My favourite story: Little Red Riding Hood

OBJECTIVES

Situate geographically.

Fixing the previous vocabulary (house, family,food,...)

Understand the global sense of the story: Little Red Riding Hood.

Identify the story characters.

Know the place forms: on, behind, in.

Act out the story dialogue using the gesture and mime.

Put in ordre pictures related to the story.

.Vocabulary

- Revision family vocabulary: mum, dad, grandma.

- Revision body vocabulary: ears, nose, mouth,..

- Revision chothes vocabulary: night cap, night dress, hood,..

-Set phrses:

What big ears you've got!. The better to hear you.

What big eyes you've got!. The better to see you.

What big nose you've got!. The better to smell you.

What big mouth you've got!. The better to kiss you.

- Place prepositions: on, behind, in.

.Pronunciation

PROCEDURES

Recognize the names of the stories.

Identify characters.

Construction of oral sentences.

Find the mistakes in a drawing.

Formulate answers.

Reproduction and acting out of a dialogue.

Identification the story characters.

Understanding the basic language of the story.

Describing of elements in the pictures.

Identification of the oral information of the story content.

Identification place prepositions: on, behind, in.

Association of an oral message releted to the appropiate picture.

ATTITUDES

Take part in lostening for pleasure to stories.

Taking part in the process of acting out.

Be aware themselves of tips from their families.

Reponsability in acting out spontaneously.

Effort to memorize story dialogues.

Classroom English

Methodology

This project is for children from their first year of English as well as for those have already followed an introductory course. The contents and activities have been carefully designed to suit the needs, interests and psychological characteristics of the children. Children have an (active) short-term memory but need continual revision to store items in their long-term memory. New language is constantly recycled through a wide variety of activities. These build children's confidence but avoid boring repetition. Children learn by doing. For that reason require children's active participation. There are moving games and role-play situations in which children experience the language through physical involvement, as well as tasks that involve making things and exchanging information. Children like play with language. Children do not have a particular reason for learning a foreign language so there are activities related to other areas of learning (computers, maths, geography, history, music, and handicrafts...). These help the children's motivation and help make their progress more obvious.

The syllabus, closely related to the language and content of the stories, has been carefully designed to meet the needs and interest of children in Primary Education. It provides a balance between topics, activities and tasks, and develops vocabulary and language functions that are relevant to the children's communication needs. The stories help them to develop oral/aural skills. The stories expose the children to a lot of new language that is for recognition only. Language for production is kept to a minimum. The classroom language is always introduced through a series of activities that involve children physically. The pronunciation syllabus focuses on the English sounds that children may find difficult to reproduce.

The main emphasis is to develop the children's listening comprehension skills; children are also led to use a limited amount of language in carefully graded communicative activities. The level of oral language input is deliberately higher that the children's productive competence, so that they are first encouraged to fulfil tasks which highlight the importance of getting the overall meaning of the input or picking up specific information, rather than understanding every single word. In this way children are required to show their comprehension and communicative through non-verbal responses or very simple utterances. The emphasis of the oral production is mainly put on communication. The speaking activities and tasks have been carefully graded according to the children's abilities and interest to communicate Reading and writing only appear after the language has been presented and experienced at oral level. Children are first encouraged to recognise the written form at word level and then at sentence level. Finally, children are encouraged to write the key vocabulary in the story that is always accompanied by lively pictures.

The main language in the story is pre-taught through activities in which children get physically involved: moving games, songs, simulations and game-like activities. The teacher tells the story in which the pre-taught language is important for comprehension. Gesture, mime, facial expression and tone of voice used by the teacher, together with the use of posters, we help children to understand the overall meaning of the story.

Children are encouraged to encourage participating actively in a series of enjoyable, meaningful and purposeful activities. The follow-up phase is divided into three stages that lead children from overall understanding of the story to focus on and practise specific language points.It is extremely important to tell the stories in a way that the children enjoy, whilst understanding the overall content. If you want to get the children really involved in the story, it is advisable that you tell it yourself. There is also the option of using the recorded version of the story.

