Story lesson in class

In the Everybody Up series for the children's courses at my school, there are short story lessons included occasionally. These stories are really simple and short, but since it comprises the main lesson material for that particular class, we have to find different ways to make the most of it and to turn it into a whole class lesson.

I like to let the class interact with the story in different angles and through different stages in order to have the language become as naturalized as possible to the students. First, to get the students engaged with the story, we talk about the pictures and I ask questions to get students to observe and analyze them. For example, for the first picture of the story below, I could ask: "How many people are there?", "How many boys are there?", "How many girls are there?", "Where are they?", "What time is it?", etc. Very simple questions about the visuals... This also prepares the students mentally to be more receptive to the story.

Then I play the audio recording of the story and students follow along. After it is over, I do comprehension check with them by asking questions about the story. For example: "What time does the teacher want to meet?", "What do Mike and Danny want?", "What time do they arrive at the bus?", etc.

Next, for pronunciation practice, students will repeat after me as I read through the story, line by line, with exaggerated intonation. Students then answer some yes/no questions in their book. This gives them a chance to read the story more intensively and at their own pace and they can reflect and choose their answers. We take it up as a class.

And then, to force students to focus on language form more, I sketch the story on the board and blank out some key words from the dialogue. I ask volunteers to come fill in the blanks. Students are really eager to come up to the board and get to write on it. They are forced to become conscious of spelling and sentence form.

Lastly, we get volunteers to act out the story in front of the class. Each role is taken up, including the narration. The sketch on the board guides the actors in their presentation and dialogue. With the presentation, students get the practice and apply the language.

Here are some pictures and a video from several months ago of an Everybody Up 3 class during a story lesson.