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Rafe Esquith: Five Tips to Help Children Develop Their Natural Gifts

#1189. Complete Sentences

Language, level: 3-5
Posted Thu Jul 22 17:44:06 PDT 1999 by Annie (kittyk70@aol.com).
Words in the Mohawk language
Teacher, Grade 5, Mississippi
Materials Required: Book -The Indian in the Cupboard
Activity Time: 30 minutes
Concepts Taught: Revise sentence fragments

After reading a chapter of The Indian in the Cupboard, show the students an example of Little Bear's choppy use of English (for example, "You come near, I hurt you.") Talk with the students about how to make the sentence more complete (ex. "If you come near me, I will hurt you.") Then either give the students a list of other quotes to work with or allow them to find and rewrite the quotes on their own. Also may lead into a discussion about why Little Bear spoke the way he did because some children will assume it may be because he's not very smart, instead of not being familiar with the language. Give students four or five words to try to pronounce and use correctly in another language to allow them to understand the difficulty of trying to use another language unfamiliar to them.

(This will also work with the book Bridge to Terabithia, in that you can have students correcting quotes by Jess and his family that contain double negatives.)