Once Upon a Time

Princesses and Castles. This is how it all started. A simple backdrop that gave one student with very limited English a "private" quiet space to practice language.  The language and the world she loved. It was a world full of, "Wa-su-ponee-tie (Once upon a time)" and "Dey-lii-happy-ezer-afer (They lived happily ever after)" two of the few sentences she spoke. So I went with it. She would sing and try new words, ask and point to things around the class. Princesess, Frozen, Elsa, Anna, Cinderella, witches, unicorns, jewels, love, kisses, marriage, death and horses. She would sing her stories loudly and other students would watch. They were not as interested in princesses, but in telling their own stories around the castles was definitely cool.

Storytelling with a simple castle scene. She was able to focus on the language she wanted and needed to be successful, intrinsically motivated and have fun.

Others didn't want to tell stories with a pre-created image. They began they began to build their own. We looked at shape and features of castles and also considered different materials that castles were made of. Here we made direct links to maths and the current unit of inquiry, whilst developing vocabualry and oral language.

I made a deliberate effort to discuss the language of castles once this interest spread. What did they know? What did they want to know? What words were they seeking to tell their stories?

And then our first oral stories came. They were initally quick, random, disjointed beginnings of stories with little focus, but with great enthusiasm. I tried to break down the storytelling language and start thinking of a beginning, middle and end. All stories included a castle and characters of their choice. There were baddies, goodies, children form school, spiderman, volcanoes, marriage, kisses and death.  The initial stories compared to the final stories showed so much success.

A snow castle.

Observational drawing with pastels.

A Frozen castle with a focus on shape, symmetry and color mixing. We used old blocks. We chose a color palate of blues, purples and white.  When all was dry we used this as a castle with mini figures to reinact various stories and play.