“You’re never going to kill storytelling, because it’s built in the human plan. We come with it.” – Margaret Atwood, author of The Handmaid’s Tale
Stories have great importance in early years. Telling and dramatizing stories fascinate young children. They enjoy reading, writing and listening to stories.
Story telling is not only entertaining, it also develops empathy, imagination, problem solving skills and extends vocabulary and patterns of language. Stories take them into worlds of magic far away from our ordinary lives.
Children unconsciously start loving books and stories as they are introduced to wonderful and imaginative world of stories and characters.
Reading to Students
This is when adults read text aloud to students; this is often done during ‘story time’ the purpose being to share text for pleasure and not to teach a specific skill such as word recognition or phonics etc. Whilst reading aloud adults demonstrate effective reading behaviours and foster a positive attitude towards books and reading. Experiencing a wide variety of material fosters language development, expands knowledge of the world, contributes to conceptual development and creates an emotional response.
Key Features
- The main objective is to develop a love of reading and to enjoy literature together.
- Reading is uninterrupted.
- Sessions are most effective when kept to a ten- to fifteen-minute time span on a daily basis.
Benefits for Students
Reading to students helps students:
- develop a positive attitude towards reading;
- become aware of a range of text forms;
- extend their vocabulary;
- extend their imagination and generate new ideas;
- develop a sense of how texts work;
- comprehend challenging or abstract concepts and issues that might be too difficult for independent reading;
- learn about different authors, illustrators and their styles;
- make personal connections to texts;
- and listen actively.
KG class students enjoyed their story telling session where teacher told them story of Cluck O‘ Clock using props and other resources. Students enjoyed the session a lot and participated actively in question/ answer session after listening to the story.
