Children love stories. Whether you read to them from a much loved book, tell a traditional fairy tale or introduce them to a new story as a game, they are always enthralled. Books and stories get their imagination working. They help kids understand lots of different things that may be new to them and open the door to new and exciting possibilities. If you are wondering how to use stories in EFL ESL kids classes, it doesn’t just mean sitting down and reading a book to your class. It can be a much more interactive and fun way of learning.
Stories can be one of the best tools to use in the classroom to teach English to children. You don’t need to use your favorite books or well-known stories. You can make a story out of anything, whatever the theme of your lesson. And storytelling doesn’t just have to be an activity at the end of a lesson. In this post I will show you how to use stories in EFL ESL Kids classes in several different ways and some fun activities to use in your own classes.
How to use stories in EFL ESL kids classes to introduce new vocabulary
I quite often use a story to start a lesson and introduce the theme or the new vocabulary we will be learning in the lesson. It’s a nice way of getting the kids straight into the topic and involved. I frequently use this method if we are doing a lesson based on a fairy tale or a well known story. If you have a book to read, show pictures to help the class understand what they will be learning about as you tell the story. If you don’t have a book, it’s not a problem. You can tell a story using drawings on the board, actions or even toy people or animals. And it doesn’t have to be a real story either. Use your imagination and invent a short story using the lesson vocabulary.
Tell the story slowly, using lots of TPR and actions. Repeat the words you want the children to remember several times. Then get them to repeat them too. These could be the names of the characters, or some particular vocabulary that you will be using in the lesson. Once you’ve told the story, see if the kids have understood what it was about. Show them some pictures and see if they can remember the vocabulary. Then play a game to practice it . I love Duck Duck Goose if you want to practice the names of characters in a story. You can see how I used this in my Little Red Riding Hood lesson plan. Once you are sure that they know the important vocabulary, you can get on to the rest of the lesson.
How to use stories in EFL ESL kids classes to practice vocabulary
Telling a story is a fantastic way to practice using language. This is especially effective if it is the students themselves who are telling the story. Rather than you telling a story, split it up into individual phrases or sentences. Give each one to a child or a pair of children. Obviously these will vary in complexity and length depending on the age and level of your class. As you distribute the phrases, give a flashcard with a simple picture to help them remember the phrase. Also say them out loud with an action so the child knows exactly what he or she should be doing and saying.
Once everyone has a card and a phrase, give the class a couple of minutes to practice and then get them in order and tell the story together with lots of actions and dramatic sound effects. This is a great activity to do for an open day or for parents as it really shows that the kids are able to use English in a practical and understandable way. It is also a real confidence builder. I love doing an activity like this soon after the beginning of the year so that I can say to the kids, “Look how well you’re doing, you just told a whole story in English!”
For an older class, you can adapt this by asking the kids to invent the story themselves. Put them in small groups or pairs and give each group a flashcard with a picture on. Ask them to make up a couple of phrases to describe what is happening on the flashcard and some actions to go with it.. Once everyone has done that, bring them back together. Put the groups in the right order and then let them tell the story. This activity really increases the amount of time your students will be talking English in class, rather than just listening to the teacher. It is a great way of improving their confidence and letting them use their imagination.
Story time
A more traditional way of using stories in the EFL ESL kids class is to tell a story at the end of the lesson. This is usually a story or a book based on a theme you have used in class and featuring the new words or phrases you have studied. Hopefully, you have a collection of books in your school that you can use for this. If not, luckily, you can find lots and lots of books being read aloud on YouTube. If I use this method, I quite often turn off the sound. I read the story myself accompanied by the video images and adapting it to my class.
When you are reading, stop and leave a gap for the kids to fill in when you come to something they should know. Don’t feel like you have to stick to the story either. Adapt it to your class, making it simpler or letting them point out other words they know. You can also get them to act out the book as you are reading it and say any dialogue. Make reading a very active tool rather than a passive activity that isn’t always that much fun.
Keeping attention when you are telling a story
If you want to keep the kids in your class concentrated and involved in the story you want to tell, you’re going to have to make it interesting for them. Just telling a story, most of which they probably won’t understand, isn’t going to keep their attention. It also won’t be particularly useful as part of your precious lesson time. So you need to get your class as involved as possible and interested in the story. Don’t forget that little children have a very short span of attention so if it’s a long story, see where you can cut it down a bit. Don’t be afraid to paraphrase the actual words of the story to make it easier for non-English speakers to understand.
Be as dramatic and as silly as you want if that suits the kind of story you are telling. Do lots of actions. Make funny noises and do different voices for the different characters and if there is a particular phrase that is repeated in the story, get the kids to say it for you. Storytelling should be fun for everyone, you included. Have a look at Michael Rosen telling We’re going on a Bear Hunt for some ideas.
How do you use storytelling in your EFL ESL classes?
I hope this article has given you some new ideas about how to use stories in EFL ESL kids classes. There are so many ways to adapt books and stories and use them to animate your classes. Don’t be afraid to take a story you know and change it to make it suitable for what you want to teach. I’ve done this several times with We’re going on a Bear Hunt, in particular in my Pirates lesson plan. How do you use stories in your English classes? What are your favorite books and stories to tell? To stay up to date with new posts and teaching ideas, you can follow the GoogooEnglish Facebook page. Alternatively, sign up for email updates by filling in the form below.