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Invisibles Question
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33 thoughts on “Invisibles Question”
Bobbi there are drawings but they are hard to track down. Generally galleries emerge from classes. Maybe if you can just get one drawing that is really good from one class and put it up there on the back wall then other classes will go for the bait.
Also there are so few elementary storytelling teachers in the first place that I doubt if it is being done at that level. I do trust that working from kids’ drawings as a starting point instead of structures will eventually become more common at the lower levels.
Maybe we can get some good answers to these questions from the group in the comment fields below.
I learned today that the mother of two boys in Margarita’s class in Agen, who teaches Spanish, is now using Invisibles with a class of seven year olds. She’s afraid it might not work with older students. Or rather, with older students she feels too much pressure to stick with the curriculum. Anyway, she’s very happy with the results.
My third graders do “The Invisibles” from OWI very successfully. Here are my stories from class, you can choose a grade on the right under catagories:
http://www.welovedeutsch.com/student-stories
We have created a character together in 2nd grade, but I drew it as the problem was more that the artist needed to be more prepped to know what to do. Generally, my 2nd grade is a very hard grade to teach and it’s hard to stay in German with them during class no matter what we do. Probably the hardest class I have EVER taught. One student told me today about his brothers who are both in foster care and his dad, who he has never met.
My first graders have drawn pictures and we talk about them. I had great success with story-listening á la Beniko Mason with them. They enjoy watching me draw, I think. We talk about their pictures but I haven’t gotten much into it with them.
…they enjoy watching me draw, I think….
It is a big advantage you have, from what I saw in Agen. I do believe that with the younger kids if the teacher has drawing talent it is an advantage.
(Kathrin I’m not sure everyone knows what Beniko advocates in terms of listening. Basically it is to forget all of TPRS and all the skills and just tell them a story. Maybe you or Tina can add to this below, since it is part of what is coming down the pike, in my opinion, echoing Russ Albright’s recent phrase here of our being in what he called a “Post TPRS” era.)
Story Listening as Beniko demonstrated it to me is an enjoyable, painless way to provide CI using pre-written stories and tales. Sounds simple, right? It is. It is strange to me that this feels new…when it is, in reality, as old as humankind.
You basically find an interesting story. I have experimented with traditional legends and tales from Québec, Haïti, and Mexico, as well as with stories the kids wrote in partnerships in class.
Then you tell the story in simple and comprehensible language, using basic good CI teaching skills like going slow, drawing things in the story to illustrate, writing L1 and L2 if needed, sometimes stopping to provide explication in L1. That is it. My kids have really enjoyed the stories they have listened to. Especially my French 2 class, who are sometimes harder to get enthused about cresting together. It is a cozy feeling that reminds me of Story Hour with Mrs. Buford at the Middle Georgia Regional Library. I made some videos of my classes.
Haitian tale:
Part One
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h1t_6e2V8rs
Part Two
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TqQNLJGb8-E
Mexican legend:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Usfz41lHqPE
Quick (maybe) off topic question, Tina. How do you define Level 1 and Level 2 at your school?
You teach middle school 6-8, yes? They are beginners in 6th? Do you see them every day all year? It seems like when we get into more creative, “organic” teaching, it isn’t so clear what we mean by levels. We are beginning to talk about this in my district where we have a variety of language teaching styles. It seems to me that those terms are obsolete, or should be. They smack of textbook.
PS I can’t wait to tell some traditional stories! Thanks to Beniko and you and Kathrin!
It does seem so obvious a thing to do.
…it does seem so obvious a thing to do….
Ditto. I know nothing about Story Listening. Very exciting! Thank you Beniko, Tina and Kathrin!
All four parts of the story “Die Bremer Stastmusikanten” is here:
http://www.welovedeutsch.com/story-listening
They are in German, as that is what I teach. I piloted it with my first graders. They understood the story well, even my ESL kids. Beniko Mason commented that it helped her acquire more German (as that is the language she’s working to acquire right now). She also told me that my Japanese kids were talking about the story in Japanese, which was amazing feedback for me as I would have never known.
