In our class we use often reading stories and traditional tales in Italian language, working with drawings and discussions. We believe that discussions among children, with circle time modality is a fundamental mean to improve learning and reflection, aiming to open minds and cooperative learning.

Activities STONE SOUP

Objectives: Introducing new structures for asking ( food): Can I have... Have you got...Food words.

Lesson one ( 1 hour)

Warming up : with flash cards repeating of words related to food. Then we discuss about what we need to prepare a soup. Children write down notes of ingredients they think of ( carrots, potatoes, meat...)

Introduction setting

The class moves to an open space: chidren stand in a circle and the teacher starts telling them to imagine that in the middle of the circle there is a wonderful glass circle. They have to pick it up all together and raise it, paying lot of attention because it's so fragile... Children concentrate on others children movement to cooperate in moving the circle up and down. When the circle lies on the ground, they sit down and listen to the story.

The teacher puts a stone in the middle of the circle and starts to tell the story about the Stone soup. There are so many version of this tale, a classic educational tale, all around Europe. An ancient one was told by a famous Italian writer, Italo Calvino, who collected tradional tales. The Italian version is about a monk, looking for food, perhaps in Middle Age time.

Telling the story

In class third I used a different version: the story was about an English soldier who, after the Second World War, wonders around small villages in Italy to go back home. He's hungry, but people doesn't want to help him, because everyone is hungry. So he pretends to have a magical stone to cook a soup with.

The version I told was in Italian language , but the soldier spoke in English asking for " carrots", " beans", " chicken"...

Lessono two ( one hour)

Retelling the story

The children reapeted the story in Italian, using the English words for Soup ingredients.

Drama

Chidren divided in group to act the scenes. In the role-play activities they exchange the role of the soldier and of the old woman, so that everyone could practice basic English structures.

Homework:the children had to retell the story to their parents; in a parents meeting some days after, I could check with parents, children skills ( and their parents' comprehension skill)

Lesson three ( half an hour)

Drawings. All together we decided how to divide the story into sequences; each child had to make a drawing to represent the sequence

( some of them worked in groups)

Lesson four ( more days, during the school lessons)

Teacher took digital photos of the drawings. Then she organized the power point presentation. Pupils wrote the text of the story in Italian using the class computer; the English texts were written using different colours; they learnt how to check spelling in English texts. Then text and picures were joined in a presentation.