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Robin Campbell
young childrenreading stories with
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Reading Stories with Young Children
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Reading Stories with
Young ChildrenRobin Campbell
Trentham BooksStoke on Trent, UK and Sterling, USA
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Trentham Books Limited
Westview House 22883 Quicksilver Drive
734 London Road Sterling
Oakhill VA 20166-2012Stoke on Trent USA
Staffordshire
England ST4 5NP
© 2009 Robin Campbell
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be
reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means,
electronic or mechanical including photocopying, recording or
any information storage or retrieval system, without prior
permission in writing from the publishers.
First published 2009
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British
Library
ISBN: 978 1 85856 452 4
Designed and typeset by Trentham Print Design Ltd, Chester
and printed in Great Britain by Page Bros (Norwich) Ltd.
iv
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Contents
Chapter 1
Introduction • 1
Chapter 2
Reading stories interactively• 15
Chapter 3
Reading stories in the classroom: getting started • 37
Chapter 4
The importance of narrative and quality books • 45
Chapter 5
Reading stories and print features • 63
Chapter 6
Activities based on reading stories • 75
Chapter 7
Interactive reading activities • 91
Chapter 8
Interactive writing activities • 103
Chapter 9
Mathematics, science and social studies activities • 113
Chapter 10
A last word • 119
References • 121
Children’s books • 129
Index• 131
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1Introduction
When young children have stories read to them as part of
a normal day they learn about reading, they act like
readers and they become readers with an interest in
books. Young children demonstrate this to adults constantly. Re-
cently, after just a couple of readings by an adult of Four FierceKittens(Dunbar, 1991), Louie age 3 years, 9 months demonstrated
how much he had learned of a repeated sentence in the story:
Adult Said the marmalade kitten,
spiking her claws
‘I am a terrible tiger!
I shall hunt hen out of her hutch.’
And she tried to growlLouie (But she didn’t know how)
She could only go...
miaow miaow
And hen went
CLUCK CLUCK CLUCK
Adult Said the black little kitten
with a glint in his eye ...
1
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Louie acted like a reader as he recalled a repeated sentence of the
story. So although he was not yet attending directly to the print, he
was well on the way to becoming a reader.
Reading stories with young children at home and in school has a
long and illustrious history. Huey (1908) argued that the parent
and the young child reading a book was the road to success: ‘the
secret of it all lies in parent’s reading aloud to and with the child’
(p332). A century later an overview of the research on reading
aloud led by Zuckerman concluded that reading stories at home
‘promotes emergent literacy and language development’ and ‘a
love of reading’ (Duursma, Augustyn and Zuckerman, 2008). Thereare numerous studies that have emphasised the importance of
reading stories with young children. When we create book-loving
schools and homes children respond by wanting to read (Michael
Rosen.co.uk). The enjoyment, the learning and the encourage-
ment of the child towards reading have all sustained the activity.
But recently the primary school curriculum has become saturated
with documents, strategies, targets and testing, testing, testing. Somuch so that sometimes there may appear to be so many
accountability boxes to be ticked and plans to complete that
fundamental aspects of literacy can be forgotten. Sadly, story read-
ing is one key area that might seem possible to put to one side, as
other more mundane activities have to be shown to be completed.
Yet story reading must remain as a daily feature of primary school
life because the literacy learning thus achieved and the desire to
read that is created are far too important to be lost.
An earlier book of mine appeared in the USA with the title Read-
Alouds with Young Children (Campbell, 2001). The term ‘read-
aloud’ is used in the United States to describe the worldwide
phenomenon of an adult reading a book to and with a young child
or a group of children (Trelease, 1995). Another text from America,
although written by Australian author Mem Fox (2001), refers to
‘Reading Aloud to Our Children’. In New Zealand the same practice
READING STORIES WITH YOUNG CHILDREN
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is termed ‘storybook reading’ (Phillips and McNaughton, 1990)
while in the United Kingdom it is most often called ‘story reading’
(Campbell, 1990) or simply Reading stories with young children.
This book explores reading stories both at home and at school
with young children. Most of the observations for it took place in
classrooms in England, predominately nursery or pre-school
classrooms with 3 and 4 year olds, 5 year olds in reception class
and 6 and 7 year olds in years 1 and 2. A few observations extended
to other primary classrooms up to year 6 (age 11).
A story reading can stand alone as an enjoyable activity, but for
most children being able to respond to the story extends their
enjoyment and furthers their understanding. Reading stories with
young children focuses on the reading and the activities that can
be developed from it. Teachers of young children and teacher edu-
cators may find this book useful as a means of reconsidering story
reading and its contribution to a literacy curriculum. Parents too
will be interested to note how reading stories at home provides a
foundation for children’s reading and writing development.
During readings the adult often encourages the youngest children
to participate as the story is being read. So Louie was already con-
tributing key phrases during a story reading when he was 2 years
old.
Adult ‘A leak in the roof.
Oh, what bad luck!
This is a job for...’
Louie ‘Fix-It Duck.’
In that instance the frequent use at the end of a sentence of Fix-It
Duck(Alborough, 2001) made it easy for Louie to become part of
the interactive reading. In other books the use of rhyming like
luck/duckhelps the child to contribute to the reading.
Then subsequently, not only do the children contribute, they alsorespond in various ways to the story that has been read (Neuman,
INTRODUCTION
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1998). The interactive story reading is an important literacy acti-
vity that is recognised as a developmentally appropriate practice
for young children (International Reading Association, 1998). Sup-
port for the activity includes research evidence from projects ex-ploring literacy development at home, and explorations of story
readings in schools. The power of the interactive story readings to
support children’s literacy learning is enhanced when those read-
ings are repeated (McGee and Schickedanz, 2007).
Literacy development at home
The Children Learning to Read Project, the longitudinal study
directed by Gordon Wells in Bristol, is frequently cited. In this
study, children were observed from shortly after their first birthday
until they were 10 years old. It was found that the children who
demonstrated a relatively high understanding of print as they
started school at age 5 were more likely to achieve high levels of
reading at age 10. But how was that understanding of print ac-
quired? The researchers found that the parents’ story readings had
a positive influence on the literacy development of their childrenand that listening to stories significantly related to the children’s
understanding of print (Wells, 1986). In addition, the opportuni-
ties for children to watch their parents handle the books and to be
involved in discussions about the story were all valuable aspects of
the story reading.
Shirley Brice Heath (1983) confirmed the value of parents reading
stories for pre-school children and the importance of the inter-active experience. She studied the literacy experiences of pre-
school children in three neighbouring communities in the United
States. The communities each demonstrated different adult prac-
tices, and these led to different outcomes for the children at school.
In one community, the parents read storybooks interactively to
their children. As we would expect, the children in that environ-
ment were successful at reading in school. In another community,
the parents read to their children and helped them with letter
READING STORIES WITH YOUNG CHILDREN
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names, but did not encourage the children to be involved in the
story readings – the readings were not interactive. The children did
well at school initially and managed tasks such as completing
workbook pages, but they were less successful in the later ele-mentary grades. The children in the third community were the least
successful at reading in school. Although the parents valued school
for the benefits it might afford their children, they did not provide
the same learning environment at home and seldom read stories to
their children.
Denny Taylor and Dorothy Strickland (1986) also discuss the bene-
fits of family storybook readings, but take a different approach.They provide numerous excerpts from parent-child read-alouds,
and there are many illustrations that demonstrate the intensity of
the children’s involvement. The read-alouds from many different
homes demonstrate the learning that takes place beyond the story
itself. The authors show how the children learned a sense of how
stories are constructed, and how that helped them understand
many other stories and create their own. The children also ex-
tended their vocabulary as they interacted with their parents dur-
ing the story readings. They learned not only individual words but
the language patterns contained in stories, and they began to play
with the sounds of language. The story reading experience also re-
inforced the listening skills the children later used to support their
classroom learning.
Although Taylor and Strickland’s book focuses on storybook read-
ings, it also links with a main theme of Reading stories with young
children: the readings can provide the basis for other activities.
Their findings show that stories that are read aloud inspire chil-
dren and parents to create their own books. So the authors suggest
that the children should have a thick pad of plain paper and a box
of crayons or felt pens to make their own response to the stories.
These responses can lead to parents and children working to-
gether to make their own family storybooks. In one example theyreport on a child who extends her interest in cats to create her own
INTRODUCTION
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storybook about them; this exemplifies how children use their ex-
periences to draw and write with feeling (pp75-76). Reading
stories with young children works. Mem Fox (2001) argues pas-
sionately that being read to at home in enjoyable interactions,enables children to become readers. And reporting on the Book-
start project, Wade and Moore (2000) and Collins and Svensson
(2008) noted that young children who share books with an adult at
home achieve well when they go to school. They do so because
they learn from books, they learn about books and they learn
literacy.
Children developing as literacy users
A number of longitudinal studies of individual children add to our
understanding of the importance of reading stories to young chil-
dren. These studies typically follow children in their first five years
of life. In many cases the researchers were studying their own chil-
dren, but because these studies are numerous, we can look objec-
tively at the data they provide. One of the best known studies is that
of Glenda Bissex (1980). Bissex read stories to her son Paul beforehe started to talk; these readings supported Paul to recognise
stories and provide an emergent reading before he turned 3.
Judith Schickedanz (1990) reports on the development of her son
Adam’s writing, indicating that Adam sought repeated readings of
favourite books from about 16 months until the age of 3 years.
After that his preference was for information-rich non-fiction
books. In other studies by parents and grandparents of young chil-dren (Baghban, 1984; Laminack, 1991; Martens, 1996; Whitehead,
2002) there is evidence to suggest that story readings are an im-
portant contributor to a child’s literacy development. Baghban in-
cludes transcripts to show how her daughter Giti developed as a
reader from the age of 30 to 33 months as she returned frequently
to reread texts she already knew.
A few studies have concentrated more exclusively on the inter-actions between parents and children during read-alouds. Jones
READING STORIES WITH YOUNG CHILDREN
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(1996) was unusual in that she limited her study to the first two
years of their lives. She noted the physical, mental, and emotional
pleasures of the readings. Spreadbury (1994) and Doake (1988)
followed children for a longer period of time, and both indicatedthat story readings were important in supporting literacy develop-
ment. Doake concluded that ‘children who are read to regularly by
their parents and teachers are being given what they are entitled to
in a society that expects them to become fully literate’ (p48).
In addition, there are two studies (Campbell, 1999; White, 1954/
1984) that specifically record a child’s development in conjunction
with read-alouds. Dorothy White, a librarian, shared a wide varietyof books with her daughter Carol between the ages of 2 and 5.
