stories that still gets students feeling personally involved, yet without the disciplinary problems that can come with “live” actors. Having a clearer idea and input from others would be great.
I think the real benefit was the opportunity for you guys to practice. I also think that you won’t get a handle on Reader’s Theatre until you actually do it.
During 2012-2013 the COACH group here in SoCal has been doing a workshop series on TPRS/CI. Originally we had planned to have different people take each workshop, but it didn’t work out that way. Instead, Jason Fritze and I led the first four workshops. As it worked out, I did the demonstrating and Jason did the kibitzing. The whole thing was a lot of hard work, and I had to overcome some emotions about people not stepping up to the plate, but in the end I gained something that no one else did. In reality, our demonstration was a Master Class in which Jason coached me while the others participated as the students, listened and observed. Consequently, I feel a lot more confident about my ability to do Circling, PQA and RT. (Our fourth workshop was on Backward Planning, and the final workshop will be on Culture and Music in the Target Language; both Jason and I have stepped back from this one, and someone else has stepped up to lead it.)
When you’re collecting the posts on RT, don’t forget the report on that workshop that I sent in.
I wish I were there.
Private lessons from Jason. I would take that – I don’t care how clutzy I was in front of the other teachers. He is the master.
Is this the post? – https://benslavic.com/blog/2012/02/20/rt-8-robert-harrell-on-readers-theatre/
No; this is the one I was referring to – https://benslavic.com/blog/2012/12/11/report-from-the-field-readers-theatre/
…our demonstration was a Master Class in which Jason coached me while the others participated as the students, listened and observed. Consequently, I feel a lot more confident….
This is the future of this work. Coaching. We can only read about TPRS so much. We can use video to the extent that we are able to see it modeled. But the real gains in technique come from standing on our feet and being coached.
Carol did some coaching yesterday with Jane Little and Jesse Sandschaper. One example – the scene was from Houdini and Brandon and his sister were talking while Brandon was eating breakfast rapidly. What Carol pointed out was to get clear action from the actors and make sure it was visibly comprehensible while Jesse narrated in Spanish. So, instead of just reading the line “Brandon and his sister were talking while Brandon was eating breakfast rapidly” and having some lame, unclear acting going on, Carol told Jesse to read it like:
Brandon and his sister were talking…. [and then model that, and then coach that, and then coax more and demand more from the actors to make it really clear]… while Brandon was eating breakfast … [and then model that, and then coach that, and then coax more and demand more from Brandon to make it really clear]… rapidly [and then model that, and then coach that, and then coax more and demand more from Brandon to make it really clear]…
I also think that when we start we probably should choose scenes that don’t have any dialogue in them. That is a higher art than just creating a scene without dialogue.
Maybe I can coax some more RT coaching from Carol today. She’s as good a coach as there is, except for Jason who is in a class by himself. But Carol is making it clearer than Jason. It’s in carefully considering and practicing each of these little details in RT that we will make it part of our teaching repertoire. Maybe some day we will look back and wonder how we ever did R and D without it!
With hell week around the corner (5 NE cities in 5 days), I have to keep this brief. Here are a few nuggets until I have to time to be more specific. 1) Start with a scene you have already read. RT is the TV version of the book. It helps students emotionally engage and increases comprehension. Weak readers NEED this. EVERYONE enjoys it. 2) Read a phrase or clause, PAUSE for actors to demonstrate. If they don’t re-do. If they do, re-do it more emphatically. 3) Repeat phrase, PAUSE for action. Continue to next part of sentence, PAUSE for action. 4) Insist on GREAT acting. On Day 2, we did another RT session (per Ben’s request) and Mason just couldn’t get the bus driver voice in Felipe Alou story. We redid it 5 times, and when he couldn’t get it, I asked for someone else to help him. Nina saved the day!! I never knew she was so FUNNY!! (intelligent, yes! Funny?…OMGosh! She is hysterical!!!) Get Nina to model good acting at your next DPS RT coaching session.
Off to prep for seminars. Will try to touch base soon.
:)cj
Thanks Carol! This helps me already… I’ve tried something along these lines but the tip to have them act part of a sentence at a time will help.
Yes Diane it could take an entire class to get through one sentence theoretically as we insist on the things Carol pointed out, which are, to repeat:
1) Start with a scene you have already read. RT is the TV version of the book. It helps students emotionally engage and increases comprehension. Weak readers NEED this. EVERYONE enjoys it.
2) Read a phrase or clause, PAUSE for actors to demonstrate. If they don’t re-do. If they do, re-do it more emphatically.
