Here’s a quick follow-up to my review of Stories Without End (Taylor Sapp, Alphabet Publishing).
As you may have read, I thought this was great resource which could be easily adapted to my own context. Here is an example of how I adapted one of the stories.
The resources as they are include a few lead-in questions related to the story content, a bit of vocab pre-teaching, the story, and some creative follow-up tasks.
I bulked these out a bit and created the following sequence around the text called ‘Spooky House’ (in which some kids are deciding whether or not to enter a scary looking house). This was for A2/B1-ish level. I taught it at Primary (without the grammar bit) and also Secondary (full content). Worked well for both.
First, a bit more orientation to the text via a picture prompt, and a chance to activate prior knowledge…
A bit more of that, but in a fun way. First, make notes…
Then (you know me!) a role play!
Then into the actual story (very short). Read and retrieve basic info…
Some comprehension stuff. Allow students to make it their own. Then some personal response…
Bring the text to life a bit…
Get a bit meaty on the old vocab front. I’d edit or omit the ‘convince’ one, wasn’t that happy with it tbh. The others worked alright.
Getting a bit EXTREME on the vocab front! Why not, quite a lot of good language in this short text…
Then into the boring stuff… Trying to make it fun obviously.
Fun follow-up task… Might need an edit (at/on the scene, etc). Make it your own!
Success criteria if you’re that way inclined…
So, there you have it. You can do a lot with 300 good words. Sapp’s book is full of very exploitable texts. Highly recommended, easily one of the best books I’ve reviewed. I love independent publishers like this – Alphabet, Prosperity, etc… They’re coming up with some gems.
You can download the basic resource below as a Word doc – it was a Google doc.
Can’t upload the Active Inspire flipchart for some reason, but if you’re a dinosaur like me and want it then get in touch.
Story is copyright Taylor Sapp/Alphabet Publishing
Categories: General, Lesson Ideas, other, reviews
ELT Planning 
Thanks, Peter, this is great. I have the book, and teaching some groups now (adult Ls), so might look for some stories in there too. The roleplay in exc 4, do you get your sts to write it? I love it how with online mats I can make them as long as I need without worrying about how much paper I will have to feed the photocopier. Highlighting in various colours is great in online mats. I also do insert tables for dialogues to be written to make sure sts write the required number of lines and use different colours for the two people in the roleplay. Yesterday I got my sts to write out the telephone dialogue between the captain of Ever Given and his wife after the ship got blocked, which was fun:) Perhaps you could do a post about the differences in writing materials for the online environment vs books. That would be interesting. Cheers for the ideas! K.
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