UNIT 2: ACTIVATING CHILDREN'S LITERATURE

It's time to stories now!

                   Folktales, modern tales, tales of yestarday and today.

                                                     

     The art of story telling: Pre-telling, telling and post-telling.

Storytelling is an art and we can not underestimate. You have to know how to tell stories because this is good for both: students and for us as teachers.

We have operate each of our faces as teachers know how to use the voice, gestures, selection of the story, knowing that possibilities offered by this story ...

• Storytelling is interactive, that means that it involves a two-way interaction between a storyteller and one or more listeners. The responses of the listeners influence the telling of the story. In fact, storytelling emerges from the interaction and cooperative, coordinated efforts of teller and audience.

• Storytelling uses actions such as vocalization, physical movement and/or gesture. These actions are the parts of spoken or manual language other than words. Their use distinguishes storytelling from writing and text-based computer interactions. Not all nonverbal language behaviors need to be present in storytelling. Some storytellers use body movement extensively, for example, whereas others use little or none.

•  Storytelling presents a story that means that Storytelling always involves the presentation of a storya narrative. Many other art forms also present story, but storytelling presents it with the other four components. Every culture has its own definition of story. What is recognized as a story in one situation may not be accepted as one in another. Some situations call for spontaneity and playful digression, for example; others call for near-exact repetition of a revered text. Art forms such as poetry recitation and stand-up comedy sometimes present stories and sometimes don’t. Since they generally involve the other four components, they can be regarded as forms of storytelling whenever they also present stories.

•  Storytelling encourages the active imagination of the listeners. In storytelling, the listener imagines the story. In most traditional theatre or in a typical dramatic film, on the other hand, the listener enjoys the illusion that the listener is actually witnessing the character or events described in the story.

 TO APPLY ALL OF THESE INFORMATION AND REFLECTIONS: 

Have a look to these videos, with simple thnigs our storytelling can be perfect.

THE WATCH.: MICHAEL ROSEN

    CHOCOLATE CAKE: MICHAEL ROSEN

Hope you like it! Remember sometimes teachers we are like actors and our audience are our children.

Ester C.

SPEAKING: PRONUNTIATION GET SOME CLUES

TODAY IS PRONUNTIATION TIME

         Getting somo clues....

                         Tongue twisters and Jolly Phonics

To speak, it is very important to be understood, the pronunciation. The pronunciation is based centrally in imitation, but we can't do boring classes, or make English classes like repeation classes. So an alternative to those "kinds of repetition" is: apply to the pronunciation puns, maxillary jaw exercises, some theoretical explanation of concepts and lot of practice including tongue twisters.

After imitating the sound and learning the correct biology for producing it, now is the time to practice the use of that sound or sound pattern. You can use minimal pairs (pairs of words which differ in only one sound like mop and pop or pop and pep) to highlight one sound or phoneme that you are teaching. If you want to add a little fun to pronunciation class, try tongue twisters. There is no end to the tongue twisters you can find or write, and not even native speakers are good at them, so the pressure is off your students to perform flawlessly.  You can also teach the natural rhythm of English through songs and poetry. 

A tongue twister that I really love is: "I saw Susie sitting in a shoe shine shop. Where she sits she shines and where she shines sits".

I would like to speak also of a reality that is done in some bilingual schools to teach pronunciation and phonetics without using the typical picture of phonetic alphabet.

JOLLY PHONICS BOOK'S

JOLLY PHONICS METHOD

What is Jolly Phonics and whats's his relation to pronuntiation?

Jolly Phonics is a fun and child centred approach to teaching literacy through synthetic phonics and pronuntiation. 

With actions for each of the 42 letter sounds, the multi-sensory method is very motivating for children and teachers, who can see their students achieve. The letter sounds are split into seven groups as shown below.

It's a very lovely method and very systematic and also it's an approachment to the music they are having fun but they are learning pronuntiation and phonetics too. This method have so many educational and fun materials apart from the sons about each letter of the alphabet.

A simple example for the first group of letter in the order that is teach:

How to teach with Jolly Phonics

Songs of the first group of Jolly Phonics teaching.

                                                     Have fun and have a good pronuntiation! Remember our students are listening to us everyday and everywher!

Ester C.

UNIT 1: REFLECTIONS- LISTENING AND SPEAKING

HI EVERYONE! 

Today we are going to speak about...

LISTENING AND SPEAKING

Sometimes we want to our students to listen and then speak like we do it but how to do this in a different way?

Today I will talk about how to get some fun and interesting skills that we saw in class. As through two videos, one a story and a song we can work around this. I'm going to show you the story and the song and then I will give you some ideas some suitables games and activities (like exercises) to work hard in listening and speaking.

• THE VERY HUNGRY CATTERPILLAR:

The Very Hungry Caterpillar is a children's picture book designed, illustrated and written by Eric Carle. It features a caterpillar who eats its way throught a wide variety of foodstuffs before pupating and emerging as a butterfly.

The story: The Very Hungry Catterpillar.

With this story we can work : the numbers, the development of the caterpillar to butterfly , food , days of the week, the antagony of night and day (sun and moon) and finally the concept of hunger or what it means to be hungry .

Some suitable activities and games for how to learn Speaking:

-True or False: After hearing the story the teacher may ask questions of understanding the story . They must speak and tell what they have understood, justifying each answer. If the students are older (5 years) we could ask them to do it themselves questions or to their class-mates.

-The sentence round or Describe and draw: There are also two more activities very suitables to do after the very hungry catterpillar.

Some suitable activities and games for how to learn Listening:

-Mime what happened.

-Listening grids

-Questions gallery

• SIMON SAYS:

Singing it's a very nice and practical way to work the pronuntiation:

My reflection of this is that we have to:

Give our students the main opportunity that is to imitate, they also are reviewing the parts of contains and they make appropriate English sounds

With this Simon Says version we can teach: the parts of the body, actions, and music instruments.

"Debbie & Friends" recorded a live concert at Berklee College of Music's CAFE 939 in Boston. Here there are performing their "Simon Says" game song. We had a great time sawing it in class! 

The song: Simon Says

Some suitable activities and games for how to learn Speaking:

-Sentence round

-Three things about me (about the game-song)

-Find a friend who can (actions from the game-song)

-Agree or desagree (some statements about the Simon says)

Some suitable activities and games for how to learn Listening:

-The Gym sequence 

-Listen and respond

-Colour dictation

Follow the route.

  

                                                                 Hope you liked it as I liked!                               Ester C.