My first input for Language was something I found really interesting and engaged with.
This is me reading “A Bear Called Paddington”
I love childrens stories and am always looking at the new releases in the childrens sections in Waterstones and read to the children everyday when I worked in the nursery. The TDT however really excited me because my favourite activity in college was creating the story sack. I chose my favourite story from my childhood (which it still is now because I’m a big kid) which was A Bear Called Paddington by Michael Bond. I decided to choose Paddington not only because it was my favourite childhood story but also because of the history behind it. This may come as a surprise to readers of this post but I have genuinely met people who thought Paddington was just a film, not a book first. CRAZY ISN’T IT! It came to my knowledge just by talking to people that not many realize that “A Bear Called Paddington” was published in 1958 and quickly became a classic book way before the 2014 film came out.
My Paddington story sack
When I had gathered everything for my story sack which was a beautiful old leather suitcase from a charity shop I included a soft toy of Paddington himself, activity sheets, a toy bus, blank luggage tags, a photograph of Paddington station, a numeracy interactive book about trains, bubble bath, a jar of marmalade and of course the Paddington book itself. I had to do the story sack with the children on my placement. It was my favourite activity on the placement and went really well without many glitches. The younger children found the book too long but the older children liked it a lot and all the children liked the activities I had set out. The main thing that I learnt from doing this story for my story sack was that you have to make the stories that you read to children age and stage appropriate. There is no sense in trying to sit and read for example The Secret Garden to 3 year olds in a nursery and doing a chapter everyday because by the end of the chapter the children will be restless, there are no pictures to fuel their imagination and the likelihood of them knowing what is going on with the complexity of each individual character is unlikely. However, reading children of P7 age a book like A bear Called Paddington is useless as well because they won’t engage in the way they should with literacy and language at their age. So it is all about a good balance. This is why although the initial TDT was to create a lesson plan for the experience and outcome..
I can show my understanding of what I listen to or watch by responding to literal, inferential, evaluative and other types of questions, and by asking different kinds of questions of my own. *Responsibility of all LIT 2-07a
…I adapted it so it fitted in with the resources I already had and changed it to…
To help me understand stories and other texts, I ask questions and link what I am learning with what I already know.*Responsibility of all LIT 0-07a/LIT 0-16a/ENG 0-17a
…which is just the Early version of the experience and outcome given to us in the TDT. I would highly recommend that anyone who is involved in education make a story sack because they are an absolutely fantastic resource to have in your cupboard. Furthermore, the children engage so well with activities after reading the story and if there is a main character can engage well with the character making learning fun. You have to be careful that you make the activities educational so that the children are learning from this.
At the same time story sacks are not perfect. Not every child wants to follow up each book they are read with an activity. Younger children like story time to be a calm down activity to relax before they have a nap and older children just don’t always appreciate the storybooks so don’t engage with them. Educators can also become reliant on story sacks for example rather than reading a book and going on to another topic a different story sack comes out everyday and the children will just simply be bored. Children with English as an additional language may also have problems fully engaging with a story sack. They can also be time consuming and expensive to create (although charity shops and the works are a good idea if you are strapped for cash!).
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A story sack is something I am always adding to like with this one I’ve added paddington shaped cookie cutters and paddington napkins so the children could do some baking. I would never be able to finish a story sack. However, going on the basis that this is what I have, I have included a picture of what my final lesson plan for a P1 class would be for 1 hour and 15 minutes (maybe an afternoon?). I would sit the class down and read them the story carefully looking at the front cover and who the author is. Once read the children would be asked to go into 4 groups. The first table would be asked to look at the train book and do shape activities for numeracy. The second table would be asked to make a luggage tag with their name and this would help me as a teacher to evaluate not only the childrens writing skills but also if they are able to write their name. The third table would be a session where there would be a computer animated interactive Paddington bear asking the children to find out where Peru is and what is in Peru? This would mainly cover geography but would also be a good starter onto a topic about South America for example? Lastly, on the final table I would ask the children to do an activity about trains. They would have to answer questions like “How do trains run?” and “Where is Paddington station?”. After the final group had finished I would ask them to tidy up and make marmalade sandwiches as a group – being careful about dietary requirements and being careful about this. There are an awful lot of children who at 5 cannot yet properly spread and use a knife so this would come under health and wellbeing. Once they had eaten them as a group they would make a chart for the wall as to who liked them and who didn’t. This would be numeracy because it is about statistics.
These are all my own ideas, some of which have actually been carried out in a classroom. I’m happy for anyone to ask me any questions about how I carried out my story sack and how I would adapt this in the classroom further – just comment below. I hope by reading about my experiences with this story sack, I will encourage anyone reading this to find out more about them and even create one of their own.
