OK, so here’s the next one.
Last semester I gave the students a template to use in sketching out the elements of any story we read. The elements, such as characters, events, mood, plot, climax, outcome, setting, etc. are in L2; some elements are accompanied by simple phrases, so “setting” would have “where are we?” [Scaena: ubi sumus?].
We “practiced” on several stories and so now this semester we took a story (my textbook is a series of stories – if you don’t have such stories in your textbook, I would suggest you start with Aesop’s fables, La Fontaine, Marshak, the Grimms, and many others in all languages) and as we began to read it together, instead of just me reading, I asked them to tell me what the setting was, who was in the story, what were they doing, how did they feel, etc. All this in L2, mind you. Very important.
The reason it’s important is that they must use L2 as a medium of communication to get a task done; otherwise, L2 passes them by as the twittering of birds.
Here’s one more:
Ask students to take one line of the story and make a question out of it e.g. The snake was lying on the money > what was lying on the money or where was the snake lying? These questions can then be given to other students or from upper level to lower level students if you use the same story in tier teaching.
The next entry will be about finding ideas.