The way that only the freezing winter sunsets can be
Storytelling and storybooks in the primary classroom
Welcome to one more of my obsessions: the story in the classroom, be it a story from the coursebook, a video, a storybook or even a thing that I invent myself, just to sell my ‘product‘. A story is not only the type of an activity that we introduce because of its many benefits or because we want to prepare our students for the YL Cambridge exams but also because the story can be a way and the means of developing the young children’s language skills, reading and writing, speaking and listening but also their grammar and vocabulary.
I have been using stories for ages and I am not exaggerating when I say that this is one of my favourite teaching tools and different storybooks characters, Marvin, Barry, Pete the Cat or Splat the Cat or Peppa, are like my best mates.
‘What’s new?‘, one could ask.
In this academic year (four months so far), I have been involved in teaching the British National Curriculum, KS 3 to my two wonderful groups who are an amazing but mixed bunch, especially when it comes to their actual English skills. One of my main aims is developing my students reading and writing skills, preferably fast (yes, yes, I know, nothing happens fast) while working with a very mixed ability group, ranging from complete beginners to A1+ children. Stories have been one of the many ways of doing and I decided to share a few examples of what we have done, hoping that they can serve as a source of inspiration, for all kinds of classes, EFL or ESL.
The general idea
The way these five stories were used in the primary classroom follow the same pattern
pre-book: looking at the cover of the book, reading the title, introducing the main character, asking some questions about it, trying to predict the story, introducing and practising the key vocabulary.
while-book: reading / watching the story, sometimes with pauses to check understanding, sometimes to involve the kids through gestures, sometimes through the phrases, if they are used repeatedly.
post-book: a variety of activities related to the content of the story or to the grammar or vocabulary of the week in which the story was introduced.
And this is when the post starts to make more sense, I hope, because I am going to share here five different stories and five story-related, follow-up activities that I used in the last few months.
Hen’s pens and Let’s practise vocabulary!
Hen’s pens is a story, one in the series published by Usborne, a lovely resource with the Ted in a red bed, Fat Cat on a mat and Big Pig on a dig. I usually use them a bit later, with slightly more advanced students, in shared reading sessions (and there probably should be a post about that) but this time, I wanted to introduce a longer story, a video story and a rhyming story, specifically to have kids practise noticing rhymes.
In the follow-up of the story, we completed a very simple reading task, in which we put the words into pairs by colour-coding them and then using the chart to practise reading. You will have also notice a colouring page in the handout. This was an additional task for the kids, only for those who like colouring.
Pete the Cat and Let’s speak!
Pete the Cat is very famous in the EFL circles and the story about rocking in the school shoes is an absolute hit. This is my personal way of teaching Present Continuous ever since I have seen the video for the first time and this year, not quite for the first time, I used it also to introduce the school vocabulary, verbs and places.
In our lesson, apart from watching, singing, miming and even re-enacting Pete’s day at school, we also followed up with a speaking activity in which the kids had to create their own sentences in the Present Continuous. They had the main verb forms, mostly taken from the story, accompanied by visuals to support speaking (in most cases, the kids were unable to read yet) and their task was to finish the sentence by drawing something. ‘I am eating…a pizza, an apple, a cookie, a banana’, according to their preferences. Later on we compared our sentences, creating our own day at school. The handout served as preparation for speaking.
Again, those children who were interested, were given a second handout to colour.
Marvin Gets Mad and Let’s practise grammar!
Marvin is, no doubt, one of my favourite characters and he’s been present in my classroom for about fifteen years now (wow!). ‘Marvin Gets Mad’ by Joseph Theobald is a great story for feelings and for learning about controlling emotions but this time round I decided to use it to reinforce the grammar behind the Present Continuous.
In the follow-up task, which was quite a stretch from the plot of the original story but it was exactly what we needed to practise the Present Continuous and to reinforce the idea of the suffix -ing. The kids had to add the suffix to all the sentences and then read them and match them to the pictures of a particular sheep.
Zog and Let’s take some notes!
Zog by Julia Donaldson was a good lesson, too. We focused on revising the body parts but we also did a lot as regards the language practice, as regards the structures we already learnt (‘I can…fly, catch a princess, breathe fire) and a few structures that were used repeatedly in the story (‘What’s the matter?’ ‘I can help you’ ‘Thank you’). While we were going through the story, the children helped me produce all the key language.
After we were done with the story itself, we ‘took notes’ about the story. All the kids got their copy of the handout and we went on through it: tracing the lines, reading the lines and completing them with our ideas. As usual, some of the lines are actually very restricted (‘Zog is a dragon’), some are more open-ended (‘He can…fly, breathe fire, catch a princess, help’), the others – even more. (‘He is…green, big, small, happy, sad, scared’). The final two lines are for tracing and for circling, depending on whether you liked the story or not. This time I included a small picture of Zog for everyone and some kids took time to colour it after they were done with writing.
Ling and her proud memory and Let’s draw!
Ling is a girl from one of the stories in our coursebook, Global English 3, in a series on memories (a sad memory, a happy memory and a proud memory) and I actually loved teaching all three. The story was quite challenging for my kids in terms of the language and I just wanted a general understanding of the main facts. After we talked about the picture and listened to the story, I did a short Yes / No activity regarding the content. This was followed by a note-taking activity, similar to the one we did with Zog, but it was substantially shorter and more limited in terms of creativity. However, this was only because the real star of the lesson was the drawing activity.
The word ‘proud’ was a new concept to us and I really wanted to make it personal, mostly because it has a huge potential and it is a good word to have at your disposal in the classroom. With the help of my T.A. we explained what it means, we gave examples and suggested some ideas for the kids, based on our shared experiences such as preparing for the Christmas show, doing difficult exercises in class and so on. I showed my students my example (below) and I let them draw.
Admittedly, the lesson (or this project) did not involve a huge lot of language production but it was a beautiful moment, nonetheless. And a very necessary one, too! Some children knew straight away what they were proud of, some others needed to take time to come up with an idea. And they did! Even those who started their search with a desperate ‘I don’t know!’.
My example is below and showing it to my class was another special moment and, guess what, they got the idea straight away! Because when we are doing something very, very difficult in Maths and my students keep raising their hands and everyone wants to give the answer, I am very proud (based on real events:-).
Coda
These are just a few ideas of what can be done in class when a story is involved. One of many ideas!
One of the YLE Cambridge visuals, Movers speaking (4 pictures), Flyers writing (3 pictures) or Flyers speaking (5 pictures). In our case, this time it was Paul and his Granmother from Flyers from the sample tests booklet (volume 2 p. 96), tampered with lightly (see below)
A handout created to accompany the visuals, you can download it from here
Procedures
Prepare the visuals by covering up the numbers on the pictures and making a copy for each student, cutting these up. Make a copy of the writing handout for each student.
Introduce the story: without revealing too much, for examply by telling the kids that they are going to meet a boy and read a story about his day.
Give out the visuals, cut up, ask the kids to find out the start of the story (aka picture number 1), talk about this picture with the class. The questions to use might include: Who is it? How old is he / she? What is she / he doing?
