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).

Using storybooks to develop speaking and listening skills

Storybooks can be used in many ways to support children's early reading. Children listening to their teacher read aloud a story supports listening comprehension, which is a crucial skill for developing children’s text comprehension. Having listened to the teacher read aloud the story, children can be encouraged to retell the story. Retelling stories is valuable because:

• children have to listen carefully
• children need to use their memory
• it helps to develop children’s vocabulary – they need to find and use words to say what they remember.

Most importantly of all, it is by listening to and retelling stories that children learn the ‘narrative structures’ that will help them to make sense of the world around them.

But what kind of stories are good for retelling? Ideally, they should:

• be in the children’s home language, or a language that they understand and can speak well
• be enjoyable
• be easy to remember
• have a recurring sequence
• have patterns like rhyme, rhythm and repetition
• contain memorable events and characters.

If the stories are in a book, then it is also helpful to have clear, interesting pictures.

In Activity 5.2 you will think about a storybook that is good to use for children to retell the story. It will be good if you can make time to do the activity with a small group of children. In the activity you will use one of the three stories you have found from the ASb website.

Using storybooks to develop thinking skills

In Section 3, you learned about open and closed questions. Here we explore ways of how you can develop open questions to promote thinking.

You can judge whether the children in your class understand a story by listening to their answers to your questions. Asking good questions requires practice – questions should be clear and simple, and help children to think critically about what they have heard or read.

You should use questions for different levels of language ability and participation, and questions that will get children thinking and using their imagination. You can use different kinds of questions, like ‘yes’, ‘no’, ‘who’, ‘what’, ‘where’, ‘when’, ‘how’ and ‘why’ questions:

• ‘Yes/no’ questions are good for very young children, or for children answering in a second language. These questions are easier than ‘what’ and ‘who’ questions because there is one answer. You should not make all of your questions ‘yes/no’ questions.
• ‘What’ questions are easier than ‘where’ or ‘when’ questions, for example ‘What did she see when she went outside?’
• ‘How’ and ‘why’ questions are the most difficult, especially for new speakers of a language. There is not one ‘right’ answer, so children would have to draw on a range of vocabulary to give an answer.

In Activity 5.3 you will select a story that is a good story for asking questions, which will make children think. You will then do the activity with a small group of children.

Activity 5.3: Asking questions to promote thinking

Timing: (We recommend you spend 30 minutes on this activity)

1. Choose any book that you want to read with children.
2. Try reading the story aloud, with expression and gestures. How will you introduce the story to the children?
3. Before you read the story to children, download the ‘optional reading’ at the bottom of the page. Read through and select three questions you can ask the children.
4. Make a table in your study notebook like the one below.
   • a.Write down questions you can ask during or after the story. Use open-ended questions and questions that encourage children to use their imagination.
   • b.Write down questions you think children will ask about the story.

Name of the story:
Questions that you can ask:	1.
	2.
	3.
	4.
	5.
	6.
Questions that children might ask:	1.
	2.
	3.

4. Write your questions onto question cards, highlighting new words.
5. Call aside a small group of children and read the story.
6. Have a conversation with children about the story, using the questions that you prepared. You can show children the questions on the question cards as this will help them to recognise some of the key words.
7. Allow the children to ask their own questions.
8. When you have finished the activity, reflect on how it went in your study notebook:
   • a.Did the children enjoy the story?
   • b.Were the children able to make meaning from the story?
   • c.What did the children enjoy about the activity?
   • d.What did the children not enjoy?
   • e.How well did the children answer and ask questions about the story? What was easy for them, and what was not so easy?
   • f.What will you change or improve next time? For example, will you change the types of question you asked or maybe the way you read the story aloud?
   • g.What opportunities can children have to do this activity independently?

Discussion

Planning questions in advance will help you to make sure that you ask a variety of different types of questions. Thinking about what answers they might give and the questions they might ask will help you to prepare for a discussion after reading the story.

There are different ways that you can ask the children to respond:

• the children can raise their hands
• you can ask an individual by name
• you can ask children to discuss the answer with a partner before giving an answer.

Sometimes it is helpful to ask more than one child for an answer – and if those answers are different, ask another child to say what they think.

In your questions and answers, try to use words from the story – especially if they are new words. This will encourage children to practise using those words when they answer the questions. You can use the words cards to remind them of the words!

Remember there might be more than one correct answer to the questions. Listen carefully to what the children say, and accept their answers if they are correct. There is no right or wrong answer to a question about feelings. Let the children use their imagination to think of an answer. As you become more confident in asking questions, you could ask children to ask their own questions about the story they have read or listened to.

