Student Generated Stories, a.k.a. Skeleton Stories

3 thoughts on “Student Generated Stories, a.k.a. Skeleton Stories”

1. Michele

   March 13, 2010 at 1:04 pm

   I love this post. As Laurie said about one of my class descriptions a while ago, this is exactly what happens in my classes! (Maybe all TPRS classes are more similar than they are different.) The kids come up with stories a teacher would never have thought of, and they are intently focused on hearing those stories develop, even more so than formerly.
   And Ben, you’re right. Anne coined the term “skeleton stories,” and I am still able to pull her printed ones out of the bag at the last minute, knowing they’ll work because she is a master of kids’ minds. But when I tried to demo one of her stories a little while ago for a visitor, my kids were so used to running their own stories that they took off on that one. We have these great arguments…”it’s my story. No! It’s OUR story!” — at which point I’m cheering inside, because “our/nasha” comes out automatically, whereas in pre-TPRS years, I had to explain what “nasha” meant every time we came to it.
   With apologies to Blaine, I have to think that “It’s my story” from the teacher is much less compelling a reason for kids to listen than when they get to say, “It’s our story,” knowing that they are right.
   So . . . if we’re naming things here, more or less “officially” (it’s our story, after all!) I have to agree that calling it “student-generated story” works better.
   An ironic note: I found that I had posted a note on moretprs.net about student-generated stories back in September 2008. I called them “stories on the spot” at that point and even then couldn’t remember who’d suggested them. It was only my second month of using TPRS, so I was so overwhelmed with the pressure of figuring all this out that I lost that idea for over a year. Luckily Ben has this blog thing going–or I’d never have mentioned it and been able to see that it could be tweaked even more by our group–so glad to be here!

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2. Ben Slavic

   March 13, 2010 at 1:16 pm

   And so much of what we do comes from Susan Gross anyway. I rarely read anything that any of us come up with here in these discussions that in some way or another doesn’t come from her. I personally don’t care where it comes from, nor do any of us, nor does Susie because she has told me that on many occasions. We just need to move this CI stuff, the new furniture, into our classrooms. Who cares where it comes from? It’s more comfortable than the old furniture.

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3. Laurie

   March 13, 2010 at 1:37 pm

   I’ve been thinking about Blaine’s “It’s my story” too Michele. The reason he utilizes that so well is that it is his way of saying that he makes the final choices. For Blaine, TPRS is all about the game that kids play to compete to give the best answers to his questions. Blaine tells them up front that it is his job to choose from these ideas in order to get the best stories. And it works. :o) They love to compete for him.
   I have a different relationship somehow with my students and can’t seem to pull that off with the right tone. This week I gave myself the title of “Directora del Cuento”. So, when choosing which ideas would be added and which ones would not, I could say, “Tengo el deber (a line from the Somos El Mundo song we’ve been doing!!! I have the responsiblilty.) Soy la Directora del Cuento. (I’m the Story Director)
   That seemed to work. :o) They DO want us to be in charge.
   I also love how the word “our” is now a natural part of our day to day lexicon. It escapes kids in Spanish too.
   This reminds me…have to go order Anne’s stories…
   with love,
   Laurie

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