Reading & Writing Workshop
It was a great pleasure to see many enthusiastic teachers at the IIEEC Reading and Writing Workshop in Tokyo recently. It was a hot and muggy day but their passion blew off the heat and we had a great time learning how to teach R &W effectively with the MAT METHOD!
The workshop started with “The Alphabet Song” from Let’s Go 1 as fun warm up, which we sang with actions for some of the alphabet letters. For the last letter Z, everyone had to gesture the letter Z, standing on one foot. However, this pose had to be kept while singing the song again which was great fun to see and do. 
For the first part of the workshop, we introduced the importance of knowing how to recognize the Basic Key Words as the first words students need to read. Here is the activity we did for reinforcement of the Basic Key Words.
Slap a Question Game
We used the student cards of the IIEEC Question Cards, and IIEEC Expression Cards and also cubes with question words on all sides.(who, what, when, where, how, etc) Students take turns to throw the cube, and try to find and slap a card that starts with the word shown on the cube. The first one to find the question card and slap it can keep the card. The student who has the most cards at the end is the winner.
Have students read the questions again when you collect the cards. In this game, the object is to read the Key question words, Wh words, so even if whole questions are not taught yet, to identify and say just the Wh word is OK. 
After the Key Words, we moved on to MAT PHONICS.
We covered step by step, how to teach Alphabet, the short vowels, the consonants, and the three letter words using the fun techniques of the MAT PHONICS such as the MAT Vowel Actions and Phonics Math.
Here is the one of the activities we did.
SSP ABC Game
We used an Alphabet chart (or the ABC chart-like page of the workbook) as a game. Students get into pairs. Each pair has ONE eraser and puts it on one row of letters. Doing SSP (Stone, Scissors, Paper) they move it backwards in the row saying each letter they pass. They can move according to how they won with SSP.
Move one space with “stone”. Move 2 spaces with “scissors”. Move 3 spaces with “paper”. The one who reaches the last letter in the row is the winner. This can be played many times as it is quick, and other rows can be practiced as well. Be sure students read the letters as they move the spaces. The object of this activity is to get students to read the letters out of order, backwards as well as forward.
Next, we moved on to introduce different ways to use the textbook.
Since we have many fun phonics chants in Let’s Go 4th edition, we showed lots of fun ways to use it to reinforce the phonics section. For the “Let’s Read” pages, we showed examples of how students can do more creative writing after they read them. 
For writing, we were able to improve the participants’ understanding of what TELL Writing is with some samples that students wrote. Also, we showed how students wrote imaginative and exciting Creative Dialogs with their own drawings. MAT classes are Student Centered!
Through the workshop, we covered the entire contents of the MAT Basic Reading and Writing Series Level 1 and how to use the Let’s Go textbook with it. Reading and Writing are important parts of English learning. Using the MAT techniques for reading and writing, our students can develop the Four Skills in fun and active classes!