Rejecting Suggestions

5 thoughts on “Rejecting Suggestions”

1. Carly

   January 29, 2020 at 12:40 pm

   I love it! I can very clearly imagine this story unfolding in class.

   Ben, I take my cue from you when rejecting answers, I say “That’s another story!” I’m pretty sure that was your line in some videos I watched many years ago and I have been using it ever since!

   I have been practicing thinking through a basic story line beforehand and getting student input only for details that don’t have an impact on the plot, like if the character lives in a house or a hotel or if the bakery specializes in croissants or pain au chocolat. And I have been practicing taking the plot directly from the character info on the back of their drawn image. If the character is sad, the problem is the reason they are sad. If they are happy the problem is someone or something that takes away the thing they like and that makes them happy. The kids give suggestions but they have to fit into that basic story line. I imagine Craig knew that the evil neighbor would need to be taken down and he let the kids decide what kind of assassin would do it.

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   1. Jake

      January 30, 2020 at 11:57 am

      I dig it.

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2. Ben Slavic

   January 29, 2020 at 2:21 pm

   This is a very sophisticated way to develop a story line, Carly. It feels as if we’ve come a long way since all the confusion and feeling of being hung out and dried from the old days, where doing a story was akin to running around on thin ice. I love specificity and a plan, and the Invisibles provide it.

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   1. Carly

      January 31, 2020 at 10:51 am

      Ugh, I totally failed at it today though. I was tired, the kids were squirrly, my artists were being too loud, and I just shut the whole thing down and I feel bad about it. I had the main character on the stool being a musical-loving sock who is scared of the dryer (individually created character) and we decided that the second character is her twin brother who doesn’t like musicals and is sometimes mean and the problem was that he plays a trick on her and locks her in the dryer. And I couldn’t think quickly enough on how he would trick her to go there and I was distracted by a side conversation and a student who looked like they were sleeping and I just made everyone go back to their seats. I ended up drawing the dryer on the board and asking questions with everyone sitting and no actors and we finally decided that the brother put tickets to a musical in the dryer. Next week we will try the video retell, but now the momentum is lost and it won’t be the same. Ugh.

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3. Ben Slavic

   January 31, 2020 at 2:55 pm

   Carly said:

   …I couldn’t think quickly enough on how he would trick her to go there….

   The way I see it is that you are putting pressure on yourself to think quickly and be the creative one. I stopped that long ago. What would happen if you didn’t put pressure on yourself to be creative? Would that be acceptable?

   Also, once the group had shown you the disrespect described above, they deserved a worksheet on relative pronouns or two, maybe a week’s worth.

   And I think you are introducing too much information here. I don’t know what level this class is, but even a third year class would have trouble with all of the words that were introduced as connected to the dryer in some way.

   Most students fake understanding, and it is because you are going too fast and using too many words, is my guess. I am almost certain of it.

   To repeat, when they act out like that it is not random. It’s not because of any reason having to do with anything else than the fact that they don’t understand.

   Don’t feel bad – it’s what everybody does. There is only one solution – slow down and shelter the vocabulary that you introduce.

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