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Invisibles Level of Questioning 5
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28 thoughts on “Invisibles Level of Questioning 5”
School culture I think contributes to how creative students are.
In a Ken Robinson video, i forget which, he noted a study in which children come up with as many ways to use a paper clip. The youngest had asked questions like “does it have to be made of metal” can it be a “giant paper clip?” As kids got older their number of uses became much less.
Rigorous schools can kills creativity. I am doing untargeted work from an OWI with my French 2. I feel like they are not ready for creative questioning. I might be the age amongst other factors outside of school. My class today is a class of about 20. Despite some management issues, they are nice kids but they are having trouble with creating the problem. They are so used to being told what to do that when the ball is in their court. There is no response.
My sharpest kids can recall so many words even obscure ones. But that’s memorization! Where is the creativity? Did I train them to just be passive in level 1. I think that it is a complex issue that I feel needs to be teased out.
…there is no response….
Great information Steven and thank you. Certainly this work is about imagination. Please keep us posted.
In a couple weeks I’m going to try out the invisibles. I have a red llama named Brittany, a liger (lion/tiger), and a few other OWI created images that I’m going to try out. Tomorrow when the kids’ parents come into the room, I’m going to have all these images on the wall under their class number so as to spark some competition on the characters.
One post I’d like to see is how to stay in bounds on step 6. It’s the longest step, and it can take you anywhere.
Thanks for that second concern Jeff. We need to know what to look out for when we are up there spinning a story with the Invisibles. To recap, so far we have identified two concerns:
(1) How to get a problem going.
(2) How to stay in outbounds in QL6.
An overarching question is “What to we do with kids who have lost their imaginations?”
This is from the discussion in the Forum. It looks like getting the problem has been on our minds for a long time as this was in May!
I suggested using questions like:
Ask them “What is his secret?”
Tell them “She is angry/sad/alone/other not positive state of mind”. “Why?”
Ask them “What is the problem?”
Maybe this part is where people will get scared?
Ben said:
So to conclude here are the six suggestion to use at level 5 of the Invisibles story asking process:
1. Wait it out, even if it’s uncomfortable. The right problem will come along. Stay in the moment as per skill #22 in TPRS in a Year!
2. Make the characters have at least one really quirky aspect as you develop them in levels 2 through 4 to arrive at the problem creation point of the story in level 5. Quirky characters might lead to a quirky problem.
3. Put the responsibility of creating the problem directly on the the students (30 minds vs. 1) by steadfastly refusing to offer any answers to anything all year. (End the atrophy of their creativity created by too heavy a reliance on story scripts from previous years.)
4. Backtrack to add more details about the existing characters so that they have more information from which to create a problem.
5. If that doesn’t work, add a third character in Step 4 (with whom?)
6. Bail out. It is not such a bad thing! One day those 6th graders revealed to me one of the biggest secrets – really the biggest secret of all by far. We were in a boring story and they were clearly restless as we went through the character/location process of levels 2 through 4 and when we got to the problem at level 5 and couldn’t come up with one they just rebelled. The English was everywhere. They complained that the characters were boring, the story was boring and in a way and with a style that only 6th graders are capable of. I, of course, like a fool, took it personally. I obviously had not taken my own advice in that class in making it clear as I trained them through that first year together that it was up to THEM to make the story interesting. Taking it personally was my first mistake. The second was even worse – I refused to bail and take their very clear and emotion-filled advice to just “drop this story and start another one!” Such a simple thing and I couldn’t do it because of my ego. Oh boy did I learn something that day.
One observation – Jeff uses story scripts (Tripp, Matava). They work well for him. They have always worked well with me. When something works, we keep it. I include scripted stories in the “use” column along with the Invisibles. I do not include backwards planning for novels in the “use” column. And using stories to teach grammar concepts? Uh…no. I’m not saying it’s bad, just that it doesn’t work for me.
No rules. Just us. Doing what works for us and sharing it. There is no right way to do this work.
