Young English Storywriters
This weblog aims to teach ESL children at the age of 10~12 to write their own stories. We design two routes for learners to choose which one they prefer: one is to write about the character first, and then the plot; the other one is to write the plot first, and then the character later. We make use of multimedia tools, such as video clips, lovely pictures, and PowerPoint files. We also introduce some relevant websites, which we believe can complement our teaching to train children's story writing ability. Just come and enjoy it! Please click here: I am young but I can write in English (by Celia and Julie).
Posts
5 comments:
Comments from Abby, Cherrie, Christina, Vercy
I love the idea of constructing a blog for children to learn how to write because it can turn the dull process of writing into an interesting and active one. And I can see Julie and Celia’s hard work from the design of the whole “learning process/steps” and how they organize the blog. There is no denying that you’ve created a little world for children to learn how to write stories by following your introduction and instructions. I think it’s thoughtful for you write a bilingual introduction. Besides, setting two routes for children to choose according to their needs and habits of writing is so impressive. I can see how much you two devoted to making a clearly and organized blog. After all these kisses, I am going to give you some kicks! Haha~
Here are my humble suggestions:
--Since the blog is for kids, I think it’s better for you to make your instructions and explanations simpler. And also, when you compose the guidelines, you might try to use short sentences and easy words (for example, I noticed that you had used the word “sequence” in your blog, I do not think children know this word). What’s more, you may enlarge the words on the blog, or I am afraid that parents would not let their kids to learn from this blog on grounds of health (it might hurt children’s eyes).
--You’ve provided kids with some good websites and video clips for helping them to write a story, nevertheless, I think it would be better if you can add more authentic websites for them. As I know, there are lots of websites related to this topic; I believe you can add them into your blog to enrich its supplementary links.
All in all, you’ve done a good job. Keep running this blog and make the content richer, I believe children will love it!!!
Since they are using weblog as their format, we expect that they will provide much information on their blog which they really did! Their target users will be young kids with low English proficiency. First, we think the picture they put on the home page is cute which may draw children’s attention, but when we look at the content we find those words are too small for children. This site is designed for children and wants them to learn something, but it will not be good if children’s eyesight is weakening while they are reading those tiny words. Then, since this is a weblog and there’s an interactive function that children can leave comments and ask some questions, we are curious that what language they should use while they are posting their responses. Is English recommended or is it ok in Chinese? Besides, it is really good that you guys put much information on this blog, but it seems that some links are not suitable for children. The language levels of those websites are too difficult for them unless there is an instructor to help them, but we think this site is mainly for children to learn at home. Last, we suggest this group add more pictures or drawing into their blog, since there is only text which is not that attractive.
(Anita, Eleanor and Mandy)
(Response to the comment of Christina's group)
Thanks for your constructive suggestions, which I really appreciate. But in fact we have enlarged the type font a bit, or you still think they are too small? I have also canceled a website link which is not so related to our teaching objective. I am wondering about other more authentic websites. Could you provide me some relevant and more authentic websites as far as you know, so that I can add them to our weblog? Thanks for your assistance a lot! :)
(Response to the comment of Eleanor’s group)
I want to explain that if you have seen one of our posting “Objective of this Weblog,” you may find that some of the websites we have provided are for teachers to teach their students. This weblog primarily teaches children to write an English story of their own, but it also can be ESL teachers’ teaching material to teach their young student. Namely, teachers can adopt and adapt this weblog as their teaching material to educate their students, instead of letting students explore this weblog alone.
We encourage students to interact with us in English, but it is also acceptable for them to leave us message in Chinese since their English proficiency are not so well. One learner has left us message in Chinese, and we replied her in English.
Thanks for your valuable suggestions, anyway. :)
Evaluation
1.Creativity:
Though the idea of writing a story is not very creative since our group also chooses it as the task of our webquest so it’s a rather common activity for language learning; however, the idea of creating two characters (Celia angel & Julie rabbit) to lead the children into this blog is very thoughtful and cute!
2.Content:
The content provide a lot of information, but it’s not very complete. Maybe I should say it’s a bit fragmentary. Sometimes it’s very hard for the elementary students to focus on so many separated information, so I think it should be arranged in a better way.
3.Target:
It’s suitable for the 10-12 elementary students. First, this blog provides the task itself and the instruction, too. If the students do not know what to do, they have a place to go. Writing a story is a very flexible task, so each student can create the story based on their language proficiency.
4.General:
Using a blog as a tool for English language learning is not easy! It’s very possible to make it too complicated while editing, so to simplify it is a challenge! I think this group had tried their best and it’s very brave to try this out!
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