Making Little Books

Years ago, in another life, when I was a Primary School teacher in Western Australia, I acquired a book about "Making Books", and, although I had the best of intentions, I was generally too busy to sit down and attempt the projects it demonstrated - let alone try to teach it to children.

Later, teaching IELTS students in China, we needed a way to focus their planning to practice their 3-minute talks, and also conquer their nervousness ... and we discovered that teaching them to make a little origami book (one of the projects in the book) was just the trick.

Since then I have employed the services of the "Little Books" on many occasions, to great effect.

Making Little Books Workshop

Just yesterday I ran a Workshop at our Teacher Training Institute here in Malaysia, to give the trainee teachers the skills to use this fun activity in the furtherance of English literacy in Malaysian Primary Schools.



The trainee teachers, and their lecturers, were very enthusiastic, and eagerly set to work.



We started with the basic 'origami book' / 'hotdog book', and as soon as they had mastered that, we moved on to work with some pop-up books.



Soon their creative juices were flowing and they were all producing amazing little books.



These young people will all soon be released into the Malaysian primary school system, where their task will be to teach English in all its forms to very young Malaysian children. With English language books in poor supply (especially in rural areas) they now have the tools to create some interesting materials.

And besides - it's fun!!