105991592 LGA 3101 Children s Literature

LGA 3101 Children’s Literature______________________________________________________________________________________

Task 1: Justification of Selected Materials Based on Pedagogical Principles

1.0 Introduction

When children discover enjoyment in reading literature, time is enriched, not wasted

and they can even imagine themselves in new places. They began to develop favourable

attitudes towards reading and became appreciative at the same time. My seven years of

teaching experience has taught me a wide range of reading materials that is used to

monitor and respond to my pupils’ different learning needs, social needs and cultural

perspectives. These are used to accommodate the range of abilities and interests, and to

encourage diversity and autonomy in their own learning.

As required for this project task, I have identified useful materials for the three

genres of literature that are applicable in promoting a child’s language development,

building cognitive skills and also their social development. I will also briefly justify my

selections based on the pedagogical principles that are relatively suitable to a group of

year 3 pupils.

2.0 Nursery Rhymes

I have selected five nursery rhymes that I believed are suitable to be used for my

year 3 pupils. These nursery rhymes are intended as teaching aids for Unit 10 ‘Razin At

The Park’ as in the textbook.

The selected nursery rhymes are ‘Old Mc Donald’, ‘Baa Baa Black Sheep’, ‘Itsy

Bitsy Spider’, ‘Horsey Horsey and ‘Mary Had A Little Lamb’. I chose these particular simple

songs so that I can fully utilise the pupils’ particular strengths and previous knowledge in

supporting the lesson and thus make it more meaningful and have a great impact. I also

hoped to build a concrete fundamental learning concept on the pupils’ prior learning, which

may have taken place outside the school.

The rhythms presented in these nursery rhymes are simple and repeated. They can

be helpful for the year 3 pupils to remember the words while exercising their auditory

memory skills. The rhymes can act as a springboard to increase their interest to sing and

learn more about the animal world.


Another reason is that, these rhymes use some words or phrases that are not used

in everyday speech or concepts. For example, in ‘Horsey Horsey’ the phrase ‘clippetty

clop’ and ‘swish’ are used. Although they have no clear definition but they do mimic the

sound of the horse itself. Other than that, in ‘Mary Had A Little Lamb’ the word ‘lingered’

and ‘patiently’ are used. Although Malaysian pupils are not expose to these kind of words

everyday, but they are undeniably beneficial for them to know as it would increase their

vocabularies. In the future, these nursery rhymes will help the children to know how to

read and spell a word when the time comes.

3.0 Children Stories

In this genre, I have selected four simple stories. I prefer to choose a one page

length of stories because pedagogically speaking, they are easier to read and I could

actively seek a way to increase my pupils’ knowledge and interest through them. Giving

them a lengthy one would spoil the enjoyment of reading and the sense of appreciations

towards a good piece of literature.

My selections of stories are ‘The Ants and The Grasshopper’, ‘The Fox and The

Crow’, ‘The Tortoise and The Hare’ and ‘The Princess and The Pea’. These stories will be

given as enrichments or additional readings for theme ‘world of stories’ as they could be

used in a few subunits which available in the textbook.

Personally, I see children stories as a medium to teach the pupils about moral

lessons which will be planted in their young minds and that they can ponder upon as they

grow older. At a tender age of 9 years old, the pupils at this point are starting to make

connections between what they read to the real world. Through reading, the pupils can

freely provide their feedbacks or expressing ideas in the while-reading activities that

challenges them to review, reflect on and refine their understandings at various points in

the lesson.

What I hope to achieve through these literatures is to set extensions to tasks that

favour lateral thinking by asking them to guess the ending part. For example, in ‘The

Princess and The Pea’, the pupils must guess what happen to the princess before I

continue reading the story for them. Such adaptations also call for me to devise tasks that

ask for a variety of solutions from my pupils. Having said that, I should expect various


responses which would indicate how well they understood the first half of the text. At the

end, it is also encouraging the pupils to be discoverers, explorers and creators in a variety

of ways

Other than that, short stories help in the enhancement of children's imaginative

thinking which leads to creativity. By reflecting on my teaching experiences, I noticed that

children are being trained to think imaginatively even while listening or reading stories in

accordance to how the story describes the setting, characters, and events that took place

in the story. For example, in ‘The Tortoise and The Hare’ the pupils could tell other animals

in the audience which witnessing the race or how fast the hare could run as well as how

slow the tortoise could be at the beginning of the story.

