The Mood Hoover by Paul Brown and Rowena Blyth – Storytelling-based Learning

Hello, my dear colleagues! In our storytelling workshop number five, we covered an amazing story called is The Mood Hoover by Paul Brown, Illustrated by Rowena Blyth. Keep reading to see photos and videos of our activities!

As a real enthusiast of storytelling, I’ve decided to create a storytelling-based learning curriculum which will be conducted in the form of a workshop. Storytelling-based learning or narrative-based learning is not something we see in everyday practice. This method focuses on learning languages through literature, using storytelling at an early age. This curriculum is for 2nd, 3rd, and 4th grade.

Storytelling-based Learning as a Way to Promote Language Acquisition in Young Learners

The Mood Hoover by Paul Brown, Illustrated by Rowena Blyth

Here is the synopsis of the book from the official webpage:

Before the storytelling, we had a lot of ice-breakers and learned about emotions and moods. I always spend a lot of time in our ice-breaker workshops, and the children get really excited to hear a new story!

Ice-breakers

Learning the basic vocabulary – part 1

First, we listened and repeated the vocabulary by using Genial.ly. Then, the children changed places, and they had to click on the audio, look at the picture, and repeat the word chorally. They loved exploring the interactive!

Learning the basic vocabulary – part 2

In the second part, the children had to color the emotion frogs as they wanted and then match them to the emotion sight words! They even added orange hair to some frogs and created a few ”horror” frogs! ? I really love what they did with the flashcards, so I want to laminate them and keep using them in the future!

Today I feel… bubble + draw your emotion

To relax and unwind, we finished the ice-breaker activities by filling the ” today I feel ” bubble and drawing our faces and emotions.

Mood wheel to review emotions

Mood ice-breaker game created with Genial.ly + Wheel Decide. One child had a task to spin the wheel, explain the task, and then imitate sounds or movements in different moods. The children love using wheels, and this one was no exception!

Pre-teaching the vocabulary

In the pre-teaching vocabulary part of the workshop, we focused on verbs and used TPR to remember them and demonstrate them together.

Listen, watch and repeat!

• Suck up;
• Spotted;
• Itching to try it out;
• Test out;
• Gobbling up, guzzled up;
• Machine/device;
• Giggle out loud;
• Admire;
• Waste time;
• Sneaked.

The itching to try it out phrase resonated so much with them, and they kept repeating it throughout the lesson.

Dramatization

We had an interactive dramatization, and my assistant recorded it. We used a real vacuum cleaner, and one girl was acting as Stan! It was truly outstanding and yet so spontaneous.

Listening task/TPR task during the dramatization:

The children had some tasks during dramatization to motivate them to listen to the story and concentrate better.

• Listen for the places – try to remember what places Stan visits.
• Listen for emotions – try to remember how does Stan make people feel.

We were also listening to music during dramatization – we used this city chatter video + vacuum cleaner sounds when the boy vacuums.

Post dramatization activities/group work: practice & application

Discussion questions:

• What is the name of the boy in the story?
• Is Stan good or bad? Why?
• Which machine does Stan use to suck out happiness?
• Why does Stan such out the happiness out of people?
• How does Stan feel? Why does he feel that way?
• What is the first person he sucked out happiness from?
• Can you remember some of the places he visited?
• What is your favorite character? Why?
• What is your favorite part of the story? Why?
• What happens with Stan at the end?
• How could we help Stan?

Post-storytelling tasks

Post-storytelling tasks are used to practice and apply the learned content from the story. For example, we did the following activities.

• Rewrite the story from the vacuum’s point of view;
• Sorting out moods and emotions in three major groups (happy, sad, angry);
• Using the fun emoji-based questions to discuss how we felt in certain situations;
• Find all the words Stan uses when he sucks up happiness and niceness uses.

Assessment

Dramatizing with the classroom decoration while the teacher reads the story. Then, completing an interactive listening practice that uses a video of a theater show – Mood Hoover retold! Created by using H5P.

Here is the interactive video in action! I love this video, and I’m really amazed at how the children in the video retold the story!

Follow up – Selecting the book they want to do next time from Alice’s interactive library on Genial.ly.

Homework: Filling the Mood Chart every day! I created a mood chart for the children to monitor their feelings during the next month. When the month is finished, they will bring the charts, and we will discuss them. Here is a photo of the Mood Chart – I haven’t posted it to my website yet, but I will add it to the freebie subscriber library ASAP.

The Mood Hover Interactive

This interactive Mood Hoover presentation is not designed only to be used in the live workshop but also to be used for revision at home and to remember what we did in the workshop. Scroll through the interactive and check it out!

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To conclude

This workshop was amazing, and it was extraordinary since this is the first time I saw the children after the lockdown in March. It was very emotional, and the story was very appropriate for the situation. Stay tuned for my new posts and our next book in the storytelling-based learning program!

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