Oral Narrative Lesson

Level: Intermediate/upper intermediate/advanced

Language: Past narrative tenses/would/emergent language

Materials: Award Winning Short Film - The Shoe

Time: 90 mins

Extras: Digital Voice recorder (many students now have these on their smartphones)

Warmer:

Tell student to close their eyes and imagine the coldest day imaginable. Snow is falling gently in a large city. The roofs of the houses and a large cathedral are covered in white. It's bright and clear winter's day.

Speaking: Students talk to partner.

1. How would you feel if you were in the city?
2. What would you do on a day like this?
3. Do you think everyone is happy when the weather is so cold?
4. What problems might some people face living in such cold weather?

Group Feedback and focus on emergent language and lexical chunks.

Brainstorm the type of clothing needed to survive is such a climate. Write on WB.

In groups, using the brainstormed language on the WB, students decide on the three most important items of clothing and justify their answers.

Video/Oral narrative:

Show the video to 0.19 and ask students to speculate on the characters and where they live.

1. Are they rich or poor? How do you know?
2. What you you think the father of the girl does for a living?
3. Do you think they have a good relationship? Why/Why not?
4. Compare your house with the one in the video.

Now put the students into small groups and tell them they are going to create an oral narrative together using a digital voice recorder. (this might be a good point to review past narrative tenses - past simple; past continuous; past perfect)

Draw student attention to their senses (sight/hearing/smell/touch/taste)

Tell the student that they need to think about the senses when telling their narrative.

Play the video until 0.46 and pause.

Each group should brainstorm together and then one student from each group speaks the narrative into the voice recorder. Set a time limit. (2/3 mins depending on the level)

As a group speculate on what is going to happen next.

Play the video until 1.34 and pause.

Ask the following questions:

1. How do you feel towards the young girl? Why?
2. How do you think she feels about her life? Justify your answer.

Group brainstorm and record narrative.

Play the video until 2.21 and pause.

Ask the following questions:

1. Describe the relationship between the young girl and her father.
2. How does her father feel when she sees her drawing on the wall?
3. What emotions are the young girl and her father feeling while looking into the shop window?

Group brainstorm and record narrative.

Play the rest of the video and ask the following questions:

1. Is the man a good father? Why/why not?
2. Is the girl a good daughter? Why/why not?

Group brainstorm and record narrative.

Follow up questions:

1. Do you think you would have been satisfied if your father had given you a 'doll shoe' when you were a child? 
2. Does the movie tell us anything about fatherhood/childhood?
3. What adjectives describe the love the young girl and her father show to each other?

Now the groups have completed their oral narratives. Groups swap and listen to each other narratives noting useful language. Complete for all groups. Students will now have a large bank of emergent language in their notebook.

Group feedback.

Writing task: Students now use the new emergent language to write the narrative.

Homework: Student make an oral narrative telling the story of their relationship with their father on a typical day.

ESL Picture Story - A Lexical Approach

Picture from The British Council

In this lesson, I used  Eric the Engine picture cards from the British Council's Learn English Kids site in order to generate lexical chunks.

Find the pictures here:

http://learnenglishkids.britishcouncil.org/en/short-stories/eric-the-engine

Simply log into the site, download the PDF picture story and cut up.

Of course, you can use any pictures for this activity. Even stick men drawings would suffice. 

Stage 1

Shuffle the cards and place them face down in front of the students - one set per group.

Stage 2

Divide the white board into 7 squares.

Stage 3

A student turns over the first card and then discusses the picture (encourage students to be as descriptive as possible) 

Stage 4

Feed back as a class and write emergent lexical chunks, single nouns, verbs, adverbs on the white board. Elicit to fill any holes in language. After card 1 has been discussed, note this language in box 1 on the board. Repeat for all seven pictures.

Stage 5

Once the eliciting and noting is complete, students discuss the story order. Then rub out and correct the box numbers on the board. Encourage students to justify the order. 

"Why do you think that picture comes next?"

Stage 6 

In pairs students tell the story to each other incorporating the lexical chucks and other language on the board. Set a 3 minute limit per student.

Stage 7

Students make a storyboard 

Enjoy

TM

Reverse Reading Revisited

Thanks to Jackie McAvoy supplier the main thrust of inspiration for this lesson.

If you want to check out the original, you can here: 

http://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/activities/writing-through-reverse-reading

I have modified it slightly and added a visual element.

