Storynory.com
Free Audio Stories For Kids
What is Storynory?
Storynory is a website wich provides free
audio stories, with transcript for children and of course adults can enjoy them
too. The website offers books and poems by classic authors, fairytales from all
around the world, myths and legends and original stories, all read by
professional actors. There is specific page for education which offers
suggestions of how the stories could be used in education. The website also
have a tool for translation which make it possible to get a specific word
translated in a text by clicking on it and choose what language you want the
word translated into.
How could it be used by teachers and pupils?
The stories are recommended for children
in age 8-11 years old but as well I as the author of the website think they
could be used for both younger and older learners depending on how you use them
and work with them.
The stories could be downloaded which
offer opportunity to listen to them however and whenever wanted and internet
connection will not be needed at the time for listening. If you have Ipods in
the school this could be used and the learners could be allowed to listen by
their selves and choose if they have to take a break or listen once more at any
part of the story. Ipads could be used and will make it possible for learners
to read the transcript while listening to the story and if there are an
internet connection at the time they could click on words they don’t understand
and get a translation of it to their native language. Of course Storynory could
be used for homework and actually I think a lot of parents do appreciate these
stories to.
There are lots of stories to choose
between and there comes one new every week. If you want 
to you can get the new story straight to your email.
to you can get the new story straight to your email.
There are plenty
of ways how Storynory could be used in education for teaching English and I
will give you some examples here.
Examples of how to use Storynory in education
Example 1, one lesson.
Start with telling them
what they are supposed to do during the lesson.
1. Listen to the story carefully. This could be
done in whole class or individually, depends on what technological recourses
you have access to and what are suitable for the children.
2. Make a word list of difficult vocabulary from the
story. I would suggest making this in pairs to get all pupils involved in the
task. Each pair then present their words and a mixed list could be set up on
the board in the classroom and could be translated by pupils and teacher
together.
3. Answer the questions on the worksheet you will get
after you have listened. I make questions adapted to what learning
goals I have set up for the task.
4. Please retell the story into own words or act the story
in groups. In this way they get opportunity to be creative and focus on meaning
further than form. They will also develop their ability to cooperate and to use
the spoken language in a motivated way.
When working with the
stories in this way they could improve children’s´ listening skills and
motivate the children to speak.
Example 2. Working with a story as a theme.
The stories could also be used to work
with as a theme where all lessons are about the story and its characters. You
can work with parts of the story to support the children’s understanding of the
whole story. To begin with, the children could get opportunity to imagine about
the characters as an introduction to the topic and then art could be used to advance their thoughts about as well the topic as the characters. When
listening to the story you can help the children to explore the emotions of the
characters through the story. The
children could reenact the story by role play or they could make their own
stories but with the same characters.
advance their thoughts about as well the topic as the characters. When
listening to the story you can help the children to explore the emotions of the
characters through the story. The
children could reenact the story by role play or they could make their own
stories but with the same characters.
When working with the stories as themes it
is easy to work interdisciplinary and lots of skills could be developed but of
course this postulates good plains of lessons with clear language learning
goals and a description of how to challenge them.
What a good ICT resource you have found! Teaching should give pupils plentiful exposure to language in use as well as opportunities to use it. It is important to bring in as much target language as possible in the classroom. This is why I definitely am going to use it. I think Storynory would be a wonderful way to cover pupils´ listening skills. Though, I wouldn’t use the transcripts to make sure the children are listening to the story instead of reading the story. If you need the transcript for another activity, like a follow up, you can just pick them up later.
ReplyDeleteThe possibility to download the stories is great and has many benefits. My experiences when using ICT in classrooms is to always have a back-up plan. Because internet connection, as many probably already experienced, is not always working as it should. But to overcome this issue, these stories can be downloaded. As you described, this makes it possible to listen to them however and whenever you want. The pupils can simply listen to the stories in their mp3 or smartphones.
You described a lesson (example1), which I like, especially in the part where the children are to make a list of difficult vocabulary from the story and the retelling of the story. Though, instead of translating them together with the teacher I would suggest to let the pupils have some time to figure it out for themselves. The pupils were supposed to work in pairs, so as an alternative; next step could be that the pupils switch places with each other, creating new pairs. According to Vygotsky, knowledge is distributed which makes collaborating necessary to achieve a holistic understanding. In the end it´s likely they have narrowed their lists down. Also, I think it´s important to avoid translation as a regular way of explaining words. Instead the teacher can use gestures, pictures etc. This approach also supports the pupils´ memorization of the words.
I had never heard about Storynory before but will definitely use it in the future. Actually, I have already downloaded some of the stories to my computer and my smartphone. I have also checked out the education page and found a podcast called Twister. It´s a series of tongue twisters, which I think could be useful to practicing pupils´ articulation.
Thank you for sharing!