How do I use stories in primary english education as a vehicle for learning?

• Autor(a) principal: Neves, Joana Lagoa Duque Simões
• Data de Publicação: 2021
• Tipo de documento: Dissertação
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Repositório Científico de Acesso Aberto de Portugal (Repositórios Cientìficos)
• Texto Completo: http://hdl.handle.net/10362/118907
• topic: Literacia; Sala de aula; 1º Ciclo do Ensino Básico; Young learners; English as a foreign language; Storytelling; teacher-as-mediator; Inglês como língua estrangeira; Professor como mediador; Domínio/Área Científica::Humanidades::Línguas e Literaturas; Domínio/Área Científica::Ciências Sociais::Ciências da Educação

As part of my master’s degree practicum in teaching English in primary school, I undertook a small-scale action-research around the use of stories in primary English education as a vehicle for learning. This study was implemented from September to December 2019, with a 4th-grade class in a primary school in Sintra, Portugal. The project consisted of implementing a storytelling methodology in which the core of each learning sequence was an adapted story, with the aim of providing real, meaningful, engaging and enjoyable language exposure and opportunities for learning. This study addressed the main question: “How do I use stories in English primary education as a vehicle for learning?” I attempted to determine: how to select and adapt stories that could respond to learners’ needs and support their learning; how to successfully plan an entire sequence of learning around a story without using the coursebook; and which storytelling skills I should develop in order to successfully tell a story. My results highlighted the importance of the teacher’s role as storyteller to support students’ learning through stories, prompting their participation during storytelling events, role plays and related activities, motivating them towards literacy and language learning, but also as a mediator, raising their awareness regarding their own learning process. Furthermore, I believe, the results have shown that it is possible to implement a story-based methodology, using stories as a vehicle for English learning, improving my learners’ skills and learner autonomy. Moreover, the findings suggest that learners were able to achieve the predicted goals and learning through stories, through the introduction of consistent and carefully planned sequences of learning based around stories, as shown by their performance in class and the results in the termly test. Finally, it was shown that the activities related to the story are fundamental to provide repetitive and supportive opportunities for language learning.