Today I would like to talk a bit about storytelling. Last week we saw a couple of videos of Michael Rosen, in which he appears telling a story about a chocolate cake and a Bear Hunt.
I really enjoyed watching those videos; I think it was really funny for me and the rest of my classmates. We were really engaged with the stories and we couldn’t stop looking at that expressive face of Michael Rosen. In that moment I thought, “everyone loves this”, so if we, as adults, love that imagine children! I would be interested in the story even though I couldn’t understand a word of English, and in my opinion that’s really important, cause I realized that of course, share a language is important for having communication, but you can share and speak the same language but maybe you can´t transmit as much as Michael Rosen in one of his stories.
For that reason, I believe that storytelling is directly linked with literacy, (another topic we have been working with during the first week) cause not everything is the spoken language in communication. As we can see in Michael Rosen’s videos, he is using all the time gestures, using his arms, hands… and also the face, this is very important, because I think we all recognize a happy, sad, frustrated, worried… face when we watch it and this is also communication.
Apart from this, I have to add that the rhythm, musicality, the tone and volume of the voice and other facts also helps with the understanding of the story; it makes it less monotone and more attractive for children but also for adults. Also it is important the repetition of structures, words, sounds… these repetitions makes the story catchier and the proof of that is that when the video of the Bear Hunt finished, we were singing or murmuring all the time “we are going on a bear hunt, we are gonna catch a big one…”
Finally I would like to share the link of the video about the Bear Hunt in case you want to feel like Michael Rosen telling a story, hope you find it as funny as me.
http://www.michaelrosen.co.uk/videos.html#bear
Video from http://www.michaelrosen.co.uk/
Hello Elena! As you said in this post, Michael Rosen is a storyteller that makes spectators be really impressed. Even us that are adults, listen the whole story without getting distracted. This is because he uses an adequate tone of voice, gestures to make the story clear, repetitive structures, etc.
So if this is even interesting for us, I am sure it would be catchy, interesting and fun for kids!
But a big question comes to my mind… Does it work for any level? I think this kind of resources in the stories can help children understand them better, but I do not believe this is enough for children that have a really low level. In an English-Speaking country it is not a big deal, because children are hearing their mother language and it is much easier for them. In Primary Education of Spain, probably you would not have any problem, however, in infant education it might be too difficult to work with.
To make it work in low levels, maybe we can use other resources than gestures, like images, flashcards, or even some explanations in Spanish.
In my opinion, I would try to use any resource to make these stories work in any level, because I think storytelling is a really fun and productive way to learn English.