White’s study presents a diary of those shared readings and
demonstrates the enormous enjoyment that came from the
readings and the influence of the books on Carol’s language and
play. In Literacy from home to school: reading with Alice (Campbell,
1999), I report on how my granddaughter Alice listened to stories
read to her daily, including many repeated readings of favourite
books. My study includes transcripts of Alice’s involvement in the
story readings and shows her progress as a reader from birth to 5
years of age. She started to make a verbal contribution to the read-
ing of a short book when she was almost 2. Then she extended
those contributions with other books until she memorised whole
stories. That memorisation enabled her to begin to see links with
the print, and at 3 years 9 months, she made known that attention
to print when sharingZoo Animals(Butterfield, 1995):
Alice: Look there’s andand zoo.
Grandfather: Yes, that says andand that word is zoo. It’s a book
about zoo animals, isn’t it?
Alice: Mmh, I like the hippo best.
Grandfather: That hippo gets all muddy, doesn’t it?
(Campbell, 1999, p86)
INTRODUCTION
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Alice’s recognition of some print enabled her to begin to read from
previously shared books. All these events contributed to her will-
ingness to read short unfamiliar books by the time she was 5 years
old. Reading stories with adults, some of them many times over,was key to supporting that development. And Whitehead (2002)
used her observations of her grandson Dylan during his first three
years of engagement with picture books to demonstrate that boys
too enjoy and learn from storybooks. Nevertheless in primary
classrooms, it can be important for teachers to ensure that plenty
of the books read to the children provide role models for the boys
(Zambo, 2007).
Reading stories in school
Do story readings work in a similarly effective way in school? The
study of story readings in school by Feitelson, Kita, and Goldstein
(1986) is frequently cited. The authors followed two teachers who
were working with first-grade classes as they read to the children
for 20 minutes at the end of the school day. One of the teachers be-
lieved that the reading consumed too much time, so she stoppedthe daily readings. When given reading tests at the end of the
study, the children in the class that continued with read-alouds
performed measurably better.
Smith and Elley (1994) briefly review the outcomes of some of the
research dealing with story readings, including some earlier work
by Elley (1989) that demonstrates vocabulary gains among 8 and 9
year-old children from stories that were read to them. They didbetter still when the teacher explained or illustrated the target
words. Morrow (1992) notes literacy gains among children from
minority backgrounds when a literature-based program was
developed with second year children in the USA. An important
part of the programme was the daily reading of stories and the
activities developed from them.
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Learning from story readings
It is difficult to isolate the literacy gains that accrue from story
readings, but the activity does appear to provide many benefits for
young children. Marriott (1995) asserts boldly that ‘it is almostimpossible to overemphasise the value of this activity for children
of any age or reading level’ (p65).
Story readings provide the basis for children to learn about
literacy, to become readers and writers, to learn through literacy
and to want to read in the future (Sloan, 1991). At the same time,
we are reminded by writers such as Money (1987) that teachers
should ensure that the child’s response to and enjoyment of thestory or poem remains paramount.
Children arrive at pre-school or primary school with a wide range
of differing experiences of books. Some have had the joy of hearing
hundreds of stories read to and with them. And because a story is
often read aloud more than once, these children may have ex-
perienced thousands of story readings. If the teacher continues
with readings and repeat readings of a story, it gives the children alink between home and school. They can extend and develop their
literacy learning at once because they are in the familiar territory
of narrative, with its interesting characters, stimulating events and
thought-provoking outcomes.
Children who have not been read to at home, benefit from having
frequent and regular story readings in their classroom. They need
to explore the delights of storybooks supported by adults who readto them and discuss aspects of the stories. As Moustafa (1997)
maintained:
The primary literacy education task of pre-school and early school
years is not teaching children letter-sound correspondences but read-
ing to them. Reading to children in school should be a daily activity, as
important a part of a child’s class schedule as math and lunch. If a child
is experiencing difficulty in learning to read, we should not ask if he or
she knows the sounds of letters but if he or she has been read to
extensively. (p78-79)
INTRODUCTION
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This affirms Well’s view (1986). He notes in his case study of Rosie,
a child who apparently had never been read to before starting
school, that she needed a personal introduction to literacy
through stories (p159). One-on-one story readings actively involvechildren in the reading. Many teachers, especially when they have
adult helpers in the classroom, can provide one-to-one story read-
ings on a regular basis in addition to class readings. Frequently,
during these one-to-one readings, other children will place them-
selves close enough to listen in; such is the power and enjoyment
of stories.
How does literacy develop through reading stories? First, childrenlearn about literacy because they have an adult providing a model
of reading. The story reading provides an understanding at a
simple level of how print functions and how it is used (Strickland
and Morrow, 1989). As children watch adults use books to read
aloud, they quickly become aware of and knowledgeable about
left-to-right and front-to-back directionality. In the classroom
Holdaway (1979) suggests that the teacher might use Big Books for
some story readings so all the children can see the print and follow
that process of reading.
But children learn far more from story readings than how to use a
book (Butler, 1998). Children learn about the structure of stories –
the beginning, the middle, and the end. Furthermore, as Dombey
(1988) indicates, children learn new words, new sentences and
new discourse patterns. When the children have the opportunity
to explore in writing the stories that have been read aloud with
them, that learning is extended. Fox (1993) indicates how litera-
ture influences children’s own storytelling. Her record of young
children’s storytelling demonstrates how the stories children have
heard feed into their own stories.
Children also develop knowledge and understanding of letters and
letter-sound relationships (Campbell, 2004). Moustafa (1997)
argues that the starting point for young children is hearing stories
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rather than learning letters, but the children do nevertheless learn
about letters from stories. For example, it is not hard to imagine
the learning about letters and sounds that might follow rereadings
of Sniff-Snuff-Snap! (Dodd, 1995), in which the consonant blendsn is so prominent. This learning would occur even when the em-
phasis is on the enjoyment of this delightful story.
In Teale’s (1984) analysis of the benefits that accrue from stories
read aloud, he includes the development of positive attitudes to-
ward reading. In part, these attitudes originate from the shared
enjoyment of the story. But they also come from the way in which
stories can provide tales about lives and events outside the child’sown experience (Trelease, 1995). Story readings can encourage
children’s positive attitudes toward books because they offer the
chance to learn about a wider world.
Organisation of this book
In order to look more closely at story readings, Chapter 2 explores
the activity in a reception classroom. It is not always possible to
watch, or listen to, a reading of a story in a classroom, but this
chapter enables us to enter the classroom and observe what takes
place. It includes transcript excerpts from the teacher reading the
story and the children’s comments and questions. We also see how
a number of activities develop from this lively, enjoyable reading.
Preparing for a story reading is examined in Chapter 3. A success-
ful story reading will depend on several things: selecting an appro-
priate book to read, preparing carefully for the story reading, per-
forming the reading enthusiastically and ensuring that the chil-
dren take part.
Chapter 4 considers the importance of narrative as a way of think-
ing. It suggests that reading stories encourages children to think in
a particular way so as to construct a sense of reality. Story also en-
hances children’s literacy skills, supports their cultural heritage
and aids their personal development. To achieve these benefits,
children must be exposed to books of quality. The chapter explores
INTRODUCTION
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the use of predictable storybooks with repetition, rhyme and
rhythm and highlights the importance of poetry and non-fiction
texts.
Chapter 5 notes how the story reading can support detailed learn-
ing about letter and word print features such as the alphabet,
phonics and spelling. The children’s involvement with stories and
the writing that follows creates numerous opportunities to think
about graphophonic connections. The stories also provide a start-
ing point for the teacher to create a word wall that aids the chil-
dren’s learning.
The children’s interest in the story reading frequently leads them
into other activities that link to the story. Chapter 6 discusses how
role playing, drawing and writing, making books, creating arts and
crafts, making and using puppets and singing songs and rhymes
can all be part of the children’s response. Sometimes it is the
teacher who encourages the children in that direction; on other
occasions it is the children who immediately want to follow the
reading in a particular way.
When the teacher reads a story from a Big Book, the activity is
transformed. All the children can see the print, so the teacher can
emphasise print features. Shared reading with Big Books is the
subject of Chapter 7, along with sustained silent reading, indivi-
dual reading, buddy reading, paired reading, guided reading and
literature circles.
Similarly the stories, poems and rhymes that have been read aloud
are a good starting point for shared writing. Chapter 8 considers
how the teacher demonstrates writing and the discussions that
take place during this activity. Other linked activities such as inter-
active writing, guided writing and individual writing are explored.
The stories that are read aloud create opportunities for many dif-
ferent activities to take place. They also lead into other curriculum
areas such as mathematics, science and social studies. Often the
children inquire about the facts that are contained within the
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stories. At other times the teacher plans to use the story as a start-
ing point for a study in another curriculum area. Chapter 9
examines how stories can provide the stimulus for exploring a
variety of issues.
The short concluding chapter reminds us that a great deal of
learning flows from stories that are read aloud. Teachers should
ensure that a variety of possibilities exist for children to follow a
well-read story and to find enjoyment in the process.
The opportunities for developing the curriculum from story read-
ings are endless. At the same time, teachers should remember that
the main objective is to provide interesting books for the children,
that will engage their thinking and emotions. The activities that
are developed from the story must not dampen the children’s en-
thusiasm for stories and reading. And no story should be overused
to the point that children lose their enthusiasm for it. In Powell
and Hornsby’s (1998) words:
Since all text is language, all texts have numerous possibilities for high-
lighting different aspects of language.There is no need to milk a book
dry of skills and bore your students in the process; it is better to use the
skills possibilities available in a variety of literature and other authentic
texts. (p84)
The secret of success with reading stories rests with the sensitivity
of the adult at home and, subsequently, the professional approach
of the teacher. With the right balance, reading stories can help chil-
dren improve their learning skills and develop a love of readingthat will last a lifetime. The following chapters illustrate how this
works.
INTRODUCTION
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2Reading stories interactively
In a reception classroom
Another busy day in a classroom of 30 5-year-old children in
London was drawing to a close. The teacher gathered the
children around her and prepared to read a story.
Teacher: What do you think this book is about?Ben: A caterpillar.
David: It’s got lots of hairs.
Matthew: And green eyes.
Sophie: Why is it wearing shoes?
Teacher: They do look like shoes, but they are the
caterpillar’s feet. It’s a story about a very hungry
caterpillar, and the author is Eric Carle.
Ben: Yeah, those letters tell us.
The Very Hungry Caterpillar (Carle, 1969) has been and continues
to be enjoyed by millions of children across the world. The appeal-
ing nature of the main character, the rhythm and repetition of the
text and the trail of holes left by the caterpillar through the pagesall add to the attraction.
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Before the teacher began reading to the 5-year-olds, she intro-
duced the book. She encouraged the children to make comments
about the front cover and the caterpillar. She told them the
author’s name. One child indicated where the teacher got thisinformation from. The reading was already demonstrating what
Strickland and Morrow (1989) describe as a ‘co-operative con-
struction of meaning between the adult and child’ (p323). The
literacy event was interactive, and the children were encouraged
to contribute comments and questions.
