This addition to the cRD discussion is in the form of an exchange between Robert and me. I add it to the thread for general interest and clarification:
Robert:
If the stories are based on something the class creates, haven’t you already done essentially all of the discussion before the story is created? Then the story is the comprehension check with further transparent input. Students have an inherent interest in the story because it is their story, and it is transparent in meaning because it uses the language they have been acquiring through PQA, PSA, Storyasking, Acting, etc. I’m not saying that Reading and Discussing is not possible at this point, just that the story seems to me to be sort of an end product.
With a graded reader, the story is new because it is not one that students have created. I understand Ben to be saying that, rather than being totally a culminating event toward which you have been teaching, the reader becomes another avenue for acquisition. There is vocabulary that is new, so it is not transparent. Thus, you have two ways in which you can deal with that new vocabulary. The high-frequency, interesting words in interesting settings can become the structures for compact read and discuss; the rest of it becomes “snowplow material” – just get through it and don’t worry about acquisition of lower-frequency words as long as students understand the gist of the story so that they are ready for the next time you do compact read and discuss. You might not even read all of the parts of the book but just summarize them for the class (in the target language).*
*This fits very well with advice from Jason Fritze (just summarize the end of the book if you don’t have time to read it; don’t try to “cover the material” and push people) and with the “Rights of the Reader” from Daniel Pennac. Some of these rights are:
#2. The right to skip #3. The right not to finish a book #4. The right to read it again #8. The right to dip in [i.e. just read a paragraph or page because it’s what interests you] #9. The right to read out loud #10. The right to be quiet http://www.walker.co.uk/UserFiles/file/Rights%20of%20the%20reader/NYOR_ROTR.pdf
My response:
Yes Robert this is an important point to address:
…if the stories are based on something the class creates, , haven’t you already done essentially all of the discussion before the story is created?…
New people here in our group, especially, should take careful note that the presumed way it worked for the past twenty years, and we would all be told to do this at conferences, was that the very reason for the stories was to get enough reps on all the words in the book and, once those stories had led to acquisition of the words in the book, the kids would pick up the book and read it effortlessly.
But there are two issues with that:
1. It would take 50 stories to set up one book and there would be some much cross checking of structures, writing stories and then making sure this and that structure was in a story before it got read in a novel (gag me) and as time went on it just got nuts. There were too many words in the novel! And yet this is still done, except for me, who worships at the alter of Matava and doesn’t line up structures to set up the reading of novels for diddly because I am totally into the Natural Order hypothesis.
2. If Sabrina is right, that they need 2000 reps and not 200, that shoots that whole 20 year old plan in the foot anyway.
So, what to do? Well, do ER like Michele said here in this thread, and/or do what you said here:
…rather than being totally a culminating event toward which you have been teaching, the reader becomes another avenue for acquisition….