Final Project

Jeison Medina Higuera

Rosa Inés Caicedo

Children Literature for Teaching English to Young Learners

Creating Didactic from Children Literature:

THR VERY BUSY SPIDER: (ERIC CARLE)

INTRODUCTION

This final paper is made to show how we can create a didactic material for classes based on one story by Eric Carle “the very busy spider”, this work will highlight the advantages of those stories in the exercise of the multiple intelligences which are going to be one of the cores of this project. One of the main parts of this final project is the creation of a book. In this case I made a pop-up book: this is with the intention to make the story more attractive and more compelling while the characters of the story are highlighted, considering that one basic principle for the learning process is from my experience that “the more engaged one is, the more predisposed to learn one is”.

The story will be presented through this book to the members of the class. This material is also accompanied by a Jazz chant and by two activities each one of them with the intention to work on a specific intelligence of the multiple a learner may have.in order to work the visual intelligence I will assigned a word-searcher to be develop with the pictures of the animals that are found in the story. In order to work the logical intelligence I will ask students to draw the sequence of the story. As learners will sing a jazz chant it can be consider an activity to foster either verbal or musical intelligence.

After this brief introduction, I just want to state that I hope an excellent didactic material can emerge from this paper, as it is the main goal. We will also be reviewing some theory regarding children literature and all its genres. Even if I focus on known stories, there are several kinds of literature for children that can complement my project, it is important to check all those literary genres, compare them and try to take the best elements from each one.

GENERAL OBJECTIVES

1. To use Literature to teach English to Young Learners.2. To use the Multiple Intelligence theory to organize and create a didactic

material.3. To acquire a more extended knowledge about Children Literature and all its

variations.

SPECIFIC OBJECTIVES1. To use “the very busy spider” story by Eric Carle in order for children to

learn the names of the animals of the story.2. To highlight the visual, the logical, musical and linguistic or verbal

intelligence in order to teach them the names of animals.3. To know the history of the literary genres directed to children learning

process, in order to acquire more teaching skills.

THEORETHICAL FRAMEWORK

In order to develop this paper, it will be useful some literary theory. First we are going to talk about children literature, fables and nursery rhymes and then we are going to see the story “the very busy spider.

CHILDREN’S LITERATURE

I would like to start with the concept of children's literature (also called juvenile literature) that consists of the stories (including in books) and poems which are enjoyed by or targeted primarily at children. Modern children's literature is classified in different ways, including by genre or the intended age of the reader.

Children's literature has its roots in the stories and songs that adults told their children before publishing existed, as part of the wider oral tradition. Because of this it can be difficult to track the development of early stories. Even since widespread printing, many classic tales were originally created for adults and have been adapted for a younger audience. Although originally children's literature was often a re-writing of other forms, since the 1400s there has been much literature aimed specifically at children, often with a moral or religious message. To some extent the nature of children's fiction, and the divide between older children's and adult fiction became blurred as time went by and tales appealing to both adult and child had substantial commercial success.

According to Aspects and Issues in the History of Children's Literature from the International Research Society for Children's Literature, the development of literature for children anywhere in the world follows the same basic path. All children's literature, whatever its current stage of development, begins with spoken stories, songs and poems. In the beginning the same tales that adults tell and enjoy are adapted for children. Then stories are created specifically for children, to educate, instruct and entertain them. In the final stage literature for children is established as separate from that of adults, having its own genres, divisions, expectations and canon. The development of children's literature is influenced by the social, educational, political and economic resources of the country or ethnic group.

Secondly it is important to know about Fables. A fable is a succinct fictional story, in prose or verse, that features animals, mythical creatures, plants, inanimate objects or forces of nature which are anthropomorphized (given human qualities such as verbal communication), and that illustrates or leads to an interpretation of a moral lesson (a "moral"), which may at the end be added explicitly in a pithy maxim. This topic is really important because the story in this case has got an implicit moral which I dear to say that would be something like “first do your obligations, cause hard work will be rewarded”.

The fable is one of the most enduring forms of folk literature, spread abroad, modern researchers agree, less by literary anthologies than by oral transmission. Fables can be found in the literature of almost every country. Fables had a further long tradition through the middle Ages, and became part of European high literature. During the 17th century, the French fabulist Jean de La Fontaine (1621–1695) saw the soul of the fable in the moral a rule of behavior.

In the third place, there is something called Nursery Rhymes. This genre is really important in order to highlight as we said from the beginning, the multiple intelligences of children. Those rhymes are the perfect kinds of literature in order to exercise several dimensions of the brain. The term nursery rhyme is used for "traditional" poems and songs for young children in Britain and many other countries, but usage only dates from the 19th century and in North America the term "Mother Goose Rhymes", introduced in the mid-1700s, is still often use. The oldest children's songs of which we have records are lullabies, intended to help a child sleep. Lullabies can be found in every human culture. The English term lullaby is thought to come from "lu, lu" or "la la" sound made by mothers or nurses to calm children, and "by by" or "bye bye", either another lulling sound, or a term for good night. Until the modern era lullabies were usually only recorded incidentally in written source. Many medieval English verses associated with the

birth of Jesus take the form of a lullaby, including "Lullay, my liking, my dere son, my sweating" and may be versions of contemporary lullabies.