Tell the kids that this is Paul and his gran (we had different interpretations here but we need grandma for the handout) and their day. Ask the kids to reorder the pictures, check and glue them in the correct order in the notebooks. They number the pictures.
Create the story: kids look at all the pictures, in order to be able to construct the whole story and the plot. This can be easily turned into a speaking activity: the teacher makes sentences such as: I can see a boy. Kids answer with: Picture 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5, etc. Later on, the students take over by making their own sentences. This can be done as a whole class or in pairs. This is also the time to introduce or to check that all the kids have all the key vocabulary. The kids are not telling the story yet, they are only getting ready, thinking about the characters, their actions and feelings.
Write the story: the teacher gives out the handwriting handout, the kids glue it in their notebooks, too. The class go together, picture by picture, they read the sentences and think of their own ways of finishing the sentences. They write the words or they ask the teacher to write the words on the board for them to copy. The teacher monitors and makes sure that everyone is going on at the same pace.
Read the story: the groups that I did it with were not very big, only 5 or 6 students, so we could all read our stories out loud and applaud. With the bigger groups, it might be a good idea to put the kids into pairs or smaller groups to read to each other and to applaud. Nonetheless, I still wanted to include this element, purely for the reading practice.
Why we like it
I am quite happy with that activity since all the materials worked well in the classroom.
The kids enjoyed it. Many of the ideas were the same, especially the feelings but there was also some potential for variety in kids’ answers. I accepted everything, for example ‘Parents are angry’ (picture 5) or ‘Paul is scared’ (picture 4). As we always say: ‘All ideas are good ideas’. In that sense it worked very well as ‘the first story we wrote’. I was very proud of them and they were proud of themselves, too.
My students are only 6 and 7 and all of them are in year 1 of primary. Their literacy levels vary and this kind of an activity gave them an opportunity to practise a variety of skills, especially their literacy skills, with more focus on reading and writing. There was enough room for creativity and enough support at the same time. Initially, I was considering including the tracing element but then I decided that it would be too much for one lesson, with five pictures and five short texts to write.
There is a lot of potential for adaptation: the number of pictures can be adapted, if you choose to use the Movers speaking resources or the Flyers writing resources. The number of sentences for each picture can also be adapted, extended or cut short. If there is time and if the kids are ready, they can add their own, sixth part and even to draw their own picture.
I made sure that everyone had the same order of the pictures for the entire story as my kids are quite young and this was the first time we worked with this kind of a materials. Because of that and because of their literacy levels, they are not yet able to work independently on such a task and I decided to keep it more T-centred and T-led this time. However, for more advanced groups (as regards literacy and independent work), there is a lot more potential. They could tell the story in their own way. If needs be, the writing handout, can also be cut up and rearranged, to match the pictures and their order.
One thing that I did not do was to allow creativity as regards the title of the story. We did not focus much on it, I only introduce the brief: Paul and his grandma, but there is so much potential here, especially that the kids are also supposed to learn about a structure of the story and that it includes a title. No harm done, we will be repeating this activity and next time we will write our own titles, too!
Before you go, make sure you have a look at all the other storytelling ideas, here and here.
(Notes from the Back to School September 2023 webinar at BKC Moscow)
The aims?
Since I believe in leading by example, also here I decided to verbalise the aims for this webinar and for this post. I knew that I would have a mixed-ability audience, with some experienced and some less experienced teachers who might have or might have not used stories in their lessons. For that reason, I chose two main aims for this session:
For those teachers who have little or no experience with storytelling in the classroom (or little or no love for storytelling in the classroom): to provide the basic tools that will help them get started
For those teachers who already have a lot of experience with storytelling in the classroom (or a lot of love for storytelling): to bring in a new angle which will help to reinforce this love
What is a story and why we even bother
A structure of a story it is super simple. Rob Bisenbach calls it a three-legged stool here, since there are always characters who have a goal they try to reach and, on the way there, they encounter some obstacles or get over some challenges or, basically, who have some adventures. Everything else is an added value, like a set of blocks that you can add, take away or rearrange. I like this approach to and it does help me with preparing the materials for my students.
The best thing is that our life, our private life, our non-teaching life, is all built around stories. We read, watch and listen to stories in form of books, audiobooks and films and series. We tell stories of what happened to us at work, at school or just something that we witnessed on the metro or in the street. We tell stories to share our feelings, to make people smile, to make the little people fall asleep or to eat lunch. If we look for even a wider context, our family’s history is a story, our nation’s history is a story, everything that we read about on the news, the serious bits and the less serious bits, everything is a story.
No wonder then something that is such an important part of our life made its way into the EFL classroom, for children and for adults. Two years ago I gave myself a task of counting all the reasons that there might be to bring a story into the kids’ classroom and, based on what I could get my hands on in 2021, I found as many as 50, some related to child development, some related to teaching foreign languages. You can find this post here. I do recommend!
Different types of stories and their advantages (and all the tricky bits)
Coursebook stories: This is the place to start from all the teachers who have not worked much with storytelling with young learners. From the point of view of the leaners, these stories are easily availalbe, they often include the favourite characters who the kids can follow throughout the entire year and the language in terms of structures and lexis is carefully chosen and consistent with the material covered in each unit. On the other hand, these stories are also very teacher-friendly because they come with a set of instructions and ideas. Even if they are not ideal, they are a great starting point for adaptation and development. Our coursebooks also provide for a good variety of stories. Superminds from CUP for example include the following: cartoons (print and video versions), action stories for the younger kids and real, extensive reading stories for the more advanced primary school kids.
Traditional stories: They are a little bit more challenging, for both parties but they also have a lot of advantages. In many ways, these stories are already available to our students. It is quite likely that they have already heard them, watched them or read them in their L1 as the Little Red Riding Hood, the Enormous Turnip or Jack and the Beanstalk are a part of the world culture and bringing them into the lesson, in a different language version will be welcomed with joy. However, the beautiful and rich language, that is the main benefit of using these stories is also the biggest challenge in the context of the EFL or ESL young learners. More often than not, children would have to rely on their memories as a lot of the story will not be available to them. Consequently, these stories require more adaptation and grading and, in general, more work since these stories are not accompanied by ‘How to’ manuals and teacher’s books.
Phonics stories: This is another type of a story that was created not for the second/ foreign language learner but simply for a child learning to read. The language of these stories, although very often simplified and handpicked, focused on certain sounds and phonics, might still be beyond a regular young learner beginner learner. However, the teachers still use them because of their potential for the literacy skills’ development although it means more work and more careful lesson planning and staging on the part of the teacher.
Storybooks: There are many advantages of using storybooks with YL. These are the real stories, written for children and their plot is not limited by the set of the words that need to be introduced in unit 5, which, unfortunately, often makes the story very educational and, consequently, very boring. Storybooks are far from this danger zone. They use beautiful language, great characters and fantastic illustrations which can help develop not only the children’s language but also their visual literacy and literary tastes. It is true that, again, a lot of work might be required to adapt the langauge and the plot to make it available for our EFL/ESL students. Not to mention that the handouts and teachers’ books don’t exist, either so teachers are basically on their own. However, as a teacher who had an opportunity to see the long-term impact of these stories being present in the YL classroom, I can say that it is absolutely worth it.
