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MANAL ALYABA COPYRIGHT 2019. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

Joey the Baby Kangaroo

Concept Overview

Joey the baby kangaroo is a short story narrated by Joey, that teaches children about the life of a kangaroo. The story introduces children to Joeys “baby Kangaroos” and where they live. Joey explains the purpose of the kangaroo’s pouches, and how the pouch controls the temperature for the babies. The story supposes to raise the interest in children to ask more questions about the kangaroo by inviting children to visit and see the kangaroos that live in natural parks.

The Story

Hello, my friends. I am Joe the baby Kangaroo. I am the national symbol of Australia. Which is the smallest continents in the world. I always sleep in my mom’s lap. She has a big size empty pouch in her stomach just for me. Her body temperature keeps me warm. Of course, I will sleep there until I grow up. Sometimes after sunshine, I wake up and I go out to play, then I come back to my mom’s pouch. Usually, we live on the natural land. However, I like to swim all the time my whole family like it too. Nowadays 25 percent of my family lives in national parks and Conservation areas. People from all over the world come to visit us. What about you? Would you like to come to visit us one day?

Target Audience

  • PreK children

  • Agas 3-5

  • English speakers

Learning Goals

    Children will be:

  • introduced to the name of baby Kangaroos ”Joeys”

  • able to explain the natural habitat of the kangaroos

  • familiar with the purpose of the kangaroo's pouch

  • able to recognize Australia as a continent

Learning Theories

Schema Theory: the story adds new information to the children’s existing knowledge. For example, learning that the kangaroos are another animal that comes from Australia, learning that Australia is another continent. Also, another child might start linking other animals to their national places, like Pandas are from China or lions comes from Africa.

Constructivism Theory: the story helps students to build their own ideas about Australia and ask questions. When I created the audio I intentionally was looking for a narrator with an Australian or at least British accent to link the voice to the original land. I wanted the listener to wonder why the kangaroo is talking like this.

Social Learning Theory: the kangaroo greets his friends at the beginning of the story, this was an invitation to a human communicative interaction between the narrator “Joey” and the listeners. Overall, I wanted to link children to their own life experience, the kangaroo loves to swim and play, a child might love swimming too.

The Process

  • I had this story for a while, I actually wrote it as a part of an assignment for English “ESL” class, the assignment’s requirement was to use a set of 7 words to create sentences. So I did a story for a Kangaroo.

  • In my original story, the Kangaroo had the name Joe as my brother. While I was searching to do this assignment I have learned that the baby Kangaroo name is Joey, so the first step was to shorten and edit the story to the current version.

  • I looked for an Australian little boy or a girl to record the story for me, but I only found a British girl that fits with the story, I have trained her to emphasize some words in the story and lighten some.

  • Sketch for the idea: after researching the nature sounds in Australia I have storyboarded the sound effects that I wanted to use with the narration.

  • Audio editing was done in Adobe Premiere, using multiple layers to mix the audio with the sound effects.

  • The project was rendered as an MP4 file instead of the common audio format, to make it easier and faster for me to post it to my website.

  • I really would love to animate this story and make it a part of a series for children.

Project details

  • Programs: Adobe Premiere, Adobe Photoshop

  • Category: Audio, Narrative, Sotrytelling

  • Created: Fall 2018.

Attribution

  • Written, Edited & Designed by Manal Alyaba

  • Narrated by Maya Oxford www.fiverr.com/mayaoxford

  • Image Articulate Storyline Library

  • Sounds Effects by Freesound.org, Royalty free Ambient sound l Nature Sound l Bird Sound l Jungle Sound l Free Sound l free music by How to Make Film

  • IMusic by Winter Sunshine by Nicolai Heidlas https://www.nicolai-heidlas.com Music promoted by https://www.free-stock-music.com Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/deed.en_US

  • Subject Information was taken from https://en.wikipedia.org https://www.britannica.com

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