The children’s involvement was maintained as the teacher started
to read the first page:
Amy: I can see the moon.
Denise: It’s smiling.
Teacher: It does look like it’s smiling.
In the light of the moon
a little egg lay on a leaf.
Sally: I can see it; it’s white.
Teacher: It is, isn’t it?
When the teacher reached the pages where the caterpillar eats a
different fruit on each day from Monday to Friday, there was great
excitement:
Danny: There are lots of holes in the book.
John: And fruit.
Teacher: Yes, there are different fruits with holes. I wonder
why there are holes in the fruit?
Ben: That’s where the caterpillar eats.
John: He nibbles holes.
Matthew: I like fruit.
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Stephanie: So do I.
Teresa: I like strawberries.
Teacher: Yes, I thought you would, and so did the veryhungry caterpillar.
On Monday
he ate through
one apple.
But he was still
hungry.
The holes in the book intrigue children. The five different fruits
also elicit comments, as we see when the teacher encouraged the
children to take part in the story reading by accepting and res-
ponding to their observations. The teacher used their comments
to lead back into the reading of the story in a natural manner. Her
actions contributed to the children’s literacy learning and were an
important part of the management of the class.
As the teacher continued with the story, the children extracted fine
detail from the illustrations. For example, when they reached
Thursday, one child commented on the strawberries:
Jamie: Four strawberries-one’s upside down.
Teacher: There are four strawberries.
On Thursday
he ate throughfour strawberries
When a child makes a remark of this nature, it encourages others
in the class to look carefully at the pictures and eventually at the
print. (Newer editions of this book have each of the strawberries in
a vertical position!)
The children also made links from the story to their own feelings.
As the teacher repeated the refrain, Ben expressed his own hunger.
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Teacher: but he was still
hungry.
Ben: I’m hungry. Is it home time?
Teacher: Nearly; you’ll soon be able to have a snack.
The two-page spread in the book for Saturday would add to Ben’s
hunger, and other children also commented on the illustration of
the food the caterpillar consumed on Saturday:
John: Look at all that food.
Danny: There’s a lollipop. I like lollipops.The teacher responded by reading the corresponding text and
asked why the caterpillar ended up with a stomach-ache.
Ben: He had too much food.
Jamie: I like all that food
Amy: He was greedy.
Teacher: That’s right; he ate too much. But what else gave it
a stomach-ache?
Sophie: Real caterpillars eat leaves.
Teacher: Yes, they do, Sophie. The caterpillar ate the wrong
food and it gave him a stomach-ache.
Joanne: He needs medicine.
Ben: My mum gives me stuff when I’m not well.
Teacher: Yes, you have some medicine. Well...
The next day was Sunday again.
The caterpillar ate through
one nice green leaf
Sophie: Now he’ll be better.
Teacher: Yes.
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and after that he felt
much better.
Clearly the children remained very involved with the story. They
related it to events in their own lives. The interaction between the
teacher and the children took more time than the actual reading of
the story. This is often the case, especially when a book is read
aloud for the first time, and particularly in reception or pre-school
classrooms.
As the story reaches its conclusion, the caterpillar builds a cocoon.
This development intrigued the children.
Samuel: It looks like a stone.
Pavi: That’s a funny house.
Teacher: Yes, it’s a cocoon. And after he pushed his way out
of the cocoon...
he was a beautiful butterfly!
Danny: That’s pretty.
Teresa: I saw a butterfly in my garden.
Teacher: So you saw a beautiful butterfly in your garden?
Teresa: Yes, but it wasn’t all those colours. It was nearly all
white.
Teacher: Was it? I wonder what it looked like when it was a
caterpillar.
Other children wanted to talk about seeing white butterflies and
green caterpillars. As they left the classroom, they were still talking
about the story, caterpillars and butterflies, and food to be eaten.
They had enjoyed the story. They contributed to the reading by
asking questions, making comments and relating the story to their
own experiences and they remained excited about the story.
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This account demonstrates the benefits of reading stories and
shows why teachers of young children use this literacy activity so
often. Many teachers read a story at the beginning of the day so
they can capitalise on the children’s excitement by providing im-mediate opportunities for them to explore the story in various
ways. In this example, the teacher chose to read the story at the
end of the school day because she knew the children would talk
about it at home and therefore develop their ideas about it before
returning to school.
Repeat readings
The next morning, the teacher reminded the children of the story.
The reading and the children’s subsequent talk and thinking about
the story provided a strong background for the events of the day:
Teacher: Do you remember The Very Hungry Caterpillar?
Jamie: I liked that story.
Ben: He eat [sic] all the wrong food.
Teacher: He did. He ate all the wrong food.
Michael: He’s got a funny face.
Danny: Read it again.
Thus some of the children indicated their positive feelings toward
the story and their recognition of a theme and they requested
another reading. The teacher was expecting this response and had
made preparations for another reading and for other activities
linked to the story.
During the repeat reading, the interactions expanded. The rhythm
and repetition that are part of this story encouraged the children
to take part in the reading. The teacher began the refrain and
paused, and this prompted the children to join in:
Teacher: On Mondayhe ate through
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one apple.
But[with emphasis and pausing for the
children]
Children: he was still
hungry.
Matthew: He eats lots of food.
Teacher: He does. Now,
On Tuesday
By the time the teacher reached the Friday page, all the childrenwere anticipating the refrain and joining in and doing so earlier,
starting with but.
The children were also excited to give their opinions about the
caterpillar and the foods that he ate on Saturday.
Danny: He got a bellyache.
Anna: He eats the wrong food.
Ben: He eat [sic] people’s food.
Amy: He was greedy. (A repeat of her comment from the
previous day, now given with some emphasis.)
Matthew: He should have just eaten leaves.
Heath (1982, 1983) argues that as children participate in inter-
active story readings, they learn not only how to take meaningfrom books but how to talk about it. The children are able to pro-
vide ‘what-explanations,’ such as a description of what the topic is
about. This provides the basis for children to provide explanations
and affective commentaries. These may be requirements for the
upper years of school as Heath suggests, but can also occur with
younger children. In this example, Amy provided a reason why the
caterpillar got stomach-ache, and Matthew suggested how the
caterpillar could have avoided the problem. The interactive nature
of the story reading supports and encourages such thinking.
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The children remained very interested in the cocoon. They wanted
to talk about the cocoon and to relate that to their own home and
other types of houses.
Joanne: He made a special house for himself.
Matthew: Yeah, a cocoon.
Sally: I live in a house.
Lewis: I live in a flat.
Sophie: My rabbit lives in a hutch.
Teacher: Well done. People and animals live in differenttypes of homes, and the caterpillar made his own
house-a cocoon.
The teacher made it clear that she welcomed comments during
the story reading, thus encouraging a pattern of interactive read-
ings for the future. She confirmed the children’s comments about
the different types of houses that people and animals inhabit, and
she reminded them that the caterpillar built his own house. Shealso repeated the name of that house: a cocoon.
This reading of a story gave the children the opportunity to behave
like readers. And their memorisation of parts of the story helped
them in the days and months ahead when they looked through the
book on their own and started to read the print. In these ways, the
story reading provided a foundation for literacy learning. After
completing the story, the teacher asked the children what theyliked about it. She prompted the class to reflect on the story and
their feelings toward it. There were many responses:
Danny: I liked it when he made holes in the fruit. He
crawled in and out.
Ben: I liked the bit where he eat [sic] all the wrong food
and gave him a tummy-ache.
Joanne: It tells us all about the butterfly.
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These responses – along with the children’s comments during the
repeat reading, their contributions to the reading, and their excite-
ment about the story at the start of the day – all suggest that they
had benefited from the two readings. And that they would beinterested in following the story with other activities.
Activities following the story reading
During the next few days, the children revisited and explored the
story in a number of ways. The teacher suggested some of the
activities and had already prepared materials for constructing
puppets. Other ideas came from the children.
Stick puppets
The children made caterpillars out of dough, clay, cloth or card-
board. The teacher helped the children construct caterpillar stick
puppets, which generated interest in creating stick puppets of
other creatures or characters. She encouraged the children to use
the puppets throughout the day as she reread parts of the story.
Children painted large pictures of chocolate cake, ice cream cones
and the rest of the inappropriate food the caterpillar ate on Satur-
day. The teacher added large printed labels for each of these foods.
Each time the teacher recited that part of the story and the chil-
dren joined in, the children moved the puppets along the posters,
crawling from one food to another.
What did this mean for the children’s incidental learning? They
memorised another part of the story, recalled the sequence of
foods eaten on the Saturday, matched the book illustrations and
student paintings to the story as it was recited, noted the teacher’s
large printed words under each picture, and worked collabora-
tively. Importantly they also had great fun.
Further readings
In addition to encouraging the children to use their puppets be-side the posters, the teacher read the complete story many times
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because the children so enjoyed hearing it and often requested it.
These further readings enabled the children to gain ownership of
the story. They grew confident in their knowledge of it, became
familiar with the main character, and could recall some of the keyphrases for themselves. A few of them could recite much of the
story on their own.
The frequent repeat readings of the book took place quite
naturally within the classroom. As Teale and Sulzby (1989) argue,
‘Repeated readings by the teacher are especially important’ (p7).
These replicate the valuable repeat readings that many children
enjoy at home (Campbell, 1999) and encourage the children toread the book for themselves. Children enjoy having the stories re-
peated because it enables them to gain ownership of the words
and meanings of the book. As Morrow (1988) notes, repeat read-
ings lead the children to focus on print as well as story structure.
As the children begin to memorise many of the book’s words, they
can recall some of the story when they look at each page. They can
take part in the reading by offering some words, phrases and sen-
tences as the adult reads aloud. In this way, they are able to behave
like readers.
Singing rhymes
As we listen to young children engaged in various activities
throughout the day, we can hear echoes of the story from the story
reading. In this classroom the children often repeated key phrases
such as ‘but he was still hungry,’ as they drew and painted. Theirinvolvement with the story also extended into other linked
rhymes, verses or songs.
To continue the shared book experience, the teacher used a song
poster with large print as the basis for another literacy activity. As
Holdaway (1979) notes, ‘Some of [the] instructional reading
material can be their songs – and poems’ (p66). The teacher had
prepared a poster with the words to a simple song that linkedclosely to The Very Hungry Caterpillar. In the song, the caterpillar
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is eating, and there is a sequence of eggs, caterpillar, pupa or
cocoon, and butterfly – then back to eggs. The teacher followed the
sequence with the children as she sang with them and pointed to
the words on the poster:
I went to the cabbages one day.
What do you think I saw?
Eggs in a cluster, yellow as a duster.
What could it all be for?