4.0 Short Play

The short play that I have chosen is the classic fairytale ‘Cinderella’ which I adopted

from the playscripts from KIDSINCO.com. I strongly believed that conducting a short play

in the classroom could explicitly help my year 3 pupils to link new ideas that are useful in

producing a creative end product. To me, this is a good teaching strategy as in having

them to brainstorm or to generate ideas, then listing them out to encourage flexible and

coherent thoughts. Slowly, the pupils will develop the simple playscript of Cinderella into a

play that they completely understand and will whole-heartedly participate in.

What makes the Cinderella in a different league to me as compared to any other

children short plays is that the script is light, easy going and supported with a very

interesting storyline, plots that are easy to understand, simpler choice of words as well as

strong characters that most children are familiar with. This play will help to broaden their

perspective about activities, chores or affairs happening in other families in different parts

of the world beside their own.

I also prefer to go with this play as it will give the pupils some timely feedback

throughout making the simple props and while in rehearsal sessions. This is also a good

communicate approach to organize response from both players and the audience or the

rest of the class who are not involved directly in the play. Based on their feedbacks, I could

restructure the areas well or weakly handled in each of the stages to support further

learning and thus implement any necessary steps for improvement.


Task 2

1.0 Teaching Activity

Activity : Children Stories

Theme : World of Stories

Title : The fox and The Crow

Objective: 1. Name the animals shown in the video correctly.

2. Retell the story heard correctly.

Set Induction : Audio cues about a few familiar animal sounds including fox and crow.

Pre Reading :

Teacher focuses only on two animal sounds.

Pupils guess the name of the animals.

Teacher introduces and briefly explains the characteristics of the animals

by using pictures.

Teacher displays the pictures on the blackboard to assist reading.

While Reading:

Teacher reads the story, pauses a few times and asks the

pupils to predict what happen next.

Pupils respond accordingly.

Pupils take turns to read aloud.

Teacher distributes worksheet about true or false statement to

check on the pupils’ comprehension level.

Pupils read again and tick their answers.

Discussion about the characters and the storyline.

Post Reading:

Teacher distributes worksheet.

Pupils write the correct number in each blank to sequence the story.

Whole class discussion.

Pupils name the moral values and teacher justifies briefly.

Choral reading.

Closure :

Pupils share their feelings.

Enrichment : Worksheet- Comprehension Questions (without guidance and clues)

Remedial : Worksheet- Fill in the blanks.

2.0 Bibliotheraphy


By definition, bibliotherapy is an expressive therapy that uses an individual's

relationship to the content of books and poetry and other written words as therapy. In the

above lesson, I have identified three bibliotheraphy elements that I believe to be

appropriate and suitable with the story. They are:

To motivate the pupils in exercising good moral values.

To assist them in the development of perspective-taking.

To understand of the problems faced by the both animal characters in the

story.

The following discussion is based on my bibliotheraphic emphasis in the lesson and

not according to the order of the lesson development.

In my lesson, the major bibliotherapic element is emphasized in the post-reading

stage. After conducting the discussion on sequencing the sentences, I will divert their

attention into discussing the moral values that they think are suitable with the story. Here, I

will provide guidance so that they are able to list more than one value. Based on these

values, I will try to instil the benefits of being good to others so that their sense of

motivation is uplifted to do so.

The second and third bibliotheraphic elements are inserted during the discussion

which done in the while-reading activity. In my opinion, conducting a discussion of the

characters will help my pupils to understand the story better and also to know the

relationship between them. At this point, the pupils should be able to construct their own

perspective about the good and bad characters and will be able to express their feelings

towards these characters.

The same discussion also allows me to help the pupils view the story from both

sides of the characters. First, they will try to see the story through the fox’s side and later

diverted their focus to the crow’s and thus understanding the problems that faced by them.

In short, those are all three bibliotheraphic elements that I have identified from the

story. I hope these elements will be useful in attracting my pupils’ interest to attentively

read the story throughout the lesson and also to build up their sense of appreciation

towards any piece of literature in the future.

105991592 LGA 3101 Children s Literature

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