Instructional Session 19

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

Beginner: say words or phrases in French to retell a story about a character that the class made

Intermediate: say sentence in French to retell a story about a character that the class made

Advanced: say a series of connected sentences in French to retell a story about a character that the class made, giving details to describe the characters’ internal AND external traits and sensory details about the setting, and using transition words to say more

Preparation:

The Guided Oral Input strategy you will be using today is a Class Story, using a One Word Image character that the class created as the main character.

During Cycle One Phase Three, if you followed the suggested instructional sequence, you built up a bank of two or three One Word Images. You will want to select one of the class’s characters prior to class as the “star” of the story you will create in this lesson. If your artists created a drawing on paper, you can use the artwork as a “costume” for your actors during the class story and the Video Retell today.

a collection of One Word

Building up a bank of One Word Images and selecting the “star” of today’s story

If you have not already developed two to four characters and artwork in the lesson(s) you taught using Session 11, you might want to cycle back to that session and spend a day or three making some additional One Word Images, so that you have a few from which you can formally select one that is well-loved and fun for the class as the star of your first class story.

Waiting until the class has several characters before starting your first story is an important point here. You want the first story to go swimmingly, and since characters and artwork are the foundation of the story’s success, you will want to have several characters to choose from, to maximize your chances of telling a whizbang story that captivates student interest and sets them up for engaging, creative fun.

A very important consideration is to choose the character for the first story with great care. You want a character that the class likes, one whose artwork is visually appealing, and who also (very importantly) lends itself to the creation of a strong problem to solve.

The character you choose also MUST suggest a strong problem to solve in your story. You have asked the students at the end of the One Word Image process “Why is this X so Y?” (e.g. “Why is this burrito so happy?”) Often the problem will be to get them to stop being angry/sad, if they are experiencing a negative emotion. Conversely, if they are experiencing a positive emotion, the problem can be to take away or threaten the source of their happiness so that they have to, of course, go on a quest to save it or get it back.

If you did not already establish the reason(s) for the character’s emotion(s), you can do so today, speaking in the class’s stronger shared language, before launching into the story-creation process in the course language.

Make sure you and your students are ready for the challenge of story creation

Another important consideration in choosing to move into story creation is your class’s readiness for this more open-ended process. The day you create your first story with your class is a day that will likely require more of you in terms of energy and goodwill than any other. There are a lot of moving pieces. For that reason, I strongly advise that you never force a storytelling day.

Unless you are feeling well-rested and eager, do not tackle the work of creating a story - the most energyintensive work that a comprehension-based language teacher can possibly do, and most likely some of the most energy-intensive work that anyone in your entire school building is doing, considering that you will be conducting a creative activity in a language that is new for your students.

So choose a day when you are in fine fettle and build your first story step by step as described in this instructional session. If you are not feeling ready, you can always, as previously explained, cycle back to any previous session. It might be a good idea to “park” on Session 11, to make a few more One Word Images, to “warm up” the class for this big undertaking, making their first story.

It is my hope that before arriving at this critical session, creating stories, you have really focused on classroom management, on your confidence, on your language delivery skills, and on getting to know your students. Creating stories with the class requires you to have a firm handle on your students’ attention, since it will require you to be slightly more creative and think on your feet just a little more. So, you will need to carefully evaluate your students’ readiness for story creation.

You might, as you reflect on your management, surmise that you need to “park” on some less-creative strategies, from the first eighteen sessions, and focus on your classroom management as you re-use strategies that are more familiar to you and your students, before moving on to this session.

Any more creative and open-ended strategy is generally, in any discipline, and with any teaching approach, more challenging to manage. But, take heart: it is not impossible! If you have set up solid expectations and reinforced them unfailingly as described in Chapter 4, Classroom Management, you will be ready, so don’t stress. You can become the kind of teacher who easily and happily engages their class in creative work together, and create stories that mean a lot to your classes, using their unique and (generally) super-fun characters, which is so rewarding, and generally one of the highlights of the year.

So, if you need to return to any of the previous sessions, which use more straightforward, easier-to-manage strategies, and “shore up” your management before moving into this session, please do so. It will pay off bigPage 347

time as you move forward, and any “lost” time will be repaid to you for the rest of the year, as you will be much better-prepared to lead your class through the rest of the sessions, which use strategies that increase in complexity and challenge throughout the year, as you grow your skills.