I went to the cabbages one day.
What do you think I saw?
Caterpillar crawling, caterpillar munching.
What could it all be for?
I went to the cabbages one day.
What do you think I saw?
I saw a super duper pupa.
What could it all be for?
I went to the cabbages one day.What do you think I saw?
I saw a butterfly flutter by.
What could it all be for?
I went to the cabbages one day.
What do you think I saw?
Eggs in a cluster, yellow as a duster.
What could it all be for?As we expect from such events, the children soon picked up the
words of the song. The first, second, and fourth lines are repeated
in each verse, and the third line shows the life cycle of the butterfly,
which the children had followed in Eric Carle’s story. Within a few
repeats of the song, the children were joining in confidently and
enthusiastically. Songs such as this become a valuable resource for
teachers, and a collection of verses and songs that complementstory readings can be developed over time. The teacher also
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printed a short verse as a large poster. In this kindergarten class-
room she used it with the children as a poem to be recited:
‘Who’s that tickling my back?’
said the wall.
‘Me,’ said a caterpillar,
‘I’m learning to crawl.’
It became easy for the teacher to involve small groups of children
to act out the words. With some children as the wall, others as the
caterpillar, and groups to recite the verse, the children engaged
again with the antics of a caterpillar. They also made connections
between the words they recited and the print on the poster. By this
time the printed word caterpillarhad been seen, spoken and en-
joyed in many different contexts. Many children were starting to
recognise the word.
Drawing and writing
In addition to making the two posters, the teacher also created a
small word wall. This ensured that some of the words from thestory were readily available for the children in the classroom. The
word wall was especially useful for the children who began to draw
and write. Others needed to make less reference to the word wall
because they were confident about taking risks with words; a risk
taking that the teacher encouraged. These children produced their
writing with their own invented spellings based on the sounds
they heard in each word as they wrote.
Because of the nature of the story, many of the children produced
drawings or collages of the caterpillar (see Figure 1). Additionally,
some children included what the caterpillar ate. Others extended
that line of thinking and drew pictures of different animals and
what they liked to eat. Two of the children’s drawings demonstrate
this (see Figures 2 and 3).
Their writing also indicates their varying levels of understandingabout print. In the example in Figure 2, the child produced four
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Figure 1: Sample Caterpillar Collage
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READING STORIES WITH YOUNG CHILDREN
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Figure 2: A Giraffe Eats Leaves
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Figure 3: Crab Eats Fish
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words:A graff ates leves(A giraffe eats leaves). One of the words is
written conventionally, and the other three are close enough
approximations to enable the reader to make sense of the child’s
effort. In particular,graffand levesdemonstrate a good use of thegraphophonic features and the child’s growing knowledge of letters
and sounds. Furthermore, each of the words appears within a
space. The spacing can be contrasted with the example in Figure 3,
where the writing of CABET FS(Crab eats fish) is more difficult to
decipher, although the picture clue helps.
In Figure 3, the final word is separated from the other two, showing
that the child, not quite 5 years old, had some knowledge of lettersand sounds and was able to put that knowledge to good use while
writing. Other children stayed more firmly with the story they had
heard, writing it in their own words, often greatly abbreviated. For
instance, as we see in Figure 4, Carly wrote only one sentence and
she obviously used the word wall; each word is written conven-
tionally.
Other children retold the story in their own words or wrote aboutsome part of it. A few children let their imagination extend their
view of the story. Richard linked the story to his other interests,
writing about railways and roads (see Figure 5).
The teacher extended the link from the story reading to the chil-
dren’s writing by developing a class book. That book, titled Our
Caterpillar Stories (see Figure 6), was placed in the classroom
library alongside The Very Hungry Caterpillar. In each of theseways, the children remained involved with the story they had en-
joyed.
Focus on the life cycle (science)
The Very Hungry Caterpillaris an ingenious book in several ways.
In addition to providing a captivating story (Trelease, 1995), it
teaches children about the days of the week and their sequence
and it encourages them to think about the numbers 1 to 5. In addi-
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Figure 4: Carly’s Story
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READING STORIES WITH YOUNG CHILDREN
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Figure 5: Richard’s Story
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Figure 6: Cover of Our Caterpillar Stories
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tion, it describes the life cycle of the butterfly, which the children
learn from the frequent rereading.
The song also added to the children’s scientific knowledge. As the
song was sung in the classroom for the second time, one child re-
marked, ‘This song can go on forever.’ A few of the children, sup-
ported by the teacher, folded a sheet of paper into four sections
and drew pictures of the cycle, showing eggs, caterpillar, cocoon,
and butterfly. That led the children to re-create the science se-
quence and follow a simple story structure of beginning, middle
and end.
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Figure 7: Adrian’s Picture
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Counting and measuring (mathematics)
Although the text encouraged the children to count from 1 to 5
with each of the weekday pages, the teacher used the children’s
interest in the main character to measure, compare, and count be-yond 5. For instance, the children took great delight in drawing
pictures of the caterpillars. They liked to follow the example set by
Eric Carle and give them bold facial features. Adrian’s picture of
the caterpillar (see Figure 7) seemed to capture the main character
particularly well.
As the children drew caterpillars, the class discussed their various
lengths. Questions such as ‘How long is your caterpillar?’ and ‘Whohas got the longest caterpillar?’ led the children to count with
cubes and compare the lengths with others. Adam used his picture
to measure the length of the caterpillar. He wrote that ‘my cater-
pillar si [is] 14 squares long’. To make that calculation, he placed 14
maths cubes beside his picture and counted them. His coloured
picture accurately reflects the number and colours of the 14
squares he used. Throughout this process, the children remained
excited about their drawings and engaged incidentally in mathe-
matical thinking.
It takes work to ensure that a story reading is successful. As the
reception example shows, the teacher has to prepare for the story
reading. Even though most teachers are likely to know The Very
Hungry Caterpillar it is nevertheless worth spending time con-
sidering the story reading. We look at this in the next chapter.
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3Reading stories in the classroom:
getting started
R
eading stories works. And they work even better if the
teacher has given some thought to the selection of the
book to be read and has prepared for the reading. How will
the book be read? Reading the book is a performance and the
teacher needs to consider and possibly practice the performance
before reading to the children. With the youngest primary school
children and pre-schoolers, it is important that the children take
part.
Selecting a book to read
This text mentions a small number of children’s books. But thisbarely scratches the surface; there are so many attractive and
worthwhile books for reading to children. We can never know for
sure which books will especially appeal to any one child. For
instance, between the age of 1 and 3, Louie constantly returned to
a favourite text Fix-It Duck(Alborough, 2001). The readings of this
picture book changed over the years. Louie listened to the book
being read when he was 1 year old and inserted the rhyming words
during his second year. By 3 he knew and had memorised large
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chunks of the book. He was attracted to the characters of Duck,
Sheep, Goat and Frog and was familiar with every minute detail of
the illustrations. At times other books became more important to
him, such as The Gruffalo (Donaldson, 1999), ‘Emergency!’ (Mayo,2002) and many others. But, for whatever reason, Fix-It Duckand
other Duck books were requested by him at intervals throughout
his development in using literacy.
As we see in the next chapter, repetition, rhyme and rhythm are
among the key elements that help us to select a particularly suit-
able book for young children. These attributes are evident in Fix-It
Duck and may have contributed to Louie’s enjoyment. At othertimes it might be particular happenings in the home, classroom or
wider community, or previous experience, that suggest a book to
be read. Whatever is the case, the books that are selected have to
be good.
Other reasons may prevail when we read a story or chapter book
to older primary school children. Again there are many great
books waiting to be read. For instance, I have read Kensuke’s King-dom (Morpurgo, 1999) to a class of Year 5 children over a two week
period. The children were captivated by the story, composed notes
that might have been written by Michael and Kensouke,
developed a conversation between the two characters – and, inci-
dentally, rapidly conquered speech marks – and found out about
geographical and historical aspects of the story. And beyond the
picture books, there are many chapter books, waiting to be read.
Preparing for a story reading
Because so many books are available, busy teachers may be
tempted to pick one up at the last minute to read aloud to the
class. However, experience of reading aloud quickly demonstrates
that adequate preparation is needed. Wade (1990) advocates that
‘stories need to be introduced, presented, recommended, talked
over and savoured together’ (p31). This suggests that teachers
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need to prepare for a story reading just like other aspects of the
curriculum.
Graham and Kelly (1997) provide a story reading checklist under
four main headings: select, plan, practice, and deliver. For their
plan section, Graham and Kelly identify six areas to consider:
resources that might be needed
how much is to be read
how the book will be introduced
points the teacher might raise for discussion how to conclude the session, and
what might be used if time is available at the end of the
read-aloud. (p63)
These issues need not take up much of the teacher’s time. But the
list does indicate that teachers will need to be well prepared for the
story reading.
Trelease (1995) also comments on preparation for story reading,
making the point that teachers need to preview the book by read-
ing it to themselves beforehand. This ensures that they know the
book and that it is appropriate for the children. Trelease suggests
choosing a book that matches the intellectual, social and emo-
tional level of the audience. This is not easy, but teachers will be
aware of the books the children enjoy and will become increas-
ingly competent at making the link between text and audience.
Gervase Phinn (2000) pays attention to choosing books for chil-
dren that will be read in the classroom. He shows how many
worthwhile texts are available, in his wide selection of stories,
poetry and non-fiction. Such lists are helpful, although teachers
still need to preview the book for themselves.
The preview ensures that the adult can read the book with an
awareness of the flow of the text. Even experienced teachers find
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that for a story reading to be successful, a practice read is helpful –
even when the teacher has already read the book to another class.
The practice serves as a reminder of the precise words, the page
turning, particular key phrases and the phrases to emphasise. Astory reading that is rehearsed is likely to be a worthwhile perfor-
mance that captures the children’s interest. Authors of picture
books (such as Julia Donaldson of The Gruffalo) report that they
read aloud their completed book to make sure that the flow feels
right (Lane, 2008). If the author feels the need to do this, so should
the story reader.
Reading as a performance
In the real classroom, it may be difficult to get the children settled
for a story. Mood is important, and the teacher should try to settle
the children without making authoritarian requests for attention.
Equally, avoid any threat that there will be no story if the children
make too much noise. The story reading is too important to be
lost. Neuman (1998) suggests starting with a song, a finger play or
a brief chant to signal the time for a story reading. Some teachersuse music to set the mood and tone. Once story readings are esta-
blished as an enjoyable and exciting event in the day, the children
are likely to settle down quickly. Their enjoyment is even more
assured when children can sense the teacher’s enthusiasm for
books. Many teachers get the children’s attention simply by saying
they have another exciting book to read. Then, as Mem Fox (2001)
puts it, the voicing of the first line ‘should be sensational. The aim
is to grab our audience immediately and never let them go’ (p48).
