Q Do you read the novels with the Invisibles program?
A. The novels are great additions to any CI program. My problem has been that many teachers introduce them too early, before half the kids in the class can effortlessly read them. That word “effortless” – it is such a key word in Dr. Krashen’s research – doesn’t happen much with the novels in school settings where comprehensible input is used. The whole backwards planning thing for the kids to be able to read a chapter was most probably developed because the kids couldn’t read the text effortlessly, so what does that say about the use of the novels? It says that they were too hard for the kids to read at that time in their language acquisition journey.
Q Can you explain that briefly?
A. So in backwards planning we extracted the words that the kids needed to know to be able to read a chapter and we put them in a list. Then we created stories to teach them the words so that they could read the chapter. But it doesn’t work. There were too many words to make stories out of. We found that it required at least three or four stories to prepare for the reading of just one chapter. The result was that the kids were constantly having to struggle to some degree to read the text. Some were overwhelmed and did the same kind of faking paying attention as they did in their grammar classes before that. Classes split down the middle between kids who got it and kids who didn’t. In no way were kids reading effortlessly in alignment with the idea about reading put forth by my mentor Susan Gross that the text should read like “a movie in their minds”.
Q So should I give up on the novels?
A. Not at all. The kids just need to be able to read them effortlessly. If they can’t read a novel effortlessly without all the backwards planning (and even with it most of the time!), then isn’t it safe to assume that it is above their level and would thus kick in the conscious analytical/reasoning faculty that is so antithetical to the research? And that would of course cause a spike in the affective filter. What the kids need is more auditory input and reading of the stories they create in class, which are not above their level, before reading the novels.
Q What do you recommend then?
A. I recommend that everybody move the novels back one year level. So if the publisher recommends a certain book for a certain level, bump that up a year. A first year book would be read by a second year class, etc. No novels would be read in level 1. The whole backwards planning thing was always a bust for me. I could be way off on this. Some of the best CI teachers out there seem to have no trouble with backwards planning of the novels. Joseph Dziedzic’s kids in Aspen, CO read like up to six novels a year. We all do it differently and all this is just my own opinion.