A is for Acting, Audio Books and Appliqué

This year my A to Z Challenge has a double theme.  The first focuses on the resources and teaching that may help children with special educational needs learn more effectively and the second is to do with my crafting likes and ideas.

Acting allows children to take on other personas, see things from another perspective, have the chance to re-read and learn lines, encourages confidence and voice projection.  There are many well known actors today that struggled with dyslexia at school and learning lines helped them cope with the daily struggle in the classroom.  I like to be able to film children acting in the classroom so that they have the opportunity to see themselves and improve on their own performance.  Once the initial awkwardness wears off most children love the opportunity to act out scenes and learn dialogue to present to others.  They are also very encouraging as a group to those who are willing to try whatever their possible learning difficulties.  Acting should not be confined to literacy classes either as there are many opportunities in other subjects such as religious education, geography, history and science for stories to be told and learnt relating to these disciplines.

Did your teacher use acting to help you learn when you were at school?  What can you remember acting in or what roles has your child played in at school?  

Audio Books are a useful resource at whatever age or ability in school as they allow a student to access literature that may be beyond their reading skill level.  Sometimes allowing children access to the text as well improves their ability to read more fluidly as they follow along as the audio book plays.  I also think that the children learn to key in their hearing to different readers rather than the sole voice of their teacher and they concentrate harder.  I always remember the awe and wonder of my class when they heard Ted Hughes reading his book The Iron Man - knowing this was the voice of the actual person who wrote the book meant a lot to them.  I also allow children during certain audio book lessons to draw whilst they listen so that they "hear" the detail in the words and understand how an author paints a picture - these lessons have been very effective in an inclusive classroom.

Appliqué is a way to decorate fabric by cutting out shapes and then stitching around the sides of them straight on top of the background piece of material.  It allows greater detail to be added than by simply quilting fabrics together and there are examples of this craft going back thousands of years.  I have found this to be a way children can decorate fabric items such as bags or glove puppets and once we made some applique banners for our new music room decorated with appliqued drums.  Unfortunately, I couldn't find any photos of my old school projects but I did make an applique bag for my daughter when she first started school to keep her pumps and PE kit in with her name appliqued on one side and a heart on the other.

As I did last year, I will be offering some new freebies from my TpT store to coincide with the A to Z Challenge and would welcome any feedback either on the store site itself or here.

This is my new Alien High Frequency word pack for Reception class so click on the button below if you would like to download.