On Thursday afternoon I told a very nice story to year 3 students: "Where the wild things are". This story is about a very imaginative boy who travels to a land full of monsters, so it's perfect for young learners.
On Wednesday my school teacher provided me with lots of scanned stories in order to practise the storytelling with my students. I found this set of resources very useful because pupils can listen to the story at the same time they see the book images on the board so I decided to choose one of the tales and tell it to my year 3 children.
That evening I took a look to all the books and I liked so much the one called Where the wild things are. Although it contained some difficult words, I thought it was a great story to tell the students. I had previously worked on The Gruffalo tale with these kids and they loved it so I was sure that they would love this one too. As I have said, this story is not easy for young learners because the vocabulary we find in it requires a high level of knowledge, so that's why I decided to use other resources in order to make children understand the plot. To tell the story I constantly used mime because it helps to understand unknown words. I also talked with different voices and showing different feelings and finally, I interacted a lot with my students asking them to repeat actions or sounds and also to anticipate what was going to happen next in the story. Definitely, non-verbal communication is perfect to help our students to understand the whole meaning of stories without working analytically. I could see how the kids were enjoying the tale all the time, guessing what was going to happen and imitating the monsters.
After having told the narrative, I planned an activity to develop the kids oral and written comprehension. I had already put in practise some storytelling with year 4 students and we did some activities that weren't related to the plot at all. I found these activities (which were included in the book) not very meaningful because they didn't check if children had understood the story or not, they just were about parts of the house, time, etc. In this case, I wanted to work on the oral and written comprehension of the tale so on Wednesday I looked for some questions on the web to ask to kids after the storytelling. I found a very interesting kind of test that was perfect so I projected it on the screen and students could answer to the questions in groups. I was wondered how well kids answer to the questions, they did it almost perfect, although the story was difficult. Thanks to that experience I could observe that teachers can teach English in a globally way so it's not necessary that children understand every single word or grammar structure of a text to catch the whole sense of it.
I want to share with you the story, so click here if you want to read it and take a look to the scanned book .
Here you have the comprehension questions as well.
That evening I took a look to all the books and I liked so much the one called Where the wild things are. Although it contained some difficult words, I thought it was a great story to tell the students. I had previously worked on The Gruffalo tale with these kids and they loved it so I was sure that they would love this one too. As I have said, this story is not easy for young learners because the vocabulary we find in it requires a high level of knowledge, so that's why I decided to use other resources in order to make children understand the plot. To tell the story I constantly used mime because it helps to understand unknown words. I also talked with different voices and showing different feelings and finally, I interacted a lot with my students asking them to repeat actions or sounds and also to anticipate what was going to happen next in the story. Definitely, non-verbal communication is perfect to help our students to understand the whole meaning of stories without working analytically. I could see how the kids were enjoying the tale all the time, guessing what was going to happen and imitating the monsters.
After having told the narrative, I planned an activity to develop the kids oral and written comprehension. I had already put in practise some storytelling with year 4 students and we did some activities that weren't related to the plot at all. I found these activities (which were included in the book) not very meaningful because they didn't check if children had understood the story or not, they just were about parts of the house, time, etc. In this case, I wanted to work on the oral and written comprehension of the tale so on Wednesday I looked for some questions on the web to ask to kids after the storytelling. I found a very interesting kind of test that was perfect so I projected it on the screen and students could answer to the questions in groups. I was wondered how well kids answer to the questions, they did it almost perfect, although the story was difficult. Thanks to that experience I could observe that teachers can teach English in a globally way so it's not necessary that children understand every single word or grammar structure of a text to catch the whole sense of it.
I want to share with you the story, so click here if you want to read it and take a look to the scanned book .
Here you have the comprehension questions as well.
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