In my opinion, Step 1 forms the anchor, the glue, to everything we do in comprehension based teaching, so that any discussion about changing even little things that we do in the midst of our ever changing relationship with the various strategies that we use in our CI classrooms is best housed in and looked upon in terms of the framework, the flow of Step 1 or it won’t mean anything, it won’t be intelligible, it won’t make sense.
Step 1 houses within it the magical formula, the DNA, of the method, no matter the acronym and no matter the strategy. If we don’t do the following things, no matter how much they are camouflaged in some new term, in every CI single strategy we use, the kids won’t understand what we are saying in the way they do when we stick to these Step 1 strategies:
First, we establish meaning. We take one or two or three (no more) expressions (called target structures), and we tell the class what they mean by writing them down on the whiteboard, making sure to do so in both the target language and in English.
Next, as we continue to establish meaning, we work with the class to generate a gesture for the expression, if one is possible. The problem most of us have, something we all seem to want to improve on in our teaching, is actually remembering to gesture the target structures when we start using them in the second part of Step 1.
(Doing gesturing is just way up there on the level of difficulty in teaching using comprehensible input, along with the annoyingly challenging skills of staying in the target language during class and remembering to speak far slower than is comfortable for us, a skill that is absolutely crucial for our students.)
So the first parts of Step 1 are:
a) writing the word in both languages on the board (and leaving them there during class), and
b) agreeing with the class on a gesture to use during the rest of the work with the target structures (from Step 1 through to the end of Step 3 reading).
Next in Step 1, we move to PQA. That is way too much to go into here.
I don’t know why we just don’t call it the Four Steps, but that’s is what this TPRS DNA really is made up of:
1) Establishing meaning/gesturing
2) PQA
3) The Story
4) The Reading.
Calling it the Four Steps would have been more clear. But the Three Steps it is. All I am concerned with here is that the reader who is new to TPRS/CI be familiar with the Step 1 pattern of establishing meaning and PQA (Step 1), and how it will form the backbone patterning of comprehensible input instruction in whatever form.
If one grasps the backbone pattern/DNA of establishing meaning, gesturing and PQA, then one can create many different forms of comprehensible input from that, not necessarily a story. The Step 3 reading part, though, should remain the same. Step 2 is the one that will change.