Years ago I saw a well-known TPRS trainer reject an answer from a kid. That’s not a problem, because we all know that we are in charge of the creation of the tableau or story line.
However, this person rejected the suggestion from the student, who in fact was very proud of their suggestion because it obviously fit right in with THEIR idea of where the story was going, in a negative way, like “No, that’s not the right answer.”
So the question in working with student suggestions to your questions in developing a CI text becomes, how and when do we reject suggestions our students’ suggestions while still acknowledging the value of the student?
(By the way, an important side point here is that there are still teachers out there who accept everything and let the developing story line be ENTIRELY student generated – don’t do that. It becomes too clunky. Stay in charge of where YOU think the story line should go. Keep things svelte. That is what Blaine was so great at. He actually would stop teaching at each suggestion, look up in the air, maybe put his hand on his chin, and ‘consider’ if that might be in line with what he ‘knew’ the story line to be. Of course, he didn’t know at all what the story line was, but by pausing and thinking he was still keeping control of where he thought the story ‘might’ go. That was a key to his genius if you’ve ever seen him teach.)
Anyway, I got an email from Craig today, and if you read what he wrote below, you can see that he was definitely in charge of the story line as it developed, but at the same time he did the right amount of listening and accepting of students suggestions as well. Reading this brought a smile to my lips, because I could just sense and feel how the story line developed with Craig keeping the rudder on everything, assuring that the story would have the right balance – referred to above – of hearing and accepting student suggestions but still being in charge. It’s a balancing act and the story Craig captained reflects good balance and SIMPLICITY of plot, which is so key to our work with CI:
Hi Ben –
Today with my first period we reviewed our drawing from yesterday. Reviewed the story and fleshed out and established what the dialogue would be between the squirrel Jeff Cheeks and a Coyote assassin he was hiring to take care of his evil neighbor who wanted to cut down his treehouse.
Craig