It is also my very sincere hope that by now you have reviewed some videos of yourself teaching so that you have a good mental representation of yourself as a language teacher and have had the chance to make adjustments to your delivery skills before moving on to the activities described in this session.

Further, you will need to set up your Videographer today, if you have not yet done so, before you move on to the Scaffolded Oral Review strategy of “Video Retell.” If you just cannot bring yourself to hire a Videographer, then you will just want to use a different Scaffolded Oral Review strategy: either one from a previous session in this book, or any other strategy - from any source

a Video Retell of a class story

that allows you to review previous information by speaking, and perhaps using visual aids.

The daily instructional framework is designed to allow you to easily “sub out” various strategies in each part of the lesson — you can use many possible strategies for Reading Workshop, Guided Oral Input, Scaffolded Oral Review, Shared Writing, Shared Reading, and Student Application and Assessment, just as long as they “fit” the purpose of that part of the framework. See the chart below for guidance on how to evaluate other strategies to see where they could possibly fit. Keep in mind that often a given strategy can “fit” within more than one lesson component, or can be slightly modified to fit.

This framework is designed to empower you with the decision-making tools to make sense of the myriad of instructional and assessment strategies that are out there, and even to accommodate strategies that you make up on your own, by giving you an organizational system to place any strategy within the daily instructional framework, and thus feel confident that you can catalogue the huge variety of engaging, effective strategies that are being developed by communication-based language teachers, and know where they fit into your daily plans and year-long plans (i.e. into which cycle and phase they fit best).

On the next page is a guide that may help you to use the daily instructional framework to categorize strategies that you encounter “in the wild” on blogs, at conferences, or in trainings.

Now, on to the lesson procedures:

Continue to greet the students in English review expectations, etc., and share the lesson objective.

If you have not yet set up your Videographer, I urge you to do so now, or at the latest before you move into Session 16, the first session in the Narration cycle (Cycle Two). 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 also - I hope - a Videographer), and begin the lesson.

Write Inside the Story

This strategy was explained in more detail in Session Nine, when it was first introduced as a Student Application and Assessment strategy, and in Session 12, where it was first used for Reading Workshop. For more details, please review those sessions.

In this sample lesson, I use the beginner reading from our Teachers Pay Teachers store (CI Liftoff) for Cycle Two Phase Two. The texts for this phase are personal letters. Of course, in any Reading Workshop, you can always choose to use a text that your class wrote together in a previous lesson.

As always, the lesson notes are written in English. To indicate the words that are said in the course language (French, in this example), I will use 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. We will use the “Write Inside the Story” strategy with the Reading Workshop text today.

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.

French Beginner Text

“I will read this personal letter to you in French, about a trip to Guatemala City during La Semana Santa, or “Holy Week,” the week of Easter, when people decorate the streets with colorful “rugs” made of colored sawdust. We will continue using this list of words (point to the anchor chart) to write more details in the text about what the writer of this letter might have been thinking or feeling.”

(Give the signal to start class, and have your Videographer begin filming, and then read the text in the course language and discuss the images and information.)

“Would this person think (pointing to the anchor chart and writing in the course language)…it isn’t fair that people in Guatemala decorate the streets (using the text and images to establish meaning) or it isn’t fair that WE DON’T decorate the streets in Oregon?” (Students raise hands or call out.)

(Speaking and writing in the course language) “It isn’t fair that we don’t decorate the streets.

(You might want to give the class a check mark on the anchor chart or other location, to award a “point” for using an item from the chart.)

Repeat with one or two other sentences, using the term(s) on your Anchor Chart to restate the information from the Reading Workshop text. After a few minutes, move into the Guided Oral Input, with a short calendar check-in, and then begin the class 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.

Overview of the Story Creation Process

A quick overview of the story creation process is provided here.

1: Review the Artwork (~2 min.) 2: Who (~2 min.) 3: Where (~2 min.) 4 (Optional): With Whom (~2 min.) 5: The Problem (~4 min.) 6: The Solution (~4 min.)

a teacher actor portraying a cup of coffee at Summer Institutes in Atlanta, 2018

Note: Even though the first three steps do not really get into the narrative/plot, I will model a first story creation lesson that stops after the Who and Where. More like a proto-story, but it’s enough to get your feet wet. You can use all six of the questions when you tell your next story, after you have gotten more solid on the first three. Since you will only be using three questions, you can thus spend more time on them than you would in a normal class, and so I suggest using the suggested times below:

1: Review the Artwork (~4 min.) 2: Who (~4 min.) 3: Where (~4 min.)

