As a general rule, the most effective stories contain far fewer new ideas and far fewer sentences than most teachers have employed in storytelling in the past. It is highly recommended that teachers limit the amount of new information allowed into the story throughout the questioning levels. It will help everything.
Moreover, kids want stories to be short and sweet. The optimal window for the Create phase based on the Invisibles, not including FCR, might optimally stretch from roughly 25 or 30 minutes to 45 or 50 minutes. This works out nicely because then you can often start class the next day in the Review Phase in an organic way.
The fact is that in the early days of storytelling we used to try to milk stories, sometimes for days. Our thinking was that we were getting all those extra reps on targets by doing that, and the kids would know the words. But they were boring reps and we never saw how boring those long stories were, even though we ourselves were bored during the telling of the story.
We don’t need to do that anymore. It is the activation of different parts of the brain in quick and crisp stories that then get good wholistic reps in other forms through the star sequence that our students’ minds want.
The Star brings variety and interest by requiring the students to create and review a text and then read it and do extension activities with it.