Level: Pre Intermediate and above

Time: 50 minutes

Vocabulary: Detective, blow up, bridge, gold bullion, criminal, enemy, thunder and lightning, picturesque, waterfall, nature reserve, evil, magician, poisonous snake, lethal, arrest, jail  

Materials: 

Students - Notebook and pen 

Teacher - Download the following images:

http://eagnews.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/spy.jpg

http://online.wsj.com/media/1228pod01.jpg

http://cdn-wac.emirates247.com/polopoly_fs/1.279083.1281837902!/image/3384850608.jpg

http://www.tustrucos.com/software/wallpapers/Maravillas-de-la-Naturaleza/paisajes/Stormy-Weather-Saguaro-Cactus.jpg

http://static.travelblog.org/Wallpaper/pix/waterfall_desktop_background-1600x1200.jpg

http://fc08.deviantart.net/fs51/f/2009/279/7/2/Evil_Magician_by_Ncio.png

https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiTTrBDmYRAitJa8eSQdadrQZoqBCfe1pxdgHcnrZENa9m6JMRICwUorIEORXRPCZcFnrmtS_pnrZiTUkc3v-KJr7AEvj3aF91p7HJYKnzUijx9BYFcKh9PJ3R-6aKAYCuUbVK7H6ReRnA/s1600/snake+mouth.jpg

http://i.telegraph.co.uk/multimedia/archive/01383/police_arrest_1383846c.jpg

Stage 1: Explain to students that something terrible happened to you this morning. Student speculate on what this might be. Feed back and note any emergent language. 

Stage 2: Tell students that you had a story prepared to read to them, but sadly your dog ate it.

Stage 3: Tell students that that they are going to predict what the story was about. Dictate the past tense questions that relate to Mr Jones 'interesting' day.

1. What was Mr Jones's job?
2. What was he going to do?
3. Why?
4. What was the weather like?
5. What did he decide to do after that?
6. What didn't he want to do?
7. Why?
8. What was the surprising end?

Stage 4: Students predict the answers. Encourage students to be as imaginative as possible and use dictionaries. 

Stage 5: Monitor and check grammar and spelling

Stage 6: Students mingle and share their prediction with other students

Stage 7: Tell students that you have some clues that show what really happened (the pictures downloaded above directly relate to the 8 prediction questions) Show each picture in turn and elicit as much detail as possible. Push students to be as descriptive as possible and write emergent language on the board.

Stage 8: Student write the real story by using the picture prompts and the new language on the board.

Follow up: Students can make a story board for homework

Santa's Story - Videotelling Lesson (revisited)

I've made some adjustments to my Videotelling lesson from yesterday, as after refection I felt it needed a bit of a re-shape. Actually, if I am truthful, it wasn't wonderful.  

Read it here:

http://canyouwalkonthericepaper.blogspot.com/2012/12/santas-christmas-videotelling-lesson.html

In this spirit, I have modified Jamie Keddie's (http://lessonstream.org/) technique slightly in the story telling stage. 

Instead of students responding to the teacher eliciting orally in the story telling stage, they write down their answers and then check these while watching the video. (Teacher should have 10/15 questions prepared for this task. Questions should be open ended if possible pushing students to be as creative as possible) 

The reason for this change is that sometimes shy students lose out in the oral eliciting stage, overshadowed by the more confident members of the group. Thus, with this slight adjustment, the former can get creative without the fear of their spontaneous responses being wrong or inferior to their classmates. 

This is not to say that shy students are discouraged from speaking, far from it; all students are given the opportunity to share their creative ideas with the class in a group feedback session after the video has been watched. At this stage, the teacher can really take the students' ideas apart and fully expand the emergent language to its fullest potential. 


For those of you who are not familiar with Jamie Keddie and Videotelling, I suggest you do. Below is a great example of his technique.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7wMVTcq7ZX8

Using a Novel for Uncovering Emergent Language and Retaining it.

A technique I have been using a lot this semester.

•Read a chapter of a graded reader to your students while they close their eyes and listen.

•Hand out a copy of the chapter and allow children to read silently and underline unknown vocabulary.

•Students go into groups and talk about unknown vocabulary and phrases.

•Groups swap and students share information about unknown vocabulary.

•Once group have circulated, have class feedback on the board around a spider diagram.

•The teacher then elicits each new word’s part of speech and how the word is used in the chapter.

•Teacher then uses information given by students to write a coherent sentence beside the word on the spider diagram.

•Repeat this for all words.

•Drill the sentences concentrating on word stress.

•In pairs students translate sentences into L1.

•When completed, rub the board and allow groups to chat in L1 to modify their answers.

•Back in pairs, students recreate the sentences from L1 to L2.

•When completed, students see the original sentences again and self-correct.

•Drill sentences and vocabulary for the final time

•Follow up homework: students have to write a present tense summary of the chapter using all of the emergent vocabulary from the lesson.