One of our biggest mistakes when doing stories is to get too creative and leave the story line that we have been given in the script. Stories work when you keep the train on the tracks. Yes, change the cars (the underlined variables) out, but don’t get the train off the tracks.
When you do this, you will notice that the second location of the story goes much better than the first location. This is because of all the repetitions we worked so hard for in the first location, not to mention during PQA. Why would a teacher in location 2 (and in location 3 if it happens) want to strike out in some new direction at that point?
The kids don’t know the language and are much more comfortable with words they know (from location 1) than with words they don’t know. Things are very steady when the teacher makes mirror images of location 1 in locations 2 and 3. The train is kept on the tracks and everybody is happy.