STORYTELLING

STORYTELLING:

INTRODUCTION:

 This story is about a crocodile who doesn´t like water. He feels sad because all of his brothers and sisters like to swim and stay in the water all day but he doesn´t. What he likes is climbing trees. But what he doesn´t know is that what makes him different makes him special, and that he might not like water for one main reason: he is not a crocodile! He breaths fire and he can fly... What can he be?

ILLUSTRATIONS:

This book has colourful and attractive illustrations that help children develop visual literacy and makes it easier for them to understand what is going on in the story providing comprehensible input through the images.

MOTIVATION:

It is an emotive story that can be motivating for them to hear because it is a story in which the characters are crocodiles and a dragon and those are two of the things children like so this makes the story attractive for the pupils.

Children can identify themselves with the main character because it is a story that can be related to their personal experiences. This makes them pay more attention, empathize with the little dragon and this way they will get more involved with the story, they will pay attention to it and it will make them build a positive attitude towards the second language without them even realising it.

As they are going to connect themselves or someone from their close circle to the protagonist, by finding the solution to the dragons problem, by understanding the story and by wondering about what is happening they will gain confidence and they will feel comfortable to speak and express their feelings and opinions. Because it is always easier to talk about something out of our personal experiences.

VALUES:

The moral of the story teaches children the importance of being themselves and trying to find their interests in life, their abilities and what they are capable of and good at.

It makes children think and by giving it a good use the teacher through the book can make them think of what makes them unique, which qualities they have and how can that be compatible with others. The teacher can also make them realise that no one likes to feel alone and that everything is more fun if you do it with someone.

Other value that appear in this book is  not being afraid of being different from others because that differences might make you feel sad sometimes but at the end you and everyone else are going to realise that what makes you different makes you special too, and everyone likes someone that is different from the rest and that stands out.

If the teacher plays well her/his cards the story can encourage children creativity by letting them predict, create hypothesis and even by asking them to do some activities that has to do with the story and that makes them used their creative skills.

LANGUAGE / CONTENT:

The language used is authentic, easy to understand, with repetitions and with non-hard structures that offer children a rich experience of language without being too hard to understand. Especially because they are going to be familiar with most of the key words that appear in the story and those that are new for them can be teached to them before reading the story or they can even guess the meaning through the context. This way you can also work with the vocabulary and practice it. There are a lot of key words that are repeated several times in the text such as “crocodile” “water” and others such as “swim ring” or “ladder” that they can learn from the story.

It´s a book that as I said before gives you the possibility of creating learning strategies such as hypothesising and predicting.

In addition to be able to understand all the story they have to use their memories to remember what happened before in order for them to understand the ending.

The story only has the dragon and his brothers and sisters as characters so this makes it easier for the children to understand what is going on and not to be confuse. It also makes them focus their attention in one or two things instead of having to focus on a lot of details.

THE TEACHER:

This book was a birthday present from a friend and she couldn’t have been more accurate choosing this book for me. I love the story, the moral of it and also the illustrations. It’s a moving, affectionate and funny book that invites you to read it and to enjoy every single page of it. I think that as I love the story I am going to be able to transmit the feelings that I had while reading it.

One thing that I loved the most was the fact that when the story ends, in the last page a dragon reading a book appears. And the dragon have eggs and the name of the book the dragon is reading is “the dragon who didn´t like fire”. It´s like an opening for another similar story in which the little dragon is an adult now and is going to have babies and he wonders “what if one of my babies doesn´t like fire!” 

3 ENGLISH BOOKS

At first I was going to recommend books such as The Gruffalo, The very hungry caterpillar, Room in the Groom, etc. But I realized that those are the books everyone knows about and we all know how good those books are. So I decided I was going to look for other books that could be use in class and are less known.

The books I chose are good to work with them in class for this main reasons:

They get used to another language, so it is not strange for them and they learn a new language faster because of the inputs that they are receiving from listening to the teacher reading a book in English.

By reading to them in English they learn faster structures, such as how to announce questions, answers, how to describe, etc. It also makes them learn a lot of vocabulary that can be really useful for them and in a way that isn´t boring for them.

By listening to this books they also learn how some words are written and this will help them in a future when they start writing in English because while you are reading to them, in an indirect way they are learning how those words are written, not all of them but some.

Another important fact to keep in mind is the fact that while you are reading and they are listening to what you are saying, they learn how words are pronounce and this will be useful for them when they communicate in English. Because being able to communicate in a second language is not easy, and working with them by reading to them will help them gain confidence and will make easier for them to talk in English without being afraid of embarrassing themselves.  

Without knowing it they are going to learn a new language in a fun way, in a motivating way because everyone loves a good story. The books I chose definitely have enough elements in their pages to motivate children and to make them have a good time.

The books I chose are also simple, easy to understand and with beautiful illustrations so that children will pay attention to them.

The books I chose are:

Ø  The pigeon needs a bath! By Mo Willems.

I fell in love with this book since the moment I saw it. It is about a pigeon that doesn´t want to take a bath because she doesn´t think she smells; but when she ends up getting inside the tub… I´ll let you know what happens with this link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hymxNlpgcxU .

It has beautiful illustrations and is not difficult at all. I will use it with kids with ages three and four. It also talks about a topic that probably happens to children in the class, that they hate taking a bath or a shower.

We have already talk about how important is for children lo be able to relate with the main character of the book. They will definitely relate with this one.

With this book I will work vocabulary, negative and affirmative phrases, communication skills will be required because children will need to talk about their own experience and knowing to distinguish talking with exclamations from talking with interrogations.

Although with this story we can do some fun activities and even games using water.

Ø  Pete the cat Rocking in my school shoes by Eric Litwin and James Dean.

Here is the link so that you can see what´s the book about: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KcHHbAdcO0Y&t=190s . Basically it’s a cat that tells us what he does at school: go to the library, playground, etc. It’s a great book for kids learning a second language because it makes them take part on the story by asking questions, it´s easy to understand and talks about school which is something with what children can relate because it is where they are while you are reading them the story.

I will recommend this book for children from ages four and five, even maybe with three year olds depending on the main purpose you have by reading them this book.

One of the things that I loved the most about this book is that the cat sings a short song and is repeated changing just one or two words through the hole book. Children like singing and this will make them pay more attention to what is going on.

With this book we can teach kids a lot of school vocabulary which is really helpful for the context we are in and taking this as an advantage we could do some fun activities like a tour around the school with clues and games like a gymkhana or getting to know each part of the school with some main aim for each room. We could also learn the song and create a dance or imagine that Pete the cat goes somewhere else that doesn’t appear in the book.

Ø  Go away, big green monster by Ed Emberley.

It is an amazing book for 3-4 year old children because it is about a monster that appears and disappears. Here is the link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fK6aDPItjGk.

With this book you can teach colours and parts of the face. We also can talk about feelings like fear and the feeling of relief.

We can do really cool activities like creating our own monsters, activities and games related to colours and face parts, etc.

There are lots of books that I will recommend to use to teach English in infant education but the important thing is that you have to make sure that children will love it as much as you do, that they understand it and that they are motivated to learn.