This video is about building a course around picture books. Fiona Hunter, a teacher, trainer and the creator of the Kids Club English website, is sharing her experience on how to do this.
The video starts with Fiona mentioning the benefits of using picture books in courses for young learners. She groups the benefits into two areas: the children’s experience and language acquisition.
Some of the benefits for the children’s experience include:
- Relaxing and enjoyable experience
- Encourages critical thinking and creativity
- Develops intercultural awareness
- Develops social emotional awareness
- Provides children with a genuine reason to communicate
Some of the benefits for language acquisition include:
- Stories are universal and common across cultures
- Provide a memorable context
- Illustrations help support the understanding
- Exposure to richer language
- Repeated exposure to language chunks
- Opportunity for implicit language learning
Fiona then goes over some things to consider when building a course around picture books such as the context, number of lessons, and the order of the picture books. Here are some tips she mentions for ordering the picture books:
- Consider the stage of the school year
- Seasonal connections
- Language focus
- Mix of story types
She also talks about how to plan the lessons around the picture books. Here are some tips she mentions for planning lessons:
- Progression from understanding to producing to creating
- How many lessons per story
- Who the students are and your objectives
- Think about the activities and how they can help students progress from receptive to productive skills
The video ends with Fiona answering a question about the main benefit of using stories for language acquisition. She says that there are many benefits and it depends on how you approach them in the classroom. However, one of the benefits she mentioned is that children can take the stories outside of the classroom and it helps them see that English goes beyond a subject.