I like that you see this work as an art Ben. Your generally philosophy holds so much truth to our well being as teachers — there is no right or wrong, it has to be body-centered, it has to grounded in pleasure, mental health etc…
I means a lot to be experimenting so much and looking back and say well “Shit. What happened? Where do i need to adjust?”
My Level 1s are Rocking the house!
My level 2s (eighth grade) probably need me to SLOW down but above all re-connect after the summer.
These are some pieces of writing I am working on about this very topic, and may be helpful.
Sometimes a character just comes with a problem built in by the student who invented them. One student, Owen, invented a character named Frederick. He had a horrific skeletal zombie appearance but craved love. Everyone ran from him, though, due to his frightening countenance. This is the obvious problem and it taps into a universal adolescent concern.
Another beloved character from the seventh graders in Portland, Jill the Krill, was the world’s only pink krill in a literal sea of red krill. This problem of fitting in touched on issues of race and color, and thus a deep problem was already established by the student who drew Jill.
This is me just thinking aloud now…
We can build problems into the characters we create and refuse to start stories with characters that are so one-dimensional that they do not suggest a compelling problem. We do not have to do stories each day, and honestly my intent is to train my students to give our story rocket high-quality fuel, so I would rather do a reading activity, a dictée, FVR, or other work, if it means not letting them think that it is MY JOB to bring the ideas. Once they get that idea, they have permission to sit back, turn off their imaginations, and laze about, basking in my wit and hilarity. Sure, that is fine on August 31, when I am well-rested and looking forward to an evening of Olympia beers and lemonade around the grill in the backyard when I go home. This “Let’s Let Hargaden Bring the Noise” does not sustain itself through the winter, when I am tired and slogging through the dark rain each day. Scott Benedict says Teach for June. I say also Teach for February. Train your kids to sustain you, to bring the noise, to help CO-CREATE something fun, or deep, or at least cute. 🙂
I will continue this discussion under “Problem Creating the Problem” in the Forum.
I am catching up on the Invisibles and untargeted/emergent story theme. What forum are you referring to? Thanks!
Here’s the blog post telling you how to join the Forum. I am assuming this is still the way to do it. There is a tab at the top of this blog that takes you to the Forum.
https://benslavic.com/blog/registering-for-the-forum/
Tina wrote, “…my intent is to train my students to give our story rocket high-quality fuel, so I would rather do a reading activity, a dictée, FVR, or other work, if it means not letting them think that it is MY JOB to bring the ideas. Once they get that idea, they have permission to sit back, turn off their imaginations, and laze about, basking in my wit and hilarity.”
And Ben wrote in the Forum last spring describing another aspect, “The fact is that if the teacher is the one driving everything forward, there is no “space” for the kids to join in the game. Most importantly, if the details of the story are not provided by the students, they will not be interested in the story. The instructor must create spaces via artful questioning that allow for those spaces to be filled by students’ answers that are interesting to them.”
The tricky and frustrating part for me has always been when I give the kids plenty of space and they don’t fill it, and there are some groups like that (thankfully not all). They are negative and have a hard time getting going. And then I feel like I should get things going, and they don’t particularly care, and then it’s a vicious cycle. Then we hobble along or go to a bailout move which feels like a defeat.
What Tina and Ben said work together, a super important perspective and awareness for me in those particular classes especially, but always, too. This just really struck me this morning in thinking about some of my classes as the year is beginning and my not wanting to feel stressed out.
In a nutshell – either we (ALL of us) get something going in an imaginative way, whatever it is, or we do something else that won’t feel like defeat. No need to get all bent out of shape about it. What makes something suddenly click?
I don’t see any recent action in the Forum about this. That’s why I continued here.
Bam! Your insights are honest, Ruth. Ruth Truth. You get it. Many of us continue to play the “I”m Not Interesting Enough at this TPRS Stuff” card when in reality we are dealing with kids who, bless their hearts, have had their imaginations lobotomized over their years in school. I have ALWAYS felt the way you describe. Except not with the Invisibles. What is your status on that?
