STORY PROJECTS 2

September training 2014 - 15

Haztegi ikastola - Legazpi

5th SEPTEMBER

Participants:

Tere Malkorra Saizar (EGAPE- Urnieta), Diego Garcia Sanchez, and Nerea Martinez Aranburuzabala (SAN PRUDENCIO- Gasteiz), Ane Miren Kapanaga Atorrasagasti (MARIAREN LAGUNDIA- Bergara), Rita Lertxundi Galarraga (ANAITASUNA-Ermua), Mª Eugenia Garmendia Ochagavia and Mireia Garcia Icuza (DIMA)

Absent:

Izaskun Salazar Apaolaza ( PAZ DE ZIGANDA- Atarrabia) could come to the meeting because she had gone to Washington with Secundary pupils.

Admin

  • They filled in a contact sheet: teacher’s name – school – contact telephone - E-mail
  • They introduced themselves and explained about their experience in Eleanitz- English.
  • Teachers filled in a chartwith the number of groups in Story Projects 2, sessions per week and their length. One of the teachers does not know yet.
  • They introduced themselves and explained about their experience in Eleanitz-English. Few of us have worked together the days before. Most teachers have worked with different material and they do not know Eleanitz. Tere and Ane Miren know the material but they have worked on it without going to any training meetings.

STORY PROJECTS 2: changes and new proposals (PPt)

  • Story Projects 1, is more like Hocus & Lotus i.e. narrative formats + rituals + group work.
  • Story Projects 2 is more like The Explorers i.e. more topic work, more individual /pair work.

Reasons:

  1. GENERALISING

•Acting out: the pupils anticipate and contribute in English from the very beginning. They have been working on formats for 4-5 years. It will give us the context/topics to work on.

2. PERSONALISING

•Emphasising personal interaction. Work on topic activities.

e.g. “Talking about…”; “Surveys on accidents and illnesses”,” Safety rules”,…

3. REFLECTION ON LANGUAGE

•“Natural language acquisition” does happen in our classes but it doesn’t happen fast enough.

e.g. “Rewriting”, “Separating words”,etc.

4. MIXED ABILITY

•This material caters for all abilities. Not limiting capabilities. Read and try the procedures on the web. At this age we will ask them to work individually first, by themselves. Then, they may check in pairs, in small groups,…

e.g. “Filling in” etc.

CALENDAR

Present Story Projects 2 Calendar to get an idea of the TIMING for each Story Project. We have 5 stories for the school year:

-Be careful with my bike

-Sorry, I’m late

-Where’s the magician?

-Inside the computer game

-Lost at sea

We looked atBe careful with my bike 5 week and 7 week plans. There are two plans because September in some schools is a very light month, some schools work just in the mornings; others start later, there are festivals, etc.

STORY PROJECTS 2 MATERIALS

Published materials:

  • 1 Activity book.
  • 5 story books.
  • 2 CDs with songs and stories.
  • Space Search CDRom

BE CAREFUL WITH MY BIKE

We followed 5 week plan to get familiar with some of the activities and to realise the different way to work in Story Projects 2. We talked about the topic activities related to the storysuch as: Birthday Calendarand Doctor sketches. Apart from that, we saw the different format activities included in the activity book such us: Separating words, SentenceBuilding, Criss cross puzzle with definitions, etc.

  • Welcome to school: 1st session
  • Play a name game (if you have a new group of pupils)
  • Talk about holidays. Tell them about you and ask them to tell you something about holidays: where they went, what they saw, etc.Give a model if necessary e.g. I went camping to Iratxe in Navarre. Make a comment about the places they went to, ask questions, etc. Make sure they produce simple sentences accurately, involve everybody when reflecting. (me to Paris)

How do we say that? Can you help Maryam? Aner, can you repeat, please? etc.

  • Elicit the characters, their gestures and the stories in Story Projects 1 before introducing the new stories for this school year. ( To know about our characters, read Our new friends, topicactivity, procedure in “Granny, let’s make a cake” story.)
  • To give out the material read Introducing Story Projects 2 procedure in topic activities.
  • Drama training

We suggest working on the acting out just once, encouraging them to produce as much as possible. When acting out we can interact and ask them questions such as, what would Nick’s mum say? What would the doctor say? What would you say in that situation? etc.. Make sure everybody, repeats the sentences related to the story that are produced during the acting out. If this methodology is new for the pupils take it easy and ask them to repeat what you say. Little by little they will start anticipating the language.

