Section 5: Using stories and storybooks

Introduction

Welcome to Section 5. In this section you will think about and practise different ways of using storybooks in your lessons. The activities involve planning for teaching so they will help you with your daily work as a teacher of early literacy.

In Section 3 you explored strategies for preparing children for learning to read. These included:

  • strategies of listening and speaking
  • developing literacy through movement
  • developing comprehension skills.

For example, you explored:

  • talking about pictures to develop listening and speaking
  • using games, songs and rhymes for literacy and movement
  • a strategy of asking questions to encourage children to think about what they read.

In Section 4 you explored three different methods to support early reading:

  • letters and sounds (phonics and phonemic awareness)
  • look-and-say
  • learning experience.

At the end of Section 4 you worked with four quadrants that helped you to think about how you can work with different children in different ways at different times to meet their different needs.

All of these strategies and methods are important for developing literacy in a holistic way. In this section you will see how children can read and interact with stories to build their speaking and listening, thinking, and reading and writing skills. Different stories will provide different opportunities. Your job as literacy teachers is to think about and plan how we can use each story in creative and productive ways to support literacy development in young children.

In this section you will use the three stories that you either downloaded or wrote down titles of from the ASb website in Section 2.6. If you noted down the title you can easily find the story again by typing the title into the search function on the AsB website (indicated by a magnifying glass).

Activity 5.1: Reviewing your progress

Timing: (We recommend you spend 20 minutes on this activity)

Go through the notes you have made in your study notebook and reflect on what you have learnt, comparing it with the summary above. Note down three things that you will use in your teaching. If possible, discuss your ideas with a colleague.

Using storybooks to develop speaking and listening skills