Trelease (1995) has further useful suggestions for guaranteeing the
quality of the activity: teachers should ensure that all the children
can see the pictures easily, sitting with their head just above the
children’s so their voice will carry to all the children, using plenty
of expression and adjusting their pace of reading to fit the story.
Trelease particularly urges teachers to avoid reading too quickly,which he considers to be the commonest mistake. Reading at the
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right pace, pausing for effect, and appropriate emphasis are all
likely to captivate the audience and extend their interest in story
and literacy. Mem Fox (2001) lists seven things to do with the voice.
Six are contrasts ‘loud and soft, fast and slow and high and low’(p42) and the seventh is pausing. So both Trelease and Fox regard
pausing as important – and it is important for the children who
listen. Mem Fox provides examples from her own books, where the
contrasts of voice are made obvious and link directly to the words
being read – and she has a web page where those contrasts are
demonstrated: www.memfox.net. Reading aloud to children re-
quires a performance that can enhance the words and content of
the story.
Ensuring that the children are involved
The interactive aspect of the story reading has many benefits,
especially for younger children. We saw how the reading in the
reception classroom of The Very Hungry Caterpillar elicited com-
ments from the children about the story and illustrations:
John: He nibbles holes.
Amy: I can see the moon.
They also related the text to their own experiences:
Matthew: I like strawberries.
And they demonstrated their knowledge:
Sophie: Real caterpillars eat leaves.
Engaging in talk of this kind enables children to understand the
story, extract meanings and clarify their own thinking. The chil-
dren become ‘partners in the telling’ (Dombey, 1988, p75) even
when they cannot yet read the print and have not seen the book
before.
Teachers should not be unnerved by the children’s comments and
questions during the reading. The pupils’ curiosity and interest is
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fostered when the teacher answers their questions and responds
to their comments. Dombey (1988) suggests that the teacher even
invite the children to join in the reading as active participants. The
reception teacher did this very effectively:
Teacher: I wonder why there are holes in the fruit?
Then later:
Teacher: What else gave it [the caterpillar] a stomach-ache?
Her questions encouraged the children to participate, and their
comments demonstrated that they had become used to contri-
buting.
Additionally, the teacher can encourage children to participate in
the actual reading of the text, especially the parts where phrases
are repeated:
Teacher: On Monday
he ate through
one apple.But [with emphasis and pausing for the children]
Children: he was still
hungry.
Inviting the children into the story reading to speak some of the
text encourages them to behave like readers and provides a foun-
dation for their involvement with the book.
After the children have commented and asked questions, the
teacher returns to focus on the book and resumes reading. This is
not easy. It is done by changing the emphasis in the voice, pausing
and using signals for the children, such as ‘On the next page’ or
‘Now’. Most teachers of young children can perfect this skill so that
the story reading flows from reading to active participation and
back to reading.
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The contribution of the teacher is not only verbal. Facial expres-
sions can encourage children to engage or they can suggest a con-
tinuation of the story. A finger placed on the lips may indicate a
return to the story. These non-verbal behaviours are designed toencourage the children’s participation in the story reading, to
signal a reading from the book and, in some circ*mstances, to re-
mind one or more children of the behaviour which is appropriate.
After the reading, the children can be involved by taking part in a
class discussion. As Trelease (1995) notes, this gives the children
time for their thoughts, hopes, fears and discoveries to surface. He
reminds us that such discussions should not be turned into a quizor an attempt to pry story interpretations from the children.
Rather, talking about the book helps them to create meanings
(McGee, 1995). The discussion can also be the springboard that
takes the children from the story into other activities.
This glimpse inside a reception classroom offers an indication of
how teachers might work with young children during a story read-
ing, although story reading will vary according to the age of chil-dren. In pre-school, the dialogue between the teacher and chil-
dren is often longer and less focused than with older children, and
the teacher may need to work harder to respond to their com-
ments and use them to return to the reading. Older children may
be more willing to listen to the entire story, saving their comments
until the end. And their interest in following up aspects of the story
in pictures and writing will be more extensive.
Routman (1991) identifies reading stories in the classroom as ‘the
single most influential factor in young children’s success in learn-
ing to read’ (p32). The interactive nature of story readings provides
major support for the children’s literacy learning. Through the use
of questions and statements from both adult and child, each pas-
sage is clarified and integrated with other parts of the story. Young
children can anticipate, or predict, upcoming story events through
the knowledge they acquire. This experience helps them develop
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strategies for making inferences and hypotheses both for the book
being read and for other written language. The reception children
enjoyed the reading of The Very Hungry Caterpillar, became in-
volved in the story, participated in a related discussion and usedthe meanings and the words to extend their excitement into other
aspects of learning.
Some teachers may feel uncomfortable about devoting a great
deal of time to story reading (Routman, 1991). The children and
teacher so enjoy the activity that it may not seem like hard enough
work. But the children’s enjoyment becomes the basis for learning
about stories and reading, learning to read, learning throughliteracy, and wanting to read (Short, 1999). Because of these
numerous benefits, story readings should take place every day –
and even more frequently for the youngest children in schools.
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4The importance of narrative
and quality books
Narrative and story are central features in the early years of
education (Whitehead, 1987). A particular benefit of story
is that it provides a way of organising thinking about ex-
periences and making them meaningful. Bruner (1968) argues
that there are two modes of thought, ‘a good story and a well-
formed argument’ (p99). These provide different ways of viewing
reality. Although both are important, this book focuses on narra-
tive.
As children ‘transact’ or interact with stories (Rosenblatt, 1978),
they consider the development of the action and begin to become
aware of what the protagonists and antagonists involved in the
action know, think or feel. These transactions enable children to
build what Langer (1995) refers to as an envisionment; that is, the
understanding they have about the text. As ideas unfold and new
ideas come to mind, this envisionment, or understanding, is sub-
ect to change. During a reading the story is a basis for encouraging
thinking as the children interact with the adult. For example, we
saw in Chapter 2 how, as the children heard multiple readings of
The Very Hungry Caterpillar and engaged in activities related tothe story, they extended their thinking and developed their ideas.
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Whitehead (1997) reminds us that pleasure is ‘the first and all-per-
vasive theme in the world of literature’ (p119). This pleasure is
evident in classrooms where teachers and children share stories,
particularly in classrooms where an initial emphasis on the storyis key. Following the story with related activities, as shown in
Chapter 2, can add to the children’s enjoyment. However, we must
remember that such activities must ‘not detract from children’s
enjoyment of good books’ (Lane and Wright, 2007, p674).
When the story gives pleasure, play and learning come naturally
and inevitably, as the children construct meaning about what they
have heard and considered. Dorothy White (1954/1984) offersnumerous examples of how her pre-school daughter Carol used a
story line as the basis for her play at home. For instance, when
Carol was almost 4 years old, Dorothy read her a book titled The
Little Train (Lenski, 1946), in which the key character is Engineer
Small, whose job is to ensure that the train is ready for its journey.
Carol regularly ‘played trains’ after hearing this story: ‘Carol oils
wheels, shovels coal, reads her orders, pulls a whistle-cord and
makes off from the sofa station for the tunnel under the table’
(White, p83). From this play, Carol was able to extend her under-
standing of railways and construct her own meanings onto the
story. Phillips and McNaughton (1990) suggest that children who
have had frequent storybook readings at home learn how to con-
struct meaning from unfamiliar texts.
Whitehead (1987) suggests that there are three main strands to
support the claims that narrative and story benefit young children
– skills, cultural heritage, and personal development. These
strands are interrelated and often all three are apparent at once.
Skills
Children who have a substantial number of encounters with books
at home learn in their first few years how to manipulate and use a
book. In a longitudinal study of story readings with my grand-daughter Alice, I noted that by age 12 months,
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Alice could handle a book by:
picking it up or extracting one from a bookshelf,
orienting the book correctly so it was the right way up,
turning a page when she wanted to look at the next picture,turn the pages from the front towards the back.
(Campbell, 1999, p17)
This competence is typical of many children who have similar
opportunities to explore books: they see demonstrations of read-
ing by adults and are supported by adults as they manipulate
books. In the classroom, the adult demonstrations that occur
naturally as part of reading a story ensure that even children with
little experience of books learn these skills.
Children also learn about the language of print from stories, and
they acquire understanding of the structure of stories – beginning,
middle, and end – as well as understanding about characters, set-
ting and plot. Carol Fox (1993) provides evidence of this learning
in her study of the oral storytelling of five pre-school children.
Transcripts of these retellings demonstrate the children’s learning.
For instance, Fox notes that when Justine was 4 years 1 month old,
she related the following story:
Once upon a time there were two little dicky birds in a tree
and mammy one said ‘Don’t go out there’
but the naughtiest was the little baby one
he went out ‘cos he didn’t listen to his mum
she said ‘There’s wolves out there and foxes and
ugly lions and other sorts of things that willeat the birds and crawling insects and
spiders and witches’
and he flyed out of the nest
and one of the tigers opened his mouth and
gobbled him all up
and the second little baby came to eat him up
and that’s the end of the story. (p85)
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In her detailed analysis of this story, Fox notes that the actions
happen in the past tense and the mother bird speaks in the pre-
sent tense. Although this is a simple story structure, it contains two
actions and causal resolutions, and it was not Justine’s richestnarrative. This example of storytelling and others like it demon-
strate a wealth of learning about language.
Children can extend their understanding of language when they
have the opportunity to write about aspects of the stories they’ve
heard an adult read aloud or rewrite the stories in their own words.
Additionally, children learn about letters and letter-sound
relationships from stories (see Chapter 4). However when we lookat the story writing of 5-year-old Dylan (Figure 8) we see how
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Figure 8: Arechy Bird
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much he too has learned about story structure, the use of two
main characters and the resolution to the story. And we also see
the extent to which, given the opportunity to write freely, he tries
to use his knowledge of letters and sounds to create the words thathe wants to include.
Dylan was able to write numerous words conventionally but
others are clearly developmental or invented spellings. He
attempted a number of different ways to write ‘bird’ without quite
getting it right by the end of the story, and his attempts at ‘up’ were
illuminating. Each invented spelling enables us to detect the way
in which the written word might have been created from his know-ledge of letter and sound.
Cultural heritage
Children learn about a wider world from narrative, especially
through the oral tradition of nursery rhymes, singing games and
chants (Opie and Opie, 1959), as well as the folk tales and fairy tales
that are handed from one generation to another. Then there is the
‘received’ literature (Whitehead, 1987), which includes books that
are read in successive generations and serve as a link to our past.
When children engage with the narrative of nursery rhymes, they
enjoy the rhythm and rhyme. They learn about story structure and
acquire understanding of onset and rime, which teachers can
capitalise on later. And nursery rhymes often suggest links with
the past:
Ring-ring o’roses
A pocket full of posies.