We presented the beginning of the story: Birthday Party and both alternatives:

- Nick's arm was broken.

- David's new bike was broken.

The beginning of the story, the Party, gives us the opportunity to work on some topic activities. We can start working onany of the topic activities related to this part, look in the plans: e.g. Talking about, Birthday calendar,…

  • Activity book

Show the activities related to this story and the book organisation which is different from Story Projects 1, there is more topic work and there are new language activities.

  • My notebook.For example when working on Talking about birthdays we may find that our pupils still do not know the months so we can ask them to copy them on those pages. Language reflections, new vocabulary, doctor sketches, etc. will be included there.
  • Format and Topic activities: Explain them. Read the procedures carefully before working on them.
  1. Doctor Sketches. Before doing their own sketches there are previous activities, “Labelthe body”, “Match the health problems with remedies”, which will help them to do it.
  2. Separating words. The text is from their storybook.
  3. Sentence building.The sentences are in extra handouts for the teacher file on the web. It takes time to prepare it. These sentences are in their storybooks too. Read the procedure carefully. It is an activity they usually like a lot, they do not realise about the linguistic work they do. They think it is a game.
  4. Spot the mistakes. (reading) There is not listening in 4th of Primary, so let them do it by themselves. This year they have to find 4 mistakes in each text and some of the texts are long.
  5. Criss – cross puzzle. It is more challenging now because apart from identifying pictures they have to read the definitions and write the words. We can use it to take assessment notes or as a filler.
  6. Songs

We are going to work on a song, “Doctor Proctor” or “Master of Disaster”, verse by verse and learn it. The songs related to this story are very easy and there are two activities related to them in the activity book.

We can listen to the whole song first before working on it and that will help everybody to get the melody. Then, start working on the song, sing the first line adding some gestures and encourage them to copyyou. Work on the first two verses. Be careful, ask pupils to sing in different ways: whole group, small groups, and volunteers.

Working on the songs they work on Listening, Speaking, Reading and Language Accuracy.

Homework: listening to the verses we have worked on and singing, reading the lyrics.

TIPS FOR THE TEACHER, SOME ADVICE

  1. Not understanding Basque or Spanish attitude is very important. Explain why to them, if necessary, or ask the tutor to do it. They will play the game and they will try hard and produce more language. Little by little they will get used to do it. We are talking about communicating. Then, we will help them improve.
  1. Acting out
  • When having big groups you can make a little semicircle inside the big one.
  • Keep the open area of the semicircle for you; make sure you don’t turn your back on your pupils. (Eye-contact)
  • Make gestures to help them predict and anticipate the language, but do not exaggerate.
  • Sometimes long sentences are difficult for them to produce. Work on them: back chaining technique is a good one:

It may be nothing serious but you must have a check-up.

check- up

you must have a check-up

nothing serious but you must have a check-up

It may be nothing serious but you must have a check-up.

Do not cut the sentence too much. We want to help them produce the whole sentence in a natural way.

  • Make sure everybody participates, even when their own ideas are good, ask everybody to repeat.
  1. Listen to the pupils and let them give their own reasons. Usually there is a logical explanation for their answer.
  1. Space Search CDROM.

We think that each school should buy a pack and we should have a session for English in the computer room timetable. If it is not possible, try other ways, we can show the pupils how it works and let them borrow it in turns. They like it a lot. It is worth including it in our plans and playing at least once at the end of each unit. Once they know how to play, it is a good resource. If interested, our pupils can get their own CDROM too.It can be a good present for birthdays or at Christmas.

It is similar to Welcome aboard, but it has new activity types and a very attractive context: the space..

  1. Continuous Assessment. It is important to take continuous assessment notes about your pupils, sometimes during the session and sometimes afterwards depending on the activities we work on.

BACK AT SCHOOL:

  • Meetings with parents at the beginning of school year: methodology, material, aim of the register and importance of their implication. (print the document on the web)
  • It is worth buying the CDsbecause they have the songs, the story listening version, the story book version and the dictionary.They can work by themselves at home.

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