Everyone can tell stories, but to make stories attractive to young children, we must put in some effort and use some brains. Taiwan Province Xinyi Foundation has a small kangaroo storytelling troupe. Since its establishment in April, 1994, it has made beneficial explorations in the development of early reading ability and the cultivation of reading interest of young children. At the second national symposium on children's early reading held in East China Normal University in late October, 24, the kangaroo storytelling troupe of Taiwan Province Xinyi Foundation gave participants a wonderful interpretation of "from story to drama"-a brand-new concept and method of children's early reading, which won warm applause from everyone present.
After the meeting, the author specially interviewed Ms. Liu, the head of the group, hoping to have a deeper understanding of the purpose of the group and her views on early reading for young children. Naturally, the topic begins with the meaning of the name "Little Kangaroo Story Troupe". Ms. Liu said: The name of "Little Kangaroo Story Troupe" contains our wishes and expectations. We hope that our troupe can have a warm parenting bag like a kangaroo: it can jump high and far like a kangaroo; More importantly, it is possible to establish an intimate and warm parent-child relationship with children like kangaroos. We think:' Love is telling stories for children', and we set out to build our troupe. Indeed, "Little Kangaroo Story Troupe" combines good books with children's reading interests, and presents common family materials by means of personal performances, audio-visual light and shadow, creative puppet shows, crayons and children's interaction, showing the rich connotation, infinite surprise and wonderful imagination of stories. It can be completely called a professional group specializing in telling stories for children.
from story to drama: both actors and teachers
The members of the Little Kangaroo Story Troupe are both actors and teachers. As teachers, they all have the qualities of actors. But when they use their mouths, hands and even all their organs to attract small audiences, the identity of teachers is diluted. For example, before performing the finger ballad "The Caterpillar", a teacher first assumes that his fingers are the caterpillars in children's songs, and then uses his fingers to imitate the movements of the caterpillars while reading aloud: "Caterpillar, where is the cave?" ..... Oh, here it is! Caterpillar, get into the hole, turn around, dig, pull and pull the radish. " Another teacher's hand plays the role of "cave". When it comes to "pulling radish", "caterpillar" pulls "lol" out of the "cave" with great effort, and the performance is quite vivid and realistic. At the same time, when the teacher tries to let the children try their own fun of performing finger ballads, good guiding skills make everyone feel that this is clearly a teacher's ability. For example, when telling the story of duckling for children, the actor first talks about his trip to Beijing, describes Beijing specialties, and naturally transitions to Beijing roast duck, then exaggerates the shape of duck walking through his own body movements, and then extends it to the way ducks dance, and finally lets children dance duck dance with them. In such an interactive process, it is difficult to tell whether the league members are actors or teachers. The transformation of their roles has narrowed the distance between teachers and children, and the idea behind the performance has to be recognized: this is obviously a group of unusual actors who love children and know the way of education.
From story to drama: both audience and actor
Tell stories to children, the protagonist is usually a teacher or an adult, and children are mostly audience. However, the Little Kangaroo Story Troupe has brought us a new idea: to make children read happily, we must first let them participate in storytelling, assign children the task of storytelling, and let them play the role in the story themselves. At first glance, this practice seems to be similar to our common kindergarten drama performance, but there are great differences. First of all, the starting point and purpose of the two are different: drama performance is to reproduce the story through performance after the children have mastered the story, which is to let the children perform the story; From story to drama, it is to assign roles to children before they are exposed to stories, so that children can read stories by participating in speaking and speaking performances; Secondly, the learning process of the two is different: drama performance must first let children know the plot and results of the story, and then reproduce the story. In the process from story to drama, children sometimes do not need to know the content of the story in advance, but naturally understand the content of the story and experience the reading experience through the guidance of teachers and the participation of children. For example, the story of Guess how much I love you is: the protagonist Rabbit wants to run away from home. For fear that Mother Rabbit will find her, she has become six different roles: fish, stone, flower, bird, sailboat and trapeze. In order to find the rabbit, Mother Rabbit has also become a fisherman, a climber, a gardener, a tree, a wind and a tightrope walker, and finally found the rabbit who left home. At the beginning of the story, the teacher's mother rabbit chose six children to play six different identities of the rabbit. Everyone didn't know the story, but they successfully participated in the performance under the guidance of the mother rabbit. In a relaxed and happy atmosphere, children change from a passive audience to an active actor. As participants, they tell stories and act out stories with teachers to experience the fun of reading.
From the audience to the storyteller, children have fun and learn easily. This way of learning undoubtedly brings great enlightenment to how to reduce the learning burden of children.
from story to drama: the educational charm of props
props are one of the elements of drama, but kangaroo says that the story troupe is unique in that props are not only acting utensils and decorations, but also play an educational role.
The Little Kangaroo Troupe advocates letting young children perform with props, believing that this will help to increase their self-confidence and make them not afraid. In addition, the troupe also advocates making props, such as children's toys and discarded daily necessities, using materials from daily life according to the needs of the story, so that the props are economical and practical. In order to tell the story "Mr Spider is moving", the teacher made a lovely spider with a pair of black gloves and some sponges for washing pots. The image is lifelike and the production is simple. In the story "Crocodiles are afraid, dentists are afraid", the teachers of the troupe designed four groups of images, such as paper dolls, puppets made of cold drink sticks, headdresses, sanitary chopsticks and dolls made of straws, which are full of imagination. The "Little Kangaroo Storytelling Troupe" also has a three-dimensional activity game book. The teacher of the troupe introduces the usage of this book in this way: when telling stories to children, the picture should be facing the children: the book should not be laid flat, so that children can see the picture; When turning pages, don't turn them together, and don't turn them flat; Don't leave your books behind because of the performance. The reason why teachers care so much about the usage of books is to let children see the structure of books clearly. There is also an apron on which many things can be stuck in the props of the troupe. It is convenient and interesting for teachers to tell stories while sticking pictures on the apron.
Professor Zhou Jing, vice president of the School of Preschool Education and Special Education of East China Normal University, commented on the achievements made by the Little Kangaroo Storytelling Troupe in the research and practice of early childhood reading education: It seems simple to tell the story, but there are many opportunities for creativity and thinking. How to make good use of these opportunities to develop our children is very important. Under the service tenet of "protecting children's childhood", Taiwan Province Xinyi Foundation has been providing new information about preschool education to the public for more than 2 years, advocating discovery learning and child-oriented education concept, which is worth learning. Although there are still some problems to be discussed, they do provide new ideas and new ideas for early childhood educators to tell stories, and provide new space and new experience for expanding early childhood reading.