Jim sent this. It definitely warrants discussion:
I’ve been thinking for a while how to allow ourselves to share stories with each other so that we don’t have to necessarily write up everything from our stories all the time. I think that would save us considerable prep time. The way I see it working best and most efficiently is if we are on the same page (i.e. the same story script) so that our readings are comprehensible to each other. I have been considering trying to publish a book that would have original readings in several languages that stem from the scripts in my book. But that would no doubt become stagnant and outdated after a short time and lack all of the awesome readings that are developed after publication. What if it were a website? How would it make the person enough money to make it worth their while? Is it even something teachers would want to invest in? I would appreciate any opinions on this.
The Problem with CI
Jeffrey Sachs was asked what the difference between people in Norway and in the U.S. was. He responded that people in Norway are happy and
10 thoughts on “Readings”
http://www.tprstalk.com has a folder option with the ability to store an unending number of stories. We have been inviting people to put their embedded readings there and slowly but surely are building a library. Right now there are readings in Russian, Spanish and French. Michele and I would love to have any of you check it out and/or leave one of yours. Seems like we could do the same with stories. Unless you want to keep it to this group, and then perhaps google docs?
with love,
Laurie
Why keep it to the group? We could load up every good reading that we write there and access it easily, it sounds like. I would need to make some kind of link there.
Another idea I had was that we could all do the same story maybe, every once in a while, to compare notes that weekend.
I love that idea…even if there were stories that came out in French and Spanish, I have enough kids who understand other languages in my classes that they’d probably enjoy seeing how other classes engineered a story.
It sure would help me. Do we write them first in English and then work towards our target language from there. It will be a cold day before anyone does Mvskoke, but then who knows. I just passed off some Spanish stories to my Spanish teacher here in Extended Day and she was excited! And I have a Russian teacher I am observing this afternoon for class management, but I can hardly think of what her life would be like if she was doing TPRS. She is a great young person and her class is small and intimate. So, bring those resources on.
Kate,
If if your Russian teacher is interested, I could share materials. We have a beginning of an easy Russian novel, and a few materials that have been thoroughly vetted.
Michelle–
She could really use resources. We are working in that class with 5 little guys (k-2) but one of the children is the daughter of Russian immigrants (which isn’t a big immigration population in Tallahassee, FL). I suggested after reading the Brown Bear post to do something with my other 2 teachers (who are college students working for me and know nothing about TPRS). Each of us is going to teach the story. Each of us will take a section and by the end of Dec. our students will present at the school’s weekly Friday performance the story done once with 3 different language sections. Got any Russian Brown Bear resources?
Kate
For jim’s idea, if you’re wanting to keep the stories in your book more private, what if you had a password protected website for teachers who buy your book? You could add teachers as collaborators on a wiki. You could use a free site like google sites or wikispaces so that it wouldn’t cost you anything, and the sharing of resources would add value to your books and to the CI community. I’ve also heard of people using facebook, but many of us can’t access that from school.
Carla, this idea has come up in my mind a couple times, but you make it sound easily doable (in contrast to how I was imagining it).
I’m guessing that there are several folks who have bought my script book who are not blog inner circlers who would benefit from such an added feature. And as Ben rightly warns, it wouldn’t be a mess of stories that would cause us more grief searching out than writing out own. It would be simple: You want a reading for X story, in French or Spanish or Chinese (maybe!), you go to the password protected site (password in the scripts book) and you find the story you want a reading for. I like this idea a lot right now. But I’m still listening…
I’m not saying we need to keep the readings private, just pertinent to stories that we use and out of the endless cloud connected to the list. I want things specific and organized. For example, if German teachers on this site use the Deutsch Aktuell series, then we can have stories here under the readings category. And those who use Tripp’s and Matava’s scripts could find lots of embedded readings from those books. Ii would never go looking in a huge place with millions of stories for my readings. By the time I found one, I could have written five.
As a new TPRS person it is so much more helpful to grab a reasonable script of 5 lines and translate to my target language. And then key my personal actions to teaching the target phrase or words. I am still at the scripting myself stage. I need those ? words on the back of my hand. I also want to know if anyone knows of a TPRS person existing in N. Florida? I need help from someone watching me.