The age of the guys for whom the program “Musical English” is designed, for which I work, is 5-8 years old, but it can be of interest to anyone. After all, a fairy tale helps us, which can be used in the process of working on educational material.
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One of the criteria for choosing fairy tale material is the presence of songs and music in fairy tales, but today we will talk not only and not so much about this. We, language teachers, often complain about the lack of teaching time. And this is natural when learning any language. The question arises: due to what it is possible to enhance the effect of classes and keep it for a longer period? My answer is to use during the lesson the maximum possible and adequate means and techniques for the age of the students and the content of the lesson. In the arsenal of each teacher there is something that helps him solve his pedagogical problems. Music, songs, rhymes, tongue twisters, gestures, facial expressions, movement, acting – all this just allows you to easily and naturally introduce, train, consolidate educational material and even control it.
Since a fairy tale (story, scene, situation, dialogue) is the language environment where it is appropriate to use all of the above, its appearance in my classes arose naturally. The Musical English program is designed for three years of study, and in addition to the huge song material and small situational scenes, I would like to highlight the main fairy tales that we work well with, as well as dwell on the criteria that I follow when choosing fairy tale material.
I give them in the order in which we use them, and immediately highlight those topics that resonate with our program:
1. Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See? (animals, colors).
2. Old MacDonald’s Farm (animals, etiquette phrases).
3. Three Billy Goats (family members, food).
4. Goldilocks and the Three Bears (room names, food, adjectives).
5. A Wolf and His Colors (days of the week, colors).
In addition to these themes, each fairy tale is filled with phrases, constructions and, of course, makes sense and teaches the younger generation something.
Here are the criteria for choosing fairy tales that I consider important:
– necessary lexical and grammatical material;
– an interesting, intriguing and / or funny story;
– the frequency of repeated phrases;
– the presence of good song material;
– the possibility of using the fairy tale in a group.
I will dwell on the last point, because it reflects the main feature of using fairy tales in my classes. How is fairy tales usually used in the classroom? They listen to it, read it, put it on stage or show it to parents in open lessons. All this can and should be done. In our classes, the children and I live a fairy tale, practically without using costumes and props, we don’t spend extra time from the lesson for rehearsals, and we don’t even have roles permanently fixed within one fairy tale. Preparation for a fairy tale begins long before its actual appearance. In a few lessons, those phrases are naturally introduced, which later in the fairy tale already become understandable. On the other hand, sometimes a fairy tale is the first presentation of new words or grammatical phenomena.
Working on a fairy tale, any number of people can be involved. There are also separate roles, but the process of work never stops due to the absence of one of the students in the lesson, since any person in the group can perform each role. Work on a fairy tale can last from 2-3 weeks (2-3 lessons) to 3 months. At the same time, I am making a video recording, editing, and as a result, a certain product is obtained, which I am happy to share with the children and their parents. Recording also helps to work on the material, improving it. Two or three minutes of watching the filmed fairy tale at the lesson once again allow you to repeat what has been covered, as it is always interesting for the children to look at themselves, to see what turns out better, and what else needs to be worked on. Small props, often designed and made by the children themselves to encourage their creativity, add a special touch to our fairy tales.
Despite the fact that each group of the same age is working on the same fairy tale, they never turn out exactly the same. This is a mutual process, and very often something new is born in the lesson, the story being told takes on a different sound.
The technology of working with a fairy tale is usually as follows: after the preliminary introduction of the main words of the fairy tale through a game, exercises using gestures, facial expressions, songs or rhymes, the whole fairy tale or part of it (if the fairy tale is large) is viewed and homework is sent. It usually consists of a watched story and an audio recording, where an English sentence is spoken, its translation into Russian and a return to the original phrase in English occurs. The pandemic, which made it impossible to conduct face-to-face classes, made it possible to activate our own pedagogical resources. This is how a series of small video lessons appeared, which enabled the children to continue their studies without leaving home and work through the material as many times as necessary for each.
I consider it very important to use every minute of the lesson so that the student can speak the language for the maximum amount of time, to be constantly involved, which is why we often speak in chorus at the stage of training the material. Sometimes, as in a fairy tale about a gray wolf who did not like his color, where there is only one character, at the training stage we pronounce the phrase “I don’t want to be … (color)” the required number of times all together, using different emotions and gestures . During the performance, each of the students plays a wolf trying on a certain color, and this phrase no longer causes any difficulties. As a result, each child can play any role and, as a result, remembers the whole fairy tale, and not its separate part.
We are not limited to oral activities only. The second year of study successfully, in my opinion, combines the work on the fairy tale “Goldilocks and The Three Bears” with the tasks in our small, several-page coloring book, which allows us, based almost exclusively on this material, to create each year books for children to read.
Analyzing in the lesson mini-tales in 3-5 sentences with repetitive constructions and passed words, the whole group under my leadership participates in the birth of one common story, which can then be transformed into a personal fairy tale of the child.
This year, the idea arose to give children the opportunity to voice their fairy tale and make a video book that can be read and listened to in the summer during the holidays. This idea must be realized, as the acting skills and spontaneity of young authors simply cannot be left behind the scenes.
Summing up, I would like to note that, using as efficiently as possible not only study time, but also the period between classes, by the end of the school year, you can not only get a fairy tale created and lived together with students, but also the joyful faces of happy children, for whom this the year has not been in vain.
Ekaterina GOVOROVA, teacher of additional education of the Children’s Musical Theater “Domisolka”
