If we sense that the class is willing to continue and engagement is still high, we can also add some of the details listed below to truly personalize the character even more. Of course, we need not worry too much if we don’t get to these additional questions when building the One Word Image. This is because the students often end up brushing up their character during the story creation process that usually occurs the next day (except in block classes when it happens in the same class period).
7. Age and Name
8. Favorite Number and Color
9. Likes
10. Dislikes
11. Family and Hometown
12. Job
13. Catch Phrase in L2
With questions like these, we do not need to wear everyone out with massive numbers of repetitions in one day, because we will be hearing and reading the same common L2 expressions in almost every story all year. Since they accumulate day after day as they are needed, the repetitions do not seem at all mechanical, contrived, or boring to the kids.
Moreover, I know that my students will encounter the newly emerged structures again and again later, as we review the artists’ work, as we recycle and do retells, and as we read the written text using the many reading options presented later in this book.
The fact that each image is unique to only that group of students is a very good thing. The stories are the unique creations of each class, something to take true ownership in, since they were built from the bottom up in a collaborative, cooperative storytelling experience.
(End of Series)