Laurie continues: The base story should contain your focus structures IF it is based on a class story. It [can even be] cut it down. Below are two [simpler] options: 1. Il y a un garçon. Il parle trop. Il n’arrête jamais de parler. ll parle à Diana . Il parle trop. Il commence à […]

Jennifer this is the first of the stuff I hope to get to you over the next few months, to avoid people having to re-invent the wheel on things many of us have to submit to the authorities anyway. What follows is the content of my lesson plans for this week, taken from a template we have

Kevin asked about sub plans: Hi Ben, Just wondering what you and/or others on the blog do for both planned and unplanned teacher absence?  In the past, I have just had a “cultural video” on the back shelf for substitutes to use, but I’m wondering if there are other ideas out there that can still

A student said some really wonderful words in class today. After reading Laurie’s Version 3 of the He Talks Too Much reading with absolutely no difficulties, as if she had been reading French all her life, she said: “Wait a minute! How did I do that? That was so easy it was weird!” I explained to her that

Laurie continues: If we do every reading as an embedded reading, or every class story as an embedded reading, there will never be enough time. So, some thoughts: SAVE the embedded readings and use judiciously. For example: a) Use embedded readings when students have had a free-write on a topic and have come up with

Ben, I thought I sent a bio earlier but I checked my sent mail and don’t see it.  Está bien because I didn’t include some of the things you are requiring now anyways. Thanks again for everything. This year has gone much better with a year of experience and this blog. My name is David

These next three blog entries, taken from three comments made here by Laurie Clarcq,  clarify for us what scaffolding is how we can use it in our reading classes. In this first post on scaffolding, Laurie defines the term and gives an example of a scaffolded story: It is the scaffolding of the reading that

Hi Ben, I’m not sure what you’re looking for in terms of a bio, but reading Erik Olsen’s helped me out a bit: I have been teaching French for 11 years, 8 of which have been in my current school, the Marion Cross School in Norwich, VT, a public K-6 school in a small but

Thank you Bob. Y’all can put bios here or send them to me as an email. However you do it, I can then make a separate blog post from your bios and then put them in the Group Members category. Dec. 1 is still the deadline. Bios do so much to increase the overall feeling of

La chica que habla mucho Hay una chica. La chica se llama Imani. A Imani le gusta hablar. Ella habla todos los días, todos las noches.  Nunca se calla la boca. Un día, Imani va al cine. Cuando está en el cine, ella habla mucho. No habla en portugués o italiano, sino habla en francés

Jim sent this: Thought you guys might appreciate this: “Don’t trust anybody who’d rather be grammatically correct than have a good time.” Tom Robbins, Skinny Legs and All

Here are three versions of the five Laurie wrote (five is just too much for me as I learn this) that I publish here so that I can categorize them under the Readings Based on Matava/Tripp Scripts – French category. My thinking for anyone who wants to contribute your own embedded readings for Matava or