Nothing could be more important to the novice teacher than a feeling of being on safe ground at the beginning of a storytelling class.
Nothing could be more satisfying to the novice teacher than the knowledge that the story is going to develop naturally with little fuss, that it won’t have to be forced, that they can pull a story together with only CI and personalization, and that there will be little worry involved in preparing to teach a story.
This text is taken from TPRS in a Year! –
…you are safe because you know that in signing/gesturing, PQA, and extended PQA you have very powerful tools* that will effectively establish meaning, not to mention a sense of fun in the room from the very beginning of class.
*see https://benslavic.com/blog/return-to-core-values/
…you are safe because you know that you can spend as much or as little time as you wish doing PQA and/or extending it. You feel confident knowing that you can move away from them into a story at any time.
…you are safe because you have a scripted story completely written out in front of you, with the variables your class will provide you underlined. All you have to do is replace the information provided in the scripted story with the information your kids give you in class and let the story build, sentence by sentence. The first sentence in the scripted story becomes the first sentence in your story, with personalized variations. The scripted story sits in front of you like a good friend, waiting in the wings with the next scripted sentence for your story as soon as you are ready for it.
…you are safe because you have nothing to focus on except personalizing each new sentence from the story script in front of you. In one story one single word – “smiles” – was repeated in PQA for 45 minutes amidst frequent laughter. It’s a great verb to PQA, obviously. Then, when we have gotten as many PQA reps as we could on “smiles”, all we have to do is start the story, letting facts emerge as natural extensions from the scripted story, and so a strange looking dog (a student in our class) may be instructed by you to look at another student and smile as the story gets going, and everything will evolve sentence by sentence. I do not think of story ideas before the class. They just emerge as I try to personalize each new sentence from the scripted story. Thus, because our discussion is not pre-fabricated, it is alive.
…you are safe because you know that you don’t have to get anywhere during class. You don’t have to stay in or leave PQA/extended PQA at any certain time. You don’t have to do anything but speak in the target language while keeping the focus on your students. At its base, teaching a language is a very simple thing that unfortunately has been made complicated, but now is becoming simple again.
