Storytelling corner
Playing Ever After - learning through stories and play
Our school, the Colégio do Ave in Guimarães, resources and tools to use the stories in their
started a two-year long Erasmus project in October classrooms.
2017, in partnership with three other schools in
Slovenia, Finland and the Netherlands. The
project, Playing Ever After, aims to improve
language learning through stories and free play
activities, in the 4-7-year-old group.
Cross
curricular lessons, play activities and materials all
revolve around four stories which feature monster
Stories and Play: Why are they important?
The theme of the 32nd APPI conference (Teaching
Effectively, Teaching Affectively) offers us one of
the reasons: stories and play promote very strong
affective connections which in turn help to make
language learning more effective.
characters that were created by children in
Slovenia, Portugal, Finland and the Netherlands.
Playing Ever After is a transnational Erasmus
Project, but we believe that it is possible to do this
kind of project with other schools in Portugal, or
with different classes in a school or just with
individual classes.
It is the main aim that is
important - encouraging learning through stories
and story-related activities, and through play, both
teacher-directed and free.
CLIL (Content Language Integrated Learning)
programme, with the EFL teacher and preschool/
working
together:
planning,
creating resources and co-teaching.
increase
confidence
aware
of
Stories
the
rhythm,
intonation
to introduce
provide
presenting
development
and
and
intercultural
awareness.
To increase the visibility of English within the
whole of the learning environment.
To
Listening to stories helps children become
and
or
revise
new
vocabulary and sentence structures.
more independently.
language
and language learning.
the teacher
To motivate young learners to use English
support
attitudes towards the foreign language, culture
pronunciation of language as well as allowing
The main aims of the project
To
using stories in this project:
They are motivating and help develop positive
We have integrated this project into our existing
primary teachers
We have highlighted the following reasons for
ideal
cultural
opportunities
information
for
and
encouraging intercultural understanding.
Children enjoy listening to stories repeatedly.
This frequent repetition, as well as the natural
repetition in many stories, reinforce
language.
provide educators with lesson plans,
8
the