The gingerbread man story

Описание: The gingerbread man Oxford story

Storytelling Activities
Use these activities with your learners, for any story, to motivate them to listen and learn, and help
them become aware of the sound and feel of English, and understand language points, while enjoying
the story.

Activities before the story

o Ten key words
1. Write about ten key words or short phrases on the board in the order in which they occur
in the story. Don’t worry if there are a few words the children don’t know.
2. Ask them if they can predict the story (they can use the present tense to do this).
3. Then tell the story. The children see the key words on the board and compare their
prediction with the story you tell.
4. You can ask higher-level learners to work in groups and to write down each word in a
sentence which explains it.

o Meaning from opposites
1. It is often easier to teach two words that are opposite than one word by itself: big/small,
rich/poor. This principle also applies to words which are not strictly opposites but
represent concepts which are significantly different, for example love/hate. Draw or ask
the children to draw contrasting pictures.

Activities during the story

o Jump up word card

1. Give a child a card before the story. You can either give each child a different word, or give the
same word to several of them.
2. Ask them to jump up and sit down every time they hear their word as you tell the story.
3. Variation: ask them to jump up whenever they hear a certain kind of word, for example a number,
a colour or an animal. But make sure this is more like a game than a test.

o Stopping and asking

1. During the story, stop and ask the children what they think is going to happen next. At
beginner level they reply in their mother tongue, and at higher levels they can reply with
short phrases or sentences in English.
Restoring the text
1. Prepare a text of the story, or part of it, on a photocopy or on the board. Omit, erase or
white out some of the words. The number and type of words missing determine the
difficulty of the task.
2. Give out the gapped text or write it on the board.
3. The class fill in the gaps, either as you retell the story or on their own, or in pairs.

o Removing pictures

1. Prepare a series of pictures which tell the story.
2. Display all the pictures. Go through the story again, eliciting as much of it as possible
from the children, using the pictures as a memory aid.
3. The children close their eyes and you remove one picture.
4. The children then open their eyes and tell you which picture is missing and which part of
the story it represents.
5. The children close their eyes again. You now remove another picture and they tell you
which one is missing.
6. Gradually remove all the pictures and see if they can retell the story from memory.

o Writing letters
1. Ask the children to write letters from one character to another. This can be part of a wider
topic on learning on how to write letters.