Instructional Session 18

Objective: By the end of class, you will be able to…

Beginner: write words or phrases in French to answer questions about a story from French literature

Intermediate: write sentences in French to answer questions about a story from French literature

Advanced: write a series of connected sentences in French t to answer questions about a story from French literature, giving details to describe the characters’ internal AND external traits and sensory details about the setting, and using transition words to say more

Preparation:

Visual Stories are a versatile strategy that can be used to narrate any story, with visual support for comprehension. You can either draw the information as you teach, or you can use a prepared series of images, such as a slideshow, to present information to students step by step as the story unfolds. Both options are described at great length in this introductory section to Session 18.

The example lesson in this session will use a slideshow from our Teachers Pay Teachers store (CI Liftoff) about a literary story from France during the late medieval period, Le Livre de la Cité des dames (The Book of the City of Ladies) by Christine de Pizan. You can find other Visual Stories, from the literary traditions of various languages, on our Teachers Pay Teachers store, or use the example as a model to create your own slideshow or series of images.

Adjusting the Length of Prepared Slideshows to Fit Your Students’ Abilities

Please note that the slideshow is quite long, and so in my actual lesson, I most likely would not plan to use all the slides, but rather would prioritize the images that I want to focus on. My goal is almost always to finish the story in one class session, even if it is very simple. I can always return to it again later, but I really do like to have that feeling of closure, that we don’t have a bunch to catch up on next time, because I really don’t like to eat leftover lesson plans for lunch!

So, please, when you are planning your Visual Story, especially if you are using our resources, just know that they are designed to keep even the most advanced students in a block period engaged, so there are a LOT of slides in most of the Visual Stories.

You will quickly get a feel for how many slides your own classes can easily use in one session of Guided Oral Input. You will most likely find that your different classes are driving down German Highway in different gears, with some able to use all the slides, and others needing you to go really slow. You can use the same resource with all the levels, and simply remove non-essential slides for your classes that are in first gear, but leave more slides in for your fifth-gear jackrabbits.

This session begins with a very detailed explanation of Visual Stories, one of the most enjoyable and powerful strategies in the whole book, for most people (including your humble author). Here goes nothin’!

Why Tell Stories?

The experience of comprehending an entire story from beginning to end with no interruptions is very satisfying to students, and so telling a visual story makes for an enjoyable and relaxing lesson for students and teacher. A visual story is presented as a finished product, much like Story Hour at the library. They can allow you to bring in cultural and historical information, such as - in this phase - stories from literature written in your course language, or - in Cycle Two Phase Three, cultural tales such as legends and folklore.

Telling tales from the cultures that speak our languages is, thus, a natural way to bring in culture, while also avoiding the pitfalls associated with “teaching culture” (perpetuating shallow understandings and stereotypes, for instance). What is more culturally-authentic than enjoying a story that many people in our languagespeaking communities grew up hearing?

Using a prepared story that you have practiced and know well and are excited to present to your students benefits both your students and you, as the teacher. Students benefit because they hear copious amounts of visually-supported input, and it is especially engaging when it is delivered in narrative format, which is an ancient and deeply human way for our brains to organize and remember information.

Stories, especially those that have stood the test of time, such as the literary tales used in this phase of the Narration cycle, activate our brains in a way that other genres do not; in fact, I have learned from my friend and colleague, Erica Peplinski, a talented Spanish teacher from Michigan, who has an extensive background in biology and brain research, that we have an entire system in our brains - the mentalizing system - that has evolved specifically to allow us to interpret social information, including stories.

By telling stories, or creating characters and stories with our students, or discussing people in class, and their lives, feelings, and experiences, we are tapping into the power of the mentalizing system. Because the mentalizing system predates our higher-level cognition, in terms of the evolution of the human brain, we are hardwired to prefer that system to our higher cognitive functions.

When we teach with stories and socially-meaningful information (such as calendar talk and class surveys), we are giving our students the language input they need to acquire language, and we are also creating lessons that allow them - and us! - to make satisfying social connections, and light up the system that we naturally prefer - the “social stories” system, our mentalizing processes.