There are some earlier posts on using storybooks in the EFL classroom and you can find them here
My favourite storybooks to have in the classroom, Top 10
Choosing a storybook for your EFL classroom, My experience
Videos: That is an interesting resource that was not available to us in the past and that has definitely blossomed since the time of the pandemic. There are certain limitations regarding the language, the support for the teacher but it is a resource that is readily available for the teachers and for the students and their parents and that is almost unlimited. Teachers often like to use Peppa (that most kids are familiar with), Pete the Cat or the Little Princess. I have so far committed only one post on Peppa and you can find it here.
YLE Cambridge
If the fact that stories are everpresent in our life is one important reason to bring stories into our lesson, then the Young Learners Exams are another. All of the modern coursebooks are aligned with the YLE skills and requirements, they offer skills development in the format of the exam and even if we do not prepare our students for taking the exams we will be developing their language skills in some connection with the papers format.
The exams themselves were introduced in 1997 and since then, as a conference presenter, a teacher, a trainer and a manager, I have often come across comments (doubts, inquiries or even accusations) that the exams were introduced for purely mercenary reasons and that children should not be exposed to any formal assessment at that age.
For me, personally, the main benefit of the YLE Cambridge is the research that was done and has been done in order to find out what being a young language learner is about and how chilren’s language skills can be tested in an appropriate way. And it was done not in connection with a group of students from only one L1 background but around the world which means that by analysing a lot of date, the L1-influence can be taken out of equation, helping us understand how children learn. Here is only one number for you: the initial versions of the tests were trialled on a group of 5000 children from Europe, South America and South-East Asia. If you are interested, please have a look at the Research Notes published by Cambridge online in February 2002.
Stories feature in three exams, starting from a very simple picture-based reading and writing task for Starters, through Movers, up to Flyers, with a real extensive reading and a reading comprehension task, a writing and a telling of a story based on a set of visuals. The storytelling tasks are included in the KET writing task.
The language
This is, by far, the most important reasons to use stories in the classroom: the language.
In order to tell a story, the students need to be able to operate quite a few structures such as the present or past tenses, adjectives, emotion adjectives, adverbs, linking words, time and sequence words, sensory words as well as the functional language in the dialogue. This means that the students need to possess all these skills to tell a story which, in turns, means that for quite a long time, for some of the levels, the students will not be able to do it. Or will they?
I do believe (and I will try to prove it:-) that storytelling is not only the aim in itself, it can also be an approach, and these structures can be introduced in order to enable the students to participate in storytelling as soon as it is possible.
For example, as regards adjectives, according to curriculum, the beginner students are not required to know any, apart from a few basic ones. The real adjectives input is scheduled for the A1 level (Movers) when the kids encounter comparatives and superlatives for the first time, although adjectives are around us and the meaning can be easily presented and practised because they are representational.
Far from being a call to action to change the curriulum, it is possible to introduce a lot of this language much earlier, in a way that is appropriate for young language learners.
I have already written about something that I called The Storytelling Campaign. You can read about it here: Introduction and here: Activities. Below, you will find the ideas as I presented them in our webinar.
Introducing adjectives: emotionsand not only
These are very easy to introduce. With our pre-school and primary school students, we start with the basic set of happy, sad, angry but then, as we go through the year, more and more adjectives are added. The photos that you can see here illustrate the set of adjectives that I use with my online YL and a set of homemade flashcards for our pre-primary. This second photo was taken in December, after only three months of classes with my youngest pre-primary and at the time they already knew all these 12 adjectives only because we started each lesson with talking about how we feel.
The other source of language as regards adjectives are the songs, from Super Simple Songs and other channels on youtube, for example Open Shut Them or As quiet as a mouse.
All of these can be used in the following way:
talking about how we feel in the beginning of the lesson, it is good for the language, for bonding but also for the teacher to find out how the kids are in class
this is the langauge that can help to signal problems, when kids are not feeling very well (‘I am sad’, ‘Are you angry?’)
and it can help sort out other classroom management issues (‘Look, Sasha is sad now. Don’t take her pencils, please’)
adjectives can be used to make riddles and to express opinion and this way personalise the content
adjectives can be used in simple Yes No game to describe any picture to prepare the kids for the listening or reading task or to practise vocabulary, for example: ‘The cat is sad. Yes or no? No, the cat is happy’
and this is exactly the same structure and approach that will be used to describe the pictures that are a part of a story (see: Movers or Flyers)
This is another topic that, in my opinion, is not really used to its full potential in our coursebooks. For that reason, I like to introduce games and activities that promote the use of verbs. From the very first lesson we play a movement game (‘Abracadabra, 123 you are (dancing)’ and ‘Everybody is dancing’). I also introduce the verbs through the songs, for example What do you like to do, I like you and Please be quiet, I am trying to sleep. Sometimes I introduce them because of our curriculum, for example the third song here that covers Present Continous and the rooms of the house. Sometimes, they feature in our course just because they are a source of a plethora of verbs and this is how we learn them before Present Simple or Present Continuous make an appearance as per curriculum.
In the classroom, apart from the obvious advantages for classroom and behaviour management, as it is an easy to use stirrer, we can also use these structures to describe any pictures, which, again, is a preparation for storytelling with visuals.
The illustrations above come from the YLE Cambridge sample papers and they can easily be used in class, not only as the actual exam practice activity and not only with the children who are actually preparing for Starters. The story is so obvious and funny (and it includes all there elements of a story mentioned above) and the visuals simple enough for the pre-primary students to use, too. If they are prepared for it and if the activity is properly staged.
In the beginning the teacher is the one to initiate the structure either by making incorrect sentences (Mummy is eating. Yes or No) or by proving the sentence starters (Mummy is…) but, with time, the kids get more and more independence and skills. Actually, this activity can start wtih kids looking only at one picture before they are shown the whole sequence. And, bearing in mind that the teacher is the one to select the picture (or pictures) for the activity, it is really easy to choose a particular focus, closely connected to the topic of the lesson, for example talking about toys, talking about clothes, talking about food etc.
A simple story can be created even if only one picture is available, like the one above that also comes from YLE and is, in fact, a reading task, this picture can also become the basis for a story. We can see a beautiful family scene, a Sunday afternoon and everyone is doing something and feeling something. The first step is a simple picture description. The second step is figuring out what all the characters do next. ‘Next, mummy is drinking tea’, ‘Next, daddy is sleeping’ etc and here the kids can become a lot more creative. Naturally, all ideas are good ideas.
One more way of using this approach would be using not the visuals but the sets of words, like the one we have in Movers Reading and Writing part 1 or in Flyers Reading and Writing part 1. The teacher would only need to add some introduction, just like in Movers and Flyers story speaking. Kids need to continue the story and they need to use the words provided. I came up with this idea only while preparing the webinar and I am really looking forward to trialling it out with my students. Above, you can see my example from the webinar.
Introducing linking words
Simple linking words such as ‘because’, ‘and’, ‘but’ and ‘so’ can also be introduced as part of the traditional curriculum for pre-school or primary students.