Also, this summer in Agen Kathrin Shechtman (http://www.welovedeutsch.com/) had the insight to pair OWI with the Invisibles to get the interest rolling from the image. (I now firmly believe that in my own CI world images lead to imagination more than words, which are merely representations of images so why not go to the source?) And so in doing that Kathrin gave us a formula for high interest right away. Tina and I have not yet had time to edit that change into the existing book but will as soon as we can.
Also if you read Esther’s report from the field today you can see a dramatic explanation of how the one word images have worked with her lately. We have honed the prompts on OWI over the summer and feel that what we are sharing now is better. I need to get a post on that.
I had a great time with Invisibles and OWI last year in 6th grade classes. This year has barely begun, and I’m not worried about the 6th and 7th grades. I feel really good about Invisibles and OWI and leading into stories in all those classes.
It’s the 8th graders who were difficult 7th graders who I am thinking about in what I just wrote. Too many of them are just cranky and critical, unwilling to engage and interact. But I’m not giving up. With my new perspective, as of this morning, we’ll see how it goes. We’re doing 2 Truths and a Lie about summer first off. I’ll move on to OWI after that. I thought I would start with a word I choose for OWI – valise or roue ou escalier – something that leads somewhere, and see where they take us 😉
No matter what we do, this new perspective for me will help. It’ll help as we continue with 2 Truths tomorrow. It’ll help all year long and…
Okay, on to painting windows.
Another piece is that the 8th graders are still beginners, but they think they should be fluent now since they have had 2 years of part time French (2 or 3 times a week)! They don’t recognize what they do know, and just think I’m not teaching them anything, so they get snotty.
I do have to up the level of questioning and discussions around OWI and everything we do but still stay close to the basics, too, because they still need that. It’s supposed to be Level 1 over 3 part time years. Last year’s 8th graders didn’t really have a problem with this.
There is an art to deciding on the object. It must be simple and not have many moving parts. Ask for size, color, name and add a face, at least eyes.
Above all, do not tell the kids what the image is at the start of class. Anything from a teacher is suspicious, could be on a test, related to a grade. Act like there is an invisible kid in the back of the class. This invisible kid is the one who suggests suitcase, wheel, whatever YOU feel like working with that day (how YOU feel about the image counts most because in one word images and in all comprehensible input you have to be into it, to feel like it is interesting to you, etc. That is why I am fine with a different image/Invisibles story from each class.
Stairs as an image are too difficult to give a personality to, I would think.
The way the invisible kid in the back works is that you say, “Wheel! I like that!” and point to the back of the room. By the time the class has finished turning back to the front of the room to see from whence came the suggestion, you have roue – wheel written on the board. You have succeeded at this point in making the kids think that the suggestion of a wheel for a one word image came from them. It is so important to do it that way as we all know, because nothing we say can be interesting. We blew that a hundred years ago when we first started making ourselves into know-it-all judges and test givers instead of love givers in our profession.
I like to get size and name and color and mood and then maybe get into the eye color, size of the face. Small faces in big heads really draw the kids in. The ideas presented in this comment represent an improvement on OWI as it is described currently in the Big CI Book and in TPRS -the Easy Way, which I will upgrade to reflect the information in this post unless I can get Tina to do it, who somehow has the same mind as I do when it comes to comprehensible input, which is really weird to find someone like that.
Then one more thing: you want to add in one “hook” detail. For example, the image has a REALLY BIG body and a REALLY SMALL head. Or three eyes. Stuff like that. Anything that has the same effect as when a dog hears some weird sound and crooks its neck to the side to try to figure out what is happening.
Also, be careful not to let the artist start drawing until the image has been decided by the class. Otherwise, they often draw in stuff that is not happening which screws things up later. I am changing Rule #7 to “Actors and artists synchronize your actions with my words.”
