Humanising Language Teaching
Year 5; Issue 1; January 03

Ages 5-6
Time 15 minutes
Materials A largish cardboard box, props/scenery (e.g., a tree, a house) and dolls (ca. 15cm high) which can stand up without falling over. A cloth big enough to cover a cardboard box.
Focus Listening.

In this activity you move dolls (not puppets) as if they were actors. Most children will overlook the obvious fact that it is your hands that bring the dolls to life, and watch and listen raptly as you tell the story through the mouths of the dolls. Stories are really brought to life if told in this way. They seem to forget that the story is being told in a different language. The more they become absorbed in the story, the more they will absorb the language in which it is told. The same story can be told over and over again, much to everyone's delight.

Preparation

1. Choose a story such as Little Red Riding Hood (from Grimm's Fairy Tales).
2. Find or make dolls for each of the characters. Often there will be a parent who will help by making the dolls.
3. Prepare a stage by, for instance, turning a cardboard box up-side-down and covering it with a large cloth.
4. Put the stage on a table in front of the classroom and arrange the props on the stage. Keep your dolls handy but hidden.
5. Either set up everything before your pupils have come in and then begin as soon as they do come in and taken their seats (as if they have come into a theatre) or, if that is not feasible, find some way of concealing the stage until it is time to use it.

Procedure

1. Begin the play by introducing the first doll. Speak in short sentences, slowly and clearly. Try to accompany as much of what you say as possible with an appropriate movement of a doll or manipulation of an object.
2. Introduce the characters (dolls) in the same order as in the original story.
3. When the story is finished, conceal the dolls from view so that the spell of the play will linger.