STORYTELLING ACTIVITIES

In the following pages you will find lots of ideas and activities to do with the storytelling:

http://www.storyarts.org/lessonplans/lessonideas/

http://exarc.net/manuals/2-story-telling-activities

http://theimaginationtree.com/2013/11/12-creative-storytelling-activities.html

http://www.kidactivities.net/category/Literacy-Games-and-Creative-Story-Telling.aspx

http://www.thestoryteller.ca/Pages/Activities.html

PHONIC WHEEL

This is an example of how to make a phonic wheel in class. You can make it in arts for example. In this case I have chosen letter “a” and one of its sounds.

To make a phonic wheel students need these materials: scissors, crayons, pencil, two cardboards (one dark and another one bright), markers and a tack.

Students will use the cardboards to get two circles, one with the dark one and the other with the bright one. Students can use a plate or something which is round to draw the shape and then cut it.

Students will take the bright circle and divide it in eight parts. In each part they have to write one of the words we have decided before. The most important is the sound of the letter “a” so we are going to write words in black except the letter “a” which is going to be written in red.

One the words are written, we are going to draw a circle under the words. In these spaces students have to draw what words mean. For example, if one word is CAT, students are going to draw a cat but in the opposite place. The picture must be in the opposite place of the word.

Now, students are going to take the dark circle, and cut it at the same size the circle we have drawn in the bright cardboard. Then, students will cut a little piece and paint an arrow with a marker. Finally, they have to put the tack and it is already done!

INTERESTING WEB SITES TO WORK PHONICS

In the following web sites you will find different activities or advices to teach and learn phonics.

An article in The Guardian: How to teach phonics

http://www.theguardian.com/education/teacher-blog/2013/apr/01/phonics-teaching-resources-schools

Activities to work phonics and spelling

http://www.primaryresources.co.uk/english/englishA1.htm

First grade phonics activities

http://www.education.com/activity/first-grade/phonics/

English spelling games and activities

http://resources.woodlands-junior.kent.sch.uk/interactive/literacy.html

THE IMPORTANCE OF PHONICS

Phonics is a branch of linguistics where the sounds and physical properties of human speech sounds are studied. Phonics reading is highly essential in every child education.

The report of National Reading Panel indicates that teaching children phonics will help them in many ways in life. In the first instance, phonics reading is very important in helping children to learn how to spell words. It will be impossible for a person to spell any word correctly if the person is not able to recognize the sounds of the letters used in forming the words. When a child is taught phonics, the child will be able to recognize sounds in words and will be able to spell them correctly.

It will be difficult for a child to improve in his reading skills if the teaching of phonics is removed from their curriculum. 

Phonics reading helps also to increase a child's fluency in reading. Fluency in this context is not limited to reading fast. It also means reading text accurately. When a child is taught phonics properly, the child will find reading easy. The child will not only read accurately but also quickly. Reading quick and correctly is another benefits of phonics reading.

Phonics reading is also necessary for the improvement of a child's reading comprehension. It is impossible for somebody to understand a word that is not properly pronounced. When a child learns how to pronounce a word very well, the child will be able to comprehend what he or she reads. Phonics reading will also help a child in acquiring more vocabulary on daily basis.

STORYTELLING: COMPREHENSION

Using a story book or video, we can create or find lots of worhsheets to work comprehension. Depending on the age of the students and their English level, we can start from some easy activities and increase the difficulty while we go on the story.

He re you have some examples of worksheets and activities:

Put the pictures in order.


Make a puppet taking in account the instructions.



Grandma´s basket.



A quiz.


Speaking.

HOW TO MAKE PUPPETS

Some days before I have talked about puppets. We just know that there are different types of puppets: stick puppets, finger puppets, hand puppets...
I want to show you how to do different puppets by using lots of different materials. In the video below you will haw to do puppets with socks.

In this one we can make paper bag puppets:

If you search on Youtube you will find lots of tutorials which show how to do them. It can be an arts project to be use in the English classes.

A WIKI ABOUT VOCABULARY

Here you have a link to a wiki. A wiki is a space where people connected to education such as teachers or parents, can create information to be shared with other professionals who can edit the information. It is a great tool also for students, who can search for information.

I have created this wiki to talk about the importance of the vocabulary and ho to teach and get it in a second language class.

http://learningenglishvocabulary.wikispaces.com

STORYTELLING 4: DESCRIPTION

It is very important to work the comprehension. Students know the meaning of the key words and they understand new words.  But maybe, some structures about grammar are new or difficult for them. We can use parts of a story to develop grammar and speaking skills.

For example, we can use this structure on the Little Red Riding Hood to learn how to do descriptions by using the vocabulary learned before and adjectives.

-        Grandmamma, WHAT GREAT BIG eyes YOU HAVE!’ ‘ALL THE BETTER TO SEE YOU WITH’

-        Grandmamma, WHAT GREAT BIG ears YOU HAVE!’ ‘ALL THE BETTER TO HEAR YOU WITH’

-        Grandmamma, WHAT GREAT BIG hands YOU HAVE!’ ‘ALL THE BETTER TO STROKE YOU WITH’

We are going to read it. It is a dialogue between the grandmother and the wolf. Using puppets, students can recreate the conversation in pairs.

The words in red are the vocabulary we have learned. What grandmothers do is like a description, and in this unit as we have learned parts of the body and some adjectives we are going to do a role play to make descriptions. Students will work on pairs. I will give each couple a guide to show them the structures. For example:

________ is my partner.

He/she is________ (tall, short, thin….)