A-tishoo! A-tishoo!
We all fall down.
This rhyme is a startling reminder of the bubonic plague. Although
most young children cannot make this connection, many teachers
find it useful to return to the familiar nursery rhymes later at pri-
mary school and explore the origins of the rhyme.
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Children are likely to meet some fairy tales in a variety of formats.
For instance, Janet and Allan Ahlberg’s (1978) Each Peach Pear
Plum, makes only brief reference to key characters:
Cinderella on the stairs
I spy the Three Bears
Nevertheless, the detailed pictures beside each rhyme encourage
young children to think and talk about these characters, and this
can lead to extended readings of the fairy tales from other books.
In recent years, certain picture books have become part of a new
collection of received literature. Famously, The Very Hungry Cater-pillar(Carle, 1969) has been read aloud with, and read by, millions
of children around the world. It is read to children by parents who
enjoyed it in their own childhood and it still appears to captivate
children today. Not only is it part of a received literature but it also
expands a child’s world. The story of the life cycle is learned along-
side the tale about the hungry caterpillar.
Tizard and Hughes (1984) examine the responses of 4-year-oldRosy, who was sharing a book with her mother and thus exploring
aspects of a wider world. The title of the book is not indicated, but
the plot involves a puffin that witnesses a shipwreck. Here is a por-
tion of the transcript:
Child: Do, um boats, when they’re on, right on the sea
break like that?
Mother: Well, not very often, but sometimes they do. If theweather’s very bad, and they get thrown against
the rocks, they do break up. (p63)
Because the family was planning a summer holiday from England
to France, Rosy found this response unsettling:
Child: I, I, I, don’t want to. I’m not going, but we won’t go
on, if there’s too many people on the boat we
won’t go on it, will we? (p63)
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Rosy talked about boats, discussed the possibility of shipwrecks,
and made a connection to a possible sea trip. Such explorations
clarify children’s thinking and help them ‘develop a much richer
mental model of the world’ (Wells, 1986, p152), which further em-phasises the importance of story readings at home and in school.
Personal development
A number of educators have written about the power of stories
and the importance of narrative for young children. For example,
Kirby (1995) writes,
The power of stories lies in the opportunities they provide forextending
children’s thinking and feeling in numerous ways including:
their beliefs, assumptions, attitudes, values about life, situations and
people;
their thinking and responses to everyday life and complex issues;
their concerns, fears, pain, growing up, feelings and compassion for
others;
their relationships with other people;their knowledge of and responses to both their own culture and the
culture of others;
their imagination, enjoyment and satisfaction;
their abilities to predict, question, hypothesise about situations and
people;
the power to create and shape through their own stories;
the opportunity to talk to adults and peers about stories in an
atmosphere
which is collaborative, supportive and ‘risk free’. (p7-8)
Such a substantial list suggests a wider area of learning beyond
helping children become readers. And it considers the many as-
pects of thinking and feeling that are supported by narrative.
I noted this intellectual and emotional engagement as my grand-
daughter Alice gave a memorised reading of Sniff-Snuff-Snap! by
Dodd (1995) (Campbell, 1999). The plot involves a warthog res-
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tricting the use of a waterhole by other animals. After chasing the
animals away, the warthog always returns to the waterhole. At the
age of 4 years 7 months, Alice relied on her memory of previous
story readings and was able to recite the correct words about thewarthog’s last return as we looked at the final pages of the book:
Alice: Back came the warthog,
tired and hot,
for a long,
cool drink
at his favourite spot.
Down past rocks
and thornbush tree,
he came to the waterhole
BUT
what did he see?
THICK
BROWN
MUD.
(Campbell, 1999, p107)
Alice then illustrated her thinking about the story and her feelings
about the warthog by adding a last few lines. In the final picture a
drop of rain splashes on to the warthog’s back. So Alice added,
Drip, drop, drip.
The rain came down
and filled up the waterhole again. (p108)
In creating that ending, Alice demonstrated empathy for thewarthog. She was also thinking through the consequences of the
rainfall in that arid environment. Interestingly, her first line re-
captures the rhythm of the title of the story by using the dr con-
sonant blend. The frequent parent-child and grandparent-child
story readings of this book had enabled the young reader to gain
ownership of the words. This supported her development toward
becoming an independent reader. And the quality of the narrative
did far more for Alice: it encouraged her thinking and feelings
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about the characters and the plot, to which she responded so
creatively.
Numerous observations have been made about how narrative
supports personal development. Wade (1990) refers to the sus-
tenance of story, noting that quality texts provide ‘food for the
mind and for the feelings’ (p30). Evans (1998) explores children’s
thoughtful responses to key emotional issues in some stories. In
one instance, she studied year 2 children as they wrote about the
death of a pet dog in response to a reading of the story I’ll Always
Love You (Wilhelm, 1985). The children discussed the sad parts of
the story and related it to their own experiences’ concluding thatalthough the death of Elfie, the dog, was sad, the story as a whole
was not, because the dog had had a good life.
The intellectual and emotional sustenance children receive from a
story makes them want to go on reading (Bettelheim and Zelan,
1981). Ensuring that children want to continue reading, to move to
other books and to reflect on what is read is an aim for all teachers.
Books of quality
There are so many good books written for young children that one
can only mention a few. Excellent books which are cited frequently
in Reading stories with young children include those by outstand-
ing authors four different English-speaking countries: Eric Carle
from the United States; Lynley Dodd from New Zealand; Mem Fox,
whose writing is centred on Australia; and Pat Hutchins from the
United Kingdom. This still does no more than touch the surface ofthe wealth of worthwhile books that can be shared with young
children.
A much wider range of books for young children is listed in various
sources. In Trelease’s (1995) The Read-Aloud Handbook, over 100
pages are devoted to an annotated list of books that can be read
aloud and Cullinan’s (1989) annotated list appears in a chapter on
literature for young children. Routman’s Invitations (1991) listsbooks that invite readers into print and identifies predictable
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books that help children develop early reading strategies as dis-
cussed below. Professional journals such as The Reading Teacher
often feature lists of appropriate recent books to share with young
children; a regular column on children’s books started in Sep-tember 1999 (Giorgis and Johnson, 1999), and includes lists of
books for reading aloud. The columnists also group books for
particular purposes, such as ‘for inviting interaction’ (p80). English
four to eleven too has regular reviews of books for children. On the
internet booktrustchilrensbooks.org.uk and several other sites
provide information on children’s literature (Karchmer, 2000).
Teachers can stay up to date by checking the annual awards given
to outstanding books for young children.
Predictable books
Rhodes (1981) argues for the value of predictability in books for
young children. Certain books enable young children at school to
read right away, because they draw on the children’s knowledge of
language and of the world. She maintains that when the ‘language
flows naturally, and the vocabulary and content reflect what chil-dren know’ (p513), children can predict what the author is going
to say and how it will be said.
According to Rhodes, the key characteristic of predictability is the
use of repetitive patterns. For example, Slinki Malinki, Open the
Door (Dodd, 1993) relates the mischievous adventures of the cat,
Slinki Malinki and a parrot. After each room they visit the text re-
peats the rhyme:Slinki Malinki
jumped high off the floor,
he swung on a handle
and opened
a door.
Children hearing this book in a read-aloud can soon predict the
next page and prepare for the havoc the cat and the parrot willwreak in the next room.
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Predictable books are characterised by familiar concepts, a sym-
biotic match of text to illustrations, rhyme, rhythm of language,
the familiarity of the story or story line to the child, and the use of
familiar sequences (Rhodes, 1981). What does this mean whenbooks such as Slinki Malinki are read in a classroom? Children al-
ready know that cats may make a mess at home, so this story in-
volves familiar concepts and thus assists their understanding. The
close match between the text and illustrations also supports the
predictability.
Children bring their knowledge to school. Many arrive with some
knowledge of folk tales, fairy tales and songs. When they meet Cin-derella again, the familiarity of the characters aids the predicta-
bility. Some multilayered texts (Watson, 1993) make use of that
familiarity. As noted earlier, in Each Peach Pear Plum (Ahlberg and
Ahlberg, 1978) the characters from one familiar text meet
charactersfrom other texts:
Cinderella on the stairs
I spy the Three Bears
This theme runs throughout the story.
We saw how Eric Carle used the familiar sequence of numbers
from 1 to 5 and the days of the week in The Very Hungry Caterpillar.
The two sequences are linked as the caterpillar eats his way
through the fruit on each day of the week. The children bring some
understanding of these familiar sequences to the story reading,
and the story further develops their understanding and aids theirprediction of what is to come. The children’s knowledge of lan-
guage and the world helps them create meanings from books, and
the repetition, rhyme, and rhythm of the text – what Wade (1990)
calls ‘the three R’s’ of language and story (p7) – support the young
children’s learning.
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Repetition
Repetition that contributes to the story line helps children become
good readers. Typically, the repetition is of a phrase or sentence
rather than a single word, as in some reading schemes used in thepast. In Slinki Malinki, Open the Door, the repeated sentence
contributes greatly to the excitement of the story and the build-up
to its conclusion. The phrase appears six times on six of the 15
pages of print. The repetition also aids children when they begin to
read such texts for themselves.
Because the repeated phrase or sentence is an integral part of the
story, children pick up the phrase very quickly. For instance, whenAlice was 2 years 9 months old, it took just one reading at home of
Good-Night Owl (Hutchins, 1972) before she contributed a key
repetition:
Grandfather: Owl
Alice: tried to sleep.
Grandfather: The bees buzzed,
buzz buzz,
and
Alice: owl tried to sleep.
(Campbell, 1999, p59)
Although Alice had not yet begun to give much attention to the
print in books, she did use that key phrase when she tried to con-
struct the story by herself immediately after hearing the story for asecond time:
Alice: Owl tried to sleep
There’s the bees,
Owl tried to sleep
and
the bees buzzed
buzz buzz.
Owl tried to sleep
and the squirrel was sitting in the tree.
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It is not only girls who listen attentively to story at that age and
learn by heart much of the content. Louie at 2 years 8 months had
absorbed much of the book ‘Emergency!’ (Mayo, 2002) during the
frequent repeat readings he requested. So that as his grandfatherread to, and with, him Louie made a major contribution to the
story reading, using his knowledge of the repeated words and story
rhythm.
Grandfather Ambulance speeding
Louie emergency!
Whee-oww! Whee-oww! Pull over, make way!
Siren screaming, light beam-beaming.
Grandfather Help is coming –
Louie it’s on the way!
While repetition contributes to this story line, it also builds up the
predictability and helps children toward ownership of the text. In
addition, it supports young readers when they attempt to con-struct the story for themselves or move toward reading a well-
known book on their own.
