1. Throughout the ‘voices’ this week, the social element of storytelling kept coming through – the process of making meaning in a way that responds to the other or of making meaning communally or even intergenerationally (by creating formative experiences that resonate in the future and which reflect on stories of the past)… I recently did the postcard project with Class 10. After a range of creative speaking and writing activities, the students took characters that they had developed and wrote stories in pairs – a story in which the two characters, which they had developed independently from quite different contexts, both featured. The stories were beautifully creative and diverse, and the students had a lot of fun. “Media”, language in general and storytelling specifically, is social and intersubjective, and it can be fun to playfully foreground this in the classroom.
As I do not teach Foreign languages yet, I tried out the postcard-describing-game in Fine-Arts in class 9. Questions were allowed.
The students loved the game were vivid but not too loud and had a lot of fun. The drawings were extremly simplified. As I did not tell them to use colours, they just sketched with pencils. Next time I would! Some of them had difficulties with “left” and “right” , others forgot do differ fore- and background or to mention the proportions. So comparing the original postcard with their own works was a lot of fun for the whole class!
We did storytelling in the Seminar as a preparation for becoming a class teacher. I really enjoyed it, but also experienced it as a very personal thing to do which takes some effort. You give a lot of yourself into the story. The feedback was very useful and practicing it before several times helped me a lot.
As Charlotte mentioned we worked with postcards in our Fachdidaktik and I plan to implement it to my lessons when I start teaching.
I told my son the story about the coat which was resewn into various clothing whilst I was making face masks with him out of old clothing yesterday. He’s 8, and his breathing rhythm changed significantly as soon as I started telling. He then retold the story to his Dad (in German), and it was wonderful to see him adapt the rhythms and patterns of the telling to another language. I read to them a lot, but I don’t ‘tell’ that often – and the difference really is noticeable!
As mentioned before we practiced storytelling with Mr Rawson. It was way harder than I thought, especially to find the appropriate amount of known and unknown vocabulary.
And presenting it fluently needs a lot of practice.
I told my two sons a story about Emil Nolde while showing them a postcard with one of his famous flower paintings. The young Nolde was working as a wood sculptor for Heinrich Sauermann in Flensburg before he started to draw and paint. He was still called Emil Hansen back then. And he was one of the wood carvers of the great hearing room in the Flensburg Court. While I was telling about the life of Emil Nolde my sons though being 12 and 14 years old where sitting quietly and listening closely. It has been years since I told them the last story and it turned out to be a good time for all of us.
I practiced telling the story of Peter Rabbit with the intention of telling it to the 3rd grade that I am teaching starting this summer. I noticed how I could use my hands and body language to try to show the story, especially when telling it for the first time. I also had the idea that I could practice some vocabulary words (like “rabbit”) with Total Physical Response with the whole class before the story begins and then include the movements we learned later while telling the story to perhaps make it easier to understand. In any case, I am still thinking about how I can convey some important vocabulary words for a particular story, so that the children will understand it.
I told my friends the legend of the Children of Lir.
I read it a while ago and decided I would prepare it “from memory”. I first didn’t look up the legend online, I just used the images I still had in mind. I thought it would make the legend more lively if I used my impressions as a starting point.
Once I was satisfied with the result, I checked online if my version was accurate enough and if I wasn’t “damaging” the legend. The memories I had in mind were actually not too far from what I did find.
I then proceeded to tell the legend, while trying to focus on the inner pictures as well as what I had felt when I first read it.
It was a nice experience. However, I think that I will have to train a bit more in order to feel confortable with this sort of exercise.
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10 Comments
I am really excited to hear about your experiences with stories and images in the FL classroom!
1. Throughout the ‘voices’ this week, the social element of storytelling kept coming through – the process of making meaning in a way that responds to the other or of making meaning communally or even intergenerationally (by creating formative experiences that resonate in the future and which reflect on stories of the past)… I recently did the postcard project with Class 10. After a range of creative speaking and writing activities, the students took characters that they had developed and wrote stories in pairs – a story in which the two characters, which they had developed independently from quite different contexts, both featured. The stories were beautifully creative and diverse, and the students had a lot of fun. “Media”, language in general and storytelling specifically, is social and intersubjective, and it can be fun to playfully foreground this in the classroom.
As I do not teach Foreign languages yet, I tried out the postcard-describing-game in Fine-Arts in class 9. Questions were allowed.
The students loved the game were vivid but not too loud and had a lot of fun. The drawings were extremly simplified. As I did not tell them to use colours, they just sketched with pencils. Next time I would! Some of them had difficulties with “left” and “right” , others forgot do differ fore- and background or to mention the proportions. So comparing the original postcard with their own works was a lot of fun for the whole class!
We did the postcard thing with Martyn, it was great! In french lessons we used postacrds to create own poems.
We did storytelling in the Seminar as a preparation for becoming a class teacher. I really enjoyed it, but also experienced it as a very personal thing to do which takes some effort. You give a lot of yourself into the story. The feedback was very useful and practicing it before several times helped me a lot.
As Charlotte mentioned we worked with postcards in our Fachdidaktik and I plan to implement it to my lessons when I start teaching.
I told my son the story about the coat which was resewn into various clothing whilst I was making face masks with him out of old clothing yesterday. He’s 8, and his breathing rhythm changed significantly as soon as I started telling. He then retold the story to his Dad (in German), and it was wonderful to see him adapt the rhythms and patterns of the telling to another language. I read to them a lot, but I don’t ‘tell’ that often – and the difference really is noticeable!
As mentioned before we practiced storytelling with Mr Rawson. It was way harder than I thought, especially to find the appropriate amount of known and unknown vocabulary.
And presenting it fluently needs a lot of practice.
I told my two sons a story about Emil Nolde while showing them a postcard with one of his famous flower paintings. The young Nolde was working as a wood sculptor for Heinrich Sauermann in Flensburg before he started to draw and paint. He was still called Emil Hansen back then. And he was one of the wood carvers of the great hearing room in the Flensburg Court. While I was telling about the life of Emil Nolde my sons though being 12 and 14 years old where sitting quietly and listening closely. It has been years since I told them the last story and it turned out to be a good time for all of us.
I practiced telling the story of Peter Rabbit with the intention of telling it to the 3rd grade that I am teaching starting this summer. I noticed how I could use my hands and body language to try to show the story, especially when telling it for the first time. I also had the idea that I could practice some vocabulary words (like “rabbit”) with Total Physical Response with the whole class before the story begins and then include the movements we learned later while telling the story to perhaps make it easier to understand. In any case, I am still thinking about how I can convey some important vocabulary words for a particular story, so that the children will understand it.
I told my friends the legend of the Children of Lir.
I read it a while ago and decided I would prepare it “from memory”. I first didn’t look up the legend online, I just used the images I still had in mind. I thought it would make the legend more lively if I used my impressions as a starting point.
Once I was satisfied with the result, I checked online if my version was accurate enough and if I wasn’t “damaging” the legend. The memories I had in mind were actually not too far from what I did find.
I then proceeded to tell the legend, while trying to focus on the inner pictures as well as what I had felt when I first read it.
It was a nice experience. However, I think that I will have to train a bit more in order to feel confortable with this sort of exercise.