Stories

In our second Back-to-Basics video, we will be talking about asking stories with your language classes.Stories are a great way to teach vocabulary and grammar in context while engaging your students with interactive language skills.

Sometimes teaching a story with 3 verbs is just too much for your students. That's where one-verb stories come in and are a great way to highlight a particular verb and allow your students to be hyper-focused and acquire that verb more easily.

Typically when we ask a story, we generally focus on three different verbs and that works great! But every once in a while there might be a need to really laser in on only one verb. This verb might be particularly difficult, particularly important, or one that students often mess up.

Parents sing and talk to their babies about the world around them. They keep vocabulary simple, but they don't shelter their grammar. They use whatever grammar is necessary to communicate their message. This is how they acquire the language, the vocabulary, and the grammar in context.

At the end of last school year, I had the pleasure of reading another one of Ben Slavic's excellent books called A Natural Approach to Stories. Now building characters is a mainstay of my classroom