Rhyme
A number of picture books include a rhyme element, which
children generally love. For instance, in Hairy Maclary from
Donaldson’s Dairy (Dodd, 1983), the main characters are
introduced one by one in an extending rhyme:
Schnitzel von Krumm
with a very low tum,
Bitzer Maloney
all skinny and bony,
Muffin McLay
like a bundle of hay,
Bottomley Potts
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covered in spots,
Hercules Morse
as big as a horse
and Hairy Maclaryfrom Donaldson’s dairy.
Young children greatly enjoy this story, and they are usually keen
to join in with the rhyme within minutes. It is not surprising that
after a reading they can be heard using the rhymes as they engage
with other activities in the classroom. And any sighting of a
Dalmatian dog is almost certain to evoke the words ‘Bottomley
Potts covered in spots.’
Not only do children like to hear rhymes, they also enjoy playing
with words and using them to create their own rhymes or jingles
(Chukovsky, 1963). Teachers can capitalise on this interest in the
classroom, first by providing worthwhile books for story readings
and then by using their learning as a basis for phonological
development. As Meek (1990) indicates, when children have fun
with rhymes, phonology is developed. For example, with HairyMaclary from Donaldson’s Dairy, the play with rhyme leads to an
awareness of onset such as (m and h) and rime (-orse), as inMorse
and horse. This awareness, Goswami and Bryant (1990) suggest, is
significant feature of children’s development as readers.
A brief look at a few lines from one of Dr. Seuss’s books, such as
Green Eggs and Ham (1960), illustrates how children will be made
aware of onset and rime:
That Sam-I-am!
That Sam-I-am!
I do not like
that Sam-I-am!
Do you like
green eggs and ham?
And later in the rhyme:
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Would you eat them
in a box?
Would you eat them
with a fox?
In the first instance, the rime element -am together with the onset
letters Sand h become part of the children’s language and aware-
ness. The rime -oxtogether with the onset b andfare among the
many others that follow. But mainly the children enjoy the non-
sense of the repeating rhyme throughout the book.
RhythmRhythm is an important feature of books for young children. The
use of rhyme and repetition in Green Eggs and Ham creates a
rhythm that children listen to and like to use for themselves. It is
doubtful whether this book is ever read aloud without the words
being delivered in an almost song-like rhythm with the words.
Children enjoy the rhythms that are created by the repetition and
rhyme.
Rhythm in stories also appeals to children, and is produced in a
various ways in the books that are read aloud. In The Very Hungry
Caterpillar, a two-page spread highlights the foods the caterpillar
ate on Saturday:
On Saturday
he ate through
one piece ofchocolate cake,
one ice-cream cone,
one pickle,
one slice of Swiss cheese,
one slice of salami...
The repetition of oneon this first page of text is repeated another
five times on the opposite page as other foods are introduced.However, it is the listing of the foods that appears to give the
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rhythm to the text. The alliteration, such as slice of salami, adds a
rhythmic feel to the text and attracts the children to the words.
The image created by the sounds in slice of salamican remain pro-
minent in children’s minds. In a classroom, of 5 year-old children
(Campbell, 1992), I observed Richard read Carle’s book to his
teacher in an individual reading conference. The correct reading of
each miscue follows in parentheses:
Richard: one slice of salami (Swiss) cheese
one slice of salami
one lollipop
and then at the end of that double page
one slice of salami (watermelon). (p24)
Richard miscued Swiss and watermelon as the memory and
rhythm of slice of salamidominated part of his reading.
Fox (1993) notes the importance of rhythm in some of the story-
telling of pre-schoolers. One of the children in her study, Josh,regularly heard weather reports on the radio which described con-
ditions at sea at Fair Isle, Dogger Bank, and Rockall and elsewhere.
Josh caught the rhythm of those broadcasts and enjoyed produc-
ing his own weather reports.
Many teachers of young children seek predictability, repetition,
rhyme, and rhythm in the books they read to the children. Others
suggest different criteria for quality books. Nutbrown (1994) main-
tains that children’s books should be evaluated according to their
appeal, readability, content, development and inclusivity. Hart-
Hewins and Wells (1990) suggest a somewhat similar list, namely:
content, language, attractiveness, and ease of reading. Teachers
can add their own criteria to such lists based on their experience
of reading to children and their discussion with colleagues about
books. Many factors need to be taken into account when selecting
books for reading to and with young children.
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Poetry and non-fiction
The emphasis in this chapter has been on the importance of narra-
tive and children’s engagement with stories through the use of
high-quality storybooks for story readings at home and school.However, teachers of young children know poetry and non-fiction
also have an important place in readings aloud.
Some of the stories that are read to children might be regarded as
extended poems. The rhyme and rhythm of many nursery rhymes,
songs, and stories that are read aloud to children ensure that they
will also enjoy hearing poetry read aloud. From readings, children
often like to move on to reading other poetry and writing their ownsimple rhymes and poems.
Many stories communicate facts. For instance, Cimru the Seal
(Radcliffe, 1997) provides information beyond the story about the
life of a seal, its diet and predators. The children learn much of that
information incidentally, as the story is read aloud. However, in a
Year 2 classroom I observed, a discussion after the story was read
demonstrated that the children were interested in exploring thefactual aspects of the text. So it important that from time to time
teachers choose non-fiction books, or sections from them, as read-
alouds. The children then have a model of scientific writing, and
they can consider the ‘well-formed argument’ (Bruner, 1968, p99).
The many different books that are read to and with children will
interest and excite them. The story readings, and the activities that
are linked to them, also facilitate the children’s reading and writ-ing. At the same time, the children also learn about print features
(Wolf, 2008). This is the subject of Chapter 5.
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5Reading stories and
print features
T
he range of excellent storybooks available for reading aloud
enables young children to experience the widest possible
contact with letters, sounds and spellings. Studies of young
children who regularly have stories read to them at home indicate
that they move on to school with a strong foundation of grapho-
phonic knowledge (Campbell, 2004). The miscues these children
produce as they read and the invented spellings they create as they
write are indicators of this knowledge. For children in the early
years of primary school, reading stories in the classroom provide a
similar opportunity to learn about the alphabet, phonics and
spelling. As Kane (1999) argues, phonics can and should be taughtfrom meaningful contexts: ‘The quality children’s literature we
want our children immersed in provides all the examples of
phonics enthusiasts could ever want’ (p771).
Just the titles of books such as Hop on Pop (Seuss, 1963) hint at the
learning that is likely to take place as such books are shared with
children. Part of this story rhyme reads,
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We like to hop.
We like to hop
on top of Pop.
STOP
You must not
hop on Pop.
As children explore and think about writing, their awareness of
sounds is enhanced. Singing, reciting, writing and playing with
words such as hop, Pop, top and stop makes that so. As Strickland
(1998) suggests, the children’s involvement in rhymes, songs, and
alliteration in various links to story readings promotes phonemic
awareness. It also provides the basis for learning the letters of the
alphabet, phonics and spelling.
Alphabet
Powell and Hornsby (1998) demonstrate that children using litera-
ture in a reception class can consider graphophonic connections
in a meaningful way. They show how one teacher used text fromthe storybook Possum Magic(Fox, 1983) to help the children think
about a letter and then create an alliteration. The book reads:
Later, on a beach in Perth, they ate a piece of pavlova.
Hush’s legs appeared. So did her body.
‘You look wonderful, you precious possum!’ said Grandma Poss.
The teacher and the children used the alliteration to create a
tongue twister: The precious possum had a piece of pavlova inPerth.
Over a few days the teacher developed a chart of pwords, starting
with words from the story, and the children suggested other words
to add to the list. Together they created a word wall that used
words from the story reading, children’s forenames and other
words they found important: Perth, pavlova, precious, possum,
Patrick, party, puppy, Paul and pink(p86).
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Staying with the theme, the teacher selected poems such as ‘Peter,
Peter, Pumpkin Eater’ to extend the children’s attention to the
letter. The <Pp> letter chart (showing both uppercase and lower-
case letters) was hung on the wall for the children to add otherwords beginning with p.
The class went on to develop the link with the story. As the pos-
sums continue their journey around Australia eating ‘people food,’
the story reveals that:
They ate Anzac biscuits in Adelaide,
mornay and Minties in Melbourne,
steak and salad in Sydney,
and pumpkin scones in Brisbane.
Powell and Hornsby show how the first two lines formed the basis
for two other letter charts. Again, the teacher began with words
from the story and then added words from the children. Such
activities helped them learn the letters of the alphabet and move
beyond it to detailed consideration of the letters.
Non-fiction alphabet books, such as Animalia (Base, 1986), can
add to the children’s learning when they are used as the basis for a
story reading. As Strickland (1998) notes, making alphabet books
readily available in the classroom for the children to browse
through after reading it aloud furthers their interest and supports
their learning.
PhonicsThe fact that the children are learning phonics from story readings
and follow-up activities is evident in numerous ways. For instance,
during one reception story reading of When I Was Little Like You
(Walsh, 1997), one of the 5-year-olds in the class made an un-
expected comment:
Teacher: ‘When I was little like you,’ said Gran,
‘we bought fish from the boatman on the
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quay. A brace of bright mackerel for
supper, still fresh and shining.’
Francis: You get a /k/ with three letters. Like in quay. You
can have a k, c, or q.
The teacher had not taught these letters and letter sounds directly,
but the constant play with language, words and letters ensured
that they were learned. The story reading led to a consideration of
initial letter-sound correspondences and thinking about some
words. It also gave the children a chance to initiate discussions
about letter sounds.
In one first year classroom, the teacher read aloud the Big Book
version of Walking Through the Jungle (Lacome, 1993), and en-
couraged the children to write a sentence using alliteration. Some
of the children chose an animal from the story, such as the croco-
dile (see Figure 9).
In this writing, the child was able to produce alliteration by spell-
ing each word conventionally, although substituting an for a.Other children wrote about animals that were not part of the story,
such as a flamingo (see Figure 10).
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Figure 9 : Crocodile Sentence
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Althoughfluffyingmay not be a recognised word, here it appears
to fit well with the child’s description of it. As the word flamingo
was not part of the story, it had to be written unseen and the child
demonstrated knowledge of letters and sounds and a willingness
to construct words using this knowledge. When children are en-couraged to write following story readings – and when their spell-
ings are acknowledged for the learning that is demonstrated – the
foundations are in place for conventional spelling to develop,
especially when the teacher and the children talk freely about
letters, sounds and words in context. As Geekie, Cambourne and
Fitzsimmons (1999) note, when children are encouraged to write
from the very beginning of schooling, the need for the explicit
teaching of phonics is reduced.
