I think that people who are frustrated with doing stories will benefit from this twist on the Three Steps of TPRS, because it is easier to do than stories. It’s a cobbling together of ideas we have been discussing here over the past months, a kind of fusion of ideas, using Look and Discuss – L and D – as a primary base for the class instead of a story script.
For those new to Look and Discuss, I recommend that you read the articles in the categories (to the right of this page) on that topic to be clear about what L and D is. Read especially these two articles:
https://benslavic.com/blog/look-and-discuss-l-d/
Now, what is this way of spending a class period based on the Three Steps that is easier than doing PQA and a story and a reading that are fully based on three structures?
First, we put up a picture and write three sentences about it in both languages. The following example would be for a level one class:
1. There is a man standing in a boat.
2. The boat is going fast.
3. The man has a long beard.
So the PQA would be based on that. You would just ask the simplest of question about the images. Simple to us, difficult and challenging for the kids.
PSA would help immensely here when the content/knowledge low level questions begin to fade in interest, because you could say stuff about kids that are variations on the three sentences like “Class, William is in a boat.” When the class and William protest that he is not in a boat, you say he is, ask him to stand like the man standing in the boat. Now, in this Story Option A version of PQA, you have two compelling things going on in the room that you don’t have when doing the Three Steps in the old way – you have an image (powerful vs. no image) and you have an actor up during the PQA.
So you PQA those three things as described above, esp. using PSA, and go on like that perhaps for a class period. Then, the next day or earlier if the PQA dries up (it happens and often depends on how compelling the image is), you have a simple paragraph that describes the image of the man in the boat. This would probably have to be given to the kids as handouts since the LCD is being used to project the image. There was discussion about this here recently but I didn’t understand it because, unlike Kip, I don’t love technology.
Here is an example of a text that could be given to the kids. Remember that this is not Step 3 – Reading – of TPRS but just a quick reading to start class before going on – it’s a way of refreshing the class through reading what we have discussed via listening up to this point:
The man in the boat has a beard. He is standing in the boat. He is not seated, The wind pushes his beard behind him. The wind doesn’t push it in front of him. The man is smiling. The boat is going fast. The boat is not going slowly. The boat is in the river. The man is not in the river. The man’s beard is not in the river. etc. etc.
When using ROA to process this written text, a million circling questions are possible. See https://benslavic.com/blog/category/reading-option-a/
Note that the text is not really a story. It’s more a description of a static image. Who cares? I like it because when doing stories I rarely am able to follow the critical rule of repeating the story in three locations, which is necessary if the students are going to understand the story. So this is just simpler.
Next, I would have a kid stand up and pretend to be the man and say the same things that have been already said about the man in the boat. It’s a trick. With the kid standing up pretending to be the man in the boat, the attention of the students is placed fully on the student actor who is pretending to be the man in the boat. When that happens, an entirely new set of brain activity takes place and you are able to sneak in a ton of variations on repetitions of the three original target structures without the students even noticing it. And, as we all know, funny variations usually happen, variations that can be personalized to the kids in the class, and the image would literally take on a life of its own as the student modeled what was happening in the picture, with the new variations. Just remember to stay in bounds at this stage of the SOA process. Never go out of bounds by introducing new vocabulary into a comprehension based class.