Dear Mother Goose by Michael Rosen and Nick Sharratt – Storytelling-based Learning

Hello, my dear colleagues! Our storytelling workshop number six covered an amazing story called is Dear Mother Goose by Michael Rosen & Nick Sharratt. 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

Storytelling-based Learning- Workshop 6: Dear Mother Goose by Michael Rosen & Nick Sharratt

Here is the synopsis of the book from goodreads.com:

Mother Goose helps a whole host of favourite nursery rhyme friends with their problems. Lift the flaps to find out how she helped to solve some of their problems.

Before the storytelling, we had a lot of icebreakers and learned a lot about different nursery rhymes. I always spend a lot of time in our ice-breaker part of the workshops, and the children get really excited to hear a new story! I was surprised to see that the children already knew so many nursery rhymes!

Materials needed: A yellow block, big boxes, catalog with food, printed materials, scissors, chalk, textile strings, toilet paper rolls, cardboard theater, glue gun, envelopes.

Ice-breakers

• Create a simple obstacle course for the children to use. Don’t forget to include a candle for them to jump over (a block with yellow or orange cellophane attached to the top), just like Jack.
• Mother cupboard memory game. Click HERE for the game pdf.
• London Bridge is Falling Down – learn the song with the flashcards.

Pre-teaching the vocabulary – nursery rhyme matching and sequencing

Memory card game – match the nursery rhyme to the rhyme mats. Click HERE for the nursery rhyme sorting mats. The children had a lot of fun naming the characters, sorting them into groups, sequencing the events in the rhymes, and finally, singing some of the rhymes. While matching, we had a playlist of all the rhymes that appear on the mat to help them forget some of the rhymes.

London Bridge is Falling down, TPR game

We played the London Bridge is Falling TPR game for the first time to warm up a bit more. Of course, the children already knew the song, and they knew this game in Serbian. However, they were amazed to find out that this game is also played in English!

Dear Mother Goose interactive storytelling

We discussed whether the ideas are good or bad during the interactive storytelling and if we had some better ideas to solve the nursery rhyme character problems. I had different assistants who helped me flip the flaps and even read some parts.

Listening task/TPR task during the dramatization

The tasks during the dramatization included:

Dramatization questions

• Do you know the Humpty Dumpty nursery rhyme?
• Who wants to help me lift the flaps?
• While reading the story ask the children if they can spot the difference between the picture under the flap and on top of the flap?
• Why are the different?
• What is different about their expressions?

Additional tasks during the dramatization included:

• Listen for the characters – try to remember which characters do the book mention.
• Listening to music during dramatization – nature sounds

Post dramatization activities/group work

After the dramatization, we sat down to rest and answered the following questions:

• Which part of the book did you think was the funniest? Why?
• Think of another nursery rhyme that the children know for example, Little Bo Peep, Little Jack Horner or Three Blind Mice. What problems might these nursery rhyme characters have? Brainstorm what would Mother Goose say to them?
• What is your favorite nursery rhyme character? Why?
• What happens with at the end?
• How do you think Mother Goose felt at the end of the story? How did her friends feel?”

Practicing prepositions with Jack be Nimble + Genial.ly

After discussing, we played various assessment games. This one included moving the character from Jack be Nimble around the flame to practice prepositions interactively.

• Making your own ending – draw it and write it together, on the whiteboard;
• Solve each problem differently than Mother Goose;
• Pair the flips and the flaps + name them – Genial.ly;
• Answer to the quiz on Genial.ly.

Pair the flips and the flaps + name them – Genial.ly + H5p

After that, we connected the flips and the flaps with a matching game made with H5p, and the children did it collaboratively.

Assessment and a short vocabulary review after the reading

Finally, we did a short comprehension, where they had questions connected to the book, and they had to select the correct character.

Workshop – practice and application

The workshop part consisted of building the location from the pages of the books to dramatize and then organize the classroom with the things we have present. According to their fine motor skills and abilities, every child got a different character to make/cut/draw/decorate. We used various recyclables and waste paper.

Examples of nursery rhymes puppets

Mother Hubbard’s Cupboard

The children can create their own cupboards from cereal boxes. First, help the children cut two doors to open at the front of the box. Then, the children can fill their cupboards with pictures of food from magazines.

Humpty Dumpty

Make Humpty Dumpty standing puppet from the printable and add strings as legs. Click HERE for the Humpty Dumpty printable.

Find patterns from the newspapers to fir the wall bricks.

Jack and Jill

Make Jack and Jill from toilet paper rolls and follow the given instruction. Click HERE for the Jack and Jill puppet instructions.

Incy Wincy Spider

Color and decorate the spout.

Make a 3D spider following a video instruction

Mary Contrary

Make a garden and with the flowers, and draw Merry’s face in the printable! Click HERE for the Mery Contrary printable.

Printable theater

While children were crafting, I made a theatre, and when I finish it, we will use it as our stage for the acting. Purchase the printable theatre HERE.

Additional activities if there is extra time

• Encourage the children to write to Mother Goose with their own problems. Put them in envelopes and share them with parents next time.
• Talk about the addresses at the top of each letter. The children may like to make up their own fantasy addresses.

I always list some extra activities if we have extra time, but honestly, that’s rarely the case. Still, I believe it is important to be prepared.

Assessment

Dramatizing with the classroom decoration while the teacher reads the story. Unfortunately, this step was not finished simply because the children had to go earlier and we didn’t have enough time.

Follow up

Selecting the book they want to do next time from the Alice in Wonderland interactive library.

Homework – Dear Mother Goose by Michael Rosen & Nick Sharratt Genial.ly interactive

This interactive 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. So scroll through the interactive and check it out!

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To conclude

This workshop was very interactive, and this is the first time we sang and played nursery rhyme TPR games outside. Stay tuned for my new posts and our next book in the storytelling-based learning program!

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