We took an example from the ASb website of a story about a cat and a dog playing ball. We thought of these questions as examples:

Name of the story:	Cat and Dog and the Ball
Questions that you can ask:	1. Do the cat and dog live in a house?
	2. Is there a roof on the house?
	3. What do the cat and dog play with?
	4. What colour is the ball?
	5. Who catches the ball?
	6. Who throws the ball?
	7. Where is the ball now?
	8. Who gets the ball?
	9. Why did the elephant get the ball?
	10. How do the cat and dog feel when they cannot get the ball?
	11. How do the cat and dog feel when the elephant gets the ball?
12. What do you think the cat and dog enjoy about playing ball?
13. Do you enjoy playing games with your friends?
14. What do you think will happen to the ball that the cat throws into the air?
Questions that children might ask:	1. Why did the cat throw the ball high?
	2. Why do the cat and dog live in a house?

Using pictures in books and asking questions supports children’s predictive skills. For example, in Cat and Dog and the Ball, you can stop on the picture with the sentence ‘Cat and Dog cannot get the ball’. Then ask the children, ‘What do you think the cat and dog can do to get the ball?’

You do not have to only ask the questions that you prepared. You can also ask the children questions that come into your mind while you are reading, for example, questions like ‘What do you think will happen next?’, and ‘What happened before this picture?’ Make sure you give the children enough time to answer questions. Remember that you want the children to explore the ideas, so don’t be too quick to come in with your own ideas and make sure that all the children who want to share their ideas have a turn. They don’t have to always agree with each other.

Put yourself on the side of the children in the discussion. Show genuine interest in the story and the questions, for example, asking ‘I wonder why …’ and ‘I was wondering about …’. Good learners are always ready to ask questions and are not ashamed if they don’t always have the answers.

Using storybooks to further develop reading skills

Figure 5.1: My Teacher

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The cover of My Teacher, an African Storybook resource.

Figure 5.1: My Teacher

In Section 4 you explored different methods for teaching reading. These were:

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

If necessary, go back to Section 4  and remind yourself about those methods. In the next activity you will explore further how you can apply these methods using storybooks.

Activity 5.4(b): Recognising the different approaches

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

Compare the examples of the reading approaches that you spotted with a friend or colleague. How could you use these ideas in your teaching?

Ms Khumalo’s word wall is shown in Figure 5.2:

Figure 5.2: Ms Khumalo’s word wall

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A list of words from a word wall. The list reads: ‘teacher’, ‘braided’, ‘hair’’, ‘green’, ‘beads, ‘is’, ‘yellow’, ‘white’ and ‘red’.

Figure 5.2: Ms Khumalo’s word wall

Read the discussion below to find out how Ms Khumalo used letters and sounds, look-and-say, and the learning experience method.

Discussion

• Letters and sounds: Ms Khumalo works with ten children, focusing on recognising the sound associated with ‘b’, picking out and sounding words in the story than begin with ‘b’.
• Look-and-say: Ms Khumalo works with a group of 20 children and reads the story with cards that highlight key words. The emphasis is on helping children to recognise the words through linking them with the pictures.
• Learning experience: Throughout the session, Ms Khumalo relates the story to children’s experiences and encourages them to draw pictures of the words. This will help their comprehension of the words.

Managing your reading classroom

If you create a productive, dynamic, creative literacy environment, you will find ways to involve all the children in reading activities all the time. This can be very difficult if there is a large number of children in one space. You can use different grouping and reading strategies to help manage large groups of children:

• Shared reading: You read a story to a larger group of children. You read the story for enjoyment and talk about what the children see, hear, think and feel. You follow up the reading with discussion and activities, including children reading the same story in pairs or individually.
• Group guided reading: Children are in small groups of between six and ten. The children read the same story together with the help of an adult. The adult helps the children in different ways to guess and read difficult words using the most appropriate method (letters and sounds, look-and-say, and language experience). They also discuss the story together.
• Paired reading: Children sit in pairs to read together, or take turns to read a simple storybook that they can read themselves.
• Independent reading: Children read short, simple books on their own, that are easy enough for them to read without help.

Reviewing your learning

Moving forward

In this section you have learned about the importance of storytelling and storyreading and how children need to hear stories on a daily basis. You have reflected on how storytelling enhances children’s speaking and listening skills. You have had the opportunity to share a range of storybooks and considered how planning effective questions can support children’s comprehension skills.

Section 5 has also introduced the idea of thinking skills and how using storybooks can enhance how children think about the stories they hear and the stories they tell. You have learned more about how reading and writing activities can be supported with a good-quality storybook and how children can be encouraged to make links between the stories they hear and the stories they write. This section has also introduced you to different ways of organising your classroom for reading, including shared reading, group/guided reading and independent reading time.

In the final section  you will think about how to assess reading. You will be introduced to a tool that will help you decide what support young readers need, and to strategies that you can use to assess the reading of individual children in large classes.