Number 25 The British Council Russia

I know that many of you are now teaching English to young learners and that in a lot of schools English starts in the first year. We are often asked for ideas for this age group so this month the English Page looks at some activities you might like to try out with your students. I have chosen story telling as the focus for this month – in other English Pages we will look at other areas which are specific to young learners.

If you have ideas about topics you would like us to cover in the English Page, do please write to me, Margaret Hay-Campbell, at The British Council, VBGIL, Ulitsa Nikolyamskaya 1, MOSCOW 109189.

The next English Page will be published on Tuesday, 6th February.

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YOUNG LEARNERS – STORY TELLING TECHNIQUES

Stories can be a wonderful source of language learning for children. As listening practice alone a story is a very effective activity – we all love stories (irrespective of our age!) – and with very young learners a story coupled with actions, can be very involving. There are also many creative activities which you can use to follow up the initial story telling.

Here is some useful advice taken from “Young Learners” by Sarah Phillips about using story telling with your class.

If a story is to be successful, never read it, tell it!

In order to do this:

1. Prepare yourself an outline or skeleton of the story

which contains the main points.

2. Practise telling the story out loud, perhaps to a friend

or colleague, or into a tape recorder.

3. Remember to use expression, mime, and gestures.

(Practise in front of a mirror!)

4. Remember to keep eye contact with the people you are

telling the story to.

5. Don`t rush it, enjoy it.

There are good examples of story-telling in Sarah Phillips` book and also in other books dealing with young learners such as

“Teaching English in the Primary Classroom” by Susan Halliwell (published by Longmans) and “The Storytelling Handbook for Primary Teachers” by G. Ellis and J. Brewster, published by Penguin English. You can find these books in the British Council

Resource Centres in Moscow, St.Petersburg, Nizhny Novgorod and Ekaterinburg.

Here are three activities you might like to try out with your class:

THE FROG FAMILY

Level: Beginners

Age Group: 6 – 10

Aims: Linguistic – listening for gist, relating words and

actions, family vocabulary.

Other – to involve the children in storytelling.

Preparation: 1. Practise telling the story. Include very

explicit actions that the children will be able to

mitate.

2. Prepare pictures of the Frog family.

3. Draw a large lily-pad and make an area of floor

into a “pond” with chalk or string.

In class: 1. Tell the children in their first language that you are going to tell them a story about the Frog family and either draw the frogs or put up pictures on the board. Check they know who is who.

2. Ask the children questions like: “Have you ever seen a frog?” “Where do frogs live?” “What do they sit on?” “Do they like to be hot or cold?” and “How can they get cool?” Then show them the outline of the pond on the floor and the big lily-pad in it.

3. Tell them the story, remembering to use lots of gestures to make the meaning very clear.

4. Tell the children you are going to tell the story again, but this time five of them are going to be the Frog family. Ask for volunteers and ling them up by the edge of the pond.

5. Tell the story again, and as each child hears their character they put up their hand. Encourage them to do the gestures with yu as you tell the story.

6. All the children will want to have a go at acting out the story; once they have heard it several times you can divide the class into several ponds and tell the story with several Frog families at a time.

Follow-up: The children can draw a picture of the Frog family.

TIMMY GOES SHOPPING

Level: Elementary

Age: 6 – 10

Aim: Listening for detail, the language of shops and

shopping, to give passive exposure to verbs in the past

simple tense, to relate speech to pictures.

Preparation: Make four large pictures of the baskets that you

can stick on the board. Find some pictues of the food

in the story, or bring in food yourself.

In class: 1. Tell them that you are going to tell them the story of a boy called Timmy who went shopping.

2. Ask them “Do you ever go shopping? Do you go on your own? Or do you go with Mummy and Daddy?”

3. Show them the food (or pictures) and ask them in which shop you buy what. Teach the English names of the shops and write them on the board.

4. Ask the children if they have a list of things to buy when they go shopping. Draw one on the board. Ask the children to suggest things to buy. Then wipe these items off so that you have an empty list.

5. Tell the story.

6. Then ask the children to tell you what was on Timmy`s list and which shops he went to. Write these on the board.

7. Put the large pictures on the board and tell them that one of them is Timmy`s basket when he got home.

8. Tell the story again.

9. Ask the children to discuss in pairs which is Timmy`s basket, then ask the whole class which basket they chose and why. (This will probably be done in Russian which is fine as this activity is designed to practise listening comprehension, not speaking in English.)

REMEMBER: The food and the shops should reflect the children`s environment – select food which children in Russia might buy on a shopping expedition.

FOLLOW-UP: 1. Tell the story again, but ask the children to give different details.

2. Draw a cartoon strip of the story with empty speech bubbles on large sheets of paper. Put this up on the board. IN GROUPS the children decide what should go in each bubble and write this down on cards. The teacher then asks for volunteers from each group to stick their cards on the big drawing at the front of the class.

These two activities come from “Young Learners” by Sarah Phillips published by Oxford University Press and reproduced here with kind permission of the publishers, OUP.

USING RUSSIAN FAIRY TALES

Think about using traditional Russian fairy tales which are already familiar to your children for story telling.

1. Tell a familiar fairy tale (in English). Divide the class into groups. Divide the story into sections and allocate a section of the story to each group. Ask each group to draw a large picture illustrating their section of the story. When the pictures are completed display the whole sequence on the wall. Get the children to retell the story – one person from each group should contribute their part of the story. Don`t stop and correct the narration – it will spoil the flow of the story. Note down one or two mistakes per group and after the story telling give each group their “mistakes sheet” and ask them to correct the mistakes as a group.

2. Tell a fairy tale the children already know but change someof the details. Ask the children to listen for the changes and call out when they hear something different. eg. Goldilicks and the four bears/she tries on the Bear family`s hats/she has a bath and uses Daddy Bear`s shampoo/she falls asleep watching their TV. Use your imagination!

DO TRY OUT SOME OF THESE STORIES WITH YOUR CLASS. HAVE YOU OTHER

IDEAS FOR USING STORIES? THEN PLEASE WRITE TO THE ENGLISH PAGE.