Planning and managing literacy learning
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Get the things you will need like instruments for sound effects, music or masks. Make sure that everyone has a job like the narrator, props person, director, reader. Practise the reading aloud. Practise the reading with sound effects. Read the story to a small group or the whole class. Talk about how well your readers’ theatre was done and what you may do next time.
Puppets There are many different kinds of puppets—shadow puppets, glove puppets, finger puppets, stick puppets and marionettes. Shadow puppet plays can be performed behind a screen. Puppet theatres can be made from cardboard boxes or from tables turned on their side.
Felt stories Felt stories are created with characters and props made with pieces of coloured felt cut out and glued together. The characters and props are stuck onto a felt board, and removed when the character is no longer playing an active role in the story.
The steps to designing an integrated curriculum Selecting a topic Vukelich, Christie and Enz (2002) write that selection needs to be a blend of topics that are important to children and departmental guidelines. Broad topics that are relevant to the lives of children work best. Katz and Chard (1989) suggest topics like:
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children’s homes, families and food the local community’s people and businesses important local events and current affairs nearby landmarks, rivers, hills and forests natural phenomena like weather, water, wind and air, plants and animals.
Broad topics like these help children make sense of their own personal experiences and life around them. Teachers can begin to select a topic by asking children to brainstorm what topics they want to study. Topics can be listed and then grouped if areas overlap. To prioritise the area to be studied, teachers sometimes ask, ‘What would you like to study first of all?’
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