You can still create a perfectly satisfying little proto-story even with just these minimal details. You might add more plot details during Shared Writing, or perhaps return to finish the plot in a later lesson. That is perfectly fine; you could add onto the story in the next lesson, if it is engaging and you want to continue working with the character. In the second lesson, you would simply review the first three steps (or whatever you covered in the first lesson) and then move into the remaining steps.

I strongly recommend, if the story is not super-compelling, to just move on to a fresh story with another character in the second lesson, as there is no more disheartening feeling than trying to revive a deflated story the next day. Only in the rather rare case when a class is absolutely swept up in the story would I return to it again, rather than move on to a fresh beginning. As you get more confident in the story creation process, you will find that you move more quickly to the remaining parts of the story outline (i.e. With Whom, Problem, and Solution).

Student jobs to support story creation

As this is your first class-created story, begin the process with some preliminary setup and hiring new student jobs, which is conducted in the stronger shared language.

You will need to hire for at least two, maybe three, new jobs, in addition to the artists you already hired to help in the one Word Image process. You may want to have your student HR team help you hire students for these jobs. The job descriptions and training manuals for the new jobs are found in the HR Manual in the Appendices.

Videographer

In order to do a Video Retell, you will definitely need to use your Videographer, and you will need to hire that student if you have not already done so. This student uses a video camera (I suggest a tablet or phone) to record the story. You might also have an Assistant to the Videographer, who counts down and gives the signal to begin filming, perhaps using a director’s clapboard and saying “Action!”

Story Driver

I strongly urge you to also hire a Story Driver. The Story Driver is responsible for making sure that the story takes off and comes to a resolution within approximately 15 minutes by signaling to you when it is time to move to a new step in the questioning sequence outlined above. This job, which was taught to me by Ben Slavic, was transformative in how I managed the story creation process, which I used to allow to drag on more than I would like to admit. For me, my Story Driver is crucial for keeping stories light and entertaining and moving along at a good pace.

I like to provide the Story Driver with a piece of cardstock with the question sequence and approximate times, so they can follow along and signal if I get “stuck” on one part too long, as is very tempting to do when the class is engaged and the story is fun. Simply have the story driver to signal you when it is time to move to the next question on the list above, perhaps using their fingers to indicate the number in the sequence that you need to move on to.

I do not let the story driver time me with a timer, because that distracts them. I tell them that the ideal story driver can sense when we have spent the right amount of time on each level, and that the times listed are only guidelines. An ideal story driver just knows when we have spent enough time establishing the details of a certain level and does not let us linger there too long, so that the story gets boring or does not have time to conclude in one class period. Many classes don’t have students who are talented enough to do this job well, so, as with all the student jobs (as with jobs in real life), we don’t want to hire someone who can’t do the job.

Since you will probably only get through some of the story questions on the first day, you might want to make a “beginner” card for the story driver, with just these elements on it (notice again that the times are “stretched” to give you more time to play around with the question(s) for that step).

1: Review the Artwork (~4 min.) 2: Who (~4 min.) 3: Where (~4 min.)

Actors

You will need one or two actors today. I highly recommend that you present this first story as an “audition” for possible permanent actors, not making any promises about who will be hired as the “official” actors until they have had a chance to ”prove” themselves and their ability to walk the fine line between hamming it up enough to be engaging and fun and “upstaging” you and thus distracting the class from the input.

After you have chosen two students to be your actors today, leave them in their normal seats for now. I generally wait to call them up to the actors’ stools until I get to the “Where” question in the story sequence outlined above. This will happen naturally, and is explained in detail below, so don’t stress about it.

Artist(s)

You will also need to train your artist(s) to do the two-panel story drawings, since they have, up until this point, only done drawings of the characters themselves. You will want to coach them that they need to divide the paper into two sections -- the top and the bottom. The top is for the “Problem” part of the story and the bottom is for the “Solution” part.

Here is an example of a two-panel illustration using a One Word Image from a first-year Spanish class.

