In my blogpost I will tell you about an Internet page called Storynory. On this page you can find a great numbers of different Audio stories that you and your students can listen to and read. There has been a new story published every week since November 2005. Therefore, you have a great amount of stories to choose among. I think that the pupils in 5th or 6th class can be able to understand the stories.
You find the page on:
To use the page you need a computer with Internet connection, headphones or loudspeakers. If you have a projector, it is an advantage, than you can work with the whole class on the same story. A printer is useful too, than you can print out the stories and use them to further work. You can also download the stories to iPods if you have iTune on your computer, or have it as an app on your iPhone.
I think this page is easy to use for the students. There are not a lot of commercials popping up, distracting them. It has a two-click system, first click on the kind of story you want, second click on the story you have chosen and now you can start listen. There are five different categories of stories:
Original stories
Fairytales
Classic
Educational
Junior
You can either just listen to the story or both listen and read at the same time, while the stories also are on your computer screen. They also have a translation tool on the site. If you double-click on a world, there come up a list of different languages, choose the language you want, and then double-click at the worlds you will have translated. All worlds have not a translation, but many have so I think it could be a good help for the children.
How the teacher can use the page.
On this page you can get a great amount of material to raise the pupils listening and reading skills. You can let the students’ just listen to a story that you selected. Before that I think you have to prepare a list of some words they have to know before they start listen to the story. To be sure that they have understood it you can give them some Task1 and Task2 questions (Harmer 2007). Since you have the story even on the screen it is easy to print it out and continue to work whit it. Many of the stories you can let the students’ dramatizes in groups and play for each other. They can also rewrite them into our time; many are old stories. Here they can get inspiration to write own stories in English, either one by one or in small groups. They can illustrate it and make a Photo Story, that they can show the class, their parents or publish on the class’ wikipage.
How the students can use the page.
They can listen and read the stories. Many of the stories are famous stories that are told all around the world. That makes them easier to understand, while they have got a pre-understanding of the stories. It can also be fun to compare how the story is told in Great Britain with the way we tell it in Sweden. The storytellers also give a small background to the story, which could be nice to know. Here they are given the ability to listen to how a native English speaker pronounces worlds and the intonation of the language. Even the children can download the stories to iPods and iPhones and just listen to them for fun before they shall sleep or on a long boring journey.
This is a wonderful webpage with a large variety of different stories to choose from. I got very excited when I found 1001 nights because our theme at my school this semester is 1001 nights. I got a little bit disappointed though when I found that the stories from 1001 nights are quite difficult for my pupils in grade 4-5. But I did recommend the webpage to my college who works in grade 6-9.
ReplyDeleteThe majority of the stories I believe are too long and difficult for pupils in grade 5 and 6, but you can always break up the stories into smaller pieces. Under the category educational stories I did find something called Twisters, which is a tongue twister and it can be fun and useful when learning to speak a foreign language.
As you point out I also believe it is important to go through the vocabulary before listening and reading a story. It is very useful that there is a translating tool on this site, because then the pupils do not need to spend too much time and energy looking up all the unfamiliar words in a dictionary. The fact that some of the stories are well-known all over the world makes the stories a bit easier to understand as well.
You also write that the pupils can rewrite the stories, write their own stories, work with Photo Story and make a play out of the stories which I believe are some good ideas. A couple of the easier stories can be used as a script when acting out.
I consider this site to be very useful as a listening, reading and comprehension activity for pupils. Maybe I will give the 1001 nights stories a try even if they seem a bit too difficult, but my pupils have some pre-understanding because we are working with the stories in Swedish.