I have since done it with my 3rd graders, who were amazingly attentive and could all tell me what happened in the story, and I am telling the story to the 4th graders next period. With my first graders, I had them color in animal masks and they record themselves acting the story out, because they love that stuff, with the others I just ask them quickly for a recap in English or have them write a quick summary as a formative assessment.
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1POZkt_5r0lHK_BlZhjD8IiIpsWzvNexZ6QGMkfCzu9A/edit
“Museum in the Sky”
Thanks for putting it together, Tina. Keep adding to it. It’s boss.
“It’s Lit!” as my seventh period seventh graders said on one of their SLA posters. 🙂
Ruth, I teach four seventh-grade classes and one eighth. We have a two-year program; sixth graders so far have only Arabic and Mandarin. We cover one year of high school over the curse of two years. But the alignment with the high school is the sticky wicket these days. They LOVE the textbook, like I have never seen people that enthused about a textbook, like, EVER. We could not be farther apart in our approaches. So I have Spanish 1 which is Semester 1 at high school, but for me is a year long. Three groups of them. And I have French 1 and 2, one of each. French 2 is mostly eighth graders. I *think* next year I will loop up with my seventh graders and teach them Spanish 2. I hope so! The parents seemed REAL enthused about that idea at conferences and I would love it too!
YES! I had forgotten about this resource. Thank you!
“I am thinking I could go as low as 4th grade, but doubt that my 2nd graders or 3rd graders would have the artistic ability yet.”
Hi Bobbi, I’ve had kind of a different experience than others here with the Invisibles drawings. I’ve used them in 6th and 7th grade beginner classes, both as individual drawings and coming from OWI. I know that’s not 2nd and 3rd grade, but I’ve found that we can get a lot out of a character even if it isn’t the greatest piece of artwork. They almost all want their turns to be the artist, and I give them their turns. No matter that we review the idea of big, bold, colorful, clear, etc, we still sometimes get small, messy, chaotic…or some combination of everything. But it still works! The rest of the class loves to see what the artist comes up with. We still use the artwork to review and retell. We get as much CI as we can. We hang them all up.
If I were you, I’d give them a chance. Maybe you could have them draw right next to you at first, in plain view and talk it all through with them as they draw. You know what I mean? Just a thought.
Ownership *IS* key. It is why I love this new kind of work so much – using the artwork so extensively. I might try to combine art with the story listening. Then we would have a collection of different artists’ drawings (from different classes) about the same story…might be fun to compare the details each artist decided to include.
I continue to be amazed at how much creativity I am finding in CI once I decided to not worry so much about the reps and the vocabulary words and the structures I thought I “had to teach”. It is like the cork popped off the genie bottle.
Forgive me if this issue has been extensively discussed here (please direct me if it has) as my PLC reading has been spotty this fall:{.
My question is, Tina and other OWI/Invisibles/Story Listening practitioners: Do the kids ever seem fatigued by the huge amounts of listening over several days of a cycle? Do you feel the need for all the novelty we were (originally) trained to incorporate? Does it ever feel predictable (in a bad way) to ask an image or story, and then take it through to the reading phase, and then do the same kinda cycle again with another OWI?
I see my ids only 3x week for 30 minutes, so it could take up to 2-3 weeks to ‘produce’ and write a story about a character and knit it in with the characters from the other classes…
I only did one (as yet incomplete) cycle of this, and it was going great, but I wonder if the kids really do crave novelty in the format?
Do you still have them get up and act?
what about props and costumes – are those on vacation/retired this year?
Alisa
…does it ever feel predictable (in a bad way) to ask an image or story…
This is a deep question. My answer is definitely not. It is predictable in a good way. Why? Because classroom energy and student buy-in are so high….
…it could take up to 2-3 weeks to ‘produce’ ….
