Appunti di laboratorio di lingua inglese, Laboratorio di lingua inglese, Francesca Mancini

Leo Lionni and his stories

Leo Lionni was born in 1910 and he has written many stories. Leo Lionni was an engineer for a computer company. When he retired, he came to Italy in Chianti, where he died in 2010. In his free time, he loved painting and creating stories. A lot of stories are populated by animals.

Language learning research

There is a lot of research about how people learn the language. The greatest discoveries are American, except for Piaget, who was Swiss. We know a lot about how we learn a first language. A child learns his first language just by listening. We know that a child, when he is 6 months old, starts to babble, but when he is 12 months old, he can say “mama” and “good” as his first words. When he is 18 months old, he can speak quite complete sentences.

Piaget's theory of learning

Piaget was a psychologist and an educator. His learning theory was based on different stages of development. According to Piaget, children learn when they interact with the world around them. Children learn through assimilation: they create a sort of bag of solutions. The accommodation is when the child tries to change his behavior to solve problems. A child learns with the sensory-motor stage: watching, hearing, touching, tasting. Afterward, children become able to categorize, classify, and establish relationships. They actively explore the environment, such as the house, family relationships, and the school. But Piaget mainly forgot to consider social factors and interactions with other human beings.

Vygotskij's contribution

Vygotskij considered social development for the child. Children learn with the help and the interaction of adults. As a consequence of Vygotskij and Bruner’s studies on the development of the child, a methodology was worked out which takes into consideration that a child learns by internalizing the results of interactions with others and peers. What is this methodology?

Vygotskij was known for the theory of the Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD). The zone is a distance between what the child knows and what the child is supposed to be able to know with the help of his family, a good teacher. Interaction with peers is the most important element in the children's group.

Teaching methodologies

Which methodologies can teachers use to develop strategies in children? Bruner calls this assistance and support from the adult as scaffolding.

The art of storytelling

A storyteller is a person who is able to capture attention. In the Anglo-Saxon countries, an old tradition of storytelling was born. Storytellers have always existed: in the USA, in England, there were clubs where members loved to tell stories in front of other people. A good storyteller cannot be considered boring by other people. A good teacher should love to tell stories.

Frederick by Leo Lionni

Frederick is a story of a small mouse who lives in a big mice family in an abandoned farm in a barn. Frederick, a field mouse, did not collect food for the winter like his friends did. They often asked him what he was doing. He would say he was collecting sun rays, colors, and words for the winter. His friends did not understand and continued working. When winter came, and they went to their winter hideout, the food supply reduced, and the mice were very sad because they had no more food. It was Frederick who lifted them up with the sun rays, colors, and poetic words he had collected before winter, which helped all his friends survive that winter.

Frederick, un topo di campagna, non raccoglieva cibo per l'inverno come fanno i suoi amici. Spesso gli chiedevano cosa stesse facendo. Stava raccogliendo i raggi del sole, i colori e le parole per l'inverno. I suoi amici non lo capivano e continuavano a lavorare. Quando venne l'inverno, e si rifugiarono nel loro nascondiglio invernale, le provviste di cibo diminuirono insieme ai loro spiriti. Fu Frederick che li sollevò con i raggi del sole, i colori e le parole poetiche che aveva raccolto prima dell’inverno, che aiutarono tutti i suoi amici a sopravvivere all’inverno.

Fish is Fish by Leo Lionni

The protagonists of the story are a fish and a frog. Avanotto (in Italian) and minnow (in English) is the name of the little baby of the fish. Girino (in Italian) and tadpole (in English) is the name of the little baby of the frog. Minnow and tadpole are destined to grow in two different ways. The tadpole will have very long legs and, when the frog is ready, it can live in the pond.

The story is about a minnow and a tadpole. Time goes on, and the fish grows into a larger fish, and the tadpole into a frog. Finally, the frog is able to leave the pond, but he returns to tell his old friend about the world. The fish imagines the birds as colorful fish with wings, the cow as a hilarious furry fish with horns and udders, and the people as fish in clothing with hair. Of course, the fish wants to see these amazing things, so he jumps out. He discovers that he needs to be in the water to survive. The frog saves him. In the end, both fish and frog are happy with their own unique worlds. The fish tells the tadpole: "You were right ... fish is fish."

La storia parla di un avanotto e un girino. Il tempo passa e il pesce diventa un pesce più grande e il girino una rana. Alla fine, la rana è in grado di lasciare lo stagno, ma torna a raccontare al pesce del mondo. Il pesce si immagina gli uccelli come pesci colorati con le ali, la mucca come un pesce peloso esilarante con le corna e mammelle, e le persone come pesci vestiti con i capelli. Naturalmente il pesce vuole vedere queste cose incredibili, così salta fuori. Scopre che ha bisogno di stare nell’acqua per sopravvivere. La rana lo salva. Alla fine, il pesce e la rana sono felici nei loro mondi unici. Il pesce dice al girino: “Avevi ragione ... il pesce è il pesce”.