It is advisable to start each session with a short activity that focuses the children's attention on English and creates a positive attitude. They are warm-up activities designed for the pre-story presents to be pre-taught. We also use Moving game activities. They are sequences of instructions used to pre-teach.Through these activities children understand and perform the instructions given without speaking. Moving Game activities are based on Total Physical Response (TPR); a method developed by Dr. James Asher, in which children experience the language through physical involvement.

The aim of the games is to get the children to practise the main language in a motivating and enjoyable way.Since some of the games imply moving and even running, it is important to keep good control of the class while playing. Give clear instruccions and demostrate how to play the games by playing them yourself the first time. Make sure the children feel confident with the language they need and encourage them to use it while playing. Do not worry if it is noisy as long as itis controlled and the children are engaged in a purposeful communication activity. However, stop the game and start another activity whenever you feel that children are out of control. It is advisable to reat those games that have been succeful as a warm up activity at the beginning of another session or as a closing actvity.

Act-out activities are very important in this project. There are a number of role play activities in which children, either in groups or in pairs, reproduce the main dialogues that appear in the story. It is important that the children practise the dialogues by listening to them on the cassette and repeating the sentences with accurate pronunciation and intonation. Once the children feel confident, ask them to rehearse the dialogue in groups or in pairs. Then ask some volunteers to act it out for the rest of the class. Encourage them to make the appropiate gestures, mime and facial expression. Young children usually enjoy acting in front of the class. However, do not insist if some of them are not confident or willing to participate. Using the puppets or wearing the masks stimulates children and makes the act-out activities more enjoyable.

The best classroom organisation should be in a semi-cercle around the teacher when they are listening to the story, presenting new materials or TPR activities. Get the children seated in a cercle with the tables at the back and an empty space in the middle. It is important to show the children how to move the furniture silently in ordre to do different activities and to practise this right form the beginning.

A lot of English can be used in the class in a very natural context. If we use the same language again and again in similar contexts, the children will get familiar with a lot of useful language. Lots of gesture and mime will to make this language comprehensible.

In the average teaching/learning situation, the amount of time in which the children are in contact with English is very limited. Therefore English should be used all the time in class in order to expose the children to the largest possible amount of comprehensible input. Gesture, mime and visuals are excellent tools to accompany the teacher's talk in order to make input comprehensible. However, in a class of young learners, there are important aspects to be taken into account in addition to what is actually taught. Sometimes these aspects require immediate treatment that cannot be easly done in English. Probably the only golden rule on when to use L1 in the class is a very simple one: common sense.

It is very rewarding for the children to see their work displayed around the classroom or in any other suitable part of the school. Decorate it nicely using cardboard of different colours, cut outs with English motifs and props that the children bring to a class. Change the decoration from time to time.

Children of this age are developing their personality. We can contribute to this developement while teaching English. For most children this is probavly their first contact with English. They come to class very motivated because children are naturally curious about anything that is new for them. Our main role is therefore to maintain and foster this motivation as a contribution to personal development.So the activities presented were enjoyable and motivating and children got easily involved in them. This way they are carried out also helps the teacher to create a sound basis for the future learning stages by: crating a relaxed atmosphere, building up the children's self-confidence, getting the children familiarised with ways of working (pair work, group work, sharing knowlege, finding information,..), fostering positive attitudes within the class (sharing materials and classroom equipament with others), making the children aware of their achievements, allowing the children to work at their own pace, encouraging the children to  use English as real communication tool, without being afraid of making mistakes.

The most carefully planned lesson can be a total failure if there is no discipline in the class. Bearing in mind that young learners are physically active, lack of control and noise are not always synonymous. It is crucial to make the children aware right from the first day of class  to follow and enjoy them and not to disturb other classes.

The ultimate aim when teachinga language is that the learner can communicate using the language correctly. Teachers should always bear in mind that it would be too ambitious to expect correct production from all the children at this stage. Errors should be considered as part of the learning process. So, never interfere with communication: when a child is saying something do not interrupt. After he/she has finished, use correct English to paraphrase in a gentle manner what he/she was trying to say. Encourage children to risk saying things in English even if their production is far from accurate. Do not forget to praise their attemps. Be patient.

It would be a great mistake to think of assessment at this stage in terms of a written exam given at the end of each term. Assessment must be looked upon as a means to improve theaching/learning process. The assessment at this stage will be mainly based on daily observation.