🌿 Session 2
Gestural Exploration of the Story
👦🏻 Target age: 5-7 years.
⏰ Duration: 40 min.
Objectives : develop mental images for your students, starting from an orally transmitted tale, and motor exploration in an imaginary environment.
Space: Prefer a space where students can move: gym, outdoor area, etc.
🎯 Pedagogical objectives
This second session engages students to move in space and follow the imaginary path of the story. By inviting exploration, it helps students create mental images.
First, the teacher revisits the collective creation of the Groumf, as seen in session 1. This exercise engages both memory and students’ creative thinking.
Second, the exercise is to explore the story: the teacher is invited to bring the story to life through the senses and movement in space.
🟢 Part 1: Collective invention of the day’s Groumf
> The teacher leads and guides the collective creation
> The students listen and participate
🗣️ Example exchange:
Do you remember the Groumf from the last session?
Let's imagine together its shape today.
It won’t necessarily be the same as last time!
Close your eyes: how do you see it?
How big is it today?
Who thinks it’s as big as my hand, a dresser? A tree? A house?
So today, it will be this big.
Who sees it with fur? Who sees it with scales? Who sees it with feathers?
So today, it will have...
Who thinks it has four legs?
Who thinks it has wings?
Who thinks it crawls on the ground?
So today…
Who thinks it has two eyes? Four eyes? Six eyes?
So today…
[The teacher is free to suggest options regarding ears or other attributes]
🟢 Part 2: Movement exploration, guided by the teacher, of the story path
Positioning: moving in a gym, playground, or gathering area.
🎯 Objectives: The teacher retells the original story adding sensory details (e.g., “what can we hear in the meadow? The bees buzz: Bzzz”). The idea is to strengthen students’ representation of the story. This prepares session 3 where students will create their own mental images.
A model session is provided in the appendix. The teacher can omit one or more environments crossed: road, meadow, mud, forest, cave. They may, of course, improvise from their own representations.
Guided by the heard story, students explore different stages of the story, moving in the room or playground, adapting their movement to each described environment. The teacher’s physical participation can help regulate the group and immerse students in imagination.
🟢 Part 3: Gathering and sharing experiences
Positioning: gathering around the teacher
Possibility to sit in a circle on the floor.
The teacher encourages and regulates speaking about the shared experience. They help students express representations using the five senses.
Students put into words the experiences lived, respecting rules for collective speaking.
🗣️ Example exchange:
“What do we keep in our minds as an image for:
The cave?
The forest?
The mud?
The river?
The meadow?”
Observe enrichment and diversification of images mentioned.