Using the English language

There are two ways in which I can use the English language. I can use the English language for teaching and, using the point of view of popular, to work on something also through English.

Teaching skills

How to access your thinking skills? The test TSA (Thinking Skills Assessment) tests problem-solving skills, including numerical and spatial reasoning. Critical thinking skills include understanding arguments and reasoning using everyday language. Students don’t need any familiarity with specific tests or theoretical frameworks - they’re simply being tested on their ability to think through problems and arguments, critically and logically.

• TSA assesses a general academic aptitude that applies to a wide range of different countries, from Geography to Politics, providing a benchmark that all applicants can be measured against, regardless of their background, nationality, gender, or qualifications.
• Offers a vital additional selection filter for courses that typically attract a large field of high-achieving applicants.
• Is useful for assessing the suitability of applicants to courses which attract candidates from a wide variety of subject backgrounds.
• Correlates with future academic achievement: research shows a strong positive relationship between TSA scores and on-course success.

Every book of pedagogy has a chapter dedicated to Bloom. The 6 descriptors of thinking ability developed by Bloom and revised about 20 years later by Anderson are:

These skills are divided into two levels: the first three are the low level (remembering, understanding, and applying) and the second three are the high level (analyzing, evaluating, and creating). In 1956, Bloom developed the taxonomy to describe the domain of critical thinking. In order to propose higher forms of thinking in education, these are the bases of pedagogy. We use them when we design education. Bloom identified three domains of educational activities:

• Cognitive: mental skills (Knowledge)
• Affective: growth in feelings or emotional areas (Attitudes)
• Psychomotor: manual or physical skills (Skills)

But there are some subcategories. The verbs which can stay in the range of remembering are: recognizing, recalling, listing, describing, identifying, retrieving, locating, naming, finding.

Sample sentence starters and potential activities

• What happened after? Make a list of the main events of the story.
• How many? What animals were in the story?
• Can you name? Make a shopping list.
• Can you recognize? Write something in a diary.
• Who discovered? Create a timeline.
• Do you know when? Play a memory game.

The verbs which can stay in the range of understanding are: interpreting, exemplifying, classifying, summarizing, inferring, comparing, explaining, and distinguishing.

Sample sentence starters and potential activities

• Can you write in your own words? Retell the story in your own words.
• Can you explain? Make a short summary.
• Try to classify. Search for synonyms.
• What is your interpretation? Interpret a work of art.
• What do you mean by? Describe an experience.
• Can you rephrase? Classify why.
• Draw a story map.

The verbs which can stay in the range of applying are: executing, working out, producing, completing, organizing, implementing, making preparations.

Sample sentence starters and potential activities

• Can you group by characteristics such as? Retell the story in your own words.
• Try to work out a graphic. Produce something similar.
• Can you organize? Organize in sequences.
• How can you implement? Complete this chart.
• Which factors would you change if? Can you distinguish between?
• Can you execute according to the given instructions? Work out a plan.
• Organize a poster showing.

The verbs which can stay in the range of analyzing are: differentiating, focusing, underlining, outlining, structuring, integrating, finding.

Sample sentence starters and potential activities

• What do you see as other possible outcomes? Design a questionnaire to gather information.
• Can you distinguish between? Write a commercial to sell a new product.
• What could happen if? Find the differences in.
• Can you develop? Organize.
• Try to underline. Make a family tree to show the relationship.
• Can you select? Develop an experiment.
• Try to underline the most important sentence.

The verbs which can stay in the range of evaluating are: assess, decide, argue, conclude, judge, test, score, critique.

Sample sentence starters and potential activities

• Is there a better solution to? Form a panel to discuss views.
• Do you think is a good or a bad thing? Express your opinion on a specific issue.
• How do you feel if? Find advantages/disadvantages.
• Collect, discuss, and interpret data.
• What do you think about? Draw inferences from data.
• How effective are?

The verbs which can stay in the range of creating are: arrange, combine, create, design, invent, hypothesize, develop, plan, produce, construct.

Sample sentence starters and potential activities

• Can you design a? Invent a new ending.
• What would happen if? Create a new product.
• Can you create a new and unusual use for? Write about your feelings in relation to.
• Write a role play.
• How many ways can you? Sell an idea.
• Can you develop a proposal which would?

Gardner's Multiple Intelligences

We have to help children to learn to think and learn to learn. Learning needs to be constructive and situated.

Verbal/Linguistic intelligence

• Enjoy listening, but are always ready to talk.
• Love poetry, music, dialogues, skits, debates.
• Learn through verbal instructions.
• Discuss different characters' points of view.