Teachers benefit, too, as they can gain a sense of control over what, for many of us, is an extremely daunting prospect: telling stories to groups of youngsters in a language that they are far from proficient in. For me, when I began my journey as a communication-based language teacher, I relied almost exclusively on creating stories with my class. This was in 2004 and 2005, when I was a new teacher, and back then co-creating stories was one of the only strategies I had at my disposal.

Why This Book Begins with Prepared Stories Before Co-Created Stories

While my students and I truly enjoy creating stories together, and I was, for the first eleven years or so of my language teaching career, a passionate adherent to primarily story-based language instruction, it was a lot of work! And the work was not always just work work; it was emotional work. It was not always easy, or even possible, for me to be in a mental state that allowed me to feel confident heading into class with only a story outline, knowing that my students and I would need to create a story from “scratch” almost every day. Many of our stories were hilarious, super-engaging, memorable “home runs,” but many others felt clunky and cumbersome and struggled to get off the ground and take flight. This uncertainty, day in and day out, took a huge emotional toll on me. And I know, from listening to other teachers, that I am most assuredly not alone in this.

So, branching out from this steady diet of co-creating stories “from scratch” and began to experiment, after a decade of steady story-creating, to telling prepared stories I selected and rehearsed, with pre-planned visual scaffolding, was quite a welcome relief for me indeed, and this is why I have arranged the narration strategies in Stepping Stones to begin with narrative strategies that are not story creation, but rather storytelling.

In the next session, you will venture into the super-satisfying realm of story creation, using some of the One Word Images that you produced in Cycle One, Phase Three. I am confident that the suggestions you will read in the next session will make co-creating stories feel a lot more structured and successful. Just the fact that you will begin the story with one of the class’s characters in the starring role will get you on more solid footing than you may have experienced when telling stories “from scratch,” which is, even for very experienced people, not an easy task.

My intention is that by the time you set out to create your first story in Session 19, that you will have developed confidence and skills through your work with stories in Sessions 16, 17, and the current session, 18, using more “controlled” and prepared instructional strategies like the Story Mountain used in Session 16, Card/Slide Talk about personal stories used in Session 17, and Visual Stories in this session.

Starting with Childhood Favorites

Visual stories can, obviously, be used to introduce students to a whole world of authentic cultural information through folktales and legends from the cultures that speak our languages, and the example lesson in this session dives right into a culturally-authentic tale from French medieval literature.

However, if you feel that your students - or you - might be overwhelmed by the complexity of the literary stories like the one used in the example lesson, you might choose to begin instead with a simple, familiar tale that exhibits the classic fairy-tale pattern of “three”. The Three Little Pigs is a good option, because it is simple, familiar, and easy to illustrate because the plot is so concrete. It also follows the time-tested (and easy on the teacher) fairy tale “rule of three” (e.g. the THREE Billy Goats Gruff, the THREE Little Pigs, the THREE Wishes).

It is a happy coincidence that stories based on this “rule of three” also provide copious repetitions of the language, so you do not have to think about how to scaffold comprehension of as many different words, and students have more opportunities to re-hear and re-process the same words and expressions at least three times during the story, after which they will go on to hear many more repetitions of this language, in the rest of the daily instructional framework.

The most important factor to consider when preparing your Visual Story is:

How will you make each element of the plot comprehensible, in the moment of telling it?

It is important to note that I am not talking here about teaching them each and every word in the story, or “preteaching” vocabulary. I take a firm position against the “pre-teaching” of vocabulary prior to using it in a meaningful context. It’s not that I think it’s “take it or leave it.” I truly think that it is DETRIMENTAL to your development as a teacher, to your students’ learning, and to your overall happiness and longevity in the comprehension-based teaching biz.

Down with Pre-Teaching Vocab and UP with YOUR TEACHING SKILLS!

Here’s a rather harsh truth. Sorry-not-sorry in advance. If you need to hear this, if you need a little friendly kick in the seat to commit more fully to working on your skills, it is worth the harshness I have to now deploy. Let’s get it over with, shall we? Here goes.

