Every time I have an English Workshop, I try to make the exercises lively and interesting. If the young people generally have a good level of spoken English, I will try to have them speaking amongst themselves as much as possible. At the same time, I adapt what I do when I have established the general mood amongst the group.
Last week, I had an English Workshop with a group of 4 young women and everyone was really quite quiet, shy and tired, so I thought I would try a new activity; “Story Circle
Marie : Once upon a time, there was a frog with very long hair.
Lucie : The frog met a pink little horse in the forest.
Jezabel : They met a chicken who wanted to go with them. They said yes because they knew that the more they were, the more they would laugh.
Amandine : Along the route the chicken lost his feathers.
Rebekah : The frog and the horse were hungry and saw that the chicken was ready to eat.
Marie : The chicken proposed to his friends that they didn’t eat him but that they should look for food in the forest instead. They decided to kill a rabbit and stole the fur of the rabbit for the chicken because he was cold.
Lucie : The rabbit was too little for everyone to eat and the little pink horse wanted to go to Mc Donald’s with the fake rabbit (chicken) and the frog. If 3 people bought food, there would be a sale in Mc Donald’s.
Jezabel : They called the chicken with a mobile phone and the chicken didn’t answer, so the frog went to the toilet and he didn’t come back either.
Amandine : The little pink horse was very scared because he smelled the chicken burning and the frog as well (the French eat frog’s legs!).
Rebekah : In fact, the little pink horse went to the toilet and saw a magic portal that made the chicken and frog disappear. The smell was due to the movement in the magic portal.
Marie : But the little pink horse was very clever and decided not to enter in the magic portal. He called other friends (shouted “frienndddssss”) to help their friends. 3 ninja turtles appeared.
Lucie : 1 ninja turtle got lost on the way because he was hungry and wanted pizza. In the pizzeria, there was a second magic portal. He found the chicken/rabbit and the frog in the pizzeria.
Jezabel : The problem was that some “people” wanted to buy computer games and others wanted to buy clothes. They couldn’t agree on which shop. They were arguing.
Amandine : They were shopping but became enemies. The ninja turtles were against the frog, chicken/rabbit and the little pink horse.
Rebekah : Suddenly, the animals realised that they are not human beings and that they really wanted to be, so they returned to the magic portal.
Marie : When they arrived in front of the magic portal, they found a magic book. There were magic sentences to achieve their dreams.
Lucie : They decided to change the world together and not to change themselves. All the people became animals. The problem of shopping was no more.
Jezabel : When they remembered, they opened the magic book again and they wanted to make a wish for the second dream. The second wish was to open an animals shop in the forest, because everyone there were now animals.
Amandine : They made it into a prevention centre against carnivores.
Rebekah : For a while, it worked very well, but eventually the carnivores realised that they did not like the life of a herbivore and they revolted.
Marie : The carnivores decided to open a shop of humans (they really wanted to eat human meat). They cultivated humans for their meat, because the humans grew up rapidly.
Lucie : A big war between the herbivores and carnivores began, but the carnivores had the magic book in their possession with one dream left. They decided to change all the herbivores into humans and to make the biggest dinner of the year with all the friends to make fast food out of humans.
Jezabel : They needed to dig graves for all of the carnivore animals because it wasn’t beautiful to have the bodies everywhere. They cleaned the forest because there was blood everywhere because the killing was violent (yes the vegetarian humans KILLED the carnivore animals violently).
Amandine : There was illnesses that developed due to so many dead bodies.
Rebekah : The 4 ninja turtles, the chicken/rabbit, the pink little horse and the frog found each other back at the magic portal at the pizzeria in their human bodies. They wanted to find a solution to go back in time, because they realised their mistakes with their wishes.
Marie : They didn’t find a solution because it’s not possible to return in the past. They decided to build a big spaceship with the remaining humans to escape the illnesses.
Lucie : When the 21st of December arrived, a big catastrophe on the Earth killed everyone, but the spaceship was in another galaxy at this moment. They could see the news and television. They were now homeless in space, like a star.