To save time and keep up with the story illustration, your student artists will need to immediately start drawing the main character in the panels, before you begin the story, but they must be sure to leave space around the character for the details of the story which will emerge later. The artists must also be reminded to leave the character’s face empty, so that they can fill in the right emotions later. Instruct your artists not to put in dialogue or words about the story, just symbols, and maybe signs that indicate where the character is.

1: Review the Artwork (~2 min.) The Story Creation Process

Holding the original illustration of the character, and speaking in the course language, point to the picture and review the already-known facts about the character: its “species,” (e.g. “This is a burrito” or “This is a bus.”) its color, its size, its emotions, the reason for its emotions, and any other facts that the class previously established when they created the character.

2: Who (~2 min.)

Once you have reviewed the known facts about the character, add some more details. Here is where you decide, with the class, the character’s name and perhaps their job as well. There are many other details that you can establish during this time, of course, but name and job are key. You will develop the character beyond what you had when you started the story, which will add greatly to the direction the story takes. Character, more than plot, makes the really great stories.

Notice how in the panel demonstrating this, the teacher asks the question, and then gives a couple of examples of possible answers, to establish the meaning of the question (what its name is) and then repeats the question, so that students comprehend the question from context. You might use question word posters, or write the question words, or assign a gesture, but that is not really necessary. You can simply pose the question, give a couple of possible answers, and then repeat the question, waiting for students to offer ideas.

3: Where (~2 min.)

When asking where the character is, it is good to get a more and more specific location through your questioning. So if the class says that the character is in Spain, then find out that she is in Barcelona, and then find out that she is in a cathedral. And then find out that she is in the gift shop of the cathedral. Among the candles. Getting an increasingly more specific location does a lot to help shape the problem that the character will later experience. This process is modeled below. Again, notice how the teacher uses proper nouns (e.g. Portland, California) to convey the meaning of the question “Where is he?” and then repeats the question once meaning has thus been established.

As stated above, character truly is more important than plot and location, but being very specific about location ("in the candle section of the gift shop of the cathedral in Barcelona in Spain") can also play a big role in bringing more interest and a better problem than just having the character be in the cathedral or worse, only in Barcelona or much worse, only in Spain. It expands the possibilities.

I like to write the location on the board, and perhaps add a simple sketch or word(s) in the class’s stronger shared language to reinforce the meaning, like a “sign” in the background, as shown in this image. This is the

point when it is generally most fruitful to call up the actor. You can do this quite simply, pointing to the first actor’s stool and saying, “This is the candle section of the gift shop.” Then gesture to the actor to go to the stool that now represents the candle section of the gift shop (or whatever location your class has decided on), to a round of applause from the class. You will not forget that you need an actor because once you have a location, you can’t really go forward in the story without one.

Once the actor is up, the real fun begins, as you can now start to use the actor to add levity to the story by asking them to portray emotions as they repeat the lines you will feed them, as modeled in the example below. I like to begin by having them look around at the setting and react to it, using the emotion that the class established for the character.

You: Class, Steve the Burrito looks (gesture) at the gift shop. He is happy (gesture).

(Look at your actor and gesture for them to look around the gift shop, with a happy expression of wonder on their face.You can add mirth to the proceedings by requiring Steve to look really happy, even if he was superhappy the first time.)

“No, no, Steve is REALLY happy (gesture)!” (Indicate to the actor to look happier.) More mirth can be had by making your poor actor portray an EVEN happier reaction.). “No, no, Steve is REALLY, REALLY HAPPY (gesture)!” (Indicate to the actor to look EVEN happier.)

Then I like to have the character simply describe themselves: their physical and personality traits, and their emotional state.

Again, I use the “No, no, not like that” trick to coach the actor to provide repetitions of the language by having them portray their lines with more and more and more emoting.

You: Steve says (gesture), “I am a big, purple, rich burrito!” Steve: I am a big burrito… You (prompting the actor) …purple and rich. Steve: purple and rich. You: Steve says (gesture), “I am really happy (gesture)!” Steve: I am really happy!

You: No, no, Steve is REALLY HAPPY (gesture). Steve says (gesture), “I am really happy (gesture)!” (modeling over-the-top happiness in your intonation, facial expression, and body language) Steve: I am REALLY happy!