If you feel the need to pre-teach vocab, then you most likely aren’t using enough scaffolding (sketches, pointing to pictures, using familiar graphic organizers, using gestures, all that) in the moment of teaching.so you need to work on your delivery skills so that you can simply USE the language to jump right into the “good stuff” — the content — instead of sort of “killing the joy” by pre-teaching vocabulary to the conscious mind.

Ow, that DOES kinda sting… it almost hurts my fingers to type that… but if you can accept this harsh reality, then you will be able to work on your skills, and you will find that your course just begins to establish a “flow” that, in my experience, and the experience of many teachers with whom I have worked, cannot be achieved by pre-teaching vocab prior to the “good stuff,” which is to say the COMMUNICATION and CONTENT that this book is carefully laying out like a buffet of knowledge and memorable experiences for you and your students.

Yeah, it’s a wee tiny bit harsh. But don’t feel bad. It’s a very common malady. I promise. There are lots of reasons that you are not achieving the foundational goal of this approach to instruction: speaking comprehensibly in the moment.

It could be that you are not in the habit of simplifying your information enough, so that you are trying to speak using too many words, or you have too much to “cover” and you are speaking too fast. It could also be that the topic is too abstract, which means you need to devise a way to make it more concrete or learn how to prioritize the essential information so that you can skip some of the more abstract parts.

It could be that you are not pausing to point and sweep the room with your eyes and do all the things that, when you read in Chapter Four on the importance of SLOW, you meant to do….but you have not yet watched enough of yourself on video, or you have not yet gotten the classroom management piece under control, or you just forget to go slow when you get excited, and the conversation is getting cooking and, well, you know how it is…

You.just.canthelpit.youjuststart.totalksofast.whenyougetcarriedaway causeforyou.Italianis.secondnature.andyouforget howhardit.canbeforbeginners!

It really could be any number of “teacher skills” that you, honestly, need to work on (which is why you’re reading this, right?) so that students are able to comprehend what you are saying in the moment, using the multi-layered scaffolding that you have baked into the lesson.

I refer you back to my exhortations, in earlier sessions, to video yourself and then - painful though it seems - WATCH AN ENTIRE CLASS PERIOD EACH WEEK, if not more. You will grow exponentially. How I grew!

I’m still catching up to myself, five years later, from the years I spent filming my teaching every day. It made me grow so fast in my comprehensibility skills.

Pre-teaching vocabulary, furthermore, can drain the joy out of the upcoming experience, when most people would rather just get to the fun stuff, the stories, so their mentalizing system, described in more detail above, can have a good time. And, lastly, pre-teaching vocabulary is less efficient. When we encounter words and expressions in a meaningful context, without focusing on the language but rather on the messages that are being delivered in the language, we remember better.

Teach LESS and you will actually teach MORE and BETTER. What a concept!

Students do not need to comprehend each and every word in the story in order to acquire the language. They do need to understand the messages that the language is delivering. So, the goal is to make the storyline comprehensible and give the students what Dr. Krashen calls “the illusion of transparency” - the feeling of following the plot of the story, explained in greater detail in Session 17.

You might want to consider these key supports to aid in their comprehension: 1. Writing cognates on the board so that students can “see” the English inside the L2 word 2. Writing in the course language and the class’s stronger shared language on the board (translation) 3. Sketching and changing/rearranging stick figures to represent the characters and action, for instance, changing a character’s face from smiling to frowning to denote a change in emotion. 4. Using voice intonation and gestures to enhance students’ understanding of the story.

The key point to remember when planning a story is to speak slowly and simply so that the students understand, even if it means rendering far less of the story than you wish.

Your main objective is to make the plot SIMPLE and understandable. Even if you were to tell the story of the TWO Little Pigs, because telling the story about the three would drag the story out past the 12-15 min. of Guided Oral Input time, go with understandable messages.

You will want to simplify the plot and the language (see the example of the Three Little Pigs below to see how simple “simple” actually is) so that the students can follow the plot. Please note that this does not mean that the language needs to be constrained or unnatural. For example, there is no need to ensure that the verbs all be in the present tense, or contain words only from the first-year textbook.

