Story scripts should be simple and emotional. Students are attracted to verbs and emotions. But too many verbs confuse them and stories lacking in emotion bore them. Amy Catania wrote a story about a waitress who lost her new ring and started

Designing a curriculum based on a novel can be a very effective way to acquire a language. How to do it? The following ideas are suggested: 1. The instructor looks at the first chapter of the book and picks out the vocabulary that

You take a chapter from the novel and, going paragraph by paragraph, you do the following: 1. the students read the paragraph silently or translate with a partner if they can handle that. 2. you read it aloud while they read it silently. (loudly and

Pls. send only readings that are connected to Matava/Tripp scripts. I got a bunch today that were just readings, but, as good as they are, I think that they would be hard to use by group members. Unless y'all want

Robert sent this. I have worked with math teachers on using gesturing to pack formulae, etc. into muscle memory. Maybe someone can address this idea: Hi Ben, Could you post the following note and question for me? Recently the AP Psychology teacher asked me to

Another Matava French reading for fifth graders from Allison: La vache Qui Veut Être une Poule Dans une maison il y a un mouton, trois canards et une vache. Les animaux habitent dans la maison. Le mouton est grand, calme et noir.

This one is from Allison and thank you Allison: Here’s a script based on Matava’s “The Thirsty Boy.”  My fifth and sixth graders like stories with animals, and I like to bring in restaurant vocab now and then.  We have had other

A repost from 2011: I got the email below from Brian. In it, he talks about the term "flying" that we have been using here lately. It made me think of some old emails from Krashen describing a very similar term

I need a reminder that I am there to teach the structures, not the story. Sometimes we get to focusing on (more like bowing down at the alter of) the story and those myriad details that we need to do. It

Jody wrote in 2009: I also teach songs. Duh-- (especially with my little ones), but NOT because I actually believe it increases language acquisition very much. That is pretty easy to prove. Stuff from songs very rarely shows up in spontaneous