The odd hook detail and face is what ropes the kids in. How can they resist an unhappy (in case it becomes an Invisibles story, unhappy is easier to create a problem…) dog with a really big body and a really small head with a very small face with yellow eyes named Chet?
Also avoid asking “where” and “with whom” because once you ask those two questions you have basically launched things into a story. All that is needed once you add those two things in is a problem. Of course there is nothing more wonderful than when all your careful questioning as per the points made above leads you and the kids into a story. It happens a lot!
One more thing, and we learned to do this over the summer at the various workshops – sculpt the image, as per:
https://benslavic.com/blog/sculpting-one-word-images/
Wanted to bump this because I still haven’t gotten what I need to be confident in the transition from OWI to Invisibles story.
Do you just come out and ask them in English…”Okay guys, we need a problem. What’s our problem?” Is that the bump you get over and then it’s smooth sailing?
I do not ask in English. I ask in L2, “Quel est le problème?” or “¿Cuál es el problema?”
Mostly I just tell them. It is my story and by that time we are usually on a fast train to Happyville or at least working with a solid little story – because it is based on a known quantity – a character WE made (OWI), or ONE OF US made (Invisible).
I find that with the OWIs and Invisibles, the kids are much more likely to just be “along for the ride” than before, and I can just guide the story to Happyville once we establish (with kids’ input) the Who, Where levels. (With Whom is also in there in the seven levels but right now I am working with just five: 1. Class Meeting 2. Who 3. Where 4. Problem 5. Location 2 and solve problem.)
Before, during the nine years I spent doing stories the old way, which is to say focused on language slices (targets) and not images, I found that we rarely made it to the place where I could just hum along with the story. For one, the characters took time to set up as they were not a known quantity. Two, I needed more student buy-in cause the stories were usually a little dull, so I needed more student input into the details, etc. Three, I was spending a lot more mental energy on remembering the targets and saying them and asking questions about them and suchlike. So I needed more help from the kids. The new way – the easy way – I feel more like one of those storytellers at an improv story telling competition…just letting the story unfold from my own head, with a little input from the kids, but I feel that I am in the driver’s seat as far as getting the problem/traveling to Location 2/solution goes.
The idea is to talk about something they find interesting, not to personalize every stinkin’ thing that gets said. If you can come up with a relatively believable problem once you have THEIR character in a location THEY chose, then you can pretty much take over, until you need to I guess I might be moving away from Susie Gross on this point. Maybe we can P too much. It is clunky sometimes, and unnecessary with this high-interest system that we are using now. I am amazed at the energy level in my classes around stories. It has never been so high. I have never been so relaxed too. Win, win.
Jeff if you are reading Tina puts the hammer down on the problem creation issue:
…mostly I just tell them. It is my story and by that time we are usually on a fast train to Happyville or at least working with a solid little story – because it is based on a known quantity – a character WE made (OWI), or ONE OF US made (Invisible)….
Yes you can P too much. I agree Tina. I like streamlined stories about characters over all the P. Really well said. Plus, people have been intimidated by PQA for far too long. We’re changing this. No more circling, no more targets, no more using the stop sign, no more a lot of stuff except fun CI. I have asked Tina to write an article on stopping the use of the stop sign, which I first suggested over a year ago. We may well have finally arrived at the juncture in this work after over two decades where working from images created by the class in a certain way, formula, can replace, it certainly has for me, all the old confusion, all the training from self professed experts. So many people would like teachers to think that this work is complicated. But there are no experts. There’s just us. I think I’ll publish that prayer for Sunday night tonite.
It’s not always a bump. Just like in regular stories, our mind is always on the lookout during the character description and the general build up (the image, where, with whom are the keys) to the problem. In my experience, I am able to successfully generate a problem myself about half the time by the time I get to Questioning Level 5 (the problem) just by being on the lookout. It naturally emerges by then. The rest of the time, yes, just can ask in English or L2 since there are no rules. I have more thoughts on this in the two comments below as well, Jeff.