Not if you only allow one detail for each character. I think it can be simplified down. And I guarantee you that the kids will come back over a number of days of not seeing you and remember every detail of their invisible character.
This is the real deal, Alisa, and the breakthrough I have patiently waited for what seems like forever in my own teaching.
I have noticed that many of my kids remember not only the details but also their excitement. Some of them light up and smile when they talk about our purple giraffe who lived in a mushroom in Russia. The same goes for Eddie, the guitar playing cat in the band ‘2 Direct Shins’. It seems like my kids recall both the TL and how they felt simultaneously.
I also wonder about the logistics of doing a cycle of story-read-expand if needed. I see my 6th graders twice a week and it seems like we always do readings on Fridays. That’s not necessarily a bad thing but I do feel pressed for time with them.
Alisa kids crave structure. Really. They crave predictability and safety and clear boundaries. And within that structure true creativity can happen. Think of the most creative places. Actors studios. Artists workshops. Laboratories. Highly structured spaces. In a high functioning creative space everything has its own place. This frees the thinkers and creators who work therein to devote energy to acting. Not finding the script in the chaos. So I think what Ben said is so true. We’ve been sold another bill of goods on the novelty piece cause the stories with targets are hard to get off the ground and keep afloat. People burn out. Ben wrote how many books on it? And he told me he wrote them in a desperate attempt to figure all the TPRS rules and regulations out. And he never did. But he sure tried! Fifteen years worth and in the last six months of his career he throws it all out and the movie went from black and white to color. Someone, his students in India, pulled the string on the light bulb for him, just before it was too late. And then people start giving him a hard time about it. WTF?
I know for me that I was not even telling many stories last fall. I had burned out on them. Too complicated. Too much management. We were just doing more chatting in the TL. Like unscripted not targeted conversation about any old topic just meandering through the language and topics. But the stories are the goodies. They’re what makes life fun. I missed stories but not the energy they sapped from me. It was emotional energy based in fear. Will this story be pleasing to the kids? Will they help me out with cute ideas? Will this story flop? Teaching in general is s fearful enterprise. I’m reading The Courage to Teach right now. My brother in law who is a priest gave it to me for Christmas. I’ve already cried three times reading it cause it’s so true. Teaching is a vocation that takes a lot of heart. And it’s scary and vulnerable. For everyone even traditionalists. Everyone. Fear is always there. But with NT work I feel a lot less fear. Anything we can do throw overboard or change, to lessen our fear and suffering and nervousness is worth discussing. I like waltzing into class with a string story or a loose idea of using a kid’s character. It helps me feel confident and excited to be there. Excited to share something meaningful and have fun doing it. Why worry?
Alisa asked:
…do you feel the need for all the novelty we were (originally) trained to incorporate?…
I think Carol gets credit for the phrase “The brain craves novelty”.
My answer is no. I think there were so many flaws built into old TPRS that dragged down the interest that this phrase just naturally came into existence. PQA not working? Try a story. Story not working? Read a novel. Nothing working? Attend a worskhop. Do something different!
The work Tina and I are promoting is interest that brings interest that is so sky high that we don’t need to go running to another novel activity. And yes I meant the innuendo on the word novel there.
Alisa if you still have questions, it means that Tina and I haven’t done a good enough job of fully explaining it yet. But we forgive ourselves, even in the midst of, for me and I am guessing for her as well, by far the most interesting work with CI we have ever done. We do need to make the Invisibles and SL more clear, and we will. It’s just that it takes a long time to roll that rocket ship out onto the launching pad.
A question about Invisibles and Story Listening:
I get that these are both nontargeted in their approach, and in that respect, they are very alike. Language that is needed comes up and gets incorporated into the class. However, Invisibles are highly driven by student content, and Story Listening includes very little student-derived content at all. In fact, I read often about high engagement with Invisibles coming from the student-created elements of it. I do understand that the stories chosen for SL are intended to be compelling because of expected student interest, so they’re the same in that aim, too. But the way they get there is so different.