‘Because’ is the one that we start using in the first half of year 1. It can be included in the hello circle when the students talk about how they are (‘How are you today?’ ‘I am happy’ ‘Because…’) and start giving simple justification for their adjectives. ‘I am happy because it is sunny / because it is Friday / because I have a little homework’. It might happen that the kids will start to answer in their L1 or in a mix of L1 and L2, but it is perfectly fine. First of all, I like to know why my students are happy or sad or angry because it might have an impact on their behaviour in class. Second of all, it helps me to react to their news and to bond.
‘Because’ can also be used while describing pictures or while expressing opinion in a simple way (‘Do you like this story / song / picture?’ ‘Yes, because it is happy / funny / fast etc’)In the beginning, this has to be initiated and supported by the teacher, with the sentence starters or with offering a few options for the answer. It also helps when the teacher acts as a model (‘I am happy because my lunch was yummy’).
‘And‘ is even an easier linker to promote. First of all, it can be demonstrated and supported with gestures (i.e. fingers, to signal more than one element). Second of all, it can be used with any vocabulary, colours, toys, food or emotions (‘I am happy AND beautiful’).
‘But’, by comparison, poses a bigger challenge but it is not impossible. With some of my groups in the past, I used the song already mentioned here (‘What do you like to do’ by Super Simple Song) because its every verse is build around a simple contrast (‘I like dancing BUT I don’t like dancing with a bear’). With some other groups, I started to introduce it with a song, too, ‘Do you like broccoli ice-cream?’, simply by adding ‘but’ for some dramatic effect in-between the lines of the story (‘Do you like ice-cream? Yes, I do’, ‘Do you like broccoli? Yes, I do’ ‘BUT do you like broccoli ice-cream?’) and the kids simply picked up on that.
The most challenging of all of these for my Movers kids turned out to be ‘so‘ as they seemed to confuse it with ‘and’. I haven’t had a chance to implement it in the classroom since it was an idea that came to my during the preparation for this webinar, but this connection could be created in a natural way between ‘I’ve got a stomach ache’ and ‘I don’t eat ice-cream’ or ‘No ice-cream today’ which we use with my pre-primary kids while talking about health and health problems. Again, one more thing to trial and test when I am teaching level 2 of pre-primary again.
As regards the story sequencing linkers such as ‘first’, ‘next’, ‘in the end’, we introduce them through exposure while telling stories based on visuals. It is one more activity that starts with the teacher being responsible for providing those and encouraging the children to follow up with the events of the story.
Staging of the story
One of the biggest challenges that the students face while telling the story is the very genre and the way we tend to present it in class. Very often, children, when they hear the word story, they automatically raise the level of challenge for themselves and they approach the task in a very serious way, hoping to create something that will at least match the creativity and the success of Harry Potter. Which, of course, is not the case. When we start telling stories in class, we are expecting something with a character, a goal and some obstacles, something with a beginning, the middle and the ending and, if we are using the YLE Cambridge materials, something that describes the three or four or five visuals provided.
Our task, as teachers, is to show the students, how this task can be broken in and managed, moving on from a very controlled practice, to freer practice, and, perhaps, eventually, to a very creative story writing or story telling.
Here is one of the approaches that I used in class effectively, based on the Flyers speaking materials.
Step 1: Collecting resources to tell the story in a simple way.
Students can work individually, in pairs or teams. They make a list of all the things they can see in each picture, starting with the basic nouns that can be seen which later can be extended into adjectives, verbs, emotions etc, anything more abstract. Afterwards, the kids, in pairs, describe the pictures (aka tell the story) with all of the words on the list, crossing them out as they use them. This is how we can ensure a good length of a discourse, especially that the teacher will be monitoring the kids as they are creating the list and the teacher can add some of the crucial words if they are missing. The students can exchange their lists and tell the story again, with a different set of words and they can also write the story for homework.
Step 2: Crazy words aka freer practice
This step is a simple development on step 1. The words on the list on the right have been provided by the teacher and, as can be seen, they do not feature in the visuals provided. Since, however, the children already know the story very well, they can be invited to take part in a more creative task. We read the words together with the whole group and I tell them ‘These words are in the story but they are not in the picture’ and we make a few examples together about the first picture, for example: ‘Students are hungry. It is 10 a.m.’, ‘Students are looking at the flowers in the garden’ etc.
Afterwards, children work in pairs and create their own story trying to incorporate all the crazy words.
Step 3: Story and its framework
This is the most creative approach in which the kids use only the general framework of the original story. After the kids tried to tell the story and tried to tell it with a few new details, they have a chance to change as much as they want to within the framwork. I prepare the main events, in the form of questions and we reveal them one by one while the students are working in pairs, thinking and planning their story. Afterwards, we have a big, whole class, storytelling session and it an absolute joy and fun to see in how many versions you can tell the story based with the same building blocks. Here, in the post on the activities in the storytelling campaign, you can find the framework for yet another Flyers story, Charlie and the elephant.
A few bonus ideas
Vyacheslav – about one more, super simple way of setting up a storytelling activity
This is my number 1 storybook illustration ever. Marvin Wanted More by Joseph Theobald
This post came about as a result of conversations with some of my trainees and colleagues, most recently with Vera, and it inspired me to reflect on not necessarily on my favourite storybooks as this list would be much, much longer but on the list that I would start a storybook library from and the titles that I would buy first.
Making this list was not entirely pleasant because as soon as I got to number 10, I started to revise it as I was being flooded by the titles and the characters that also wanted to make it. It is quite likely that this list will be modified in the future.
Here we go then. The Very Personal List Of My Favourite Storybooks To Be Used In the EFL Classroom with some very short rationale and some interesting links.
Very Hungry Caterpillarby Eric Carle: It is a true classic and it is quite likely that your students, no matter how young, have already read it in their L1. It has a great character that we can relate to (I know I can) and it can be used to teach food, emotions (‘I am hungry’, ‘I am not feeling very well’), the life cycle of butterfly and, potentially, the seasons and weather, too. It can be combined with a treasure hunt in the garden and in the park and with a craft lesson.
Dear Zoo by Rod Campbell: This is a storybook that I know it by heart and I did use it in class a few times with only a box and a set of flashcards. It is a great resource to teach and to practise all the animal vocabulary but it is a great starting point to teaching adjectives, too. I used it to introduce the idea of a riddle which we later extended to make our own. It has been
Marvin Gets Angry by Joseph Theobald: I have a special place in my heart for Marvin and his antics. This book can help you to teach the basic emotions (happy, sad, agry, tired) and it is great in the first lessons, while establishing class routines and teaching kids how to behave but it also helps to accept that we all get angry sometimes and we need to find ways of dealing with. Other than stamping on the flowers, frightening the hens and biting the cow’s tail. It works for body parts, too.
Brown Bear by Bill Martin Jr and Eric Carl: It is a wonderful book for the first lessons with year 1 students because it has a repetitive text and it works very well with colours. It can be also used to teach ‘What can you see?’ ‘I can see / I see’ which is a good first functional phrase that will be used throughout the course.