Okay. The half the time really helps. It gives me perspective.
Jeff another thing that Tina and I have found is that a good problem is very often the result of a compelling image. In that sense, I prefer that the child create the image at home individually instead of using the OWI.
The more compelling the image, the better the problem, so that with the Invisibles we have to think beyond linear terms and facts to create the problem, as we used to do with stories, and learn also to rely on the image itself to create the problem.
I first saw this happening with a shoe drawn by Kathrin Shechtman this summer in France. It was more than a shoe, it was a person, and it had problems, and so do you see how that can translate into a problem for the story?
Below is a brilliant (unedited) passage written by Tina from the next edition of the Invisibles book that expands on this idea. By the way, Elena Overvold in Portland, who is having success with this approach in her high school, says that this passage here is at the heart of the book for reaching her kids of extreme poverty who have turned off to/seen through high school:
A boy in Tina’s class drew a character who was ugly and looked like something from a horror film. However, in Frederick the Skeleton’s back story, the student was careful to specify that Frederick was actually a real nice guy who was sad that people ran away when he came around, because of his horrifying appearance.
How could we not be interested in these creations that hint at the intense, hyper-real world of identity and self-concept that is so crucial to the work of growing up? It is my firm belief that every single Invisible, no matter how cute and innocent, contains the seed of something deep, as all art does.
Using images in a first- or second-year class thus helps our stories to access layers of human experience, through the visual element and all the emotion it can convey, that would be inaccessible if we were only using language to communicate. Is this not what we want in our comprehension-based language classes? That even Novices can begin to use their new language to communicate something real? And meaningful?
So when we access deeper layers of human experience of human beings who happen to be trapped in high schools due to their age, via these images, due to the projected aspects of themselves onto an invisible character, we are probably going to have problems for our stories out the wazoo. So that is another answer to your question about how to generate a good problem in an Invisibles story, Jeff.
That aspect of revealing a deeper personality of a high school kid, by the way, is why I personally prefer that the kids draw the images themselves over OWI.
Another way to establish a problem is to work from a list of possible story hooks. These could even be pre-written and kept close at hand for quick reference. If you try this, Jeff, we would like feedback (that goes for anyone anytime working with the Invisibles). This passage from the newest edition of the book was written by Tina:
Pre-planned lists of possible story hooks will be different for every teacher and ideally for every class, to reflect what is important for that group of kids/drawings at that time. Just like you will only want to suggest images that you love, that speak to you and lift the corners of your mouth, you will only want to work with story hooks that call to you and your students in a deep way. After all, you are the one telling this story. You need to love the image you are working with as well as the message that the story conveys. In the problem, the message has its seed.
There are several ways to develop this list of deep problems that speak to you and your students. One way is to work from a list of strong hooks. Thinking of favorite films, fairy tales, stories, or books is useful in developing a list of prompts that speaks to you. A short list of strong prompts is provided below to get you started.
1. A character is so beautiful that looking at them is blinding.
2. An employee or student or pet is uncooperative and tells the boss or teacher or their person what to do – power differential reversed.
3. Two characters are physically stuck together and cannot agree.
4. The character discovers a doppelgänger – good or evil.
5. A character locks another character away, or keeps them on a leash.
6. The character is ugly on the outside but beautiful on the inside and is therefore lonesome.
7. The character does not want to be what they were born into, or does not want the life that has been imposed upon them, or wants something that is impossible to have.
8. The character is half good and half evil.
9. The character is alone and wants to be with someone, or is with the wrong group, or is with people and wants to be alone.
10. There is buried treasure in a faraway location.
Another way to develop a list of strong one-sentence prompts is to have the students generate them. These can be written on small pieces of paper and kept on hand for your reference in storytelling.
