Literature for Children - Working With Metaphors

Eliana Pacheco Ferreira

Eliana Pacheco Ferreira is a Portuguese, English and Literature teacher for 23 years. Works in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, for an English language school called Sociedade Brasileira de Cultura Inglesa S.A which has a partnership with a Primary School called Escola Parque, where the reading project was carried out. E-mail: liapach2000@yahoo.com.br

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Introduction
The story
Using the story

In the first semester of 2005 I was asked by the coordinator of the school I work for to develop a project with my nine-year-old students. The topic was "Prejudice". So I developed a reading project with them in which I could make use of metaphor. A summary of the book I used follows. It is a well-known story called "The Unhappy Giant" originally by Cheryl Palin (Macmillan).

The book tells us the story of a giant, Mr Big, who used to feel deeply hurt because he could not make friends. People felt scared of him because of his appearance, especially the children, and that made him become a rude and aggressive person. The giant lived in a big house with a beautiful garden which the children dreamed of playing in, but they were not courageous enough to go there. One day the giant decided to go on holiday. The children saw him leaving and decided to spend some days playing in his garden while he was away. Time passes. The children have been having a wonderful time in the garden and have completely forgotten about the giant. But one day the giant is back and finds the children playing there. He becomes completely furious and shouts at the children who run away totally terrified of the giant. During the following days the children notice the giant's sadness and loneliness and feel sorry for him. The giant notices how upset the children are as well, since they do not have a place to play any more. One morning, looking through his window, the giant noticed how bleak his garden seemed to be and he decided to invite the children to play there again. At first the children were suspicious of the invitation but accepted it in the end. The giant talked to them and played with them. He was able to show the children that in fact he was a nice person inside. A genuine friendship starts between the giant and the children. Now they have something nice to do together everyday.

First I planned to activate the students' schemata during the pre-reading stage by eliciting from them what a giant looks like (review of the parts of the body and have / has got). I also worked with flashcards in order to introduce new lexis and grammar (the seasons, the weather, winter clothes, summer clothes and the present continuous form of the verb to wear). We also played some games, like the Right x Wrong game in which the students form a line and I would show a card with a picture on it and say a sentence. If the sentence matched the picture, they were to jump to the right; if it did not, they were to jump to the left. Then the students took turns showing the cards and saying the sentences on their own. In this way they could have some fun and get listening and speaking practice. Thanks to this technique I could cater for Visual, Auditory and Kinaesthetic styles and work using TPR (Total Physical Response) principles.

While reading the students simultaneously listened to the recording. Next, each student took a different role and they were reading the story aloud. Meanwhile, I took notes on their speaking/pronunciation mistakes. After their mini performance I wrote the words on the board and worked on pronunciation with them. In this way I offered them some practice on reading, listening and speaking.

In the post-reading stage we talked about what the students had understood from the story. All of them voiced their point of view and one of them, a lovely girl said: "Teacher, I think that the story tells us that we should not judge people because of their appearance. We should give everybody a chance to show who they are from the inside". I praised her and asked the group in Portuguese: "What's the word you use in Portuguese to express this behaviour?". They said PRECONCEITO and I replied: "Do you know that there is a word in English that we can use for that? That's PREJUDICE". Next, I elicited from them some different kinds of prejudice. I asked them if they or someone they know had ever suffered from any kind of prejudice and how they felt. Then I gave them some handouts I had prepared so that they could practice the written form of new lexis and grammar.

As a follow-up activity I encouraged them to role-play the story, but in a new version, their own version. Since we live in South America and the setting of the story is somewhere in Europe, I wanted to bring the issue closer to their immediate reality. They prepared everything for their adaptation: dialogues, make up, costumes, hairdressing. In this way they could bring the story into their real world. I filmed their performance so now we have a nice DVD based on the book, we can view and show to other people.

In August some new students usually arrive. Last August was not different and I used the "Mr Big" as a reminder to help my students remember that new friends come in all forms, sizes, colours and shapes, and this helped my students to cope with the potentially 'difficult arrivals'. Yes!! I had reached my goal. I had used the story metaphor to prepare my students to deal with the challenge of new students arriving on the scene.

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