Topic for Erasmus staff exchange
Personal information
Name: Marleen MESOTTEN
E-mail: marleenmesotten@hotmail.com
Telephone: 0032472543434
Nationality: Belgian
Sex: Female
Occupation or position: lecturer in Dutch and drama
Topic(s) for staff exchange
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Drama from a picture book
Picture books are valuable tools in the development of young children. They
contribute to their emotional, social, moral, religious, creative, sensory, cognitive and
linguistic development.
Repeated reading or telling of the same picture book and building activities around it
make sure that the content, the language, the illustrations and the values are
gradually assimilated by the children.
A very rich activity proceeding from a picture book is drama, because it allows
children to experience the book fully with their heart, body and mind. Quality picture
books offer a lot of opportunities to meaningful drama activities around the language,
the illustrations, the story, the characters.
This drama workshop starts from the picture book Where the wild things are by
Maurice Sendak, a classic in children’s literature. The participants learn how they can
transform a picture book into drama activities for children of 5 to 8 years old. These
exercises include voice projection, miming representation, transformation, fantasy,
role play …
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Story-based approach to language learning by young children
This workshop aims to illustrate how very young children (4 to 7 years old) can learn
English through combining picture books, drama and music. I use the picture book
‘Dear zoo’ by Rod Campbell. It was published in 1982 and over the years it has
become firmly established as a classic among children’s picture books. It’s about a
child that writes to the zoo for a pet. The zoo sends a series of unsuitable pets,
revealed behind flaps in the form of crates and packing cases. These animals are all
sent back for different reasons, except the last one, which is perfect!
I’ll illustrate how children pick up the foreign language by means of dramatising and
singing.
Furthermore, I’ll illustrate in this workshop how animal photographs can be
transformed into stories that are dramatised by the children.
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Working with sock puppets in pre-primary and primary education: I teach the
technique of manipulating sock puppets (movements, voice, expressing emotions,
character) and inform the participants about the possibilities and advantages of
using sock puppets in their practice.
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Creative session on story building, starting from clay: warming up exercises
in which we use the clay playfully and clay some objects, around which the
participants build a story. Finally, they present their story in a creative way to the
rest of the group.
Each workshop takes 2 hours and is meant for maximum 20 participants.
- Powerpoint presentation: The book corner in pre-primary education
Picture books, fairy tales, poetry … they are all valuable tools in the development of
young children. They contribute to their emotional, social, moral, religious, creative,
sensory, cognitive and linguistic development. Most important, children learn to love
books!
Consequently, the book corner is an essential corner in a pre-primary class (3 to 6
years old). But unfortunately, in many classes they are not very popular among
children.
This powerpoint presentation aims to answer the following questions:
 Why a book corner in pre-primary?
 How can you make a cosy, attractive book corner?
 How can you teach children to treat books with respect?
 What activities can be done in the book corner?
Equipment: laptop, beamer
Audience: early childhood education- primary education (aged 3-8)
‘The book corner’ is suitable for pre-primary (emergent literacy).