Whiteboard Stories

Whiteboard Stories

Board Stories

Let us say for example that the flashcards / target vocaulary is for adverbs:

Carefully, Carelessly, Quickly, Slowly, Loudly, Quietly, Badly, Well, Hard

Tom always does homework [carelessly]. “You should write your homework [carefully]!” says Mum. Tom always talks [slowly]. “O ... kay,” says Tom. Tom is a naughty student. He shouts [loudly] in the corridor. In class he whispers [quietly] to his friends and doesn’t work [hard]. His teachers are always angry. “Are you listening to me?” ask his teachers. “Paaaarrrr ... don?” says Tom. But Tom likes P.E. because he can run very [quickly] and play sports very [well].

(If you do not manage to include every FC in the story, then this is ok. It is also ok to use an FC more than once.)

The above board story (i.e., a story written on the whiteboard) can be produced by the teacher with help from the students. The teacher usually begins the story and then asks the students for ideas (“Hands up! What can the next sentence be?”) Usually the more often you do board stories, the better the students get at helping. With a competent class you may even call students to the front to write the next sentence. Another option is to have the students writing such stories on paper in groups.

Once the story has been written up on the board, you can stick the FCs over the FC words. This will drill home the fact that you are using the FC vocabulary items within a language context. This is not compulsory of course – depending on the size of your FCs, it is not always convenient.

Have the students read the board story after you. The whole class can read as one. Then you can have different students reading each sentence. You can also ask for volunteer students to read the whole thing individually in front of the class.

Here is another example of a board story with simpler FCs. Let us say that the FCs are for rooms:

Mum is in the [kitchen]. She is eating a sandwich. Dad is in the [living room]. He is watching TV. Baby is in the [bedroom]. It is playing. Mum likes the [kitchen]. She can cook and eat. Mum doesn’t like the [garage]. It is dirty. Dad likes the [living room]. He can watch TV there. But the TV is small. Dad wants a big TV. Baby has a toy snake. The snake is green. The snake is in the [bathroom]. The dog is in the [bathroom] too. The dog’s name is Bobo. Bobo is eating the toy snake. “Yummy!” says Bobo. “I like eating Baby’s toys.”

Let us say that the above story is being taught to a class who have not learnt present continuous yet. This is ok. The students are being exposed to natural grammar structures, they are repeating the sentences, and even if they do not yet know the grammatical rules behind them, this is not necessarily a bad thing. (When the students help, the teacher may at times receive a sentence with grammar mistakes but will write the sentence up correctly.)

Note: A whiteboard story does not always have to be about the target language. You can write any simple story you like on the board, get everyone to read it after you, get them to read it as a class, get individuals to read it aloud, get them to read in pairs one sentence each), etc ... Whiteboard stories are excellent for word recognition, and any appropriate story is fine.