Long Post Warning
Yesterday I received an email from a long-time reader extolling the virtues of the Star Sequence Curriculum:
Ben, I have been on this PLC for a long time and have watched everything develop carefully. I am amazed at what has happened in my classroom with the Star. I’ve had a few sobering moments with it, actually, where I realized that this is THE answer to the textbook, not TPRS. Something really deep and career changing has happened to me because of the Star. My teaching is now at a level I never could have imagined even before. Everything is so simple! I have seen elements of the Star here on the PLC from years and years ago, even before it was a PLC, but my question if you have time to answer it is when and how did the actual Star Sequence – with all those diverse strategies from so long ago – actually “form”? I’m just so curious!
I am happy to answer. Like all stars, it was formed over a long period of time (not as long as a real star but it feels like it!) and under intense pressure. According to Scientific American, stars are formed “when atoms of light elements are squeezed under enough pressure for their nuclei to undergo fusion. Turbulence deep within dust clouds in galaxies gives rise to knots with sufficient mass that the gas and dust begins to collapse under its own gravitational attraction” (citation below). This is kind of what happened with the Star Sequence!
Here are some chronological details for those interested. I know you didn’t ask for as much detail as I provide below but there are still some people in the group who remember the old days and enjoy reminiscing themselves so I’ll publish it for them as a kind of blast from the past. It really is enjoyable for me to reminisce, and yes I agree with you about the Star’s power because a lot of people have said similar things to me over the past three years:
- Like a real star, over many years from 2001 until now, I kept inventing new strategies to use in my teaching using comprehensible input, first in TPRS and now in NTCI (2015) . The earliest one that I can remember is, of course, Card Talk, which at the time was called Circling with Balls. The first reference to that is in the “old blog” (before it became a PLC) in about 2003.
- Dictée is also an activity that has been around. I brought it over from France into the CI world in 2002. It became an immediate hit and is now a staple, along with One Word Images, Card Talk, The Classroom Rules, Quick Quizzes, the Reading Options, WCTG and the entire Invisible protocol, in many CI classrooms.
- One Word Images date back to about 2003 also. I did them for years quietly with my students for about ten years before I started talking about them on the old TPRS list serve in about 2012 and that is when they exploded over the internet.
- Of course, the Quick Quizzes date from those really early days too – 2004.
- Then the next “dust cloud” to gather enough “mass” to become a proven teaching strategy was the Word Chunk Team Game, which now forms part of the fifth node of the star (see charts below). It was invented in about 2007.
- Another current element of the star which I think is really powerful are the 20 Reading Options, invented while I was at East High School in Denver in about 2009. I remember when my Denver Public Schools WL Coordinator Diana Noonan came into my classroom one day to observe and saw those reading options and said, “I like those!” They have proven themselves over the years since then, certainly, and are currently, like the Classroom Rules, used in probably tens of thousands of classrooms now.
- On the “writing” node of the star, that came from Susie Gross way back when she used to give workshops in the early 2000’s and demonstrate how you can just stand in front of the class (at the time on the overhead projector, now the doc reader) and just write the story in class so the kids can learn how to write. There is nothing original from me on the writing of the story for the next day, as that happened with TPRS, but I do claim rights to inventing the jobs used in the Star Sequence – the first (of 14 used in the Star) was the Story Writer.
- Most of the other nodes in the Star, namely the Reveal, Great Reveal and of course the heart of the whole thing, the North Node of the Star, the Individually Created Images that really started it all, happened in India when I was teaching there in New Delhi at the American Embassy School in the 2015-2016 academic year.
The analogy of how a star forms in space really is accurate, because the strategies listed above, along with many I’m not mentioning here, were the work of 18 years of intense pressure as I vetted and tested each one – the ones in the Star, the ones that formed this particular Star, are the ones that withstood the scrutiny of being tested over all those years.
The actual “coagulation” of the Star happened in Ann Arbor, MI during a workshop, which I took a photo of as is described in this post from August of 2017: https://benslavic.com/blog/the-invisibles-star/
The second star, this one with six nodes, is here:
Then more versions of the star started to happen.
In one, I changed the words to make the Star more simple (Tina changed a few of the node terms as well) and this more streamlined version is found in Year One with only the words Create, Review, Write, Read, and Extend.
