Thursday 17 October 2013

STORYTELLING

Hello everyone!

I am going to tell you a story…

Once upon a time there was a class full of bilingual students that studied to be the best teachers.

One day Raquel (their teacher) told them a story, The Princess and the Dragon. This story was very funny and she illustrated it with a power point and GESTURES!! Then Raquel said: “You have to make a similar story” and the students very surprised started to think about how they could create a story similar to Raquel’s.

Suddenly Patri, Inma, Dani and Jessy started to think about the new story. “How can we connect it with the curriculum?” asked Dani. “Don’t worry” replied Jessy, “I have an idea and we are very imaginative”. So they started to think. They thought and thought and thought and finally they created a new story.

Patri, Inma, Dani and Jessy told the story to all the class and they were going to remember it ever after.

This is an example of a story.  I want to prove that creating a story is very easy and we can create it with any topic. As Raquel taught us, everything that we tell is a story, it can be written or not.

This story explains what we did in class the other day, we have created a story with the structure explained in the Literature class of a typical tale (you can see the structure in blue colour in the story) and it is called The Rabbits and the Fox. It is about a grey rabbit that meets a cute rabbit in the countryside, then a horrible fox appears and the rabbits run to the den. We have created a power point and some gestures to illustrate the story. Clicking on this link you can see the video:



And the slides that we have created related to it:









Another way to represent the story is with a role-play, where we can decorate the class like in a story. In class we represented We’re going to the bear hunt by Michel Rosen, we did not use any material, the class was divided in groups and then a group represented all the elements (grass, river…).

From my point of view these activities are easy to do in schools with the children of any level, since Infant Education to the last level of Primary Education. They are funny, dynamic, interesting and purposeful. We can add some elements of other subjects like Science, Music or Arts and Crafts. For example, our activity was related with Science and the food chain, the rabbits eat carrot and the fox want to eat the rabbits, and the animals have different adjectives, so they learn new vocabulary.


What do you think?

3 comments:

  1. Hello Patry!

    I would like to comment your post because I love this activity and I really enjoy it.

    Recording our last year, we learnt a lot of things about literature and how to use them with children. We learnt that Poetry and Literature is a chance for children to play with the language and words. Furthermore, teachers have to achieve that children enjoy it.

    I think that this activity is very dynamic and poweful. We can use it with different objectives and in different subjects. We can use them in order to introduce new vocabulary in English class. In Language, to motivate children to read, create, imagine...Moreover, we can link this activity with art, music, science...We can create different stories that contain the new topic, and use it at the beginning of the unit or at the end in order to summarize all the most important information and clase the topic.

    With this activity we can get different goals. We can get attention, curiosity, stimulation of the children. We can help them in the learning process and maybe with these activities they are going to remember better the new word, key word, contents...

    Also, I would like to say that I like Michael Rosen and his works. He is one of the best-known figures in the children's book world. Moreover, I believe that he achieves a great and attractive story and I really like the way that he represent his stories with different movements and gestures.

    Finally, congratulation!! I saw your video again. It is a beatiful story and I enjoy when I saw it in class. I hope that you can use it during your practicum or other similar story that you will create because it is a great activity to develop with children and we have the opportunity to do it. =)

    BYE!!

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  2. Hello Patri!
    I didn't read your story! It is very funny :)
    so far, for me, this has been the best activity we have done. In my opinion we really enjoyed creating our own story and showing our personal part.
    You did it very well, the motion pictures were very useful and original to follow the story. You prepared it OK!
    This type of activity is very useful to create new knowledge in children. In our case, we had to follow a given structure, but we could integrate in the story our characters and our story. The activity can develop the creativity and it uses cooperative work.
    Congratulations for your blog!
    See you :)

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