A GREAT IDEA FOR PRE-SCHOOL, JUNIOR PRIMARY +

An Advisory Teacher in the London Borough of Newham wrote in English Four to seven (2011) about children creating verbal stories and later written stories using ‘small world materials’ - small figures and other articles that are manipulated by hand. The children  prepare a setting, wooden trees, fences etc. or use a pot plant in the classroom to place varied animals in it. They use small transport vehicles, train tracks, roadway plastic sheets, small fluffy toys and lego pieces.

 

Children can move outside and use the school environment to photograph small scenes (e.g. ants moving quickly to and fro); a digital camera to take photographs of scenes and movement of small world items.

This is a wonderful hands-on way for pre-school, reception and year one, new English language learners and children who are delayed learners to talk about stories and then if appropriate write their created stories. (Many elements of modern education have been adapted from Montessori theories and practices. Oral language long before written language  is an important element of Montessori practice).

 Read what the Advisory Teacher did:

‘Children would choose their setting, set up the small world, take a photograph, move the setting and characters as necessary, take another photograph and so on, until the story was completed. They told their story as they moved from photograph to photograph. They had little, if any, experience of multimodal story making in this way and their confidence varied a great deal. When prompting the children, I asked open ended questions e.g., “What will happen next?” “How does the princess feel? “What is the crocodile thinking?” to extend their own ideas as much as possible. Once finished, children viewed their photographs on the laptop and re-told their story, adding ideas and thoughts as they wished. I scribed what they said and then made up the books using Microsoft PowerPoint, adding text boxes, speech and thought bubbles.’

The books are then shared with peers and adults; children take the books home to read.

Of course, the Advisory Teacher, also, either read stories or shared stories (literature-based learning) with children who in turn innovate on these stimulating pieces (for example, J. Crebbin’s The Train Ride, Pat Hutchin’s Rosie’s Walk, J. Oke’s The naughty bus).

The Advisory Teacher found that children’s verbalizations were transferred into writing stories, they chose a setting and characters, developed a sequence of events which were similar to the published story. They drew on their prior experience of stories and revisited photographs on the laptop which they built upon. Book language was used, using vocabulary and key words from stories with these new words being rehearsed. Other learning evolved. One child remarked how animals do not talk, so the Advisory Teacher introduced thinking bubbles. Another child brought to mind how zebras do not live in the rainforest, but solved his own problem and having the zebra visit.

What is great was that the activity is open-ended. The children can participate at their own level; children benefiting from seeing good peer modelling of language and social play. Some children initiate more role-play or storytelling to direct and extend themselves. Often they place themselves or their friends in the stories they create.  

Older, advanced-in-writing children can use the scenes they create to write their own ideas, matching the Powerpoint slide with the appropriate idea and inserting all those wonderful functions found on Powerpoint.