You can think of the goal more like simplifying the language to the point that you do not feel rushed in your telling of the story. I do not shy away from using “complex” vocabulary (I have literally been known to teach a gesture for the word “contains” on the very first day of first-year French and Spanish) and I am perfectly comfortable using “advanced” grammatical constructions, when they are needed, such as the past perfect or subjunctive, with any group of students.

You are strongly encouraged to use the suggestions in this session to think through the flow of the story, to make sure that there are not too many sentences to “get through” in your “script.” You also want to rehearse the story and the visuals at the same time, drawing or looking at them as you speak, to make sure that the information you plan to convey is concrete enough to allow you to represent it visually. If not, you might want to skip that detail.

If the detail is so important that you can’t leave it out, you might want to think of a different way to say it, using concrete images or gestures to make it concrete. For example, in the story of the three little pigs, on the next page, the script I made myself does not use the “Little pig, little pig, let me come in,” and the “Not by the hair on my chinny-chin-chin” of tradition. Instead, I prepared the much more concrete statements, “Let me enter,” and “No, no, no!” Same general idea, but a lot less taxing to students’ noggins.

So I simplify the story, in most cases, by subtracting details and clauses from the sentences. By having less to narrate, you can focus more of your mental attention on the students’ comprehension.

When you read the planning sheet for the Three Little Pigs below, please think about how you see these ideas in action.

But before you go any farther, maybe take a little art break, and check out how to draw that handsome-looking wolf…and maybe try your paw at sketching a big, bad wolf of your own!

Starting with a Professional, Proficient Storyteller

When I prepare a Visual Story, especially as a non-native speaker of the languages I teach, I like to watch a short video of a proficient speaker narrating the tale I plan to tell. This allows me to learn the storyline as well as, usually, some new vocabulary, or at least to give me ideas for vocabulary that I do not generally use in communicating in the language. Words that are in my receptive vocabulary (i.e., I can recognize them and understand them when I read or hear them) do not often spring to mind when I plan on my own, because my receptive vocabulary - especially in my non-native language - is not as strong as what would come naturally to a more proficient speaker. As I listen to the video a few times, I take notes in L2, and from those notes, I plan my story - the language and visuals I will use when I tell it.

Now let’s look at the two options for preparing and delivering the information in class: the low-tech way and the digital way. We will start with the low-tech option.

The Low-Tech Option: Drawing in front of the class as you tell the story

Telling stories with the support of drawings on the board is a time-tested way to provide comprehensible input. I was very excited, in 2016, to have the opportunity to learn about Story Listening by working with and learning from Dr. Beniko Mason, an English teacher from Japan, who has developed an entire language acquisition program that uses telling stories with drawings and leveled reading as the primary means of instruction. Dr. Mason’s extensive research over three decades has shown the effectiveness of providing input in this way.

For more information in Dr. Mason’s own words, please see the Story Listening Foundation. They have published the Story Listening Toolkit, written by Dr. Krashen and Dr. Mason, which can be used to support your storytelling. Visual Stories are not Story Listening; it is a standalone program. However, Dr. Mason’s research and tireless advocacy for high-quality comprehension-based instruction based on stories, both those told in class as well as those in written texts, as the foundation for higher levels of literacy development, has really energized my thinking about how powerful it can be to prepare a story that you, the instructor, loves and is excited to tell your class.

I suggest that you use a piece of paper as a planning sheet, to represent your whiteboard, to “lay out” the Visual Story step by step like you will tell it on the board, under the document camera, or on large format paper (such as chart paper). I will use the example of the Three Little Pigs to demonstrate this.

It is also a good idea to spend some time rehearsing the story, drawing and narrating it a couple of times using your planning sheet, to get comfortable with the delivery. In the lesson, some teachers find it useful to

hold a copy of the story written in large letters so that they can read easily while teaching, while others prefer to use the planning sheet on which they have planned the drawings and other visual supports.

As you read the graphics below, please take note of how the teacher draws the story as it unfolds, bit by bit, phrase by phrase. Drawing on the board as the story unfolds is non-negotiable in a Visual Story. You do not have to be an amazing artist. Quick sketches are best, as they keep the plot line moving along. If you need help with your drawing skills, you might check out the books Make a World by Ed Emberly or Chalk Talks by Norma Shapiro, which contain simple templates for many different drawings.

