More-In-One-Stories

Adrian Tennant, UK

Adrian tenant has over twenty-five years experience in ELT. He now works as a freelance teacher trainer, writer and consultant. He’s had the pleasure of running a number of courses for Pilgrims including CLIL and How to be a Teacher Trainer, and is a member of the ‘C Group’. E-mail: adrian.tennant@ntlworld.com

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Introduction
Background
Activity & procedure
Appendix
Bibliography

Introduction

I think like many teachers who started their careers back in the 1980s or early 1990s one inspiration for creativity in the classroom were the books that had Mario Rinvolucri’s name on them. When I look up at my bookshelf I see well-thumbed copies of many titles with his name on the spine (along with those of co-contributors). However, on one book it’s almost impossible to make out any name, so worn is the copy. That book is Challenge to Think by Frank, Rinvolucri and Berer and my edition is the 4th impression from 1985 published by OUP.

Background

Over the years my ability to adapt activities has certainly got better. No longer am I content to simply pick up a book and use an activity as it’s presented there. It’s not that I think the activities aren’t any good in the existing format, simply that over time my repertoire has increased and I can now see new ways of using those old exercises and activities. In some cases what I’ve ended up doing is combining more than one activity type to come up with some kind of hybrid. On occasions I’ve also found that by doing this I can solve some problem or issue that I’ve had in the classroom and that has been bothering me. Adding a creative twist to an already creative activity can enhance something and give it a magical quality that often makes you wonder why you hadn’t thought of it before – so here is one such example.

Activity & procedure

The activity I use is the Two-in-one stories combined with the idea of a running dictation.

1. Start by selecting two (or possibly three) stories you want to use.
2. Cut the stories up line-by-line or into sections (see example below).
3. Mix up the lines of the stories.
4. Stick each line up on the wall.
5. Put students into pairs and ask them to decide who is A and who is B.
6. Ask the ‘A’ students to sit down with pen and paper and ‘B’ students to stand in front of their partner.
7. Explain that there are sentences on the wall (don’t tell the students that they are from a story, or how many stories there are – let them discover this as they do the activity).
8. Tell the ‘B’ students they need to run to the wall, read a sentence, return to their partner and dictate what they’ve read.
9. Tell the ‘A’ students to listen to their partner and write down what they hear.
10. The ‘B’s then return to the wall and read another sentence and repeat the process.
11. Tell the students they can read the lines in any order, it doesn’t matter at the moment.
12. Once the ‘B’ students have read half the sentences they should swap places with their partner who should then run and read the remaining sentences.
13. Once the pairs have finished reading all the sentences and writing them down they will come over to you and tell you they have finished. Ask them if they notice anything – hopefully they will notice that the sentences make a story (or more than one), but that the sentences aren’t in the correct order.
14. Ask the pairs to sit together and put the sentences in the correct order – as they do this you’ll see them realise that there is more than one story.
15. Finally, ask the students to read out the completed stories.

Appendix

When I first started using ‘Running dictations’ I could see that my students enjoyed them and that it gave them an opportunity to practice different skills, but I still questioned the overall effectiveness of what they were doing. Then, when I first had the idea of using the two-in-one stories as a running dictation I started to notice that we were adding extra skills and elements to both activities. Suddenly, not only did we have reading, writing, speaking and listening going on, but we’d added thinking to the equation. I also noticed that it meant that pairs who ‘finished’ quickly actually had something more to do with the same material – in other words it helped me solve the perennial problem of ‘fast finishers’ or at least reduce the impact. Appendix Example of three stories (The Stork, The Farmer and The Invitation from Challenge to Think)

‘Well,’ said the farmer, scratching his chin, ‘I’ll tell you what we do.’
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‘Why do I have to use my elbow and my foot?’ asked his friend.
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The cook stole a leg from a beautiful roast stork just before it was served to the king.
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A man inviting his friend to his home explained to him where he lived.
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‘But, you Majesty, you didn’t clap last night.’
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The man went back to his car with a puzzled look on his face and said to his wife, ‘I think he must be crazy.’
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The king asked him angrily why the bird only had one leg.
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‘Come to the third floor,’ he said, ‘and when you see the letter E on the door, push the button with your elbow and when the door opens put your foot against it.’
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The king clapped his hands and the birds flew off. ‘There,’ he said, ‘You see, they all have two legs the moment I clap.’
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‘We eat what we can and what we can’t we can.’
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Next morning, the cook and the king went down to the river and saw the storks all standing on one leg.
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A curious tourist, after passing a huge field of carrots alongside the road, stopped and asked the farmer what he did with his large crop.’
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The cook replied, ‘Storks only have one leg – come to the river with me tomorrow morning and I will show you, Your Majesty.’
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‘He said they ate what they could and what they couldn’t they could.’
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‘Well,’ exclaimed the man, ‘You’re not going to come empty-handed, are you?’
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Bibliography

Frank, C. Rinvolucri, M and Berer, M (1982) Challenge to Think. Oxford University Press.

Please check the How the Motivate your Students course at Pilgrims website.
Please check the Creative Methodology for the Classroom course at Pilgrims website.
Please check the Methodology & Language for Primary Teachers course at Pilgrims website.
Please check the Methodology & Language for Secondary Teachers course at Pilgrims website.
Please check the Teaching Advanced Students course at Pilgrims website.