Novels are too long for me to be able to do authentic texts using embedded readings.
Here is another way to break down texts that may be 1 + 5 for our kids. (No we should not do them, but what if we want to do a text with a graduation class and we only have a few months to read it before they graduate? This post addresses that problem:
I’m now trying to get my level 3 kids ready to read The Little Prince. I want to read it with them before they graduate in the fall. But, I don’t want to read all the Blaine novels like Vive le Taureau! that are needed to get the kids to where they can read the Petit Prince. I don’t want to because I don’t have time – these kids graduate in June after three TPRS/CI years – but also because I just don’t want to.
So I’m going to try this idea from Annick Chen. Here is Annick’s idea:
1. pull words that the kids don’t know from the first lines or paragraph in Chapter 1 of the book*.
2. gesture those words (TPR).
3. PQA them.
4. read the paragraph.
and go through the book that way, one paragraph or even one line at a time.*
Annick used that plan in a level 2 class once. She didn’t do a single story all year in level two. She told me today that since there were no stories that year, when the kids came to her that next year in level 3, they really missed the stories from level 1 and they did a really great job at level three with stories.
This may be an idea for those of us who, like me, are struggling making stories work at the upper levels, because the kids are tired of the story format after two full years of stories.
*of course, if there is a passage or just a few lines that do not lend themselves to doing PQA with them, and this will happen often, just translate through that passage going from the L2 reading to spoken L1. I could see reading half the novel just translating it in that way. I need to give my PQA crazy self permission to do that. [Credit: Leigh Anne Munoz in a comment here yesterday]
Note: Judy made this comment below, and I moved it to this post, because it extends the point quite well, offering detail:
I pick out the words on a page that I suspect they don’t know and list them. There are about 10-12 words per page. I type up the list and put in red the ones that I consider high frequency. Before reading the page we look at the words, I ask them if they know any of them, I give definitions and examples for the ones they don’t know, which they write down. I do some PQA with the three or four words that are in red. I ask them if some of the words “speak” to them, if they think they’ll remember them because of an association, etc. and we talk about why.
Then we start reading and discussing the story. While reading, they have their notes for any words that they don’t remember. I try to use the high frequency words as much as possible in the discussion, so they’re getting more repetitions. In this manner we can read 3-4 pages in an hour. They are enjoying it and finding it easy. Both the adults and the teenagers love the story.
I’m hoping as they advance in the story that they will become more autonomous and will be able to read the last chapters on their own. I’m not being as careful or thorough about the unknown vocabulary as some seem to be. I’m certainly not getting seventy repetitions of each new word. But I figure that if it’s high frequency we’ll be seeing it again and again and again. If it’s not high frequency, it doesn’t matter.
My takeaway from this is to pick out ten new words per page, then type up the list and put in red those that look like they are high frequency, then explicate any words that need it, then doing PQA with the ones in red, since they are the ones that directly bear on success in the reading of the text.