Below, you will find a brief tutorial on how to draw a simple, yet quite cute, pig, followed by a sample practice sheet that could be used with this story.

Please note that on the practice sheet on the following pages, which I made in Canva, I show the parts of the story that I would write, and then some of them get erased.

This is, in reality, how I use the board. I learned the super-useful trick of drawing over characters’ faces to change their expressions from Dr. Mason, as well as the advice to write sparingly, and then erase the words as the story goes on, to clear more space on the board as students become more familiar with the terms.

The story of the Three Little Pigs in my first-year French class

Preparing a Slideshow or Printed Images

You can also use a slideshow of prepared images to narrate the story bit by bit, to replicate the drawing-infront-of-the-class experience of allowing students to see the story unfold with a visual to support their comprehension of each new word and utterance.

To do this, you will prepare a series of images that you will use to narrate the story, prior to class. These can be on physical pieces of paper, printed out from the internet, or simply drawn on large pieces of paper (cutting Page 336

A Narrative Input Chart using prepared images, from Summer Institutes in

a piece of pasteboard (aka “posterboard”) into four squares makes good-sized images), or they could be put into a slideshow, such as the one in the example lesson from our Teachers Pay Teachers store.

Here are some pictures from Summer Institutes of a lesson in which I used drawings to narrate a story about the life of BelgianRwandan recording artist Stromae.

If you draw the images yourself, you could use the “project from the internet” trick to help you draw better. You tape the blank paper on the wall, project an image from an internet search onto it, and lightly trace the outlines, using pencil. Blue or green color pencils are the best, I have found, but your run-of-the-mill graphite works fine, too. Then you can go back and color over them, or have a student helper do this for you. Your students will not be able to see the light tracing from their seats, and - unless you reveal your magician’s tricks, they will be marveling, mouths likely agape, at your artistic prowess. See the images below for some tips on how to use this amazing trick.

Hang large paper behind the projected image. Lightly trace the outlines. You will have the guide lines for your drawing in class.

Students will see what looks like a blank paper. Trace over the outlines in marker as you teach. Get ready to feel like the World’s Greatest Artist!

On the back of each picture, you can write a short “script” in your course language (I usually like to get this from an online source written in the language, since I am not a native speaker) that you will say as you present the images. You will want to simplify the language and prioritize the facts that are visually represented in the images. About two to four sentences per image is a good rule of thumb. For beginners, you will want simpler, shorter sentences, with simple vocabulary that you can support in a showing Summer Institutes participants what is on the back of one of the drawings concrete way, by gesturing, pointing to a detail in the image, etc. Depending on your students’ level of listening comprehension ability, you can use more complex language for your more advanced students. To deliver the story using images like these, on pieces of paper, it is useful draw a timeline or some other visual image that suggests “moving through time” on the board (the one pictured here is a road, but you could use train tracks or a map, or any other format that you think is applicable to the details of your story) and tape the images to the timeline after you narrate them. You can use the timeline to add extra information like dates, names of characters, locations, etc, as shown in this picture of me getting ready to add the paper images to this timeline. As you speak about the images, you can use them to scaffold details about the plot. You can hold the papers in front of you and point to the images as you speak about them, as shown in this photo, before taping them to the timeline (blue or green painters’ tape is best for this as you will most likely need to pull the papers off the timeline to re-use them in another class. As you can see in this photo of my “sad face,” you will also want to continue using other visual cueing to support students’ comprehension of the words you will be saying. I am showing with my face, and also with the expression that I drew on the character in the picture, the words that I was saying in French: “I was very sad!” Regardless of the mechanism you choose to deliver the story (drawing as you speak, using printed images or drawings on pieces of paper, or a prepared slideshow like the one in the sample lesson in this session), after you have narrated the entire story, you can go back and re-narrate the story all together to help students comprehend more than they did the first time.

As you do so, it is recommended to point to the images and perhaps sketch some additional supports on the board near the images.

