Monday ( 14 - 04 - 2008 )

Hello,

Today we had someone new among us. There was a Turkish teacher who is visiting Belgium for 10 days. She comes here especially to observe pre-primary schools.
She attended the first lesson about story telling.

During the lesson in the morning, we learned something more about folktales.
Anita wanted to check if everybody knew some folktales and espacially some folktales from Grimm. She tested us by giving us a drawning with a lot of folktales on it. We had to recognize them. I found 16 of the 19 folktales. I think that is quite good.
The students of other countries did know some folktales. With the help of all the students of different countries, we found all the folktales.

Examples of adapted versions of folktales:

• Roald Dahl

- He makes the fairy tales funny and different then you expect.
Anita told us for example the story about little red cap. Normally you expect that the little girl would ask: 'What a big mouth/ teath you have?!' But in this version the girl says: 'You are so heary!'. The wolf reacts confused and says: 'No, that is not right! You should ask me about my mouth!" After this the little girl takes a gun and shoots the wolf.

• Babette Cole

- She makes a completely different version then the normal fairy tales. She writes for example an other version of princess Cinderella. In her version it is about a boy 'prince Cinders' and he doesn't loose his shoe, but his pants.

• Eugene Trivizas and Helen Oxenbury

- He also gives a funny version of the normal fairy tales. Anita told us for example the story of 'The 3 little wolves and the big bad pig'. Everything is told the other way around. Now a pig is bad and the wolves are good. There also are some other adaptation in the story to make it more funny.

• Mario Ramos

- He has writen the book "C'est moi le plus fort". In this book you come across with different fairy-tale characters. The leading character in this story is a wolf who thinks he is the strongest. He walks by little Red cap and asks her who is the strongest. She answers him that he is the strongest. Other figures such as the seven dwarfs, the three little pigs,... also say that he is the strongest one. Except a little dragon tells that his mother is the strongest one. The wolf is angry, but then the mother arrives and kills the wolf.

I really liked all the examples that Anita gave us. I am planning to use some of these stories in primary school. I am doing my ending work about storytelling. I think these books are very origional and funny. I am sure that the children would like these stories.

It is only recommended to do these kind of stories when the children know the real story. Then it is more funny for them and very refreshning. It is also important that the children know the real story because of the values in the story.

The use of folktales in classroom:
After these examples, we talked about the use of folktales in classroom.
They can be used for language learning. All the skills can be trained (speaking, writing, listening and reading). Folktales also provide good material for dramatic expression.

We did some exercices which you can do with pupils.

• Perspectives

We did this exercice with the story of Little Red Cap. We had to sit in couples and tell to eachother this story from the point of view of Little Red Cap, the wolf...

• Tableau vivant

We had to pick a well known folk tale and make 4 scenes of it. These scenes couldn't be played. It should be pictures of each scene. (We had to freeze.) The other students had to guess which story we were playing.

My group played the story of Snow White. In the first scene we were the seven dwarfs wo were working. In the second scene i was playing Snow White who received a poisson apple from the witch (Marian). In the third scene i was dead on the floor and the dwarfs were crying around me. In the last scene a prince (Lore) was giving me a kiss.

• Writing in text balloon

This is an exercice in which you can write words and sentences in text balloons of a folk tale.

Act

Anita came around with a big boot. This exercice was linked to the folk tale of Little Thumb and the giant. In the boot there were slides of paper with instructions on. The one who reads the paper, has to act according these instructions. The other ones have to guess what he or she is playing.

• Puppet play

We saw a movie in which two people were playing a puppet show. I think this was something very special, because the two people were playing the puppets. The faces were the characters, but the bodies were big puppets who are played with sticks. It was really interesting and funny to see!

I think all these examples are good to use in the classroom! It is only important that you keep the age of the children in your mind. The perspectives are for example to difficult to do with 6 or 7 year old children.


Kamishibai

In the afternoon, we had a lesson about a special form of telling a story "kamishibai". When you tell a story in this way, you sit next to a closet in which pictures are of the story. While you are telling the story, you remove the pictures one by one. It is a form of paper-drama.

Example of Japanese story: Momotaro

Anita showed us an example of a Japanese story'Momotaro'. She told us the story in the way of 'kamishibai'.

We talked a little bit more about the story and then Anita showed us some other pictures. I thought she was giving some more examples of stories, but that wasn't the fact.

She was showing different pictures of stories we had to imagine in groups. We had to tell them in the form of 'kamishibai'.

After sitting a while in group and discussing everything about the pictures and our story, it was time to perform!
Manuela was the brave one out of our group who wanted to tell the story. She did it very good!



Also the other students did a great job with the storytelling. All the groups were very creative with the imagening of the stories.


Use of kamishibai in your classroom
We also talked about the use of kamishibai in the class.
There were some very good ideas which are nice to do with children.

- When you choose 'Japan' as a theme in the class, you can introduce it with kamishibai

- You can tell all kinds of stories: a self invented story, a traditional story or a fairy tale,...

- You can introduce an art lesson by telling a story with the use of pictures made by famous artists.

- ...

I am very curious about the rest of this unit. I hope to learn a lot about storytelling!

See you tomorrow!