Planting acorns - Luna's Reading Tree

Current progress

Back in April, to coincide with the start of  a new academic year here in Japan, we endeavoured on yet another project: Luna's Reading Tree. As our students develop their reading skills, we wanted a reminder within the classroom of their progress as means of evaluation for both student and teacher. Conveniently, it also adds to the decor!

As part of our reading curriculum, the Oxford Story Tree series has been a staple to many of our young learners as their first steps to reading in English and beyond. Having only become acquainted with Kipper and the gang relatively recently, I've thoroughly enjoyed their grand, and at times bizarre, adventures alongside my students.

The first step

Part of the reason this series has been such a hit with Luna is the language progression, each story builds on the vocabulary from the previous titles to allow students to expand their vocabulary without getting heavily bogged down with too many new words. Each series also comes with an audio CD, to listen in class or at home, and a workbook focusing on the key words from the story. Both bring a great wealth of additional materials/content for children to internalize the language.

The entire series spans 7 levels, with each level represented by a different colour, while at Luna we use the first four levels: red blue, green and orange. We believe this provides enough of a platform for our students to begin discovering their own titles and genres to explore.

The secret room looking lonely

Luna's Reading Tree represents all 28 titles, in the forms of leaves, from the 4 series, differentiated by the different colours. Each time you complete the story along with the workbook, you add a customised acorn to the relevant "leaf" to show off your accomplishments. Our goal is to have a luscious tree budding with vibrant energy, although our initial plan may not come to complete fruition as the Oxford Story Tree series are no longer available to order in Japan.

Never fear though as we still have some tricks up our sleeves and an opportunity to discover other fascinating stories to spark our students' imaginations.

Reading young learners, smiles all round

TGIF !!!

 I was really glad that my Friday class have got stuck into their Story Tree graded readers. We skipped the red series and leapt straight into the blue, and Kipper's disastrous Toys' Party. Squeels of protest as our new role model Kipper made a cake with milk (OK, apparently!) & beans, ketchup, corn flakes...of course "Mum is angry!"

As this is our first adventure with the readers, we spent a lesson getting used to the (great) workbook that comes with each title. A number of different activities that without guidance could put the brakes on before we even start. Once the ice broken there, had a hard time stopping them from trying to do everything in one go! (Essentially a 'do at home' extra that we review every now & again in class, act out or otherwise use in some way)

A cool song to incorporate here would be Super Simple Songs' "Broccoli Ice-cream", which was recommended to me last year by Ryan Hagglund during examiner training.

At the same time we also moved up a gear with a new class book (English Time 1, also from OUP) and I am delighted that the switch is 'just right'. I used the board as an in-between step - seeing new words (some, anyway) and knowing what they are (from the pictures), to 'owning them' as in adding them to their picture dictionary at the back of the book (too often never to be seen again). Books at one end of the room, to refer to as often as you like - the points go to the most methodical memory and not the fastest runner!

English Time 1, Unit 1 vocab race

I am not too concerned with lettering on the board (whole medium is awkward) just as long as legible. We did have a vote for neatest, though, just to sow a seed! The other penny dropped when they were then asked to find the pictures in their picture dictionary and to put the matching word next to it - whose writing did they copy :) An activity I like because it passively gets them to realise alphabet order. Next week? Hangman, of course!

By the stream

Mum is by the stream.

Kipper's teddy sits on the rug.

A frog is in the stream.

Three children are on the bridge. They drop sticks in the water.

Toru (10)