Monday, April 21, 2008
CREATING A STORY...
This is a kind of follow- up activity after teaching some new vocabulary items. It is our mentor teacher's style to continue in this way. She first provides the students with nearly ten new items and works on their meanings together with the students. For this activity, the teacher elaborated on the items in the previous lesson. In the following lesson, she put the words on the top of the board. She asked the students create a story using the words on the board. Each student made a sentence and the teacher wrote them on the board. In the place of the target item in the sentence the teacher put the colorful word card (instead of writing the word). The students continued to tell their sentences until all the items were used. At the end of the activity, there was a full story that the students themselves created using the target vocabulary items.
As you see our mentor teacher gives her students some "autonomy" in their learning. Or you may call this "responsibility", too. The students have the responsibility for their learning. They realize that when they do not participate in the activity, there will be no learning on the part of them. Thus, the teacher also aims to keep the students' attention on the activity and creating their own products. Another advantage of this activity is that the teacher helps the students internalize the newly- learnt items in a meaningful task.
So my dear friends, it is all about the activity. What do you think? Does it make sense to you? Can it work in your class? Do you want to add some more aspects to it if it is not efficient in your own opinion?
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7 comments:
actually, ı was also going to talk about this activity, because ı think that it is very effective for the students not to forget the newly learned vocab items. but for that activity to work you need to have those students, this may not work in every class.
Zelish...
As another observer of this activity, I really like it. Is is so useful to provide students with a choice and room for creativity that I am sure I will use this kind of activities a lot in my own teachings.
Dear Emel,
Using students' creativity is always a positive aspect of any class. If students are the ones in charge of their creation, they will certainly retain more of those words they used meaningfully. I could think of many other ways to do this task online in a very motivating way. Do students have access to computers in their educational setting?
I'm curious to know more about your teaching reality.
Also, let me tell you that you are a natural blogger reporting what you observe and inquiring! Way to go!
Cheers from a Brazilian educator in Key West, FL.
Hi Emel,
I really enjoyed your blog posting. When kids create their own stories, even the weakest learner can read at least his or her own sentence! This is a great way to have kids meet with success.
Here are some suggestions to build on this activity. Why not write the story on tagboard or on a large flipchart if one is available? Then you can begin a collection of stories. As the school year progresses, learners realize how much English they've learned!
Another suggestion is to copy the story and either photocopy it for everyone, or put it online. You can use it for anything from reading comprehension to looking for aspects of phonics (e.g., have kids circle all of the words with a silent 'e') to drawing comic strips of the story.
It sounds like you're having a wonderful experience! I'd love to hear more.
From an EFL teacher educator and consultant in neighboring Israel!
Dear Emel,
Randi has just given you some great ideas for vocabulary development.
You wrote to me: " I think that my mentor teacher is an effective one and I am observing every steps that she takes during the lesson. I am also taking note of such activities in my notebook and I like sharing them with my dear friends.
I will be waiting for your suggestions as to online activities.
Thanks for your nice compliments..."
The first suggestion I'd give is working with these students in the computer lab and have them create their digital stories. Digital stories are an engaging way to learn and retain new vocabulary because students can manipulate their texts and illustrate their stories and they can have a real audience worldwide besides their classmates and teachers. To start exploring digital stories possibilities, take a look at http://cogdogroo.wikispaces.com/StoryTools . There's plenty to explore!!! Let me know what you think and how you would apply the idea in the classroom you're observing.
Cheers from Key West.
Dear Emel,
Very interesting and inspiring discussion has been going on here. Thanks Carla and Randi for your invaluable suggestions. I'd like to give another example of story construction.
As you know, the aim of these activities is to give ss only partial information and then ask them, for ex., to use that info. as part of a story which they must complete by asking other ss for other parts of the story.
Suppose that you want them to construct a fairy tale as a group activity. Here are the stages:
Stage1: Ss are put into groups.
Stage2: ss are told to write the following sentence on a page: “once upon a time there was a beautiful princess who lived in a large castle at the edge of a forest.”
Stage3: Ss are then instructed to continue the story by writing the next sentence
Stage4: Ss are then told to give their piece of paper to the student on their left. They should now continue the new story by writing the next sentence. The procedure is repeated until the papers have gone round the whole group. The teacher then tells the ss to write the concluding sentence.
Stage5: ss can read the resulting tales to the rest of the class.
At the end, each student has a different story and the important thing is that all the members of the group have contributed to each story.
Byee
Dear Sibel,
Students love this story telling activity!
One variation to that which is also very engaging is to have the same idea developed at a computer lab. Instead of papers moving, students move to different computers writing parts of the story. They can even start it by adding a photo or picture to the screen. Also, the follow up activity we do is to edit the text as it is much easily done on the computer. One strategy we've used to encourage students is to post some questions to guide students near the computer screen. They love it!
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