Anne Matava told me recently that my explanation of the Invisibles this past summer at the Maine workshop made a difference in her understanding of how they work in the classroom. She had read the book A Natural Approach to Stories (Teacher’s Discovery) but not fully understood it until I modeled it in a one day full-on the Invisibles workshop in Maine. Then she wrote this to me:
Ben –
LOVE LOVE LOVE the Invisibles. The workshop brought it all into focus.
Now here is a great question to add to the list of OWI questions: Is his mother/father also a __________________(pretzel, tin can, whatever)? For some reason that one is wildly funny. We had a dinosaur with a casserole for a mother. In one class we are building a pictorial family tree, as each character ends up being related somehow to the previous ones. In the mix is the one human being–the superintendent of schools!
So thanks! I love this so much. Thank you.
This set me thinking. What if I were to do a video group study of the Invisibles, for those interested, here on the PLC? I could just share the same information that I presented to the Maine group last summer that helped Anne understand what was going on – that helped her get a clearer view of what the Invisibles and one word images, the jobs, individually created images, the seven questioning levels, etc. are. We could throw in discussions of non-targeted theory, but they would have to be very limited since it is clear by now after almost two years of testing by lots of teachers that the Invisibles work, so why have all the theoretical discussion?
The only problem is that such a study group would have to be small. I cannot see putting videos that I make about the Invisibles on FB, for example. There would just be way too many people. The discussion would make the talk in the Tower of Babel sound like nap time in a nursery school.
There is a problem. It is hard for me – a big hassle – to post video here in our PLC. It’s just the mechanics of it, and if, as I plan, we do about a ten minute study video/discussion on the Invisibles every day, I would want a simpler format to upload the video. My solution is to just put it on my FB page and make that page private so we can keep the group small.
This is all preliminary brainstorming and I write these ideas here hoping for a response from the group on the viability of the idea. Ideas/comments are welcome from those in our group who are working with OWI/Invisibles.