Creating Mini-books with Beginners

This week I had more time with my G3 EAL beginners as some of them were exempted from doing the ISA test. One of the activities that Yubin, Thomas and Minato felt very enthusiastic about was creating mini-books about their families.

To begin with we read an easy book "About Me". After that, using the structure of the book and innovating the story, my students created their own stories about their families. All three of them felt very enthusiastic and eager to share about their families and even the pets they had. Thomas told us about his unusual pets - grasshoppers.

Finally, I recorded my students retelling their "Family Stories". They played this back as a form of self assessment.  This was a learning curve for the students, as at first they shy, then Yubin, Thomas and Minato realized that they could re-tell their stories better and we did it again. This activity was a very successful learning experience for my beginners and Photo Booth helped us make our self-assessment very productive.

Why use storytelling in the language learning classroom?

We use storytelling in language teaching for several reasons. One of the preliminary reasons is the funny and entertaining atmosphere storytelling creates in the classroom. A teacher of English needs to be imaginative and creative and use various strategies and activities to engage students with limited English skills. Storytelling and creating stories with the students can surely assist to make the process of teaching and learning more motivating, interesting and interactive. These are some of the numerous reasons for using storytelling effectively in your classroom:

• It promotes a feeling of well being and relaxation.
• Increases the children’s willingness to communicate thoughts and feelings.
• Fosters awareness of one’s unique imagination and creativity.
• Builds verbal self-confidence.
• Integrates multiple learning contexts (reading, listening, speaking, writing, grammar, vocabulary) into a single instructional input.
• Builds community chemistry.
• Enhances reading, listening and critical thinking skills.
• Fosters teacher-learner collaboration (Fitzgibbon & Wilhelm, 1998).
• Enthralls empathy.

Storytelling is a skill that can be effectively directed to improve other skills, such as writing, grammar, listening and speaking. Donald Davis, a noted storyteller, teaches storytelling as a bridge between a child’s ‘first language’ [gestures and speech] and ‘second language’ [writing].

Here is a story that we created and practiced retelling with my beginner G3 students Yubin, Minato and Thomas. 

COLOR SYMBOL IMAGE
(Visible Thinking Routine)

During the past week we decided to give our Grade 2 and Grade 3 students more opportunities to practice the CSI visible thinking routine. After listening to "The Empty Pot" story and discussing the main idea and author's message with our students, I asked the children to express their understanding of the main idea through the CSI visible thinking routine.

Boys and girls worked in groups, sharing their thinking and cooperatively choosing colors, symbols and images that illustrated the main idea of the story. Though it was still challenging for some students to compromise, I could see that they were familiar with the strategy and knew what they had to do and what the teacher's expectations were.

The students were very confident presenters!

Our students are learning to share their thinking and present their conclusions in different groups.

In Class Support: Color - Symbol - Image VTR

Last week we began to introduce Visible Thinking Routines to our students.  In ISPP we believe that making thinking visible helps our students by encouraging engagement, uncovering understanding and making connections. As a result of this they become more independent, creative and confident communicators.

We decided to begin with the CSI (Color - Symbol - Image) thinking routine. After my homeroom colleagues pre-taught this routine in their classes through meaningful discussion of colors, explanation of symbols and identifying differences between images and symbols, it was time for me to practice using CSI VTR with our students.
The unit vocabulary was revised using the CSI thinking routine and various teaching models (in some classes we co-taught and in others I modeled the activity) were employed.

Our students worked in small groups, discussing the vocabulary words, cooperatively choosing the color, creating symbols and images for their words.

All our students were engaged in this activity and demonstrated great team work, shared their interpretations, exploring each others ideas. It was challenging for some to consider different viewpoints and perspectives and find a compromise.

Trying to find a compromise is not always easy.

The lesson finished up with brief presentations of every team's product. It was exciting to observe their enthusiasm and listen to their reasoning.

Proud presenters in Miss Lisa's class.

Guilia's group is presenting their color, symbol and image for the word HEALTH.