How is that working out for those who are doing both, in terms of student perceptions of each? Is SL like a break from interaction for everyone? Are Invisibles like a chance to jump back into shaping the content more? I’m wondering how it works (since they are obviously working for many), not challenging. I do wonder how it works considering what I’ve heard you say many times, Ben: that if the content isn’t about the students (or something they created), they don’t care.
In other SL news, Jillane Baros & I met over Skype this afternoon. I tried a simple version of part of the story of the Chinese zodiac. Jillane is a total beginner in Mandarin. What do you know — it worked, including reading in characters afterwards. We also did a lot of teacher talk about the process & she was a great help to me. I now feel like it’ll be super easy to share this story with my own students (who already know the language I needed to use with Jillane, so I can tell my students more detailed versions & include a few new words).
I’ve wanted ways to share a few stories from Chinese culture in ways that are meaningful & comprehensible. I can also see SL as a way to prepare AP students for reading cultural & historical texts more enjoyably. I imagine that when I do this in my own classes, I’m going to end up asking some questions along the way to compare to them, or ask them to predict, or what they would feel or do in the same situation. That’s so ingrained it just comes out (even in TPR I ask students for ideas…).
Jillane wrote about it in her classroom Facebook page & reposted to CI Liftoff as well, & I reposted to my own FB page, too.
It took me a while to accept SL. Because I too was very passionate about the student driven nature of the input. I’ve found though that kids actually like listening. When the context is compelling they just listen happily. I mean watch a kid looking at TV. Mr. Rodgers is so engrossing. He’s talking to the kids – he’s making it really kid CENTERED not kid DRIVEN. That is to say it responds deeply to kid interests and is comprehensible because he speaks so slowly and his topics are developmentally appropriate and DEEPLY NEEDED by the kids’ moral and psychological development. But the kids are just following along. Just listening and thinking and developing. I am finding more ease for me and more calm for the kids with SL and the Invisibles. The kids just tend to get swept up in the invisibles stories with a lot less dithering over the details than I was used to. Shawna said the other day that the haggling over details in classic TPRS is like putting makeup on a pig. The pig is the targets. We’ve been sold a bill of goods. Not maliciously. Just out of the realization that there is only one Blaine. So we made up TPRS rules and skills and stuff like that. We made TPRS into having to be so much more “interactive” than it needs to be. Beniko supports this position. Because targets are too restrictive. With pure CI just communicating to them without all the circling, it’s more like watching TV. With a friendly gentle speaker guiding you through some deeply meaningful tales chosen for your developmental stage. In the case of the Invisibles it’s not chosen – it’s created by your peers so of course it’s appropriate developmentally. It came from a fellow thirteen year old.
I’ve only done SL once with level 1 and level 2 French. It was impressive. It seems to me that for level 1, I needed to build more context with more drawings, tpr, writing the word on the board and speaking slowly but fluently. It transported the kids to another dimension! The flow is the best and I do enjoy and so do the kids, that there is so much French being heard. My kids are basically at a tech/engineering school so SL was like watching television.
About context, I told the folk tale that Tina posted about Binta, a cindarella type of story. I think that previous knowledge and background helped students contextualize. This would help out novices. Since I recently saw the star wars series, I wanted to write up the story of star wars in French! Many students love the series a’s well as Harry Potter. Though it could set off some blurters if I get the details wrong. Any opinions?
…I needed to build more context with more drawings….
This is what we see Kathrin doing in her recent SL video. I think that is key.
On the blurting, I am really softening on that. Five years ago, there seemed to be a police force energy that we stay in L2 in TPRS/CI classes. But then we all realized that we have only 1/20th or so of the time we need to get our kids to fluency so what was the rush. There are two kinds of blurting, and I am a lot less freaked out by the fun kind. Using L1 in our classrooms is just not that big a crime to me anymore. Too many of us have been too full of ourselves on that point for too long, in my opinion. We kept trying to teach classes in which 5 to 7 kids dominated. That was crazy. We needed a full class community. That’s my song for 2017. How to build that and not worry so much about all the little things.
