Week 5 Criteria for selection of stories for young learners

-Exploitability-Suitability-

Readability
( Comprehensibility of written text ) Combination of 1. lexical (i.e. vocabulary) and 2. structural difficulty

The stories chosen should appropriate to students level of proficiency in terms of -sentence length, -word length within sentences, -complexity of vocabulary and -sentence structure.

The following are some questions you might want to ponder on when selecting:
1. What is my students language level? 2. How much new vocabulary (lexical) is acceptable? 3. Are there structural difficulties in the story? 4. Can your students understand the story and can it be made clear in a quick and easy way?
(Source: http://www.usingenglish.com/articles/using-songswith-young-learners.html)

Suitability of Content
1. Authenticity related to readers real life or current life experience.
Eg : (The Bully by Roderick & Alex)

2. Meaningful intrinsically motivating eg: (The Hare and the Tortoise) 3. Suit students Interests
4. Language or content

5. Cognitively challenging think critically and draw inferences (use texts which does not tell everything so that students can make guesses and draw their own conclusions)
eg : (A happy home/The beautiful house) in year 3 text book

6. Moral values use text that has moral values and does not contain negative moral values.
eg : (The Boy who Cried Wolf)

When selecting stories for their content suitability, you need to make sure of the following:
What type and genre of stories appeal to your students? Is the content of the story (issue raised) appropriate for your students (social cultural background, maturity level)?

does the story contain offensive words and overly crude, foul or otherwise objectionable language which is inappropriate especially for young learners?

When selecting stories for their content suitability, you need to make sure of the following: Does the book help meet curriculum objectives? Is the story consist of the vocabulary/grammatical item/sentence structure you wish to teach? Does the book present an authentic use of language?

Exploitability
Facilitation of learning of students. Make use of the story to develop students competence in achieving their learning outcomes. Carry out various activities or exercises in classroom using the story.
Always remember , when you exploit a text, make use of it to develop your students competence in achieving their learning outcomes.

Number of ways to exploit story: 1. Listen and complete story 2. Retell the story in your own words 3. Rewrite the story into dialogue 4. Write a poem based on the story

Always remember , when you exploit a text, make use of it to develop your students competence in achieving their learning outcomes.

Choose a text/story and explain how you can explore and exploit the story in the language classroom.

Story: Little Red Riding Hood Activity: Using finger puppets in storytelling
Give the students the script of the story Students practice the dialogue Have different students to use the puppet to perform different parts/ scenes of the story Students can use the dialogues given or make their own dialogues.

 Learning Outcome:
Language: motivate students to speak in English Interpersonal: more interaction with classmates Intrapersonal: increase confidence to converse in public

Choose a text/story and explain how you can explore and exploit the story in the language classroom. Story: The Ant and the Dove Activity: Discussion about favourite characters
Give pupils 5 minutes to think about their favourite characters from the story. Choose a few pupils randomly and have them talking about the characters they have chosen. Ask pupils if they are given chance, which characters they would like to be. Have pupils to talk about the good and bad characters in the story.

 Learning Outcome:
Language: increase pupils English proficiency Interpersonal: increase pupils confidence in speaking Intrapersonal: encourage pupils to do selfreflection

Create a checklist that you could use to help you choose books/ stories for your pupils.
Readability Suitability
Lexical Structural Authenticity Meaningful Interest Cognitive Challenging
Vocabulary Sentence structure Sentence length Authentic use of language Relate to current experience Motivation Genre Critical thinking Positive values Social Cultural background Maturity Level Issue Level of complexity

Moral Values
Content Language