Have the actor look at their surroundings and react to them emotionally as they state their feelings. Again, you can use the “No, no, not like that” trick to create more emotional engagement and repetitions.

You: Steve says (gesture), “I am in the candle section of the gift shop!”

Steve: I am in the…

You: (prompting the actor) …gift shop…

Steve: …gift shop…

You: (prompting the actor) …the candle section of the gift shop at the cathedral!

Steve: …the candle section of the gift shop at the cathedral!

You: Steve says (gesture), “I am in the candle section of the cathedral gift shop!”

Steve: I am in the candle section of the cathedral gift shop! You: Steve loves (gesture) candles! Steve says (gesture), “I love (gesture) candles!” Steve: I love candles! You: No, no, Steve says (gesture) “I love (gesture) candles!” with ENTHUSIASM (gesture)! He is really happy (gesture)! Steve: I LOVE CANDLES!

The above questioning sequence demonstrates how much input and engagement is found in the call and response nature of the questioning, and your coaching of the actor to greater and greater heights of dramatic performance.

You might be thinking, “Wait, I just don’t have it in me to be that dramatic in class every time I tell a story or use an actor.” That is normal; even the most dramatic, intense teachers cannot possibly sustain the level of energy required to be this dramatic every day.

You can rest assured that the first few classes in which you train your actors are the most energy-intensive for you. After you have modeled and trained your actors in the kind of over-the-top melodrama that you expect, you can begin to “fade into the background” and simply feed your trained actors their lines, in a calmer and less dramatic way, as you continue to exhort them, from the sidelines and in a calmer way, to display more and more emotion.

This is why trained, “permanent” actors are so important; once they know how to portray the information in a dramatic way, you will want to use them again and again, so that you can relax and move into this “acting coach” role, instead of having to be the source of the drama and fun.

The actor repeating what the instructor says above brings levity to classes, and this call and response process is truly something to experience. Just have the actor repeat after you, with heightened emotion, as in the above example and you will suddenly feel the afterburners in the rocket beneath you shake the rocket with power as your story blasts off to parts which, for most teachers, were heretofore unknown in previous attempts with story creation.

It is suggested that you stop here in your first storytelling day. But, if time permits (especially in a block class), you can continue on to the “plot development” as explained below. And, in your next story, you will want to challenge yourself (with the help of your Story Driver) to include the whole sequence of questions, so that you move on to telling more narrative-like stories.

Please bear in mind that question four (with whom) is always optional. I suggest that you omit the second character if you do not feel confident in using the other five questions (Review Artwork, Who, Where, Problem, Solution) then you skip it until you can confidently spin a simple story with just one character and actor, and then add in a second character in later stories. Of course, having two characters greatly increases the opportunities to get in repetitions of the language, and especially first- and second-person verbs, so you are advised to try using Step Four as soon as you feel ready.

4 (Optional): With Whom (~2 min.)

Sometimes it is fun to have two characters in the same story together. Other times it is fun to give them a new character to be with. I used to use a lot of celebrities as characters in my stories. However, in the interest of the inclusion and comfort of all students, I now rarely use celebrities, preferring to stick to the realm of imagination and make-believe. That way, we don’t end up using celebrities that some students don’t know, or that offend some students’ or families’ moral convictions. We also avoid the death trap of politics, which just keeps getting more and more dicey.

The character that joins the story can be friend or foe to the main character. You can make the second character the same “species” as the main character (e.g. another burrito) or a different species (e.g. a taco). Sometimes you will want the second character to be a human, most likely someone with designs on using the character for its natural purpose (e.g. eating the burrito, putting trash in the trash can, or mailing the envelope). Sometimes the second character can be a person from class. It can be really fun if the second character is another character from the same class, or maybe even a different class’s character that your class is interested in because they see it hanging in the other class’s art gallery.

To introduce the second character, I do not ask “Who is there with Steve?” or another question that can leave my students sitting there looking at me, as I feel uneasy, waiting for them to come up with some creative idea, or - with some less-than-creatively-engaged classes - any idea at all. I simply say, “Another burrito looks at Steve!” or “Another burrito says, ‘Hello, Steve!’” or “A person looks at Steve!” or “A person says, ‘Hello, Steve!’”