Now, on to the lesson procedures:

Continue to greet the students in English review expectations, etc. Share the lesson objective, and hand out the Reading Workshop text if applicable. If you have not yet set up your Videographer, I urge you to do so today, since you will need this student in Session 19, the next session, to record the Video Retell. If you are just absolutely dead-set on not having a Videographer for some reason (in some schools or districts it would be against board policy to film in class), that’s your prerogative, of course, like everything about your teaching practice, but you will need to skip the Scaffolded Oral Review strategy that is used in the next session (Video Retells) and use another Scaffolded Oral Review strategy in its place.

This is fine, because - obviously - you are the boss of your classroom, and the boss knows best, but please be aware that this means you and your students will miss out on doing Video Retells, which are, for most classes, super-engaging. It also means that you will not have a collection of class videos to use in the end-ofthe-year “Film Festival” class project that is described in Session 47. That’s fine too; you can easily skip the Film Festival (or any of the end-of-the-year activities in Sessions 44-47), but just know that is the trade-off you are making if you choose not to have a Videographer this year. If I have convinced you to get a Videographer, which I hope I have, congratulations, and also please see the HR Manual in the Appendices for more information on setting up this and other student jobs.

You might make your own Reading Workshop text, use the ones in our Teachers Pay Teachers store, such as the example below, or work with a Shared Writing text from a previous lesson. Distribute or project the text. Then, share the lesson objective if you have not already done so, check in with your Class Starter (and - I hope - with your Videographer), and begin the lesson.

Find That Cognate

In the sample lesson, I use the beginner reading from our Teachers Pay Teachers store (CI Liftoff) for Cycle Two Phase Two, shown here in French. The texts for this phase are “friendly” letters.

French Beginner Reading

Again, since the Reading Workshop texts “pivot” to a new text type (letters, in this case), we are returning to the simplest, most familiar instructional strategy - Find That Cognate - to allow students some time to “settle in” to this phase and text type, if you are choosing to use our resources. Because this strategy was explained in detail in Session One, which you are advised to review if you need a refresher on how to do it, we will move on to the lesson procedures right away in this session.

Of course, in any Reading Workshop, you can always choose to use a text that your class wrote together in a previous lesson’s Shared Writing. This might actually be the ideal option, especially for beginners, since the texts that they co-create with you will be the most comprehensible.

The lesson notes are written in English. Words that are said in the course language are in black text. The class’s stronger shared language is written in this color.

Once the students can see the projected text, or they have it on their desks, you can proceed. First, tell the class what the topic of the reading is, most likely speaking in the class’s stronger shared language, and then read it aloud in the course language and use the strategy, as modeled below.

“I will read this letter to you in French, a personal letter to Grandpa on his 83rd birthday. Your job is to look for cognates - words that you just know because they are almost exactly like English.”

(Give the signal to start class, and have your Videographer begin filming, if you have set that job up, which I strongly suggest you do today, if you still have not done so. Then, read the text in the course language. Once you have read the entire text, point to or circle a very obvious cognate and ask for its meaning in the class’s stronger shared language.)

“Class, ‘célébrerons’ in English?” (Students answer. Then you write the English on the text, and spell it, saying the letters in the course language, as demonstrated below.)

“Yes, celebrate in English, is celebrate. C-E-L-E-B-R-A-T-E.” (Note: This sounds like: “Oui, célébrerons en anglais est celebrate. Célébrerons: sayyy-uhhh accent aiguelll-uhhh accent aigu-bayyy-etc. (saying letters in French).”)

(Asking a more open-ended question, if time permits:) “Class, look (gesture). Other (gesture) cognates?” (Students answer, probably in English.) “Yes, passes in English, is pass, or spend like to “pass time” or “spend time”. P-A-S-S.”

Repeat with a couple of other cognates. After a few minutes, move into the Guided Oral Input, with a short calendar check-in and then begin the Visual Story.

It is suggested to continue the routine of a brief (2-3 minutes) calendar check-in, which (1) creates an opening/transition routine and (2) continues to reinforce, daily, and in a meaningful context, important vocabulary such as the names of the months and days, weather, numbers, preferences, and activities. For guidance on how to gradually introduce new topics/vocabulary into this daily routine, please see Session Five.