Barry And the Scary Hairy Monster by Sue Hendra: It is not the first book of the series, but it is the first one I used and I fell in love with. It has a great plot with a fantastic surprise at the end and I normally use it in the beginning of the year 1 course, to practise emotions, colours and some simple questions such as ‘Where are you?’, ‘Who are you?’. It is great for involving kids through miming and counting. It also normalises the fact that we are all afraid and it helps the kids to deal with the fear.
Three Billy Goats Gruff (traditional): This is my favourite traditional story to be used in the EFL classes although the reasons for that are rather random. I started using it with my students only because I found it lying around and came up with ways of dealing with it. We use it to talk about emotions and food because all the goats offer some random food items to the troll trying to bail themselves out. At least they do in my rendition.
Where Is My Baby? by Julie Ashworth: Here is another book that I am very attached to emotionally. We have a history, you could say. Naturally, I know this one by heart, too. It has some repetitive language, it can be easily turned into a role-play with the whole class and it is a perfect resource for teaching and practising body parts and adjectives. I love the ending, too because it helps to teach the idea of tolerance. It can be combined with a craft lesson.
Zog by Julia Donaldson: I love Zog because it works well in the EFL classroom to teach body parts, health problems (‘What’s the matter?’) and ‘I can’, ‘I can’t’. Apart from that, it also has a great story that includes an underdog hero, a princess that does not care about castles and honours and who wants to do something real and a prince that learns that it is not necessary to fight with dragons, all the great ideas that can help teach kids develop and believe in themselves.
Don’t Eat the Teacher by Nick Ward: This books made it to my top ten because it includes aquatic animals and a shark as the main character and a lot of school vocabulary. It has got a funny plot and can be used to teach imperatives and the rules of classroom behaviour. It is one more book that I like to use in the beginning of the year. It can be used in the unit on animals or, specifically, on life aquatic and it can be combined with the Baby Shark song and craft, too.
Rhinos Don’t Eat Pancakes by Anna Kemp: This storybook might be a bit too challening for the youngest of students, in terms of concepts or vocabulary, but it is still an amazing resource. It has some potential to be used in lessons on colours, emotions, house vocabulary, animals, verbs and adjectives. It is a fantastic resource to start a conversation on the power of imagination and the relationship between the kids and the parents. I am also planning it to use it in my Art and English classes. This is also the storybook that I used with all the ages of students: from pre-school to my advanced teachers.
Those that almost made the list: Elmer by David McKee, Marvin Wanted More by Joseph Theobald, Pete the Cat by Eric Litwin, James Dean and Kimberly Dean, Hugless Douglass by David Melling, Dinosaurs in the supermarket by Timothy Knapman and Sarah Warburton, Perfectly Norman by Tom Percival, The Colour Monster by Anna Llenas, The Day the Crayons Quit by Drew Daywalk and Oliver Jeffers, Lost and Found by Oliver Jeffers and many many more…
a group of A2 or A2+ kids preparing for the Cambridge Flyers or the Cambridge KET exam
a set of the storytelling pictures from the exam writing materials
a piece of paper and a pen
Procedure
The teacher displays the visuals on the screen and tells the kids that they will be used to tell a story.
The teacher asks the kids to look at the visuals and decide what their character is going to be called. Everyone writes the name down on their piece of paper.
The teacher tells the kids to write down ten numbers, 1 – 10, and, when everyone is ready, to write ten things that they can see in all the pictures. These can be only nouns or a selection of nouns, verbs, adjectives etc.
The teacher asks the kids to decide what kind of a story they are going to tell: a happy story, a sad story or a scary story. Everyone decides and draws a relevant smiley at the bottom of their list.
The teacher divides the kids into pairs and sends them into breakout rooms to tell their stories. They have to use the name, all ten words and they have to make sure that their story has the mood they have chosen for it.
Back in the common room, the kids give the group a summary of their story (‘It is a story about a boy who…’)
Why we like it
The main aim for me in this particular lesson was to show the kids that even such uninspiring illustrations as the ones we used (and sadly, they were really boring this time) can be a start of a fun storytelling activity and that the final product’s quality depends only on the writers that is us.
We are preparing for a progress test and a mock test and I am hoping that an activity of that kind will get the students ready for the independent work during the test itself. Looking at the visuals and making the list helped the students think of the words that they see and it helped to assure that they will be closer to getting to the required wordcount (35 words). If they have ten on their list already 30% of the way there. It also gave them the time necessary to really look at the pictures and to start thinking of what might be happening.
From the word ‘Go’ the stories became personalised because the character got a name and became six different boys instantly, Fred, Bob, Tom and Vyacheslav among them. (‘Anka, but why Vyacheslav?‘ ‘I am not sure. I looked at him and I just thought he looks like a Vyacheslav‘).
Deciding how the story will end in the beginning also helped to shape it. It was the first time we did it and for that reason I only offered three options: a happy story, a sad story and a scary story but that list can be easily extended. We shared how we were planning to tell the story before we went into the breakout rooms and among our six stories there were three happy stories, one sad story, one scary story (mine) and one ‘ill story’ because one of my students decided that his character is going to catch a cold in the end. Anyway, from the very beginning the kids knew where they were taking their Fred and their Bob. They also knew that their partner’s story will be a bit different so, hopefully, they were more interested in listening to it. There was some variety in the group so I could put them up in a pair whose angle was different.
It can be easily done in the classroom but it works amazingly well in the online classes and this is how it came to be. I wanted to avoid sharing the visuals and wasting time on opening them.
It is easy and it can be a speaking activity in its own right or it can work as a story-writing preparation task as it was in our case. Consequently, a set of three pictures can be used (Flyers and KET writing tasks) or a set of five pictures (Flyers speaking tasks).
As a potential follow-up, the kids can write the story for homework.
Next time (and there will defnitely be another round of this activity), I am going to add a more communicative element that will give them a proper listening task and that will give them an opportunity to interact with their partner’s story such as retelling the story they have heard in the breakout rooms, creating a title for their partner’s story or continuing it (‘The next day…’). I know that choosing the best story is sometimes suggested with this kind of an activity but, to be honest, I am not a fan. Not everything needs to be a competition.
This is how I daydream it: my primary kids go on to take their Starters (this is an old daydream, this year they will be taking Flyers), they are describing the pictures or telling the story. The examiner asks ‘How is this boy?’ and my kids answer ‘He is confused.’ and the examiner cannot believe her/his ears but she/he is, actually, impressed.
‘Confused’ is one of the many adjectives that my primary kids have learnt thanks to the sheep game that we’ve been playing for a few years now. We started with the normal adjectives, happy, sad, angry, sleepy but the kids noticed that I’ve been hiding some cards and they got curious. And because they were curious, they started to ask questions. Since the cards were wonderfully happy and funny, and since, together with some clarification from me, they did illustrated the concept very well (after all, they were created for children), we started using the ‘confused’ card (and with them ‘chatty’, ‘in love’, ‘crazy’).
That, in hindsight, was an excellent idea because this turned out to be a very useful words because I happen to be confused and my kids happen to be confused, too. Not to mention all the characters from all the stories. ‘Confused’ might be from the B1/B2 shelf, but, we found it very very useful, at the age of seven, in something that was the pre-A1 level.
