This story by Anne Matava is a great one:
He Talks Too Much
talks
stop it!
the whole time, all the time
Troy talks too much. He talks all the time. (At this point you can find out what he talks about, in what language, etc.) He goes to the movies and talks the whole time to John McCain. John McCain says, “Shhh! Stop it!” but Troy does not stop talking. The manager comes and says, “Leave the cinema!”
Troy goes to the library. There he talks the whole time to Lexi, who is trying to do homework.. Lexi says, “Shhh! Stop it!” but Troy does not stop talking. The librarian comes and says, “Leave the library!”
I wanted to add some coaching ideas on this one:
1. This is a great way to bond with a loudmouth. He gets that we don’t like his blurting and may have already been called to task by a parent whom we called about his talking in class. But, in the setting of the story, the kid can blurt all he wants. It acknowledges the kid without approving of the behavior and so builds a feeling of good will with the kid. That happened in one class today.
2. In another class, the quietest kid in the class was the loudmouth. It worked out equally well.
3. Now, we know after much discussion here that if we ever leave the target structures during PQA or a story to birdwalk around using new structures we run the risk of derailing everything. But what do we do when the out of bounds structure that appears in our minds during the questioning process is really cool? Do we allow it in or not?
I like to let it in. I know the risk, and I let it in anyway. But it has to be a high quality add-in. Like today during the PQA of this story, I felt like adding in two things:
- I wanted to ask the class if, when the teacher says “Stop it!” to the loudmouth, does he lose patience?
- I also wanted to ask if the loudmouth, when talking too much, showed or lacked respect for the teacher.
Now loses patience and showing/lacking respect are not allowed – ostensibly they have already been taught and I am not supposed to be using them if they haven’t already been acquired.
Then how do I get away with including those new bad boys? Because going out of bounds CAN be done. Here is my answer – I think of the discussion created by those questions as little bubbles. We go in and we go out. And when we go in, we act like they are structures.
Here is my point – if we say something new and allow it into the comprehensible input, then we have to stop with the other stuff and circle the new structures until the kids have acquired them. It is when we DON’T circle the new structures enough when the kids get confused.
After the new structures have been circled like for five minutes or so – whatever we feel is a sufficient amount, we can then return to the original structures and back into the story we are doing. So this is like doing PQA to bolster unfamiliar but relevant structures and make the story even stronger.
Anyway, I don’t know where all that came from. I just wanted to say what a great story He Talks Too Much is.