In French, the verb arrive is a direct, easy cognate with the English “arrives” and so I find that in French I rely on that word a lot to introduce the second character, saying, “A person arrives in the gift shop” or “Another

burrito arrives in the gift shop.” However, this is not the case in every language combination. In that case, you can just state an action that the person or the other burrito/envelope/shoe does, to introduce them without having to resort to speaking in the class’s stronger shared language and interrupting the story-creation process. Another easy option is to signal silently to the second actor, using a predetermined “come to the stool” signal and then simply say, speaking in your course language, “Look, class! Another burrito!” or even, “Look, class! TWO burritos! One…Steve…and two (point to the new actor)!”

If you do have a second character here, bring up a second actor, to a round of applause, have them sit on the second stool, and establish its name.

Now, you can engage the two actors in dialogue. This provides a MAJOR boost in engagement and fun, so you are encouraged, when you feel that you are ready and your class can handle the excitement, to start using two actors in your stories.

You: Betty the Burrito says (gesture), “Hey Steve, my name is Betty.” Betty: Hey Steve, my name is Betty. You: Steve says (gesture), “Hi Betty, I’m Steve.” Steve: Hi Betty, I’m Steve. You: Steve says (gesture), “Betty, I love (gesture) candles!” Steve: Betty, I love candles! You: Betty says (gesture), “I don’t. I am scared (gesture) of fire.”

(If needed, establish the meaning of “scared” and “fire”. Most likely you will write it on the board , perhaps with a translation. You might also assign gestures to the words and cycle through the new gestures along with a few already-established ones.)

Betty: I don’t. I am scared of fire.

Here, you can work with the second actor to have the portray their emotion with more and more dramatic flair. You: No, no, Betty is scared (gesture)! She says (gesture), “I don’t. I am scared (gesture) of fire” with FEAR (gesture)! Betty: I don’t. I am scared of fire.”

5: The Problem (4-6 min.)

The problem is the central element of storytelling. This is why you are advised to only select characters that already have a good problem to work with, based on either the reason for their negative emotions or in taking away the reason for their positive emotions, as explained above. I never want to get to this point without a good prior idea of what the problem might be. I don’t really want to ask the class, “So, y’all, what is the problem here?” because that leaves this super-important part of the story up to chance, and that makes me feel nervous, which greatly diminishes my ability to lead the creation of the story with my thinking faculties intact. Or as intact as they can be, what with how busy the school day is!

Note that sometimes as you work with the class in creating the story, you will find that your original idea for the problem is not as engaging as a new idea that comes up naturally in the process. So I am always open to the possibility of a better problem arising during the story creation process. But if you do not have any new ideas, then you need a strong problem to fall back on. To introduce the problem, I generally just say, “Class, there is a problem!” and state the problem in a dramatic fashion. Then you will want to return to having the actors provide more dialogue. This part can get really fun.

You: Oh no, class, there is a problem! Betty is scared of fire and Steve lights a candle!

(Establish the meaning of “lights”, most likely by writing it on the board in L1 and L2 and perhaps also assigning it a gesture and cycling through some gestures including the new word) (Make Steve pantomime lighting a candle) You: Steve lights a candle (gesture or point to the word(s) and Betty is scared (gesture). (Make Betty pantomime being scared.) You: Betty looks (gesture) at Steve. (Make Betty look at Steve with a look of fear.) You: Betty looks (gesture) at the candle. (Make Betty look at the candle with a look of more fear.) You: Betty looks (gesture) at the fire! (Make Betty look at the fire with a look of even more fear.) You: Betty says (gesture), “Oh no Steve, I am scared (gesture)! Fire!” Betty: Oh no Steve! I am scared! Fire! You: Betty yells (gesture), “Fire! Fire! Fire!” Betty: Fire! Fire! Fire!

You can go on from here with more dialogue, of course. This is a great moment to have the actors really ham it up and “milk” the moment for all its dramatic potential.

You can see that the problem does not have to be complicated. In fact, simple problems are best not just in these first few stories or the year, but throughout levels one and two. It is in the interaction with the actors, and the fact that the class has created the character, that the interest in generated. A too-complex story quickly becomes unwieldy, with too many words on the board.

Using lots of dialogue with your actors, as modeled here, puts the brakes on any tendency to create a runaway story that needs too many new words. Peppering your board with a bunch of new words runs the risk of losing kids, so keep the story simple, slow down and that will generate and maintain student comprehension, without which it is difficult, if not impossible, to maintain their engagement.