My favorite version of the star is this wonderfully detailed chart from Marianne Van Klaveren. She has given me permission to publish it here:
The idea of always “knowing where one is” is at the heart of the Invisibles and NTCI. We are always either creating, reviewing, writing, reading, or extending. What is there to be nervous about?
Alisa Shapiro-Rosenberg, our master elementary level CI teacher in Chicago has been working with the Star Sequence for some time. She comments:
“The Star Sequence completely supplants the old thematic mapping model from the 1980s that is still in use today, even though it is an accepted fact that the old model is completely outdated.
“Thematic planning has always been appropriate for general education classrooms. They provide a way to insure that the content could incorporate other disciplines so that the learning could feel connected, meaningful.
“But in the language classroom it was always very contrived. How to incorporate math into language learning? We could count up the days or the widgets. Sorry, but after kindergarten or first grade, counting isn’t really math.
“How about Social studies? Well, it’s subject matter is the study of cultures and communities, but those concepts are usually way too complex requiring far too much language to deliver in L2 for novices and even for so-called advanced language students.
“Science? We all know that a student who doesn’t have the required amount of input – thousands of hours at least – can successfully take part in a science lesson in another language.
“Ben’s Star Sequence allows us to go from node to node around the star, deepening the language experience at each node. The nodes are about extending and developing meaning, moving ever deeper into the same text but in ways that are never boring. The Star provides an amazing sequence, one that is grounded in repetition. The Star is a fugue, going ever deeper, one that does not flounder around at the shallow levels bordering on memorization.
“From the first (true north) node of “create”, the rest of the nodes – reviewing, writing, reading and extending – lead, one by one around the circle, to an ever deepening investigation (think of a whirlpool) into whatever text or image that the north node starting point addressed.
“The Star can be used for any written content – a song, a painting, a newspaper article, a video clip – but is usually about creating an image: a one word image or one that is individually created. The north node of the Star (the “Om” point, the creation point) starts an expansive, heart-based spatial (repetition-filled) investigation into any text or image. It is not a reductive, linear investigation (with limited repetitions) that is based in analysis and the mind, where language acquisition, according to the research, cannot happen.
“The star is shimmering and twinkling. It invites. We are reminded of Krashen’s quote about each exposure to a lexical item revealing another 5% of the word’s meaning as long as the interest is there. As we pass from node to node, more and more meaning emanates more deeply from it. This deepening investigation into meaning when focused on the message and not the language is when acquisition occurs.
“The Star is also a much more practical document because it can list the actual lesson plan (or options for it) for that day/week/cycle. The teacher always knows where she is in the cycle and instead of planning a lesson need only stroll up in front of the class and simply ask the class where they are in the cycle. The students will know. This lack of planning brings great mental health benefits to the teacher who works from the Star.”
I added:
If, as Alisa plainly feels, the Star is so wonderful, then why are so few languages teachers these days using it? Why are they doing the same things they’ve done for years?
It is because old habits and paradigms die hard. Linear instruction based on word lists, high frequency verb lists, backwards planning lists for novels, thematic units, semantic sets, or anything connected to a table of contents in a textbook, have sunk their hooks into language teachers everywhere.
But, in retrospect, we can say that classical thematic planning was never appropriate for Novice to Intermediate/Low language students, because it contradicted all the research. Linear lesson plan design based on lists simply doesn’t address the Communication standard. The design works in other subjects, but not in languages.
In languages words can be arranged in an almost infinite variety. Why limit that potential by focusing only on certain words at a time? Krashen has warned that such targeting of certain words in comprehensible input classes seriously constrains student interest.
Why bore the kids by teaching them the colors one word at a time when we all know that in languages such words don’t exist in isolation from other words? Why talk to the kids in stilted fashion by trying to insert the words that we “need for them to learn” when we can instead invite them to enjoy a much freer lesson that is divorced from any planned outcome? Is it not true that any conversation that any conversation that is interesting is unpredictable?
Now we have a new curricular design, one that is based in the unlimited potentialities of a spatial design and not one that is based in limited linear thinking. Curricular design models that follow the spatial design sequence found in the Star will eventually replace the told textbook model. Now, we can finally honestly say in language instruction that the sky’s the limit!
Our own Greg Schwab comments on the Invisibles:
Source for information on real stars:
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-is-a-star-born/
Boy that was a long answer to a short question. A real rant. But I love reminiscing so it’s good!