Reflection time...
After attending a course at Pilgrims, in Canterbury, puppet will then help us to create a context to
our Soares shares her introduce several topics. Students can get to know
experience and reflections about the use of all about the puppet’s country and town of origin,
puppets in the primary classroom. the food it eats, its likes and dislikes, its hobbies,
colleague
Fernanda
its friends (preferably other animals), etc.
Using Puppets in the ELT
Classroom
Bechler created a travel blog for her puppet Sally,
which
loves
travelling
to
English
speaking
countries. The use of the travel blog will definitely
At Pilgrims, in Canterbury, I attended the course enhance the students’ cultural background and
“Methodology and English Language for Primary develop their cultural awareness as they will learn
Teachers” and one of the themes we discussed new things about different countries. They will also
was the use of puppets. have the opportunity to read about the puppet’s
Puppets can be a remarkable resource in your adventures and write their own comments or ask
classroom. You can make them using several questions on the blog entries, thus using the
materials: paper bags, clothes pegs, gloves, English language in a real-world context. If
mittens, socks, wooden spoons, fingers, etc. Or students go on holidays to an English-speaking
you can be lucky enough to find one in a shop that country, they can take the puppet and take photos.
you feel that it’s suitable for your lessons. The texts could be written afterwards with the help
Children are mesmerized by these little friends.
They can be really helpful to make shy students
speak, because they are naturally curious and ask
lots of questions (a great name for a puppet: Mr.
Curious!) and make children laugh. You can also
use them for classroom management: when
students are misbehaving, the puppet amusingly
reprimands them and gets them back on track!
of their Teacher and classmates. And imagine
students’ enthusiasm if you allowed them to take
their little friend home for the weekend! In a
different project, students could also go on a tour
around the town with their puppet, take photos
next to famous sights and share them with other
students around the world.
Learning with puppets can be great fun!
Students don’t take it so personally, because it’s
not their Teacher reprimanding them – it’s their References
funny friend! Bechler, S. (2017). A travel blog for young
learners. Humanizing Language Teaching, Year
19, Issue 4, August 2017. Available at http://
old.hltmag.co.uk/aug17/sart01.htm
At Pilgrims, Sabrina Bechler – a German lecturer
at the University of Paderborn, Germany – showed
us how useful puppets can be and gave us great
ideas to use in the classroom. When you bring the
puppet to the classroom for the first time, why not
create a bit of mystery and bring it inside a box so
that students can try to guess what’s inside? Our
Sally’s Blog. A kangaroo’s trip around the world.
www.sallystravelblog.wordpress.com associated to
the
magazine Sally’s
World,
published
by Oldenbourg.
F ERNANDA S OARES | APPI MEMBER NO . B 7259 |
A GRUP . E SCOLAS F RANCISCO SANCHES | B RAGA