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.