‘OK’, ‘ill’, ‘in love’, ‘creative’
The coursebook and the curriculum
A disclaimer first: my comments in this section are based only on a very un-thorough looking through the coursebooks for pre-schoolers, only a quick glance at the contents page and the units. I acknowledge that fact that I might have missed something and that a proper research might be necessary and, for that reason, I will refrain from quoting any titles here. However, having flipped through five recently published coursebooks for pre-primary learners, I did not find much as regards adjectives, apart from colours (all), some of the weather words (depending on the title) and some random happy, sad and hungry (also depending on the title). With one honourable exception that introduces quite a few emotions as well as some other opposites, either through stories or through CLIL projects. Overall, however – not good at all.
I also had a look at the primary books and here the situation is admittedly better because all of the modern publications tend to align their content with the YLE Cambridge wordlist and that, in turn, means about 50 adjectives on the pre-A1 level, including colours and possessive adjectives.
As it happens, my school is now getting ready for the YLE mock exams and I am putting together a set of materials for our teachers and kids and that made me look at the said wordlist with a great more deal of scrutiny. Starters kids (pre-A1) are supposed to know about 50 adjectives, Movers kids (A1) – additional 50 adjectives and Flyers kids (A2) – 70 more adjectives on top of that. I am aware of the fact that these lists were not created on a whim, quite the contrary – they are a result of a large-scale research and the effort of a huge team of people. But there are all these questions there, too. Why do the pre-A1 kids need to know the adjectives such as ‘double’ or ‘correct’ and ‘right’ (as correct) and ‘its’ (also an adjective) and some other ones, although not adjectives (‘coconut’, ‘pineapple’, ‘flat’ and ‘apartment’ or ‘lime’)? Why would these be more important, useful and appropriate for primary school children than ‘hot’, ‘cold’, ‘easy’, ‘difficult’ or ‘loud’ and ‘quiet’, which are only introduced at the A1 level?
I do not have the answers but I have been introducing them (or some of them) much earlier than that. And effectively so. If you are interested why and how, please continue reading.
‘crazy’
Emotions and feelings
‘Sasha, how do feel today?‘ is one of the questions that we ask in every lesson. Why? Well, I guess, first and foremost it is for socialising. This is the question that we ask when we meet someone, just to make a conversation, at least with adults.
Since our students are children, however, there is a lot more to that. Children are growing, developing their social skills and learning about a variety of emotions available and, even more importantly, learning how to deal with these emotions and learning how to recognise these emotions in others. That is why giving them tools to do that, in their L1 and, naturally, in their L2, is absolutely crucial.
Ideally, all the Sashas in the world would walk into the classroom being happy, totally over the moon, brimming with joy and ready to conquer the world with us in the next 45 minutes. But it is not possible for every Sasha to be happy every day and, as a teacher, I want to know how they really are and during the hello circle I am, literally, all ears because if Sasha is sad or sleepy or hungry, or, sometimes, angry, I would like to know that. Not only to show empathy but also to look at the lesson and what I have prepared for today from the group’s and the individuals’ point of view. Maybe a bunch of sleepy children will not be able to deal very well with the story? Maybe it will be necessary to keep an eye on Sasha and accept that today she might not be able to focus as well as usually because she is feeling a bit under the weather. Maybe it is a good idea to start with this silly game of ours (although I did promise myself to ‘never ever’) because it might distract and cheer up this little human who walks in and announces ‘I am very, very, very angry.’
Having this range of emotions vocabulary is also very handy when it comes to behaviour management, even if in the simplest of terms.
Situation type #1: an unpleasant situation: someone draws on someone else’s paper, someone takes someone else’s toy /book / marker without asking, someone jumps the queue, no casualties, only a lot of unhappiness in the room and one person is on the verge of tears. ‘Look. Sasha is very sad now‘. Naturally, it might not be the case of ‘one size only’, one solution for all occasions but it is a good start.
Situation type #2: a 5 y.o. confrontation: both parties did have a disagreement, both parties are not very happy and, definitely, way too upset to just get over it and get involved in the lesson activities. ‘Sasha, are you angry?’ ‘Yes!’ ‘It’s ok.’ Again, some cases are more complex than that, but in many situations the very fact of calling the spade a spade and showing that it is natural to feel angry (and, by default, giving the human some time out to accept and recover) is the best solution. It applies also to all the negative emtions, as long as no comes to any harm.
To be perfectly honest, sometimes (only sometimes!) it feels like this brief and contained reaction, limited by the fact that extreme language grading is necessary, is the best solution. Anything to avoid a long lecture from the adult on ‘The negative impact and the long-term consequences of….’ that children sometimes receive from their teachers, baby-sitters, nannies, parents, grandparents…
‘ill’
Riddles
This is, by far, one of our favourite games: making riddles. The game is introduced in its simplest from, with a set of flashcards and with the students guessing the secret word which the teacher or one of the children keep close to their chest. That’s just the beginning, however, once the kids are comfortable and familiar with the format, a set of simple adjectives are added, first the colours (based on the visuals in the flashcards) and big / small. Then, depending on the topic, we introduce and play with the relevant adjectives, for example fast / slow / big / small / loud / quiet while talking about transport, big / small / friendly / dangerous while talking about animals, hot and cold while talking about food and big / small / soft / hard / light / heavy while talking about the everyday objects and so on.
The kids can either use the adjectives of their choice and affirmative sentences (It’s big, it is yellow) or they can react to teacher’s or kids’ questions (Is it big or small?).
A variation of this activity is also I spy with my little eye adopted (and limited) to the set of vocabulary that the students are familiar with, played with a set of flashcards or a poster.
Expressing opinion…
…or, rather, justifying your opinion, something that can become a part of pretty much every unit and every set of words. Not only does it create an opportunity to personalise the vocabulary by dividing it into the things we like and the things we don’t like but also to give more detail and to build a small discourse (I like it. It is beautiful) or even first complex sentences (I like it because it is beautiful).
Naturally, that will require a different set of adjectives but beautiful, ugly, easy difficult, interesting and boring to be the concepts that preschool children understand, even though the flashards and visuals will be based on some symbols.
Storytelling
Our storytelling has reached some new amazing levels since we started working extensively on adjectives, both with primary and pre-primary students. You can read more about in an earlier post on the Storytelling Campaign here and here.
‘confused’
In my classroom
In this academic year, I am working with three pre-school groups, level 1, level 2 and level 3 and I am happy to say that even my youngest level 1 students are familiar with the set of 12 different adjectives that you can see in the first photograph plus a few more that we have learnt through songs. Level 2 group have got the basic set, quantifiers ‘very’ and ‘a little’ and a few more adjectives lined up. Level 3 group have got a nice set to describe food, transport and animals (including ‘scary‘) and they have already started working on extanding that range.
The photographs that were chosen to illustrate this post all come from the set that I have created for my pre-school group.
I have decided to use paper plates because they are durable, easy to stock and they have a shape of a circle aka they are a face. In the classroom, we put them in neat rows on the carpet, in the middle of the circle, to support production. My younger students like to pick up those that are relevant and hide behind them, showing how they really feel. This makes this part of the lesson a bit more kinesthetic.
