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RT 11
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12 thoughts on “RT 11”
This is an incredibly powerful and invaluable template.
I just want to make sure I understand point 2 correctly: the students have the text in front of them in L2 and they follow along as the instructor reads/translates in L1? This is probably a silly question for an expert, but how do you ensure that all the students are really reading along and not just listen to the story being told in English? If I were to do that, would I stop mid-sentence and ask a random student “what is the German translation for what I just read?” Would that work?
I know that people do that. They ask kids for random on the spot answers to questions. Others make them put their finger on the word. That’s too much like school! Those ways of keeping the kids focused, in my opinion, suck, and they suck bad because they shame the kid.
Do we really want to do that? Good lord, we finally have a way of teaching that is not shaming to kids, and yet we want to shame them into doing our bidding with reading now?
Reading should always be an enjoyable experience. All I do is just look at the kid who is drifting for a second and make it clear that I expect them to get back to the reading. It’s so simple. If a kid gets a way with drifting a bit, it’s no big deal anyway.
I have to say that since I finally got it together to discipline myself to start reading to the kids in the uninterrupted flow way a few years ago, without adding in all that shit that just confuses them, just creating a movie in their minds, and reading in a pleasant and soothing voice, I never have a problem with them keeping their eyes glued to the words. I see them with very contented, quietly focused looks on their faces. That is because they are watching a movie. I make the movie visible when I read. I don’t interrupt the movie with bullshit.
The students will pay attention if they understand. The keys to their staying focused have nothing to do with the two coercive ways above, and everything to do with their enjoying the reading experience, with their actually wanting to read.
Again, they will read if they understand. Therefore, we must:
1. choose novels that they can undestand easily.
2. read later, not earlier, in the year, as per the previous discussion from last week on that topic (this is my own opinion).
3. translate slowly enough so that they understand easily.
4. read in a way that is pleasant for them to listen to, without a monotone voice, but lending interest with variations in sound and emotion, much like one finds in musical dynamics, but not overdone to destroy the din, the flow, that we are creating in their minds.
5. most importantly of all, we must rarely – if ever – interrupt the reading to explain shit.
I’m currently on the Reading chapter in “Fluency through TPR Storytelling” and it says that most classes are ready to start reading novels after about 2 weeks. What’s your thought on this? Is this a little over ambitious?
It’s more than ambitious. It’s an exaggeration, in my opinion. I want things to be effortless for my kids. I want them to cut through reading like a knife through butter.
How can I know if they are “comprehensible?” All I do now is buy a novel from the catalogue that says “level 1 reader” or level two reader.
It that adequate?
This feels like a dumb question, but i am going to ask it anyway!
thanks
skip
Got it – I really must try harder to get rid of the kind of teacher in me who tries to always hold everyone accountable for everything. It hurts to hear that what I was thinking about doing would shame the kids and you are right. The truth hurts, but there is also the saying about “no pain, no gain”. So, please keep the pain coming, as long as it makes me a better teacher.
Well, you didn’t have to undo 24 years of learning how to shame kids. I had to beat myself over the head with a frying pan for the past eleven years just to get it into my mind that kids do better when they enjoy what they are doing. Things are changing in education.
It is remarkable that you changed your approach so dramatically after 24 years. I can’t seem to interest my colleagues in this approach-I think I need to just shut up and do my thing.
I am also a little confused about this process, I think because it seems like the opposite of what I have been doing (the kids’ choral translation, where they are reading the text in L2 and telling the story simultaneously in L1).
It may be that the above process is just a different skill, or maybe that is what we should do with the class stories but not with novels? I am feeling cloudy. Probably because the mountain kicked my ass today and I am dehydrated and delusional thinking I will do anything productive right now. But anyhoooo….
So…just to clarify, in the RT reading process, the kids read along, reading the text, but they hear the teacher in L1? Sorry to be so dense.
I would LOVE to get this going, the whole “movie in their minds” deal. I feel like everytime I intend to read a novel, I’m somehow not fully committed, so it ends up getting dragged out for a long time, with too long in between when we read. A total setup for failure. I can see (20/20 retrospect) that I have definitely tried too soon, so the ease has not been there. I think it is now, though.
oops sorry…forgot part of my question: Ben, in the above description where you read to them in a soothing voice and such…do you do this for a certain period of time per day? Are you doing other stuff too? Is there a reading day? Are you doing nuthin’ but novel? Just trying to get a sense of the rhythm of it all, how to keep the continuity and interest up. I love the simplicity of it. I was beginning to get bogged down with the novels, since there are so many “activities” one can “do” while reading a novel, but these would seem to disrupt the flow.
I guess I had misunderstood Reader’s Theatre as hearing the novel read in L2; instead it is read and acted out in English? So it is really just like plowing through the novel in English, only with actors for action and dialogue? And the dialogue is translated into English? Correct me if I have got this all wrong. I am confused.
I have my students act out a scene from each chapter (last week, it was puppet shows) but they act while I read in Spanish. I’m wondering if there is still room for this kind of acting and reading in L2.
I think I am the one responsible for the confusion. Let me tell you the way I am thinking right now, jen and lori, and keep in mind it is all about simplicity.
For the last five years I have slowly worked my way to an understanding of what works best for me when working with readings based on stories. Until now, I have called it Additions to Option A, but, clearly I will have to change that name to a new category name, perhaps Readings Based on Stories. I will do that after I write this.
Then I will know that at any time next year when I want to do a reading based on a story (for me this is on W/Th as per my “New Weekly Schedule 2011”), I can just print that document and have it by my side during the class like a good friend, in the same way that Anne’s story scripts are by my side like good friends during stories.
So that is what I do when working with readings that I wrote from stories. I never do Reader’s Theatre with stories. It is WAY too much to try. There would certainly be chaos if I did that.
By the way, in the old Additions to Option A/new Readings Based on Stories document, it is clear what language we are always in. Everything is clearly explained in that document.
So that completes the discussion on the story readings. Now, for the novel readings. I really like what jen just said just there about:
…there are so many “activities” one can “do” while reading a novel, but these would seem to disrupt the flow….
This is very important. We can’t have chaos in novel reading, or any readings for that, or in anything that we do with comprehension based instruction. So we absolutely need to know what language to use when doing reading classes, just like we know to use present or past structures in PQA and do the stories in the present. Let’s address the verb tense question when reading novels first.
Jason has the students read in L2 during the scenes in RT. He uses that as refocusing tool and for other things that will appear in the 20 other unpublished blog posts I have so far written about what I observed that day.
However – and I am not sure what Jason does on this, but I know what I do – when we are NOT in an RT scene, we read to them in L1. It is so soothing, to them and me as well. We just settle in and get the movie going. All that is missing is the popcorn.
This translation into L1 is effortless for them. It represents a brain break from the intense L2 work done in the RT scenes. If the students have a question, I treat it exactly as I do questions in stories – a quick four second response. Any longer and it’s like someone turned on the lights in the movie theatre.
Let’s leave this topic for now. I think, hope, that I answered your questions jen and lori. Let me know on that. Now, what I will do is publish a link to suggestions about how to work with readings during stories, and then another link about how to work with novels.
It seems to be a very complicated thing to get to simplicity, but in the worldwide TPRS community there is more complexity than we need. I think that they are all drowning themselves in activities. Why go to a conference and come back with more information than you could ever process in a lifetime? We need to make it all very simple for us here in our PLC.
So I just published my new Suggested Daily Schedule, I have my Suggested Weekly Schedule 2011, I will change the name of Additions to Option A to Readings Based on Stories, and then publish the new one on Reading Novels. Those four posts will be the pillars of my house of simplicity for next year.