Reading to students is about a lot more than words on a page!

I'm a big one for reading to my classes.  If you've read much of this blog it's kind of hard to miss that one!  Not only this, I'm also all about giving them an animated experience as an engagement tool.

Today I was pottering around, with the TV on for noise and I saw something that gave me an idea for a really great visual way to show you why I believe in the animated reading, why it changes a book from a story to an engaging experience.

I don't know whether you've paid much attention to this before but:

Shaun the Sheep from Aardman animations (more clips on the Shaun the Sheep website).

Shaun the Sheep takes place in an animal's world without words, even the farmer speaks in an unintelligible garble of sounds.  When it comes to discussing motivation for literacy it can seem a bit odd to use something like this as, instead of writing "Shaun opened the barn door", you see Shaun open the barn door because of the visual medium. What is truly fascinating though is the use of tone, cadence and body language to convey the attitudes of the characters rather than descriptive writing.

Even before children have a solid use of language they are able to understand the Shaun the Sheep stories fairly completely.

I used to play with my daughter, crawling around the floor having fun with each other but we were not having the same experience.  If we played with blocks?  She was enjoying playing with blocks and I was enjoying playing with my daughter. I could sit and watch Shaun the Sheep with my daughter when she was one and a half and we would both be "getting the same story".  It gave us common ground on a level far more advanced than reading to her, playing with blocks together, etc.  We were experiencing the same thing, at the same time, with the same level of enjoyment for the same reasons. We truly had something in common.

That is an incredibly powerful thing.  It shows how useful and effective these components of communication truly are.

While the absence of words is, usually anyway, counter-intuitive to a classroom setting that doesn't mean we shouldn't pay attention to what this situation is teaching us.

Tone, cadence and body language are integral parts of stories when told verbally and they are capable of telling a large part of the story by themselves.  They are very engaging and very universal when compared to written language, especially at the early primary level where a child's vocabulary might be letting them down.  It is also invaluable in assisting ESL students bridge the gaps in their vocabulary by providing a much more detailed context for an unknown word.

When you read a story to your class as part of a lesson?  Know the story!  Be animated!  Use tone!  Use cadence!  These things will draw students into the story and encourage them to approach stories, and literacy in general, in exactly the same way.  Enthusiastically.

And, in the end, enthusiasm is just another word for self motivation ;).

Regards,

Mel.