Circling Vortex Image
Here is one way to look at circling:
Imagine a vortex/funnel cloud to which, with each next completed circle of the vortex, you can add a detail. You start at the top with the simple original sentence and then begin circling down through the statement, the question, the either/or question and the negative question, and then start adding in details.
Soon, you reach a point where the details become too numerous. There is no room in the sentence for any more details. Arriving at this point of saturation signals the end of the circling possibilities for that particular sentence and you now know that it’s time to move on to another set of questions. In this way stories are built.
Blaine Ray is the inventor of this vortex/funnel cloud image. Blaine explained to me that this is how he conceives of circling in a story. Later, when you are doing stories, you will learn that the vortex image applies as well to groups of sentences. They, too, can get saturated. When that happens, you just add in a new character or event to the growing and expanding discussion you are having with your students.
With that new character or event, whatever you are talking about will go off in a different direction. It is the job of the teacher to allow the story to develop in this way, but to never stop using the original two or three structures associated with the story. Those structures, and nothing else, are what you are trying to teach via all your circling in any particular lesson.
Don’t forget that in this vortex work you always have options about what part of the sentence to circle, as explained earlier. If you are trying to teach the verb “sketches” (the purpose of circling is to teach targeted vocabulary), then, as long as you include the target structure in each sentence, you may wish to start by circling the subject of your sentence:
Statement: “Class, Jerome sketches!” (ohh!)
Question: “Class, does Jerome sketch?” (yes)
Either/Or: “Class, does Jerome or Micky Mouse sketch?” (Jerome) “That’s correct, class, Jerome sketches.”
Negative: “Class, does Mickey Mouse sketch? (no) “Correct, class, Mickey Mouse doesn’t sketch, Jerome sketches.” (ohh!)
Question Word: “Class, who sketches?” (Jerome)
etc.
Or you may wish to circle the verb:
Statement: “Class, Jerome sketches!” (ohh!)
Question: “Does Jerome sketch?” (yes)
Either/Or: “Does Jerome sketch or sleep?” (sketch)
Negative: “Does Jerome sleep?” (no)
“That’s right, class, Jerome doesn’t sleep. Jerome sketches!” (ohh!)
Throw In: “Class, does Jerome vomit?” (no)
“No, class! Jerome doesn’t vomit! He sketches!”
Question Word: “Class, what does Jerome sketch?”
etc.
(Since there is no object in this sentence, we would leave that third option out.)
In this example, the last sentence invites a detail from the class – “What does Jerome sketch?” At this point, you can encourage cute answers in the target language from the class. In doing this, you are not committing yourself to anything more than adding one detail to your original sentence, but you can add more if there is room in the vortex (i.e. if the students aren’t bored with the circling yet).
It is a good idea at this point to make sure that your students are comfortable with and like that detail before accepting it. Once you accept it, keep circling it until you are sure that the students understand it. Don’t add, in rapid fire, another and yet another detail. Unlike real funnel clouds, circling vortexes are slow moving to allow for full comprehension by your students!
Don’t forget that you can bail out at anytime. Sense what is happening. If you sense that your students are tuning out, go to something else: another sentence, a brain break, one of the bail out moves listed in this book or in the first version of this book, or even another activity altogether. Learn to respond intuitively and fluidly to what is happening in this work.
Even after circling and adding details to even just one sentence, you will have shared a lot of understandable language with your kids. They will have understood and responded with one word answers to lots of sentences, which will all have been generated down through the vortex from just a single sentence.
In time, you will find more and more cute little details merging into and transforming the sentences you started working with. This will signal a gain in the confidence of your students that they are getting better and better at playing what Blaine calls the “game” of adding cute answers into the conversation. Circling and adding in details is an organic process, and takes different forms in each class you teach.
The sentences will become cute and personalized and funny if the students have been trained in what it means to provide cute answers into the classroom process as per the Classroom Rules. This way of teaching assumes that students were made to provide cute answers and laugh at how clever they are.
Each time you act astonished at how clever they are, your students offer even more cute answers. In a flash, once they know what their job is in the game, they become masters of transferring your old boring teacher questions into marvelous new things. Of course, you let them think that they are the ones doing that.
How to first get a class to learn how to suggest cute answers and get the game going? I usually set it all up by stopping a few of my more conscious students in the hallway or after class and I simply ask them to help me when I ask questions by making up cute answers. Students can’t read my mind; they need to be told how to play the game, but since I won’t speak in L1 in class, I have to set that up in the hallway beforehand.
When you see interesting discussion with lots of details being generated from just a few sentences in this way, you begin to see the alchemy of this way of teaching, without ever having to even do any strategies or PQA or stories. Just circling is enough to make this method work in your classroom!