TOBY and I – first reading – English as a second language

TOBY and I – first reading – English as a second language

This whole past school year I have struggled between the desire to give my class (6-7 years old kids) the pleasure of reading in English, and between the unpleasant habit of the English words to be written in a different way than they are spoken. My little students were learning to read and write in their native language (Italian), and my last wish was to add more difficulties to this task.

During the school lessons we have focused mainly on spoken English (songs, games, speaking and comprehension, role playing, etc). We have also written some English words (during our English Alphabet lessons): very simple words like CAT, PIG, RED, DOG, which are written as they are spoken. It gave my little students a lot of satisfaction to be actually able to “write in English!”. We have also played the Scrabble game, always with very simple words.

Eventually I had the idea of writing these simple words down, in order to be able to use many of them and to offer to my kids a large variety of them. I organized them in a sort of table. Here it is:

As the days were getting hotter and hotter, and the school year was drawing to its end, I went to several bookshops and searched for a simple book for my students to read during the summer holidays. I couldn’t find any that would be simple enough. So why not make one myself?

Quite quickly, TOBY AND I saw the light of this world. I wanted to create a simple story, possibly with kids and animals, a cosy nice world to enter when reading. Nothing complicated, nothing sophisticated. Something that a kid can easily understand.

Thinking of the story (short paragraphs to be placed on one page each), quite naturally, pictures of it sprang inside my mind and I knew they had to be an important and non-detatchable part of the story – that is if I wanted the kids to really like it.

Now, I’m not an excellent artist myself, even if I can draw quite decent pictures to accompany my lessons (especially when I train at home before), but that was not good enough. I felt that the children should love the pictures in the book. Well, I remembered one year at a primary school when I worked with a really nice colleague, Angela. During my lessons, I was explaining and Angela was drawing on the blackboard pictures that could help the kids to understand the lesson. (Kids in Italy learn some subjects – e.g. science, geography, art – in English as a second language, starting at a primary school.) We really had fun during the lessons that year, teachers and kids.

And that’s how the pictures and the story were born.

And here is the story book (I have put some blank pictures on the last pages, for the children to colour, if they wish to).

If you like it and use it for your kids, please give me a feedback!