3) Repeat phrase, PAUSE for action. Continue to next part of sentence, PAUSE for action.
4) Insist on GREAT acting.
And really to expand on her point (4) above Carol also said how you just ask the class if the acting is “acceptable” or not and boy is that a big piece of this. You would be surprised at how many of the kids suddenly come to life with that question, like rag dolls become real. They suddenly smile and either shake their head no and you make the actor do it again and the entire class comes to life. THEN, and this is no small thing, you get a student to SHOW the actor how it’s done. This is what Carol was talking about with Nina, who provided the sound effects for the way the bus driver was talking to Felipe (really one of the most inspired things I have ever seen from Nina who should be in Hollywood doing voiceovers for cartoons). It is Krashen’s elusive word “compelling” for real, finally, in a comprehension based class, because once that level of sound effects and visual acting is happening in the class, every single rag doll student becomes a real kid! I’m going to be exhaustive on this RT stuff over the next few weeks so be forewarned. This is like jGR in the energy it is showing, and all I needed was a few tips from Carol. You are going to love RT!
It’s so helpful to read these reminders about RT-I’m doing Isabela #2 and we’ve been acting out a good amount of the book and I have the same 4 students acting because they do it well. I definitely don’t pause enough or repeat enough at all. These are good reminders. I also probably try to have students act too much of the book.
Getting them acting is addictive. I have only done it now for two days bc I feel that Carol provided the keys I didn’t get from Jason. I can see doing nothing but R and D and RT with Textivate for dessert, to work on writing. It’s a plan I am working on to make another template to follow – those three things. Briefly, here are soem of the keys that made RT click for me this week:
Beforehand, the kids have thoroughly been instructed (via all the circling and good R and D stuff we do) to be in complete command of the chapter.
Beforehand, we pick a scene. Now, here is something I am testing. I am thinking of writing out the five basic sentences that summarize the scene I have picked and just having it there for me for later in class. So, before class starts, I have already written out a five sentence summary and chosen the scene as well as having completely taught the chapter containing the scene. I suppose I could highlight the five key sentences as well and work from the book to get the scene going.
I don’t know – I am just thinking aloud here. I am feeling the same way about RT as I did when we were watching jGR happen and also when we saw rSF happen. It was like, I knew and sensed the power in those two things. RT is like that.
Let me say why. When the acting goes well, the kids are about 500 times more focused than even in the best story. At least in these past few days. Imagine being behind the stage of a play and being able to watch the faces of the audience as they react to a really good comedy. It’s like that. Definitely some potential gold here. And for writing too! Wow!
Another key, when the kids are up acting, the class must be able to see their faces. Today, in one class, the actor playing the insect lady couldn’t smile out of the corners of her mouth. She just couldn’t. Boy was I getting some reps on “smiles out of the corners of her mouth” bc of that, by the way. Like 50 of them. So then a kid walked in late and before he got half way to his seat I asked him (whispered in English) to smile out of the corners of his mouth bc I knew he could and would – and he did it perfectly – so I sat him in the train compartment with the insect lady and Jean-Luc and everytime we got to her smile, he just did the smile for her.
This is what Carol was talking about today in her earlier comment about Nina’s coaching and modeling – it was remarkable, exaggerated, done according to some emotion, etc. – things we will talk about later as we frame out RT.
RT is about coaching and modeling what you want.
Other tips that turned the key for me from Carol’s presentation were:
This one is crucial and why I couldn’t quite grasp RT before (and yet it has been one of my Classroom Rules for years): actors synchronize your actions with my words (Rule #6 ). In other words, if Jean Luc enters the car in which the insect lady sits, then looks for her in each compartment, and finally sees her, and gets scared and his sister tells him to go in and not call the police, the conductor or the parents, but to confront her, that is what the actor playing JL has to do in that order one thing at a time and each one blown up and focused and held onto by the narrator.
THEN and here is maybe the biggest trick of all, the main RT key thing from Carol/Jason – we ask the class if the way the kid played it, played each part of the scene, was ACCEPTABLE. You will be shocked at how much reaction you get from the class when you ask this question. Getting that much reaction from a class was new to me. I am used to working so hard on stories and now I am getting the kind of reactions from the class that I always wanted but not from stories, but from RT. There were a few times in class today when I kept thinking, “Who needs stories? This stuff ROCKS!”
I’ll talk about how the five sentences fit in to all this later. I’m starting to ramble here. But Carol THANK YOU for your visit.