Our goal is to make acquisition effortless for them.
Thus, if the sentence is:
Jacob was born on Sept. 29, 2006.
Walk to Jacob. Touch him on the shoulder. Smile big. Say his name. If no one in the world is proud of Jacob, someone is now. Next, walk back over to where it says “est né – was born” behind you on the board. Put your hand on the structure as you say “est né”. Become aware of the silence between your words. That is the sound of language acquisition!
Then, walk slowly over to the color/number chart in the same way. Point at the 29. Now slowly make your way back to the calendar and put your hand on the month, septembre. Then do the same thing with the 2006 at the color/number chart again.
Ben used to use a laser pointer, but after many years of doing that he made a big change and began walking slowly around from his Classroom Rules poster to the words on the board to the student actor to the number/color charts to the calendar, pointing out everything in a kind of slow motion ballet as the sentence progressed. Otherwise, with the laser pointer, we run the risk of going too fast and making our input incomprehensible because of the speed.