Generally, though, a good, strong problem emerges from the character, the location, or the second character. In fact, I hesitate to select a character from the pile of drawings unless it suggests a problem via its appearance or back story. You might also want to have a list of strong hooks on hand for times when you get “stuck”.
As long as the story line emerges organically from the kids’ creativity, it is going to be good. If it is in any way forced, the odds are against it being good. You can give up the nervous feeling of having to force the story (old TPRS), since the levels of questioning will guide your story down the tracks to a guaranteed ending. (You are also kept on the tracks if you are fortunate enough to have a good story driver keeping things moving crisply forward.)
Ben, these hooks are INCREDIBLE! I think that part of this work is to also know what builds a great story. With the invisibles or any other targetless stories, it is the questions that can lead the stories to gold.
I think that part of the problem with developing “the problem” is that some classes may not be aware of what makes a good conflict in the story. I am sure that ALL students have seen examples in books, stories, movies, anime, netflix etc…. However because they were so focused on the message, they were unaware of the FORM or general story structure. As storyaskers, I feel that we can be more effective or rather more compelling by being aware of “loose structures” that can lead us there. We can use “hooks” as a bail out but also to model (in L1) creativity in the classroom. My relaxed/cooky nature this year had paid off to the nth degree with my year ones. There are so many suggestions!
Not every story can be a homerun story however, as teachers if we become aware of strange hooks, conflicts, characteristics and world building (setting) then we can improve our messages towards compelling — messages that resonate with our students.
The above is just an idea and I do not advocate for pure isolated “skill-building”. Yet, if we can have practical examples, we can move further in targetless work. The invisibles lit a fire that will not be stopped. I expect that more teachers will come up with various systems that will continue to engage students at the heart of their LADs.
I have never fully read the Tao but this work reminds me of this particular passage.
The Tao that can be spoken is not the eternal Tao
The name that can be named is not the eternal name
Full Link:
http://www.taoism.net/ttc/chapters/chap01.htm
Anne Matava is the one who, in my own experience at least, can write a script with a kind of naturally occurring, unnoticed as you say Steve, hook in it that really grabs kids. Without those scripts, I would have quit TPRS. She’s just good at script creation. (To be clear, targets were only put in scripts for the same reason Blaine went along with them, bc of the status quo. That first happened in 2001). I shy away from pure hooks for the same reason Tina outlines below and also bc I don’t want to have to think too hard during the first ten minutes of the story, preferring the problem to emerge naturally from the image.
I swear, I still have not ever had too much trouble with the problem. Most of the time I find I can just tell them what it is, or they have great ideas when I ask. This weekend I did a demonstration of a story based on a OWI. It was a purple Twinkie. Because of the limitations of a hour and forty-some minutes, I had no time to give the OWI many features, beyond a microscopic face. So then in the story, the problem was real obvious. In Level 2-3 of the story (Who and Where) we had decided that the Twinkie was a student at the University of Bologna in Italy and was majoring in Lasagne studies. She had a final exam coming up. But, bam, level 4 (Problem, in my condensed story steps I am using to warm up to seven levels) came and I asked what the problem was. Well, she had no hands, with which to make lasagne. It was easy. Just try it! Jump in and trust in the group process. I wrote that list of hooks but I doubt they will get much of a workout in my room. People just be too creative.
Tina. I agree with you even more now. For me, those hooks are a plan C. Today I was observed with a non targeted invisibles story. Kids were good but came up with 3 really good problems. There are times when the energy is low but maybe its the combination of a quirky character AND engagement of the kids. Our character was a pizza slice with snowflake syndrome.
Of all the ways to get a problem, the best in my view is to take everything we have up to that point – character details/back story, where, with whom (if you use that one)- and that information will lead to a problem naturally. Plus, so what if we don’t get a problem? Big deal. We write up what we have and move on. For me it’s not the problem that counts so much as a really cool character that is really well drawn. The better the drawing, with vivid colors and some weird detail like a really small head, the easier it is to come up with a problem. The created character in this work is everything.