Table top stories

This picture in a tweet from @MrsMabberley caught my eye the other day. I follow a lot of primary school teachers, makes sense really as we are working with primary language learners and familiar activities often make great starting points for target language explorations.  

Our storytelling table linked to our book of the week; there has been some lovely talk at this area #eyfs #eyfstwitterpals pic.twitter.com/gAaZRngwxf

— Mrs Mabberley (@MrsMabberley) November 22, 2016

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We can use this approach in KS2,perhaps with stories from thge PLN SoW, or with other familiar stories.The children will be exploring and strengthening the language learning skills  developing memory , recall, pronunciation, sentence and text level spoken work.This can potentially lead to recorded recounts and re-writes of stories.

Could we use roleplay tables like this to develop independent recall /exploration of retelling very familiar target language stories #PLN https://t.co/fx6H8NglSV

— Janet Lloyd (@JanetLloydnet) November 25, 2016

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1. Take a story the class has read with you and unpicked.
2. A story with some repetition and objects that you can find as realia or picture cards would be best.
3. Read and explore the story with the children.
4. Highlight and practise the key structures in the story.
5. Show the children key objects and ask them to recall the sentence orally that they read and practised with you.
6. Give the children a story sentence card sort and ask them in pairs to reconstruct the story and read out loud the story to each other.
7. Create a story table or a story box for the class and also create story boxes for tables and groups of children.
8. Invite volunteers to take part in the story retelling challenge.Can they use the objects from the class story box or table to prompt them to recall the sentences and retell the story?
9. in the following lesson produce the table story boxes and invite the children in groups to retell the story again. You may need to give the children talking time first to recall the storyline.
10. Leave the story table or tray accessible to the children and allow them the chance when they have finished work over the next couple of weeks to individually or in pairs use the objects to retell the story (either to each other with quiet voices or as non-verbal "inside your head voice" retelling of the story in the target language).
11. You could offer the children the opportunoty to record themselves at the story table retelling the story and load this up in your "virtual story telling library".Our VLE and the Userfiles for your school would be an ideal place to store this.