Your actors are your best friends in the story creation process. Cherish them. Use them to their full potential. They put the brakes on your story train while adding a lot, by the way they speak when they repeat after you, to the fun.

6: The Solution (4-6 min.)

When I taught a Creative Writing elective, and in my English Language Arts units on Realistic and Imaginative Fiction, I found that there are three surefire ways to coach student writers to solve a problem in a narrative. They work very well in language class, too.

One: Bring in a new character. Two: Send the character to a new place. Three: Bring in both a new character and a new place.

You will need to rely on your intuition in the moment here. It will be OK no matter what you choose. Don’t get performance anxiety over this work. It is just a silly story you are creating with the kids so that they have something to write about later in class. Promise! Just go with what feels natural.

Either tell the students that a new person arrives (you might need to establish the meaning of “arrives”) or that the character(s) leaves (you might need to establish the meaning of “leaves”). Ask who arrives or where they go and, if time permits and you feel confident in establishing meaning, you can also ask how they are traveling.

In the new location, or upon the arrival of the new person, of course you will - time permitting - have your actors portray emotions through thinking aloud and facial expressions/posture, action, and dialogue.

To solve the problem, it is perfectly acceptable to simply go for the obvious, simple ending. This is not high art. Taking the example of Steve and Betty, perhaps it is windy and the candle goes out and Betty is happy. Perhaps a nun comes to the gift shop and says, “No fire in the gift shop!” and blows out the candle. Perhaps a therapist comes in and helps Betty get over her phobia. Perhaps Steve catches fire and flies out of the cathedral with some flying (burrito) brothers.

Anything could happen. It doesn’t matter. Truly, it matters not at all! Honestly, your average kids are not literary critics. They are usually just happy to have a class that is quiet and focused and where the content isn’t all about memorizing, and provides at least some degree of kid-friendly interest in their school days.

Plus, if they don’t like your super-simple stories, then they can get cracking to suggest better ideas! Why do they expect YOU to be the funny one? You’re OLD!

On the next pages, you will find “comics” of this story so you can easily refer to the entire process at a glance.

Video Retell

Video Retells review the entirety of the just-created story without interruption. The actors - and maybe some “extras” from the rest of the class - recreate the action on camera while you simply narrate the story from off-camera. You can add in props, other actors, sound effects (having students provide them), perhaps adding in a bit more dialogue, whatever strikes you in the moment.

I have had classes who take the video production very seriously, and make adorable videos of our stories and other information from Guided Oral Input. If you have students who like set design, and in some classes you will, they could be labeled the Set Crew and could quickly scurry off to a corner of the classroom at this point to make props. In the example of the candle story in Spain, they might draw a sign to put up on the wall that says "Candle Section" or just simply draw the candles and prop the drawing up next to the actor, all in a few minutes. You will want to encourage them to work fast. If they dilly-dally, it is not worth it; if they cannot complete their work fast, you will want to change to a new Set Crew, or simply drop this completely optional student job.

Two or three kids, or even more, if the story calls for it, might be enlisted to serve as “extras’ in the Video Retell, or provide sound effects at specific times (e.g. “When I point to you, knock on your desk to make the sound of the candle knocking on the gift shop counter.”).

This is a good way to engage those students who need to move their bodies all the time, if you happen to have any students like that. Which you do. I’ve never met your students, but I’ve met enough of mine to know: you do.

If you upload the videos to your Google Classroom or a similar site, they can be used at any time to provide review and additional input. They are particularly well-suited to making sub plans. You can simply have your students watch videos of previous stories - or even, for classes who can comprehend at a higher level, watch other classes’ stories - and summarize in English to demonstrate their understanding. You can grade these retells using the Narration Retell Rubric that aligns to this phase, found in the Appendices. It’s nice to be able to pull a grade for the grade book when you aren’t even in class, and the sub may not even speak your language, as is such a common problem for language teachers.

The video retell also gives your artists more time to complete the second panel of the drawing, which is the “Solution” panel. Generally the artists will need additional time to do this since the “solution” part of the story process goes by rather fast, with a good deal of action.

