The plan in WL in my district is to use stories to set up the reading of novels. This puts pressure, however, in my view unnecessary pressure, on the teacher to create those stories.
On the DPS website we have targeted a number of structures per chapter in Pobre Ana. We are to write stories using those words, and the kids, after doing the stories, ostensibly can read the novels.
There are problems with this:
Each chapter in the novel has too many words in it. A teacher cannot possibly write and do enough stories to properly set up each chapter. Preparing just one chapter in that way could take months.
It is hard for a teacher to create a good story every day. (What if we have three preps? In that case it is impossible.) It is just a long shot that scripts written by us daily would be well crafted. It takes time to craft a good story.
I just use Matava scripts. They are not directed towards anything – that is a charge that has been leveled at them and at me – Anne doesn’t care – and yet our kids learn the words.
(I am trying to get Anne to create some scripts connected to some of the standard novels we all use – most are by Ray and Gaab – because if we could have some from Her Genius connected to those books, our lives would all be much simpler.)
So one reason I have no problem with stories that have not been targeted to a novel is that the most common words are going to be found just about anywhere. And – here is a huge point – when stories aren’t shackled by having to be tied to a certain vocabulary set, they are much more imaginative.
So that is my reasoning for not connecting my stories to novels.