If I remember correctly, Krashen claimed that having prior knowledge on a topic allows us to access more complex language. Following that logic, the kids who know Star Wars could handle more complex TL because they have acquired the plot beforehand.
And this is why it’s a very good idea to read something in one’s L2 (L3, etc) that you already know & love in L1. My first novel in Chinese was The Hobbit. (The Hobbit is not so easy in Chinese, lots of terms for battles & landscape terms I never knew.) For years I’d tried to get myself to read a “real Chinese” book and never got far. Now I’m reading a sci-fi trilogy in Chinese & enjoying it a lot.
Great point, Diane! Sci-fi in Chinese sounds like a blast. 🙂
Alisa I appreciate that someone of your stature and ability and leadership capacity is exploring emergent target work/the Invisibles at the elementary level.
Just today, in speaking about this work at the high school level, since we KNOW it is great at middle school level, Tina happened to send me this in an email:
…since Rita (Barrett) piloted the Invisibles at her high school, a good number of other high school teachers have also reported happy returns from their classes with this approach, including teachers of students living with high poverty rates in diverse public high schools. So I am confident in saying that with the right invitation to the dance, and making sure that every step is completely student-centered, that the Invisibles will work with any level. Heck, I have seen adults laugh till we almost cried working with One Word Images. Let’s give older teens a little credit….
Happy 2017 to all of you!
It’s clear through the limited but powerful experimenting I’ve done this fall, that OWI, Invisibles and Story Listening are like oxygen for young/elementary learners. To a great extent we elem teachers are able to do the purest form of CI, as we don’t have to worry, nor are we tempted AT ALL by pop-ups/ grammar. We are held less accountable (we don’t give grades) so we are given the greatest latitude, and our evaluators can stand behind us because the kids LOVE IT – and that’s enough! (Well, plus they demonstrate tons of comprehension). Parents hear our stories and plenty of din at home!
Our classes are shorter and easier to manage in many ways (though prolly a lot more physically active? dunno…) We can discuss attitude and behavior with their homeroom teacher and arrive on strategies in short order – no phone calls or meetings.
We don’t have our kiddies write much and they are content to not be talking in extended utterances. Hardly any parents are gunners, hassling for harder differentiated work for lil Fauntleroy.
Our babes love to sing, dance, march around the room, wear costumes again and again, be ‘the potato,’ and lose themselves in the story. They DO forget that it’s in the TL – and they report this to me!
The direction this kind of teaching has taken reaches right back to cave painting, if you ask me…
I do wonder whether most schools/admins/teachers who are new to CI can fathom this kind of instruction from the get go. I can see where they wouldn’t think it’s legit cuz it’s so different. That’s why all the examples and Tina’s vids etc are so important!
I feel like through your experience you’ve cracked the instructional possibilities wide open, and a lot of the ‘givens’ must be re-considered.
Kids have DEAR time (Drop Everything And Read) in their homerooms every day, as well as Math and Language Arts Why can’t they also have Spanish Story Time 3x week – sometimes collaborative, sometimes Story Listening – always part of a sequence toward literacy (after 2nd grade)?
What a great comment to start out the new year. Thank you for the wisdom in it, Alisa, esp. this insight:
…the direction this kind of teaching has taken reaches right back to cave painting, if you ask me….
I get this, have been thinking about it a lot. How deep language goes. How superficial we have been in teaching it. How physical it is. How in the cells of our bodies it is. How it is a thing connected to being happy and enjoying our brothers and sisters as we go through life. How we can teach that way, not as if it is a chore. How much we at the secondary level can learn from you at the elementary level.
So much potential we have as we go deeper now yet again in 2017! It all looks so chaotic but it is not. It is part of an unfolding, a deepening, a return to our deeper minds, where language actually happens. We are going to be doing some serious spelunking this year!