Prepping for a Video Retell with Summer Institutes participants in Atlanta, GA

Notice the “set design”

By the end of the Guided Oral Input, my hope is that the artists have completed their work, so I can reveal it to the class after the video retell, for more Scaffolded Oral Review, and also refer back to it during Shared Writing, to help recall details of the setting, plot, or characters. Remember to keep the artwork turned away from the class until the moment for the big reveal arrives, in the next class session; this creates some suspense due to students’ curiosity to see how the artists are portraying the new information created that day.

Generally a 10 to 12 minute story can be retold as a video retell in about 4 minutes. A nice collection of retells provides all kinds of good material for their end-of-the-year film festival, discussed later in this book. For now, simply collecting as many video retells as possible is the goal, to set yourself up with a nice collection of videos for later use. It is like putting gold in the bank, and earning interest all year!

Have your Videographer begin a new video file, and tell them that they have artistic license to move closer, zoom in, whatever they think would make the video more appealing and dramatic. You can tell the class that you want them to provide sound effects, perhaps teaching them hand signals that you will give during the Video Retell for “ooh” and “aah” (or other expressions of surprise and wonderment such as “How wonderful!” or “How cute!” or “Amazing!” in your course language) or gasps of dismay (or expressions of disgust, sympathy, or disappointment such as “Too bad!” or “That’s awful!”) or “yay” and applause (or other expressions of delight, such as “Great news!” or “That’s so awesome!”).

Inform the class that this video will become part of the class’s End-of-the-Year Film Festival, in which you will eat popcorn on one or two of the last days of the school year, and watch the greatest hits of the year, so they should maintain “quiet on the set” so that the video is of high quality.Then, simply stand off to the side, providing the voiceover narration and not appearing in the video, and quickly retell the story, prompting the actors with their lines as you would during the story creation process.

Write and Discuss with an Anchor Chart

You will continue to use the anchor chart that you set up in Session 18, adding one or two new terms to it today. See the images below for a visual walkthrough of a possible Shared Writing session that could follow from the example story given above. For more detailed information on setting up anchor charts and goal boxes, please see Session Nine.

Atlanta’s Got Talent!

Continue as time permits, accumulating points in the goal box as you go. If another word to add thinking or dialogue 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.

Everyone Acts

This strategy was first introduced in Session 15, wherein you can find a detailed explanation of it. More information on “Everyone Acts” can also be found in Session 17.

Everyone Acts is especially fun and engaging as the Student Application and Assessment at the end of a lesson in which you have used the Scaffolded Oral Review strategy of Video Retells. However, it can be used at the end of any lesson, regardless of the specific combination of strategies that you have chosen for the preceding components of the daily instructional framework.

If you have used the Video Retell strategy in this lesson, as described above, you will find that you are mostly simply recreating the dialogue that took place between the actors in the Guided Oral Input (the Class Story) and the Scaffolded Oral Review (Video Retell), which makes this Student Application and Assessment strategy (Everyone Acts) even more engaging and accessible for students.

The activity might go something like this, after the example lesson provided in this session:

“You will get with a partner, and decide who is Partner A and who is Partner B. Partner A will be Steve, and Partner B will be Betty. I will say your lines in French with gestures and emotions, and then the partner who has that role will repeat the line with gestures and emotions, then Partner A will do the same, taking turns to create a little scene in French.”

“Partner A, Steve, (point to the word(s)), says (gesture), “I’m Steve the Burrito! I’m purple and rich!” (the students who are Partner A repeat to their partner, speaking in the course language, “I am Steve the Burrito! I’m purple and rich!”)

You can use the “No, No, Not Like That!” trick, and simply restate the actors’ line, insisting that the actor say it with MORE emotion, as modeled below.

“No, no, Steve is VERY HAPPY (gesture or use your posture and/or facial expression to establish meaning). Steve says (say the line very dramatically and gesture very dramatically), “I am Steve the Burrito and I am purple and RICHHHHH!”

(the students who are Partner A repeat to their partner, speaking in the course language and, it is to be hoped, in a more dramatic fashion , “I am Steve the Burrito! I’m purple and rich!!!”)

Continue on to Partner B, modeling a line for them that Betty said (or could have said) in the story, and perhaps return again to Partner A and, time permitting, cycling through another set of lines with both partners.

At the end of the period, you might debrief on what went well, and perhaps setting or reviewing goals.