Teaching "Jack and the Beanstalk" to young ESL learners

Teaching ESL: Teaching English to Young Learners

Jack and the Beanstalk: Teaching Outline (4 lessons)

A teaching outline presents the specific strategies that the teacher intends to use to teach a particular aspect or instill a particular skill in children.

Teaching New Words (45 minutes): the teacher will begin the lesson by pre-teaching the keywords, which will include castle, beanstalk, giant, horse, and bean. The teacher will hang up images and pictures of the identified main words on the board to help the children connect the same to the world, and consequently, remember the meaning later on in the storytelling session. Actions will also be used to some extent - for instance, when illustrating the sizes of both Jack and the giant.

Action Game (20 minutes): the teacher will sing the 'I am a Little Bean Song' three or four times as the children listen, using mimes, gestures, and action as illustrated below:

I am a little bean, small and round,

(Curl up on the floor - to represent Jack's small size)

Bury me deep in the ground,

(Sing in a low voice)

Sprinkle on some water,

(Act out watering can)

Some sunshine too,

(Hands out wide)

Watch me grow as tall as you

(Stretch to the sky - represent the tall giant)

She will encourage the children to join in singing and miming, and then leave them to repeat the same on their own. In order to make sure that the children understand the song, and can link it up effectively with the main words through actions, the teacher will sing two to three times and have the children depict the actions. Once it is apparent that the children have memorized the key words and their actions and can sing and perform actions on their own, the teacher will divide the children into several groups, and have different children act out different parts to ensure each one can coordinate their actions and words effectively.

Storytelling (25 minutes): Home-made props and visuals will be used to not only make the story more memorable, but also link up the complex details of the story with more familiar objects that children interact with on a daily basis. Different-sized drums will, for instance, be used to depict and differentiate the giant's footsteps from those of Jack; and a slide whistle will be used to depict Jack ascending and descending the beanstalk. The teacher will ask the children to mark rhythms of rhymes and words using rhythm sticks, and also use the main words of the story (in groups) to develop new lyrics to common tunes such as 'Twinkle Little Star' and 'London Bridge is Falling Down', and 'Row Your Boat'. This will help her assess the children's understanding of the key words, and how they ought to be used (Watts, 2013).

Practical Task (45 minutes): for the practical task, the children will carry out two measuring activities -- one estimating and measuring the size of the giant's hand and the other their foot. For the first activity, the teacher will draw an image of a super-large hand and have a copy of the same distributed out to each of the children. The children will measure the size of the giant's hand by estimating the number of bean seeds that could possibly fit therein; and then they will trace an outline of their own hands at the back of the sheet of paper, and again estimate the maximum number of seeds that could fit therein. For the second activity, the teacher will draw out and photocopy the image of a super-large boot (the giant's boot), and distribute two shoe prints to each child. The children will measure the length of the giant shoe print using cubes, and record the number of cubes taken up, and then they will draw an outline of their own boot inside the giant shoe print, and again take note of the number of cubes used up.

Language Focus (15 minutes): comparative and superlative forms of adjectives

The teacher will begin by explaining the concept of comparative and superlative adjectives. She will compare a number of items in the classroom, for instance, two windows, two boxes, a window, and the door in terms of size. She will convert the same into comparative forms; this window is smaller than that window, the door is longer than the window, and so on. She will make it clear that some adjectives get their comparative form by adding 'er' and others by adding 'more'. She will then ask the children in turns to compare other nouns within the classroom. Afterwards, she will formulate several examples in the superlative form, and ask the children to do the same using the nouns that they had earlier compared. The children will then formulate and record the comparative and superlative forms using the adjectives 'big', 'small', and 'long' by comparing the giant's shoe print with their own shoe print, and that of some of their classmates. The expected responses include:

The giant's hand can take up XXX bean seeds; my hand can only handle XXX seeds.

The giant's shoe takes up XXX cubes

My shoe print takes up XXX cubes

XXX's shoe print is half as long as the giant's

My shoe print (hand) is smaller than the giant's

XXX's shoe print and hand print are bigger than/smaller than YYY's

XXX's shoe print is the smallest in the class

Review Game (30 minutes): the core function of the review game is to cement the children's understanding of comparative and superlative forms of adjectives as well as the vocabulary learnt from the 'Jack and the Beanstalk' story. The teacher will write the new words learnt from the story on the board, and ask the children to develop two sentences -- one in a comparative form and the other in a superlative form using adjectives of their choice. The children will then take turns to read their sentences out to the class, and children will have the pleasure of correcting their colleagues.

Part Two: Short Answers to Questions

1. Which of the above questions do you associate with reading/listening comprehension?

Reading/listening comprehension is a demonstration of how well a child has understood the story, and consequently, how well they can apply it to real life situations. Question 12 is associated with reading/listening comprehension in this case.

Possible Teaching Aims of Questions 1, 4, 6, 8, 10 and 11

The aforementioned questions all focus on some aspect of the English language. Question 1, for instance, aims at teaching adjectives. The children will respond with 'poor', an adjective, and the teacher could define the term 'adjective', and have the children pick out other adjectives from the story. Questions 6 and 8 are geared at teaching the concept of 'verbs'. The children will respond with 'he ran', 'he hid', 'he died'; and to cement their understanding, the teacher could ask them to locate more verbs in the story. Questions 10 and 11 are geared at teaching the concepts of indefinite pronouns and adverbs respectively. Question 4, unlike the others, assesses the children's ability to correctly use gestures, particularly their hands, to visualize things.

3. Ways of Improving Comprehension Questions

I strongly believe that I can improve the comprehension questions that I pose to my learners by i) ensuring that they make use of the key words identified in the pre-teaching phase to cement the learners' understanding and visualization of the same; and ii) ensuring that the questions are not only literal, but also interpretive and applied, requiring the learner to think critically and incorporate knowledge from other branches of learning such as science and math

4. Improving the Comprehensive Questions for a Selected EFL Story

The link to the reading comprehension 'Seven Ways to Protect the Environment' has been included in the references section of this text. The reading has three comprehension multiple-choice questions that require the learner to indicate their most preferred choice of answer. The questions could be modified to be more interpretive; for instance, Fluorescent light bulbs save energy, how? The seven tips save both energy and money, explain? The modified questions would trigger creativity and criticality in the learner, and will require them to consult with the field of science.