He/she has_______ (long, short, brown…) hair.

His/her nose is______ (large, big…)

His/her mouth is______....

He/she likes_______ (reading, playing…)

Taking in account this guide each student has to describe his/her partner. With this activity we develop speaking and reading.

The role play is a kind of drama activity. We are going to speak about those kind of exercises later.

STORYTELLING 3: VOCABULARY

Vocabulary is one of the most important aspects of the English learning. Knowing and having assimilate the meaning of different words allows us understanding what we read and what we listen. At the same time, our strategies for writing will be richer and we will be able to say whatever we want. So speaking will be also more fluent.

There are lots of ways to learn vocabulary. The classic one is to memorize words, but I think that this is the worst way. Taking in account new technologies like Internet, computers, digital boards… we can find lots of resources to improve the vocabulary learning. Games, flashcards, songs, drama… are some of the methods we can use.

For example, we can use the Little Red Riding Hood to learn some key words: parts of the body. In the conversation between Little Red Riding Hood and the wolf appear parts of the body such as mouth, ears, hands, nose…

We can work this vocabulary in different ways:

-          Mime. Teacher will ask students to touch a part of their body. For example:

·         Touch your nose.

·         Touch your partner´s ear

·         …

-          Asking. Teacher will mention an action and students have to say with which part of the body they do.

·         We eat apples. With the mouth.

·         We clap, clap, clap. With hands.

·         …

-          Flashcards. Connecting pictures with their names.

Investigating on the Internet you will find lots of resources to work vocabulary in class.

STORYTELLING 2: PUPPETS

Once we have introduced the story, let watch Little Red Riding Hood!

We can watch it in parts, to pay attention to key words and specific vocabulary. To explain each part the teacher can use puppets.

Many stories and activities are suitable for puppets. Pupils enjoy talking to puppets and making their own puppets. For example, making puppets and using them to reproduce the story, is a good activity to close a story.

There are different types of puppets: Stick puppets, finger puppets, hand puppets and drink box puppets. Ones in the picture below are finger puppets.

Activities with puppets give the opportunity of working drama by acting, using sounds, different voices, movement… They improve listening and speaking skills, there are entertaining and funny and if students make their own puppets, they develop imagination and arts.

It is a good way to explain the story and to see student´s comprehension.

SONGS

Songs provide a link between home and school and allow for verbal and non-verbal participation through physical movement, as, drama and play.

Songs can be used as a ritual part of starting and ending lessons, or as an integrated part of language. They can also be used to reinforce knowledge and skills in other areas of the curriculum. They provide the opportunity to introduce children to aspects of traditional culture and develop social and motor skills.

Songs are a good way to introduce a new language. They improve listening, speaking, reading and writing skills. Those are the reasons:

-          Improve pronunciation

-          Improve the ability to imitate and produce individual sounds.

-          Develop children´s awareness of stress, rhythm and intonation patterns in English.

-          Aid memorization.

-          Contribute to the foundations of early literacy and help children how to read in English.

-          …

In this website you can find lots of songs such as nativities, assembly songbooks, seasonal songbooks, curriculum songbooks or SONG AND STORY ( useful for the storytelling). I have seen that some of them must being paid but it is possible to listen to some clips to see if we like or not or if it is useful for our classes.

http://www.outoftheark.co.uk

Songs also allow working vocabulary, grammar and some other structures. In Youtube you will find lots of songs to work lots of topics like numbers, colors, clothes, weather… 

It is time to say goodbye!

STORYTELLING 1

Yesterday I mention that the storytelling can be worked using a Story Book or a video. In the next posts I will try to show how to work a story in class with a video. In my case, I have chosen Little Red Riding Hood.

The first thing is to introduce the story, telling what we are going to see, asking if they know something about the story, if they know who are the characters, if they have heard something about the story, where and when… We can connect the story with pupil´s lives to get their attention.

After speaking a little bit, and introducing the story, the author and the characters, we will see the story.

But, why don´t we start with a song? Songs are a very useful tool. There are funny, help to remember words, it is a great learning method… We can use songs to teach vocabulary, to introduce a story like in this case, to review grammar structures, like a game…

So let´s start the story with a song!!

STORYTELLING

The storytelling is a great way to work different aspects of a language. In my opinion it is very useful to review or introduce vocabulary or grammar, while we develop and improve reading, listening, speaking or writing skills. It let us work with videos, songs, games, role-plays, drama...

The first we must do is to choose the story we are going to work with. We have to take in account the course, the English level and some other aspects of our class. Also the main ideas we want to put on practice.

Para cuidar de lo que es una narración es, aquí tienes una página web en la que diferentes personajes famosos leen cuentos. Hay un video para cada historia. Podemos ver cómo se debe hacer una narración introducción del libro, el autor ...  http://www.storylineonline.net/

In class, we can work the storytelling with a book, or with a video. In youtube you will find lots of stories. The hardest is to select the correct one or the one which connects with the topic you are working in class.

INTRODUCTION

As primary school teacher, I have decided to create a new blog that helps some other teachers to manage in their english classes.
I think that we need more resources appart from the textbook, to run our classes and make them dinamic. At the same time, it is important to give students techniques to learn English, so while we have fun, we are going to use different resources to develop and improve reading, listening, speaking and writing. That involves working aspects like vocabulary, grammar... which are important when we are learning a second language.
I am going to focus on the primary school English teaching as a second language. In any case, in the next video we can find some helpul web sites for every level English teachers.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eykl3iODtSs

Using different methods such as storytelling, arts or games, I will try to work different techniques.