"The Role of Puppetry in Teaching- Explanation with my Practical Activities"

Lesson: The Cunning Fox

Class: 3rd grade

Skills: Reading, Speaking, and Creative Expression

Subject: English.

                           Puppetry in Teaching. Puppetry as a teaching tool provides teachers with one of the most inexpensive aids in the classroom. The benefits from puppets are many. They allow children to escape into an imaginary world. They are able to use puppets to work out their own emotional problems. In kindergarten and primary classrooms: Puppets are a good way to deliver information to students and help them retain it. Student use of puppets helps them to retell information they've learned and remember it. Teachers can use puppets to demonstrate proper pronunciation to help students develop language skills.  

                    

                         This is one of my best teaching methods to teach a story. I proudly say that a good method always gives an excellent output irrespective of the standards. So I have been working on different teaching methods and materials to teach my government school children who belong to the rural area. And I have been preparing creative teaching material according to the lesson to create an English classroom environment and overcome the fear of the English language. The material helps me a lot to create speaking and reading opportunities to my class children.                               

                          

                      Research shows that using puppets in education has many benefits especially with language skills. Children can practice their oral speaking skills by telling a story to a puppet or explaining words or expressions. If the puppet is “confused” and doesn’t understand something, the child can explain and show the puppet what he has learned. A 2015 study investigated the learning impact of puppets in a kindergarten classroom. Their findings showed a tremendous impact of puppet use on a child’s education. The puppet helped to motivate students and involve them in the learning process, it created an emotional relationship with students, and added a playful mood to the learning environment. Additionally, the puppet enabled teachers to elaborate more on the topic they were covering, have more direct conversation with students, and maintain positive behavior in the classroom (Ronit, 2015).

                             I have found the frame on the Facebook page "Teach English-Fun learning." and prepared it. And the characters in the lesson "The Cunning Fox" added extra flavor to the great success of the lesson.

                        Puppets are a good way to deliver information to students and help them retain it. Student use of puppets helps them to retell information they've learned and remember it. Teachers can use puppets to demonstrate proper pronunciation to help students develop language skills. 

                             I have prepared the puppets of Cat, Fox, River, and Fish to teach the lesson. Later I have started teaching using the puppets and minimized the usage of mother tongue. Next time, I have taught the lesson entire story in the English only. Children were attracted a lot and started reciting the sentences when I show and move the puppets. Later I have allotted the characters and dialogues to my children to do the puppet show. It's unbelievable, they presented the story very neatly and so easily.                         

 

                     You can watch my children's presentation in the below video. 

So I would like to say that,  teaching method is more important than everything to overcome the hurdles of the language teaching, especially to the rural area children.  

                                        This was a famous story of a turtle and storks, who made a clever plan to take the turtle along with them. So to transact this story I prepared scene wise puppets and backgrounds to understand the lesson very easily. Once they visualize the story they can easily understand the difficult words and sentences. And also no need to switch into the mother tongue.
                                       As usual, I started the story by asking interactive questions and elicited the related vocabulary. Later I asked my children to describe the scenes and guessing the story while I was changing the backgrounds and puppets. They responded well and described the scenes and narrated the story in their words.

There are so many ways to use puppets in the classroom! children need ways to express their imaginary feelings and interests in class. Puppetry allows for this and so much more!