This experience is based on the well-known fairytale, Little Red Riding Hood.
Children learn to analyse the meanings of various aspects of the story and in response to this analysis, create a soundscape using musical instruments to accompany the story. This experience should be differentiated depending on the individual child/group level.
This learning experience plan relates to:
- emergent literacy
- language and emergent literacy learner (36-60 months)
- learning focus: making meaning and expressing ideas through texts
- teaching practice: performing arts.
Collect information
- What information has been gathered as evidence to inform this experience?
Links to VEYLDF
Outcome 5: communication
Children engage with a range of texts and get meaning from these texts:
- Explore texts from a range of different perspectives and begin to analyse the meanings.
Children express ideas and make meaning using a range of media:
- Use the creative arts, such as drawing, painting, sculpture, drama, dance, movement, music and story-telling, to express ideas and make meaning.
Victorian Curriculum levels F-2: literature
- Share feelings and thoughts about the events and characters in texts.
Learning intentions
- For children to develop the ability to evaluate a text.
- For children to express ideas and understandings through music.
Assessment of learning
Learning is demonstrated when children:
- talk about their feelings, thoughts and responses to the Red Riding Hood story. E.g. “I don’t like the wolf because he is scary”
express ideas related to the story through the use of musical instruments:
- e.g. child loudly beats the drum to represent the scary wolf or generates ideas about how the instrument should be played (e.g. fast/slow, loud/soft) in relation to specific parts of the story.
Resources
- book or YouTube Clip of The Little Red Riding Hood
- whiteboard and marker (not essential)
- various musical instruments which could express a range of feelings and portray various characters (drums, bells, cymbals, maracas, xylophone).
Group size(s)
Small group (two-five children) or medium sized group, if appropriate.
Differentiation
Differentiation should be based on prior assessment of the child/children’s communication skills. Examples of differentiation:
- offering the story in a child’s home language (e.g. on a CD) if they are new to learning English, and combining this with hands on opportunities to make and express meaning with instruments.
- for a child who is analysing the meaning of stories with ease, the educator could extend their ability to re-tell stories by offering the opportunity to re-tell some or all of the story alongside the soundscape created by the other children. The child could be encouraged to express meaning through volume, rate and pitch.
Experience process
Clearly articulate the learning intention:
- introduce the experience by explaining that children will read/watch/listen to Little Red Riding Hood and while doing so they should think about the story and how it makes them feel and think.
- Discuss how musical instruments will be used to create a soundscape of this story and provide explanations as required.
Read the story of Little Red Riding Hood incorporating the following strategies to facilitate the learning in focus:
- talk to the children about whether they are familiar with the story and what they already know and understand about what happens, the characters, and so on.
- during the story, ask children questions which focus on their responses to characters, specific events and the story overall. E.g. “What was your favourite part?”, “What did you think about…?”
- encourage the children to make predictions about what may happen next in the story and why.
- if listening to the story, encourage the children to close their eyes and imagine what the characters look like, how it smells in the woods and/or what grandma’s house looks like – invite them to share their ideas and visualisations.
- as appropriate, write specific words or record pictures on a whiteboard to support children’s ability to recall their ideas for the next part of this experience – the creation of a soundscape.
Summarise and clarify children’s thoughts, feelings and responses to the story and introduce the musical instruments:
- play each instrument for the children to listen to and encourage them to explore the instruments, talking about what the sounds make us feel or think about in relation to the story.
- encourage the children to talk/think through the story part by part and assign music throughout. e.g. “Then she walks off through the woods, she is feeling happy.” “We could use this sound to show she is happy.”
- use questioning to encourage the above. e.g. “So most of us felt scared of the wolf, what instrument do we think sounds scary?”
- To consolidate and assess understanding, play out the whole soundscape and have the children explain decisions they made in relation to sounds associated with characters, actions, and settings. Educators may choose to invite family members or other children/educators from the service to listen to the soundscape and story and have children explain their thinking to the ‘audience’.
Going further
This experience can be extended by creating a play of Little Red Riding Hood with the children. In doing this, children would be required to draw on their understanding of the story to develop a play.
This could involve selecting props, costumes, creating backdrops, music and assigning and acting out various roles in the play. Families, staff and children from within the service could be invited to attend and formal invitations and posters could be created to advertise the event.
Reflect and review
Reflective questions for educators may include:
- What learning has occurred? How do you know?
- What have you realised about the child’s interests, knowledge, and capabilities?
- In discussion with colleagues, what would you plan next to consolidate or extend children’s learning?
Additional and alternate resources for this learning experience
The following can be in the form of books, internet clips or audio books/cds:
- Jack and the Beanstalk
- The Gingerbread Man
- The Little Red Hen
- Hansel and Gretel
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