I have drawn all of them myself but before making the decision on how to represent each adjective, I like to look at different emoticons to get inspired and to find something that meets two criteria a) I can draw it and b) my students will be able to associate it with a specific concept.
In some cases, the symbol was pretty easy for students to decode (for example: an owl = clever), in some others, I had to follow up with a brief clarification (for example: lightbulbs = ideas = creative). After the first lesson, I decided to upgrade the ill flashcard by adding a real tissue for the poor sneezing person.
There is another thing that I am considering at the moment. With my preschool students we start with the adjectives that help us describe how we feel and it must have been out of sheer linguistic greed that I decided to add those adjectives that describe personal characteristics rather than emotions such as ‘strong’, ‘beautiful’ or ‘clever’. Although, to be honest, we adults know very well that there are days when we feel particularly beautiful or not and the kids responded well to it. At the moment, I am considering different ways of organising all the adjectives that we already know and building up on that, in each category.
Storytelling (a definition for the purpose of this post): story-everything in class: telling stories, reading stories, listening to stories, writing stories, making-up stories, watching stories…
All the reasons to use stories in class when you teach children…
Stories, storybooks, traditional stories are a part of the child’s world
Stories help children learn about the world and the concepts
They also provide models of behaviour
They introduce children to other cultures
Telling stories and listening to stories is a social event
They help to develop focus and concentration
They can be a starting point to developing learning strategies such as predicting or making hypothesis
They expose children to different illustrations and they help to develop visual literacy
They help develop imagination
They help to develop kids’ memory
Stories help children to know the sounds, rhymes and this way to develop early literacy skills
Working with stories helps children learn about the value of books
They help children learn about the real and the imaginary world
Stories help faciliate interaction between adults and children
Children who read and listen to stories find it easier to understand other people
Kids who read stories are likely to have higher confidence levels
Stories are a natural way of teaching children
Stories help children relax
Stories help children understand their own feelings
Reading and stories can develop critical thinking skills
Storytelling and story reading can be a source of fun and pleasure
All the reasons to use stories in class because you teach a foreign language…
They create the context for the language
They help to build and develop the vocabulary
They can be used to introduce the langauge
They can be used to practise the langauge
They can be used to revise the language
They help develop listening skills
They expose the children both to dialogue and to narrative
Listening to stories is the first step to producing the language
They help develop literacy skills
Stories are a wonderful opportunity for integrating skills ie reading with listening or speaking with writing.
The stories created specifically for the EFL / ESL context have the graded language and they are built closely around the vocabulary and structures that they are already familiar with
Traditional stories have the advantage of being familiar to the children already and this will make their reception in a foreign language much easier
Storybooks are a source of the beautiful and natural language that can be made accessible to children. Some of them might be known to children (for example Gruffalo or The Very Hungry Caterpillar) and this will make the L2 version more easily understood and easier to use
Visuals accompanying the stories can also be used as a resource to introduce and to practise the langauge
They are an intergral part of the Young Learners Exam so using stories in class from early on will be contributing to preparing students for them
They can help connect studying English at school and studying English at home
They can motivate the children to learn the language
Using stories in class can encourage children to read for pleasure
Storytelling can be used as a classroom management tool as they are natural settlers
Some of the concepts in stories can be used to manage children’s behaviour in the EFL/ESL classroom ie ‘Boris goes to school’ is a story about making friends
Telling stories or reading stories can be an introduction or a follow-up to song lessons or craft lessons
Many stories have a set of structures and that makes them easier for the EFL/ESL students to learn
A story is usually used in more than one lesson. This repetition is also beneficial for the students as they can get more and more involved in the retelling or the re-reading of the stories
Telling stories can be an introduction to role-plays and drama activities
Even the lower level students can be encouraged to create stories. They will use their ideas based on the vocabulary they have (Wright)
Storytelling activities appeal to children with different intelligences and learning styles (Read)
Stories can be used to supplement the coursebook
Or they can be used as the basis for a curriculum
Reading and listening to stories can help with pronunciation in L2, too.
Stories encourage the kids to contribute ideas and to express themselves
Have I forgotten anything? I must have. Although 50 is not a bad number to start with. More later…
Happy teaching!
Bibliography
I will give myself a permission to be slightly reckless about referencing everyone since it is not a very serious research article. While preparing this post, I have consulted:
Sandie Mourao and Gail Ellis (2020), Teaching English to Pre-primary children, Delta Teacher Development Series
Opal Dunn (2012), Introducing English to Young Children: Spoken Language, Collins
Forgive the grand name, I must have been in the mood for something like that, now I feel like the general Kutuzov himself.
Initially, I was planning to write a post on all the reasons of using stories in class and perhaps I am going to get down to it, eventually but I want to reasearch it properly so bear with me. It will take some time.
If you have not worked with stories much you can have a look at this post here, to look at the basics of using storybooks in the EFL classroom and here at one of the ways of building a lesson around a coursebook story.
Today, however, I would like to tell you about the behind the scenes work – everything that takes place in my VYL and YL classes to ensure that my kids are ready to tell stories.
makebeliefscomix.com
Why bother?
To take my students from the receptive skills of storytelling towards the productive storytelling skills and in a more extensive way than just listening to the stories we read and which they help to retell
To give them the appropriate tools to enable production (We Want More! (remember?)
To unleash their imagination and creativity, step by step, even in pre-school.
makebeliefscomix.com
Step 1: Teaching adjectives
I wouldn’t want to say that the curriculum and the coursebooks we use with VYL or YL do not contain any adjectives at all. Yes, some of them are included but, in my opinion, there is a lot more potential than just the basic ‘happy, sad, angry’ and ‘big and small’. If you think about it, many coursebooks introduce adjectives only when they deal with comparatives and superlatives and, in my humble opionion, even the very young kids understand at least some of the opposites and they can use them to describe things.
For that very reason, the curriculum can be upgraded by adding:
more emotions: happy, sad, angry, hungry, thirsty, tired, sleepy, not so good, great, good, OK.
more adjectives to describe characters: brave, strong, clever, beautiful, ugly, scared and not scared, fast, slow.
adjectives to describe objects and animals: funny, scary, long, short, old, new, clean and dirty.
It is true that it might not always be easy to depict these accurately but we can easily use the children’s growing ability to deal with symbols and all these concepts can be associated and explained with carefully chosen images.
Here you can find some of the vocabulary sets that I use with my pre-school and primary strudents. A very important note: children are not necessarily expected to memorise all of these and to be able to remember both the word and its written form. We stick to the curriculum as regards the tests and assessment but in our classes we use a lot wider vocabulary range than the coursebook suggests.
Step 2: Teaching verbs and teaching Present Continous
That is another topic or area which, in my opinion, can significantly contribute to the development of our little students’ storytelling skills but, at the same time, the area that has not really been reflected in the coursebooks. Fair enough, the Present Simple might not be the most essential structure to know. It not introduced explicitly in the pre-school coursebooks (to the best of my knowledge) and in primary it is a structure on the YLE Starters list but in the classroom, this one is introduced in year 2 of primary.
