Hey Ben!
Just wanna give you an update on how things are going with the Star. We’re in November and the Star is still a game-changer. It’s amazing what some of my classes are doing. My 6th period class has created their own “cinematic universe” with our stories. One of our very first OWIs was a pink orangutan named Dr. Tang. He’s shaping up to be some sort of super villain, in a way, and has been making appearances in all of our stories. Here’s a recap of how things have been going regarding that period in particular:
- OWI of Dr. Tang was created. We weren’t doing stories yet, but we loved this little guy.
- We eventually made a OWI of a purple jellyfish in an aquarium in Dubai. We did a story and the problem in the story? Dr. Tang arrived, ate the jellyfish’s friend and blew up the aquarium.
- A OWI of a blue goat with a pumpkin head. His name is Jack. He’s in a swimming pool in Punta Arenas, Chile in July. He’s with a penguin named Ping-Ping. Problem? The goat can’t swim! All of a sudden the “goat” off it’s mask and revealed itself to be the one and only Dr. Tang. Dr. Tang saved the goat with a helicopter and they went to Antarctica.
- Story today: OWI of a little yellow crocodile named Bubbles. Bubbles is in Orlando, Florida with “Florida Man” (don’t get the “Florida Man” reference? just google it). Florida Man wants to go to Disney, Bubbles wants to go to Universal. Florida Man kicks Bubbles, Bubbles flies to Dr. Tang’s laboratory. Bubbles knocks on the door and Dr. Tang says “Hello. Welcome to the family”.
It’s starting to look like Dr. Tang is assembling a team of some sort, I’m very excited to see where this goes and it should really heat up when we start doing Individually Created Images. Today the term “DTU (Dr. Tang Universe)” was coined due to our stories having a tendency to have Dr. Tang pop up.
My first period class is killing it as well. Today they made a story about a skeleton cat that works at Chik-Fil-A. Amazingly enough, it was their idea, I didn’t fit the word “works” into the story but it’s definitely a word that level 1 students should know. When it’s non targeted and interesting to the kids, the essential vocabulary will work its way in. The cat was with a mushroom named David. The cat ate the mushroom which turned out to be poisonous. The mushroom then controlled the cat and the cat danced an Irish jig. The cat’s name, by the way………….Bartholomiau.
My 8th period class, on the other hand, is a whole different beast. Nobody in the class is artistic, we can’t get any decent tableau’s or story illustrations to save our lives. They are just embarrassing and I think many 5 and 6 year olds can do better. And despite being full of rambunctious boys, there is a total lack of creativity in that class. The OWIs and stories are just awful. They’re not even worth giving a recap of because they are just terrible. I don’t enjoy doing the Star work with them, I’m not sure what to do. Should I jump to Individually Created Images to see if they somehow manage to hit some home runs with those? Or should I go the route of doing boring, traditional work? Or targeted, 3 structure TPRS stories? I’m at a roadblock with that class.
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Chris Roberts
Spanish teacher
Fairless High School
“un mate no se le niega a nadie” –un dicho argentino