Many nursery rhymes have been argued to have hidden meanings and origins. John Bellenden Ker (1765–1842), for example, wrote four volumes arguing that English nursery rhymes were actually written in 'Low Saxon', a hypothetical early form of Dutch. He then 'translated' them back into English, revealing in particular a strong tendency to anti-clericalism. Many of the ideas about the links between rhymes and historical persons, or events, can be traced back to Katherine Elwes's book The Real Personages of Mother Goose (1930), in which she linked famous nursery-rhyme characters with real people, on little or no evidence. She assumed that children's songs were a peculiar form of coded historical narrative, propaganda or covert protest, and rarely considered that they could have been written simply for entertainment.

THE VERY BUSY SPIDER

This story as have been mentioned before was written by Eric Carle: a well-known American writer of children literature; the story is about a spider who spends a whole day spinning a web in a fence post. While the spider is spinning several animals come to invite her to do several things but she does not answer because she is very busy. These animals are: Horse, cow, goat, sheep, dog, pig, duck, rooster and an owl.

THE STORY:

Early one morning, the wind blew a spider across the field, a thing silky thread trailed from her body. The spider landed on a fence post near a farm yard and began to spin a web with a silky trend.

“Neigh, neigh” said the horse: want to go for a ride?The spider didn’t answer she was very busy spinning her web.“Moo, moo” said the cow: want to eat some grass?The spider didn’t answer she was very busy spinning her web.“Baa, baa” blatted the sheep: want to run in the meadow?The spider didn’t answer she was very busy spinning her web.“Maa, maa” Said the goat: want to jump on the rocks?The spider didn’t answer she was very busy spinning her web.“Oink, oink” grunted the pig: want to roll in a mud?The spider didn’t answer she was very busy spinning her web.

“Woof, woog” Barked the dog: want to chase a cat?The spider didn’t answer she was very busy spinning her web.“Meaow, meaow” … Cried the cat: want to take a nap?The spider didn’t answer she was very busy spinning her web.“Quack, quack”…Called the duck: want to go for a swim?The spider didn’t answer she has now finished her web.“Cock-a doodle-do” crowd the rooster: want to catch a pesty fly?And the spider caught the fly in her web, just like that.

“Who, who” asked the owl: who built this beautiful web?The spider didn’t answer, she had fallen asleep. It ‘had been a very, very busy day.

CONCLUSIONS

There are some extra elements that teachers need to know and also to be aware of in order to do a good job in terms of preparing and creating material for the lessons. We as teachers need to be conscious of the different learning styles present in children, the possible problems that each of this learning styles can have, which intelligence each style has more developed, etc. Since there are not the same learning styles among the classmates, we have problems choosing the activities to the audience, they would have to be adequate for children but at the same time they would need to keep an adult audience engaged in the lesson.

All things considered then we can conclude that it is not easy to build didactic material from a literary piece, teachers need to be conscious about many things, they need to be aware of the real needs of children, also teachers have to learn how to develop and give the material to their students. We as teachers need to deal with many theories and approaches but at the end and to put it simply, what is important is that children can enjoy whatever they learn and that they really learn something by doing all this didactic process.

REFERENCES:

ARMSTRONG, T. (1995) Inteligencias Múltiples en el salón de clase. Virginia, EE.UU.

BREWSTER, J. ET all, (1992) The Primary English Teacher’s Guide. Penguin English.

Carle, E. (16 de junio de 2014). Eric Carle. Obtenido de http://www.eric-carle.com/bio.html

CANEPA, N. (1997) Out of the Woods. The Origins of the Literary Fairy Tale in Italy and France. Wayne Statu University Press.

ELLIS, G. and Brewster J., (1991) The Storytelling Handbook: El Guide for Primary Teachers.Harmonds Worth. Penguin.

___________ (1988) Jazz Chants Fairy Tales. Oxford. Oxford University Press.

___________ (1979) Jazz Chants for Children. Oxford. Oxford University Press.

HUNT, P. (2005) Understanding Children’s Literature. Routledge. London, New York.

JENNINGS, C. (1991) Children as Story Tellers. Oxford. Oxford University Press.

LERER, S. (2008) Children’s Literature. A Reader’s History from Aesop to Harry Potter. The University of Chicago.

ACTIVITY 2

Draw the sequence of the story.

ACTIVITY 1

NAME:__________________________________.

FIND THE NAMES OF THE ANIMALS OF THE DRAWINGS.

JAZZ CHANT

Early one morning, the wind blew a spider across the field, a thing silky thread trailed from her body. The spider landed on a fence post near a farm yard and began to spin a web with a silky trend.

“Neigh, neigh” said the horse: want to go for a ride?The spider didn’t answer she was very busy spinning her web.“Moo, moo” said the cow: want to eat some grass?The spider didn’t answer she was very busy spinning her web.“Baa, baa” blatted the sheep: want to run in the meadow?The spider didn’t answer she was very busy spinning her web.“Maa, maa” Said the goat: want to jump on the rocks?The spider didn’t answer she was very busy spinning her web.“Oink, oink” grunted the pig: want to roll in a mud?The spider didn’t answer she was very busy spinning her web.“Woof, woog” Barked the dog: want to chase a cat?The spider didn’t answer she was very busy spinning her web.“Meaow, meaow” … Cried the cat: want to take a nap?The spider didn’t answer she was very busy spinning her web.“Quack, quack”…Called the duck: want to go for a swim?The spider didn’t answer she has now finished her web.“Cock-a doodle-do” crowd the rooster: want to catch a pesty fly?And the spider caught the fly in her web, just like that.

“Who, who” asked the owl: who built this beautiful web?The spider didn’t answer, she had fallen asleep. It ‘had been a very, very busy day.