Using stories in the classroom

by Janet Shackleton

This lesson is aimed at lower intermediate students. It could be adapted for use with higher and lower levels.

This particular lesson uses an adapted version of ‘The Emperor's new clothes' by Hans Christian Andersen, but other stories can be used in the same way.

The lesson aims to:

  • develop students' ability to reconstruct a grammatically and textually coherent piece of writing
  • provide practice in prediction skills in order to ease the understanding of a new text
  • provide practice in gist listening in order to encourage students to not focus on difficult vocabulary and thus make authentic listening texts more accessible
  • provide practice in scanning a text for information
  • by the end of this lesson the students will be able to successfully form past simple object questions in writing.

Worksheets

1. Students' numbered square sheet (one per pair)
2. Vocabulary definitions
3. 3 possible endings for the story (Optional)
4. Full story
5. Answer sheets for A's and B's
6. Answers: Teacher's numbered square sheet
7. Teacher's answer sheet for question forming activity

Procedure

1) Start by eliciting different types of leaders: king, queen, president, prime minister, emperor etc.

2) Ask students what kind of a personality they think a good leader needs.

3) Tell them you are going to read the beginning of a story about a leader and that they need to listen very carefully as they will need to reproduce the text from memory. Tell them that you will read it twice but that they are not allowed to make notes at this stage.

4) Read the text twice. (Use the teacher's numbered square sheet, worksheet 2 in the answers.)

5) Put the students into pairs and write their names on the left-hand side of the board. Draw 3 vertical lines representing their lives after their names.

  • Hand out sheet with numbered blank squares (worksheet 1). Tell them that each box represents a word from the text.
  • Ask each pair in turn to suggest a word that they remember hearing from the text. (The words do not need to be in order.)
  • If the word is present, tell them which number it is and the students write it in the correct box. Make sure you cross out the word on your copy, so you know which words have been ‘found'.
  • If the word is not there or has already been called out, the pair loses a life. (Each pair has 3 lives). Wipe off one of the lines from the board to show how many lives they have left.
  • Continue going round the classroom until the whole story has been reconstructed or all the pairs have run out of lives. Finally read out the text again.

6) Pre-teach vocabulary: give the students the handouts with definitions of vocabulary (worksheet 2) and write the vocabulary on the board. Students have to match the vocabulary with the definitions. (Vocabulary on board: show something off, vanity, invisible, silk, confused, magnificent, procession, naked)

7) Give students 3 possible ways in which they think the story might end (worksheet 3) and ask them in pairs to guess which they think is correct. Alternatively just ask students to discuss how the story ends without the options.

8) Read out the whole story and students decide who had predicted correctly.

9) Write on the board: ‘Clothes', ‘Every hour' and ‘About the emperor's vanity.' Ask the students what questions would give these answers. Write the questions on the board: What did the emperor love? How often did he change his clothes? What did the thieves hear about?

10) Elicit Question, Auxiliary, Subject, Infinitive on the board:

Q A S !
What did the emperor love?
How often did he change his clothes?
What did the thieves hear about?

 

Remind students that this structure is used with present simple and past simple object questions and that QASI can be an easy way to remember how to form these questions.

11) Divide the class into A's and B's and give everyone a copy of the whole story. Then give answer sheet A to group A and sheet B to group B (worksheet 5) and ask them to write appropriate questions for each of the answers on a separate sheet (this can be done in pairs). Monitor carefully and remind them of QASI.

12) The groups then swap questions and have to try to answer them using the story (again, this works best in pairs). Once they have written their answers, they can swap the papers again and check each other's answers.

13) Finally you can have a class discussion on the moral of the story.

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