Reading with stars
I would like to dedicate the first post to my new student Kitti, my new student, who goes to Grade 1 in the UK, but has been living in the country only for 2 years. I help her read and understand better as we share the same mother tongue. I was looking for a story she would be interested to read. STORYLINEONLINE is a great website if you are looking for a good story with audio and subtitle but it provides more. The stories are read by famous actors like Betty White or James Earl Jones, but some of them like Amanda Bynes and Elijah Wood might also be known by teenagers as well. The fact that the stories are read by professional actors has many advantages like authentic pronunciation, mmimics, acting, which all help understanding. We can also enjoy the original illustrations or animated cartoons while listening to the story, which not only increses the fun factor but also enhances meaning. The stories 5-10 minutes long, and address different issues a child can face. I chose Guji Guji because:
- it has a very simmilar story line to Ugly Duckling, so the child can rely on her knowledge, of course children are not bothered by not knowing all the words but this helps her understand the story
- Robert Guillaume’s brilliant performance (sound of the bad crocodile, laughter, wiggling movement, reading in a slower pace) and the expressive, animated cartoon adds so much to enjoy the story, at the same time they also scaffold the understanding of the story
- it is only 5 minutes long so it’s just long enough to engage the children and later read the story by themselves.
1. I showed her pictures of a duck and crocodile and asked questions about the animals, so she could tell me what she already knew about the animals.
- What is the name of the animal in the picture?
- Have you seen a duck/ crocodile before? Where?
- What colour is a duck/ crocodile?
After we listened to it I asked her what she enjoyed the most about the story.
4. Then we focused on some vocabulary items- features of the animals. I created some flashcards with WORDJUGGLE (feather; beak; webbed feet; nest; lake; pointed teeth; blue-gray skin; sharp claws). I typed the word on one side and left the other side (definition) empty. We discussed the meaning and asked her to draw it on the empty cards. Later we could use them for a matching exercise or separate them as features of the 2 animals.
5. With StoryboardThat she could create a picture of an environment where a duck/ crocodile lives (with some of my help, she is not computer literate yet). At this point she had to produce some spoken language using the new vocab items, but also the name of colours and shapes.
6. We did some loud reading from the beginning of the story. As the recording can be stopped and rewound, children can listen to a sentence before they would read it.
I will dedicate some more time for Wordjuggle and Storyboard as both websites has an incredible potential that I could not exploit enough in this lesson plan.
No comments:
Post a Comment