I recorded this video for my kindergarten students. Normally, this is our story time – daily routine.
At the beginning of every English lesson, we would sit together on the carpet (circle time) and take our mini story books and read the story just like in the video.
Here is what I do:
First 1 or 2 online lessons we still do this reading routine together; meanwhile kids are already watching the story from YouTube and learning it at home. So I have more time for asking questions or for other extension activities I can do about the story.
I say, you say!
If you watch the video you will see that at the beginning I say this: “I say, you say” This has turned into a kind of secret message between me and my students. Whenever I want them repeat something after me, I say this and magic happens 🙂 (Did I just say magic 😀 ?) By the way, I’m not that kind of a repeat after me parrot teacher, but I like to do it especially during story time.
By repeating every sentence after me, kids learn the story by heart in approximately 5-8 English lessons.
It’s not like memorizing for the end of year show kind of thing, it is real learning, learning by heart. I love it!
What does this mini book look like?
Our course book English Play Box provides mini book versions of the unit stories. We have 7 units in a book, so it means kids will have 7 mini story books to read with me and when they take the books home, I want them to read the stories to their families.
I love this Play Box course book series, because it is story based and the stories are really fun! Plus, kids have their own story books. This is great for the teacher as I know that they can take their books anywhere they want. Also, kids tear the pages out themselves and turn them into a book, write their names on it and color or draw something to personalize them. Lovely…
Ok, let me stop here 🙂
Obviously, we don’t have enough time to have our story time routine during our online lessons. So, I recorded our story time routine, uploaded it on YouTube, sent the link to the parents and asked them to have their kids watch it every day, with their mini books of course.
Why I did it:
First of all, when we do this routine in our online lessons, it takes too much time; so I wanted to save some time. As I said, we used to read these stories everyday, but now we can’t do it, so I wanted my kids to have our routine back.
If you wanna read more about what we do during our online lessons with 4-6 year olds and see full lesson plans, you can also have a look at my other blog posts like this very first one.
So, Does it work?
So far, no negative feedback, only positive ones (knock on the wood)… I even received a short video from one of my teacher friends. Her 3 year old daughter is watching my video and repeating after me. So cute!
And YES, it works great IF kids are doing it. The ones who watch it everyday, answers all my questions perfectly and are super engaged during the online lessons. The ones who didn’t watch or didn’t watch it enough needed more attention…
I know sometimes kids don’t wanna do these things at home, so in every online lesson I remind them of these videos and ask them if they watched it or not 🙂 I want them to feel that it is not their parents’ responsibility but theirs 🙂 and I’m gonna feel happy if they read the story with me…
So, yes it works but not %100 percent. But I won’t stop reminding my kids of watching these videos by asking them in every single lesson we have!
By the way, it wasn’t easy to record a video like that with all those pauses, gestures 🙂 but I feel super relieved as I know my students have the opportunity to listen to our stories any time they want.
Topics and Structures recovered with this story: Clothes, weather and family members vocabulary. “S/he is wearing” , “It’s cold” , “What’s the weather like?” , “She has a …”
If you have story time routines, why don’t you make a video like that?
Thank you for reading ^_^