Fiction Genre: “The Boy and the Fish”

Stories are ways to transfer ideas from individual to another, as said by (Brown, 2012).

Children’s stories always have moral elements that benefit the children in a number of ways.

One of the biggest educational benefits of children’s stories doubles as an emotional benefit as

well. Stories can teach children different healthy coping mechanisms. For example, stories may

help children to cope with personal problems such as divorce, abuse, or death. The stories may

present problems and solutions in a way that the children will easily comprehend and at the

same time neutralizes their fear factor. In much the same way, stories for children can be used

to help children deal with irrational fears, which are often figments of the child’s imagination.

Picture 1

The book I have chosen is ‘The Boy and the Fish’ retold by Susan Akass published by Story

Worlds. In my planning, I would use this book for year 1 under the theme of World of Stories.

The content standard states in (4.3) By the end of the 6-year primary schooling, pupils will be

able to plan, organize and produce creative works for enjoyment while the learning standard is

(4.3.1) Able to produce simple creative works with guidance based on stories. No doubt, the use

of this story is in line with the content standard and the learning standard outlined by the

Ministry of Education Malaysia.

First and foremost, I choose this particular book because of the colourful layout and the one

sentence story. I find this very suitable for the year 1 students as they are still young so the

simple sentences would be easy for them to understand. The big and colourful pictures are able

to convey ideas more effectively. According to Morill (2012), pictures in the books are fun to look

at, captivating and help to stimulate children’s imagination. This is why I strongly believe that the

colourful pictures in this book will help to arouse the curiosity of the students and

subconsciously motivate them to read more books. Hence, when the students are motivated to

learn and understand the story, the teacher is successful to enable the students to acquire and

integrate knowledge in accordance to the developmental learning as taken from the official

webpage of (Prince George County School, 2010).

Beyond that, I see a particular pedagogical potential where this story is almost similar to the

famous nursery rhyme song entitled ‘One, Two, Three, Four, Five, Once I Caught a Fish Alive’.

Since my target group is of age 7 years old, this song will be useful and entertaining for the

students. I have a vision to use the song after the teacher and the students have read the book

aloud together. The song is to emphasize the significant event in the story where the boy caught

a big fish but had to let it go. Conrad (2007) also noted that music is a fundamental element to

teach in the classroom because music helps to strengthen memory, calms the students and

attract full and active participation from the students. The song is catchy, easy to sing. The

ends rhyme and this also exposes the students to phonetic sounds system in an indirect

manner and this is useful for a long term English language development. Michalak (2011) wrote

the importance of mastering the sound systems of a target language to be able to speak well.

The song goes like this,

“One, two, three, four, five,

Once I caught a fish alive,

Six, seven, eight, nine, ten,

Then I let it go again.

 

Why did you let it go?

Because it bit my finger so.

Which finger did it bite?

This little finger on the right.

 

One, two, three, four, five,

Once I caught a crab alive,

Six, seven, eight, nine, ten,

Then I let it go again.

 

Why did you let it go?

Because it bit my finger so.

Which finger did it bite?

This little finger on the right.

 

One, two, three, four, five,

Once I caught an eel alive,

Six, seven, eight, nine, ten,

Then I let it go again.

 

Why did you let it go?

Because it bit my finger so.

Which finger did it bite?

This little finger on the right.”

As you can see that the song also includes numbers and counting. Therefore, it is very useful

and caters to the needs of the year 1 students.

This book has many pedagogical potentials where the teacher can develop many types of

activities such as counting numbers, singing a song or even an interactive read alouod with the

students. All fo these fun and enjoyable activities are important to cultivate motivation among

students to learn.

Based on the given reasons above, I see there are many advatanges when using this book. To

sum it up, a teacher needs to be very careful when selecting stories to be taught in the

classroom because stories play a vital role in the growth and development of children. The

books they read and the characters they get to know can become like friends. It’s also good for

children to understand that books are a useful source of information and that good reading skills

are important for success in their future lives. Reading stories also helps children with their

confidence levels, coping with feelings and language and learning.