This week I have had the great privilege of teaching the Grade 3s for the first time! This week I thought that I would try another teaching technique, to teach new words and vocabulary from a lesson revolving around a story! It is ok just to read the story and have the words on the screen, but I am aware that in order to make the story more interesting and vibrant, to truly bring the words to life, it is so much more rewarding to turn it into a physical representation of the words through acting! What's more in order to engage student interest even more you can have them involved with the acting process.

So, this week we studied the story of ‘Goldilocks and the Three Bears’ with many students getting involved across the multitudes of classes. It was so amazing to really see these students bring the characters to life and to have the class engaging in the story. The students then had the chance to act out the story within their groups. Although they may not remember the words, it is ok, because the basis of language is bringing understanding to each other, so by them acting the story out in groups it showed that they had understanding of what had transpired within the story even if they were not able to verbally articulate it.

I love that there are so many varied ways of bringing words to life, maybe through games, exercises or in this case acting. I love how the students were able to laugh and enjoy themselves while learning new words from this foreign language! Maybe these students will go on to be Doctors or Policemen or Teachers themselves, maybe they will travel and learn many languages, maybe they will learn English to a much higher level. Or maybe they won’t but I like to think that no matter where they end up they may remember the stories that they have learned and what happened within them, maybe they will tell them to their own children in Chinese or English, for then the story will go on, that is what understanding does, it brings people together so that it can go on and I think that’s beautiful.