At the same time, this is the structure that can be easily introduced and clarified with gestures, a structure that can be used in the classroom, to clarify instructions or to manage the group and a structure that is very (very, very) useful while describing pictures and, later on, describing pictures which form a story, like in the YLE Movers and Flyers.
As for the content, these are some of the verbs that can be added to the curriculum
everyday verbs: get up, eat, drink, brush your teeth, wash your face, get dressed, go to school, go to sleep, play, cook, watch TV, sleep.
hobbies and free-time activities: dance, sing, draw, read, write, ride a bike, listen to music, jump, run, swim.
makebeliefscomix.com
Step 3: Teaching the basic linking words
This is probably the most challenging step as it is the most abstract one and cannot be easily represented with flashcards. At the same time, the three basic linking words: and, but and because can be taught in the context.
These are the ideas that I tend to use with my students
and: introduced as a follow-up of ‘I like / I don’t like’ to talk about our preferences ie ‘I like apples and bananas and cookies’ and it can be used with quite a few sets of vocabulary such as colours, toys, food, animals, pets, etc.
because: introduced when we talk about how we feel. We start with a simple ‘I’m good’, ‘I’m happy’ and then we slowly introduce the linking word ‘I’m happy because it is sunny’. The same applies to all the pictures and photographs we discuss.
In all three cases, the introduction starts with the children being exposed to complex sentences linked with three words and getting used to hearing them. Production comes later on, when they are ready.
makebeliefscomix.com
This is the first part of the post.
In part two I am going to share some of the activites we use in class. It’s half-ready)))
This post is a lesson I taught with a group of 4-year-olds in their first year of studying English, based on the materials from Playway to English 1, 2nd edition by Herbert Puchta and Gunter Gerngross from Cambridge University Press.
It was taken from unit 6 (The Weather) and it is called ‘The Little Seed’.
Story cards ‘The Little Seed’ Playway to English, 2nd ed by H.Puchta and G.Gerngross, CUP
Pre-Story
Vocabulary revisionand practice with flashcards, the weather dice, the song, the weather sounds etc. Kids sit in a circle, on little stools.
New vocabulary introduction: a bee, a butterfly, a flower, a seed. We used finger puppets because these three feature in my garden finger puppet set (together with a ladybird and a caterpillar) which I once got as a present (thank you, Cheng <3). I put them on my fingers and we practised saying ‘Hello, bee!’ ‘Hello, butterfly!’ The kids got really excited so we did spend some time, playing with them, trying them on and saying ‘Hello, bee!’ ‘Hello, butterfly!’ These activities were done on the carpet, with kids sitting in a circle. I forgot to bring real seeds so this time, we skipped this stage but I am planning to include them in the follow-up lesson (see below). Of course, the same can be done with regular flashcards or handmade toy butterfly and bee.
While-Story
Just look: I hold the cards and show them to the students, one by one, in silence. Kids just look. Sometimes, I draw the kids’ attention to some of the elements, by pointing at them. Sometimes, I point and say the words or encourage the kids to name things they can see but, really, that is not the priority here. I just want them to take the story in, to build it up in their heads, before we add the language layer to it.
Listen: I play the audio and we listen to the story and look at the pictures. Again, I sometimes point to the key elements in each card. I also use the gestures to reinforce the ideas and concepts and to add another learning channel to the visual and the auditory. In this story we are using the following: hands together, under your cheek with the head slightly tilted (The little seed is sleeping), face up, as if enjoying the sun, with a smile and a happy sigh (It is sunny), hands moving up and down, with the fingers spread and wiggling (It is raining), hands going up and arms stretching high up for (The little seed is growing, growing, growing), pointing with one finger at the picture (Look, it’s a beautiful flower). Some of these gestures have been used so far (the weather), some are new. I don’t pre-teach them, the kids join in when they are ready.
Listen and say: We retell the story together, using the cards. I lead but this time I pause frequently and elicit the words and structures that the students know or, alternatively, I produce the phrase and encourage the kids to repeat.
What do you think? This is the stage for the students to personalise and to express opinion. Usually this is done through a very simple question of ‘Do you like the story?’ or ‘What’s your favourite…?’ In this particular story, we asked ‘Do you like the story?’ ‘Is it a happy story or a sad story?’ ‘Is it a beautiful flower?’
The finished product
Post-Story
Look at my picture: I show the kids the final product and we try to retell the story once again, in its simplified version, this time focusing on the structures that the kids can reproduce: The little seed is sleeping. It is raining. It is sunny. The little seed is growing and growing. Look, it’s a beautiful flower.
Craft: I give out the cards and we create the pictures with kids, while retelling the story. I create another picture, step by step, to model the activity for the kids. This stage took about 10 minutes. I was considering adding the butterfly and the bee but decided that it would take too much time and that is why they do not feature in the picture.
‘The little seed is sleeping’, I give out a small blob of white plasticine, I stick it ‘underground’, ‘Stick and press’
‘It is sunny’, I give out yellow markers. We draw the sun in one corner. We repeat the key phrase as we draw. The kids who have finished drawing can also use the gestures for ‘It is sunny’. I collect the markers.
‘It is raining’, I give out blue markers. We draw the cloud and rain in the other corner. We repeat the key phrase as we draw. We use the gesture for ‘It is raining’. I collect the markers.
‘The little seed is growing, growing and growing’. I give out a piece of green plasticine. We kneed it and roll it to create a string. ‘Let’s roll and make one piece of spaghetti’. We stick it to the picture, as the stem of the flower. ‘Stick and press’.
I give out two pieces of green plasticine, we make two blobs and attach them as leaves. ‘One leaf, two leaves’. ‘Stick and press’.
‘Look, it’s a beautiful flower!’ I give out two big pieces of blue and red plasticine. ‘We need three red pieces’ ‘Let’s make the flower’ ‘Stick and press’. ‘We need three blue pieces’ ‘Let’s make the flower’ ‘Stick and press’
3. Let’s tell the story: We show the pictures and go through the story again. The kids are now better able to tell and show the story.
4. Homework: Kids listen to the audio at home with parents, while looking at the pictures in their books. They complete the task in the book by sticking stickers in the gaps.
5. Follow-up: In the following lesson, we are going to retell the story again. I am also planning to start our own classroom garden with some flowers and beans, water them and watch how they grow.
This lesson plan is, of course, one of the many many ways of using this material and teaching this lesson. Enjoy!
From a seed to a flower here – a lovely video that I used when I was teaching Maths and Science to pre-schoolers in one of the lessons devoted to plants but it can be used as a follow-up activity in the story lesson.
How to grow a bean plan from Learn English Kids here if you want to start your own class garden.
How plants grow – an interactive gamethat demonstrates how much water and warmth a plant needs to grow. On the one hand, it is kind of cool and very informative, on the other, however, I could not apply the water and warm fast enough and ended up killing the plant. It made me sad (yeah, really) so, eventually, I decided not to use it in class, either.
A post from Anastasia Bykova, which I found only after my own had been written. If you want to turn this story into a series of lessons, look no further. Lots of ideas for a classroom garden and a proper project – an animation film created with kids which is also available on youtube now. You can find it here. We are going to watch it next Friday.
