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Many teachers have already
used this activity; their experience is that older
children are happy to join in a "baby-ish" story
because of the challenge and satisfaction of
showing they can follow it in a foreign language.
If it proves successful with your pupils, we
suggest ways you could develop more storytelling
activities in later sections.
Telling the
story
The Teachers' Guide suggests
how you can develop the main lines of the plot
using the language that is already familiar to the
children, plus a few new words and some gisting.
You can use the pictures from the English version,
or the French edition (now available from Early
Start).
You could group the children
around you so they can see the illustrations in the
book; use a "big book"; or to prepare your own
overhead projector transparencies (OHTs), or
flashcards.
When you first launch into
telling the story in French, be ready to use lots
of mime, gestures, and pointing to the
illustrations to aid the children's understanding.
Although the French is mostly easy to understand,
you may prefer to aim at a simple paraphrase of the
main direction of the plot . It is possible to tell
the story using little more than the core
vocabulary the class already know. Depending on
your own fluency and how the children respond, you
can add more embellishments.
For simplicity, teachers
generally use the present tense to tell a story (so
does the French edition!). As always, first time
round do not show the children in writing those new
words the story will introduce - let them hear the
sound first.
This is a nicely repetitive
story, and you may find that children want to join
in and supply the words as the story progresses -
if so, do encourage them, especially in counting
and days of the week. If they prefer to listen for
the first time, they will probably want to join in
next time.
...for more
fluent teachers:
Introduce your story-telling
sessions with: "Maintenant, je vais vous
raconter une histoire..." (Now, I'm going to
tell you a story). Use French sounds like
"alors.." and "eh bien" to fill out
the narrative.
Buy
this book in French
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