Very quickly, you will want to move on to introduce the story briefly in English:

“I will tell you a story from French literature. This story is very old, from the medieval times, 1405 to be precise, over 600 years ago, but it is a very important part of the history of women’s liberation from male dominance, otherwise known as the ‘patriarchy.’

In this book, Christine de Pizan, who was one of the rare women of those times who could read and write, imagines that she is reading a book - that really existed - by this dude who was basically saying that women are the source of all men’s problems. Christine gets upset by this, naturally, and she imagines that three supernatural women come to visit her and help her to build the “Cité des Dames” or the “City of Ladies,” where women who have lived amazing lives can all come together and get away from the shade the men were throwing around back then (and, seriously, still today, to a lesser degree).”

Project the first slide (or show or draw the first image) and use the visuals to narrate the story, saying one to two sentences per slide, as shown below.

Please take note that there are 16 slides, and Guided Oral Input is generally only about 10 minutes in length (or perhaps about 20 in a block class), so you will literally spend less than a minute on most of the slides, if you were to use these in class. For that reason, you will want to be very careful to SIMPLIFY what you plan to say, so that you can finish the story in the time allotted.

After about 10 minutes of Guided Oral Input, you will move on to Scaffolded Oral Review.

Continuing on with the lesson procedures, we move to Scaffolded Oral Review.

Finish My Sentence

Move to your Review Spot. For a detailed explanation of the “Finish My Sentence” strategy, see Session Five.

“Time for ‘Finish My Sentence.’ I will say a fact in French, and then you will all speak in French as long as you can, to finish the sentence and say more facts. I will listen and count to six on my fingers. If everyone is still talking when I get to six, the class will get a point, but if not, point for me!”

“Number One (hold up one finger). Christine de Pizan was reading a book and…” (The class speaks in French saying endings like, “was sad,” or other statements according to their ability.) “Six! Good job, a point for the class!”

(Tally the class points, perhaps writing on the board.)

“Number Two (hold up two fingers). Christine de Pizan felt sad because…” (The class speaks in French saying various endings as you count the seconds.) (Repeat, if time permits.)

Write and Discuss with an Anchor Chart

As promised in earlier sessions, the training wheels are being lifted from my heavy-handed coaching, little by little, as you grow in confidence and skill. So, the Shared Writing is not written out in script format in this session, but rather provided below as a visual walkthrough. It gives an example of a possible Shared Writing session that could follow the lesson example above.

As you read over the images, please pay special attention to the new anchor chart for this phase. The literacy focus is including inner thinking and dialogue in the narrative. The title I chose for my example anchor chart is “In Their Own Words,” but you can name it anything you like.

See the sections on Reading Workshop and Shared Writing in Session Nine for more detailed information on setting up anchor charts and goal boxes during Shared Writing. To read more details on Write and Discuss in general, please see the first eight instructional sessions.

Continue in a similar vein, as time permits, accumulating points in the goal box as you go. If another word to narrate in the past comes up naturally as you write, and you think it is important to remember and use in the future, you can add it to the Anchor Chart. Then, move on to Shared Reading.

The “Go-To” Daily Strategies

Shared Reading is not modeled in this lesson, as you are simply continuing to use the “go-to” strategies explained and modeled in the previous sessions. Refer to Sessions one through ten for more details.

Write Inside the Story

Write Inside the Story is explained in more detail in Session Nine. Please see that session for a more detailed explanation of this strategy.

Walk to your Quiz Spot. Students will need paper. Leave the Shared Writing text projected where students can look back at it, and have the Anchor Chart visible.

“OK, quiz time. I will read our writing. Your job is to find two sentences that could have more details in them, and then “write inside” the sentence. You copy it and then use the words/phrases on the chart to write “inside” the sentence, to add more.” (You might explain the activity in English and then repeat in the course language, as shown below.)

We will write inside the text. We will use the chart. We will add to the text.

(You might model with a sentence or two, as shown below.)

Give students time to work on their writing, perhaps working with a partner.

You might want to debrief with students, congratulating them on what went well, and setting goals for future improvements.