Story Magic 1

Macmillan

As I am presently waging a one-man campaign in my school to add more content-based teaching (mainly stories and songs) to a rigidly grammar-based children’s syllabus, I jumped at the chance to review a book where stories were so important that they were even included in the book’s title. Most of all, I was keen to see if this book could help me prove (at least to myself) that children learn more English that way.

Just as the title suggests, stories form a major part of this Primary level course. Each of the nine units is based around (and named after) a story, such as ‘Max’s magic book’, ‘Happy Birthday Princess’ and ‘The Cup final’. The stories are unrelated to each other, but the character ‘Max the Wizard’ is used throughout the book, for example to read the stories on the class cassette- hence the ‘magic’ part of the book title. The stories are not necessarily something native speaking children would choose, but the way phrases and grammatical forms are repeated over the story (for example, prepositions as the naughty fairies run away with Lucy’s school report) is mixed with humour (skipping dogs and whistling rabbits) and colourful pictures makes the stories accessible and fun. I found the stories were perfectly designed for young primary school learners- students this age got the humour (which younger learners didn’t really follow), and liked the characters and illustrations (which older students were put off by). The stories also tie in with a clear grammatical syllabus, without making the grammar heavy or too obvious. The most unusual thing about the stories is that they are available as flashcards as well as in the student’s book. This really means that the whole lesson can be based around the story, as memory games, run and slap games etc. involving the cards are easily added into the mix. Another set of flashcards deals with the vocabulary of the course, especially the vocab in the stories- adding yet another very flexible resource. Although the ideas in the teacher’s book for using these are somewhat limited, I found enough variations on how to use the stories occurred to me to keep the kids interested, on their toes and motivated week after week. The ‘Gilbert the Ghost’ stories at the end of each unit are shorter and simpler stories that follow the adventures of a naughty ghost, which I was pleased to find some students reading for pleasure without any encouragement.

After stories (which take up 2 1/2 pages of each 6-page unit) the biggest component of the course is songs and chants- one before and one after each story. Titles include ‘the Ready for School Song’ and ‘the Party Foods song’. While songs at this age have to be chosen carefully not to appear too babyish, they can be a great way of making the language stick- for example, every time I want my students to tell me what letter I’m writing I have to say it to the tune of the ABC song. The danger is, though, that the students know the whole song off by heart without understanding any of it due to lack of context- and I’m afraid that is a danger with these songs. For example, while the family song includes a drawing of a wedding that students can point at while they are singing or listening to the song, it doesn’t really present the language. Presumably, the vocab will need to be translated for the students- something I am never too comfortable with. There is also not nearly enough use of actions in the songs and chants.

The rest of each unit in the student’s book is filled up with speaking games (presented in cartoon format), craft work (often based on pages cut from the activity book), pronunciation and word recognition work, and examples of simple written project ideas (with pictures and 3 or 4 lines of text). All of these are quite nice, and presented in a simple, colourful way that easily got the kids’ attention. The student’s book finishes with two nice short seasonal units on Xmas and Easter. In addition to the 10 cut-out activities, the activity book has various word-puzzles, listening exercises, colouring exercise, a few games, and a dictionary with stickers. Although it’s in black and white, the use of pictures and the varied content make the activity book fairly attractive for the kids.

In contrast to the thin, accessible student’s book and activity book, the teacher’s book looks quite thick and imposing. This is partly because of the amount of help the book offers teachers, from general tips on using the stories to specific extra game ideas at various points in each lesson, but mainly because each 6 page unit is designed to last 7 lessons, with 2 pages of teacher’s notes per lesson. This format (relatively few pages in the student’s book stretched out with repetition, craftwork, the activity book and extra games) makes the book very flexible- each unit could be covered in anywhere between 2 and 10 hours. Although the teacher’s notes are quick and easy to read, and offer perfectly teachable lesson plans, I must say that after a while I ended up teaching the material in the book entirely in my own way- partly to add some variety, and partly to move through the book quicker.

All in all, I liked this book. Most importantly, my children learnt much more with this ‘stories and songs plus grammar and activities’ format than they had with the ‘grammar and vocab plus practising games’ format that my school sticks to. What’s more, they learnt language that kept on coming up in natural classroom interactions between the students and teacher, giving us plenty of opportunity to recycle and remember the language even after we had gone back to our usual textbook. This increase in the useable language students could understand (and eventually use) and the inherent interest in the material noticeably increased student motivation- even with very young students who I was sometimes seeing only for 22 hours a year. I am teaching small (1 to 12 children) classes in a private language school, but I have taught in primary schools before, and this book would certainly be on a very short shortlist if I was in the position to choose the books for either kind of class. Even beginning teachers should see raised student interest and good learning outcomes from following the lesson plans given, and experienced teachers should find the content easy to adapt and quite inspiring. Without needing to be very good at storytelling, drawing or acting yourself, you can easily use this book to bring all these artistic factors into your classroom. I did find that I had to supplement and replace some of the song content, and didn’t really discover any new favourite songs here. In complete contrast, I have used the stories from this book with all my classes at this age since first trying this book, and the same is true of some of the craft and project ideas.

Review originally published in Modern English Teacher magazine. Republished with permission.

(C) Alex Case/ Modern English Publishing