Seven and eight-year-old children from Le Havre won a reading aloud contest, organized by Bookinou.
Bookinou is a connected “storyteller”, a kind of digital library filled with audio books that allows children to both listen to stories and also record them. They can then upload their recordings to Bookinou and all users have access to them and can listen to them in turn.
The principle of the competition was simple: it was necessary to register a children’s book proposed by the jury, a book entitled “The Little Noises of Life”written and illustrated by Barroux.
Julie Lefebvre’s CE1 class at the Henri Wallon school in Le Havre therefore won the “coup de coeur” award. As a reward, the author of the book came to meet the students in class this Tuesday, June 14 to present his job to them.
How did the children get on this adventure?
The teacher, one day, put in the hands of her 14 CE1 students a book entitled “The Little Noises of Life”, defined by its author Barroux as a “very poetic and delicate book, where the little hero wonders about the nature of the noises of life, from the noise made by blackbirds on the roof of the house to dad’s watch which ticks when he reads a story “.
The exercise thrilled the toddlers. Usually, they are always asked not to make noise. There, the exercise was to recreate noises. “We created the noises from scratch”explains the initiator of the project and teacher Julie Lefebvre: “For the cat’s claws, we used scratches that were in the classroom, for the pebbles that clash, we hit wooden bricks, the children did tests and chose the noise that seemed to them the most convincing. .”
– Olivia Cohen
“The students want and have gained confidence!”
Julie had the idea to participate in the competition organized by Bookinou because she uses their storyteller at home with her children. She thought she would try it with her class: “We’re working on oral language and I thought having them record a story would motivate them!”
The teacher was right, she recorded everything with her phone and it worked: “They didn’t necessarily see the point of reading aloud when by recording them, it allows friends, family, other classes to listen, it gives them confidence and desire!”
Now, Alyah, one of Julie’s 14 students, is less afraid to read aloud in front of her classmates but she wants to continue training: “I keep making mistakes sometimes”plague the smart kid, who recognizes that the stories “without picture” stimulate her imagination and push her to “invent your own images”.
– Olivia Cohen
What is a profession-passion?
The children are proud to have won a prize and their performance touched the author a lot, Barroux, who came to class to answer their questions. Between two jokes, Barroux talks about his job as an author-illustrator: “You, when the mistress does not come, she will be scolded by the director, me, if I do not go to work, I scold myself because I am my own boss.” And to tell that at school, when he was their age, he didn’t really know what to do with himself because he was only good at drawing and literature.
The children, put in confidence, laugh and heckle but are silent and attentive when Barroux offers them to draw a big cat to decorate the class. Julie the teacher explains to the children: “It’s good to do a job you love, you see!” The students are won over and have adopted Barroux.
After two hours of discussion, the prize-winning little readers go to the canteensmiling, a little disappointed all the same that Barroux the artist does not come with them in the afternoon at the swimming pool. “They were excited to meet him”, confirms Julie. Mission accomplished.
The tale recorded by the CE1 class can be listened to here.
– Olivia Cohen