Comment on one article: Kids and stories

A few weeks ago, I posted a post about storytelling activities, in which I explained different activities to do before, while and after a story.  As this year I have been working on the subject of narration this topic, stories, I wanted to improve my knowledge by choosing this article: Kids and stories. It is an article that I found on the British Council’s site for young learners. It is about different types of resources to work on reading (that are quite similar to the listening activities).

For those who are interested in the article, here I leave the link so you can read it. You can also find links with stories and activities that are very useful for young learners. www.teachingenglish.org.uk/article/kids-stories

I will not explain all of them because I think they are very well explained in the article. However, I am going to talk about which ones I find more suitable to use in Infant Education and I am going to make a brief reflection on them.

 Activities to prepare children for reading

This kind of activities are done before reading (or storytelling in case of very young children) in order to familiarize students with the text they are about to read. I believe the four activities that are proposed are suitable for carrying out them with young learners.

• Using illustrations: It is always a good idea to help the child understand and visualise the story. We can use flashcards, pictures, photos or even drawings to help improve reading comprehension.
• Pre-teaching vocabulary: As teachers, we can teach first some thematic vocabulary. We can pick up a few key words from the text and explain them or maybe do different activities to practise and familiarise students with the new vocabulary. 
• Introduce the theme: We can also introduce the topic of the book doing different activities. However, I think that this activity can be included in the last activity, in pre-teaching vocabulary.  
• Input cultural background:  I think this is very interesting. But, more than an activity, I think this is essential when you learn a new language.

 Activities during reading

These are the activities that children will have to do during the reading.

• Use a variety of ways to read: Reading or listening to a story is an activity in itself.  For that reason, in the classroom it is important to vary the kind of reading. Nowadays infant education teachers have a lot of resources that we can use to read a story for the whole class. Some stories can be read as texts with illustrations. Other ones can be read to imagine. We can also use a projector, a CD... It is essential that, as teachers, we know how to narrate and tell stories, keep the class motivated, stop at convenient pints to make questions, read with different voices, … 

• Total physical response: From my point of view, TPR is the best way to work with our students, with very young learners. In this activity the story can be mimed while the teacher reads and the children listen.

Post-reading activities:

These are activities that we will do once we have read the story. They provide students a way to summarize, reflect, and question what they have just read.

• Quick comprehension check: As the article says, “It is always a good idea to do a quick comprehension check when your learners have finished reading the story. This may take the form of a few ‘gist' questions about the text in oral or written form, or asking children for a response.” I totally agree with this since I think it is important to see if the children have understood the story.
• Make a poster/illustrate the story: It is a good activity in which the child is creative, expresses himself and shows us what he has learned. It's his way of summing up the story.
• Role-play/acting out: Although I think this is a slightly more complex activity, once the story is over, we can make a small theatre. 

This is the post. I hope you liked it and gave you ideas on how to work the stories in child education.