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Figure 10: Flamingo Sentence
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The alliterative writing activity, like many other literacy activities,
encouraged the children to think about letters and sounds in the
context of a story they enjoyed. The extended alliteration that is
contained in Margaret Attwood’s Princess Prunella and the PurplePeanut (1995) is typically enjoyed by older primary children. In
one year five classroom the children discussed the writing and
then proceeded to write their own alliterative stories. The extent of
the children’s enjoyment and understanding is illustrated in these
few sentences from one of their stories:
Pretty puppy eats lots of portions of pies and for pudding a plum.
She is now getting very plump. Pretty puppy likes to pounceon people, she pulls and pushes a lot.
Such writing is creative. Stimulated by the story reading, it fosters
a clear understanding of alliteration and encourages the children
to play with words, letters and sounds, and language.
There are numerous ways in which children can explore letters
and sounds creatively. Opitz (2000) provides guidance about the
possibilities suggesting various books that can serve as the basisfor exploring alliteration and other aspects of letter-sound corres-
pondences naturally, as the stories are read aloud.
When children are encouraged to write in a variety of formats, they
develop an understanding of phonics and a love of writing. Phinn
(2000) suggests that young children should both listen to and write
poems. Miniature poems, such as the Japanese haiku, are
manageable for children because they are short. Children in yearstwo and three respond well to the discipline of the haiku’s short
lines of five, seven, and five syllables. It requires them to think
carefully about letters and sounds as they consider the syllables in
each word. This builds on earlier work they may have done in pre-
school and reception classrooms to clap out the syllables in their
names and in nursery rhymes (Ericson and Juliebö, 1998).
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Word wall
The walls of the classrooms for young children traditionally carry
a great deal of print. As long ago as 1958 the many pictures in God-
dard’s book on infant school reading show simple print being usedto support children’s reading and writing. Goddard argued that
just having the print on the wall is not enough; the teacher has to
talk about it with the children.
Goddard’s children also had their own ‘wordbooks’ or individual
dictionaries. Throughout the year, the children expanded them,
adding words from the classroom print and reading books, and
words they asked the teacher to help them spell correctly. Thestrategy supported children with a personal resource for words
they might otherwise have difficulty with. But the teacher could
not always prevent the dictionaries from becoming overloaded
with words that were seldom used. Neither could she support
every child as needed and some important words were probably
missed. Providing a classroom dictionary or word wall tries to
overcome such difficulties.
Cunningham and Allington (1999) argue for word walls in recep-
tion and primary classrooms but they too point out that it is not
enough for the teacher to hang a word wall in the classroom and
suggest that the children use it as necessary. Instead, these authors
argue, it is important for the teachers to ‘DO’ word walls. In parti-
cular, they suggest that the teacher should:
be selective and ‘stingy’ about what words go up there,limiting the words to those really common words that
children need a lot in writing
add words gradually – five a week
make them accessible by putting them where everyone
can see them, writing them in big black letters, and using
a variety of colours so that words which are constantly
confused (for, from, that, them, they, this, etc.) are in dif-ferent colours.
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practice the words by chanting and writing them because
struggling readers are seldom good at visual learning and
can’t just look at words and remember them
do a variety of review activities to provide enough practice
so the children can read and spell the words instantly and
automatically
make sure that word-wall words are spelled correctly in all
their writing. (adapted from Cunningham and Allington,
1999, p136)
The first and last points stress the need for the teacher to be veryselective in the words they choose. Their expectations can support
the children in learning key high-frequency words and so facilitate
their reading and writing.
Many reception teachers start by placing each child’s forename in
the word wall in alphabetic order, which has a section for each
letter of the alphabet. Studies of individual children before they
start school emphasise the importance of their ability to writetheir own name (Baghban, 1984; Campbell, 1999; Schickedanz,
1990) and the children are interested in seeing their name on the
wall. The class can also make comparisons from the listings. For
example, it would be remarkable if there were not at least two chil-
dren with forenames starting with the same letter. Then the
teacher can expand the list by adding some of the key characters
from storybooks or some high-frequency words, as suggested by
Cunningham and Allington (1999). The word wall supports the
children’s learning of the alphabet, recognition of each letter and
phonic knowledge of initial letter sounds.
Moustafa (1997) also advocates the use of word walls, suggesting
that they be created specifically from the predictable stories that
are read aloud in class. In this case, the teacher asks the children to
choose their favourite words from the story after reading a story
several times. The children will be supported further if the teacher
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places a picture from the story, perhaps of the key character, next
to each word.
Additionally, the teacher can highlight certain letters of each word
to emphasise the onset or rime – which is an important part of
children’s learning (Goswami, 1999). For a Humpty-Dumpty story
with the words wallandfall, the teacher might highlight the onset
/w/ or /f/, or the rime element /all/. The words can be regrouped
frequently as the teacher talks with the children about words start-
ing with /w/, or when the class is considering other /all/ rimes. As
Moustafa (1997) indicates, such strategies make the phonics in-
struction ‘explicit, systematic and extensive’ (p93).
For Moustafa, working in this way creates a whole-to-parts phonic
instruction. However, it differs from traditional phonics instruc-
tion, or the return of synthetic phonics into the classroom (Rose,
2006), in that it follows, rather than precedes, the story. It is only
after a story has been read to, with, and by children that parts of
the words are taught. And it concentrates on units of the syllable –
namely, letter-onset and letter-rime correspondences – ratherthan letter-phoneme correspondences.
Whichever approach is used, the word walls provide support in a
number of ways:
the children will learn about the letters of the alphabet as
each section has a space available for words to be added
the sequence of the alphabet is shown by the word walland the teacher can bring the children’s attention to that
feature (as well as singing some of the well-known alpha-
bet songs)
the high-frequency key words can become part of child’s
visual memory of words
words of interest from the story come from the children
and mean something to them so can be learned morereadily (Ashton-Warner, 1963)
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the children learn about word families, first at the level of
initial letter similarity and then when the word wall is
developed with onset and rime highlighted.
Spelling
Teachers of young children may be concerned lest the use of the
word wall might reduce the children’s use of invented spellings. If
numerous words are displayed, the children have less need to go
through the process of sounding out the word to work out how to
represent it in print. So teachers need to use word walls with
thoughtfully. The children’s engagement with invented spellings is
too precious to lose.
Interestingly, invented spelling is one of the key links between
whole language and phonic-based views of early reading develop-
ment. Goodman (1990) explores how children are active construc-
tors of knowledge. Invented spelling not only tells us about what
they know but also shows how they are constructing literacy from
their increasingly sophisticated understanding of print conven-
tions. Adams (1990), although from a different perspective, also
values invented spellings:
In overview, classroom encouragement of invented spellings and
independent writing from the start seems a promising approach to-
wards the development of literacy skills. Beyond all that was mentioned
above and whether the children are directing their efforts towards good
descriptions or imaginative stories, this approach appears incom-
parable for purposes of developing their abilities to reflect on their ownthoughts, to elaborate and organise their ideas, and to express them-
selves in print. (p386-387)
The teacher will want to support young children in their under-
standing of print and the production of words in their writing. The
word wall can support the children in these endeavours as it helps
to create for each child a visual memory of some key and fre-
quently used words that they can then write automatically andconventionally. But teachers will want to ensure that for much of
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the time, and with many words, the children are actively engaged
in constructing the word themselves, using their knowledge of
letters and sounds. Initially, this produces invented rather than
conventional spellings. It also lays the foundations of literacyknowledge that will serve the children well in the future.
Knowledge of letters, phonics and spelling are all developed from
story readings and associated literacy activities such as writing,
which arise naturally from those readings. Young children learn
about print features because they are immersed in language and
literacy. Teachers can support and guide this learning as they talk
about print before and after they enjoy hearing stories read tothem.
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6Activities based on reading stories
Some teachers read a story with their class early in the day;
Hart-Hewins and Wells (1990) for instance often schedule
the story reading time just before the children’s work
period. This allows the teachers to suggest activities that link the
story with the children’s play, writing and art. Drawing and writingabout books helps children understand and think through the
stories. When teachers choose books of quality most children are
inclined to follow the reading by responding in some way, be it
through role-play, drawing, writing, making a book, constructing a
model, creating and using a puppet, or learning a song. The forms
of response will vary, but some response is likely.
It is clear that a wide range of activities, or ‘enterprises’ as Routman(1991) calls them, can be developed from stories that are read to
and with children. However, it is essential that the stories remain
paramount and the other activities and learning are derived
naturally from them. Not every book should be linked into the
work of the class. Nevertheless, the teacher should be aware of the
activities that can be generated by each story, and use the chil-
dren’s enthusiasm and enjoyment of the story as a guide to the
activities that are provided or suggested.
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For instance, before she read The Snail and the Whale(Donaldson,
2003) to the class, a Year 1 teacher considered possible avenues for
development. She mapped these possibilities into a subject web
(see Figure 11).
The teacher did not use all these activities but took account of
used the interests of the children to determine which of them to
follow up. But as the children explored the story, the web re-
minded the teacher of other possibilities. Often the story leads to
other stories or one like The Snail and the Cherry Tree(Dalgleish,
1990) might introduce a scientific consideration of snails. What-
ever avenue is chosen, many teachers follow a story reading bysupporting the children’s explorations of the story in various ways.
The examples that follow come from different classrooms and age
groups and feature a range of stories.
Role play
Young children use the stories they have heard in their play activi-
ties in the classroom quite naturally (Carter, 1999). Teachers can
support children’s learning by linking a role play area to a recent
story, by for instance arranging a corner to resemble a cave after
the class reads Can’t You Sleep, Little Bear? (Waddell, 1988). The
story begins:
‘Can’t you sleep, Little Bear?’
asked Big Bear, putting down his Bear Book
(which was just getting to the interesting part) and
padding over to the bed.‘I’m scared,’ said Little Bear.
‘Why are you scared, Little Bear?’ asked Big Bear.
‘I don’t like the dark,’ said Little Bear.
During the role play, the children can act out aspects of the story,
and in this instance revisit their own concerns, such as fear of the
dark. And because this book contains positive literacy images as
Big Bear reads a book, the teacher can place a small collection ofbooks in the cave to support the play. And there are other Big Bear
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Figure 11: Subject web for The Snail and the Whale
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books to be read with the class eg Let’s go home little bear(Wad-
dell, 1991).
Hall and Robinson (1985) suggest that the use of storybooks with
literacy-based images may contribute to children’s understanding
of reading and writing. However, it is the characters and events of
the stories that provide such a strong basis for the children’s play.
As White (1954) indicates in relation to her daughter Carol’s play at
home, ‘How these children’s books take hold and inhabit her
mind!’ (p164). Stories do indeed capture the children’s minds, ex-
tend their imagination, and support role-play.
Adult involvement in the role-play can vary from just reading the
story to preparing an area to reflect the setting of a book. In some
classrooms, the level of teacher involvement and direction for
role-play is even greater. Morado, Koenig and Wilson (1999) report
on their work with children from reception to year two in which
they brought together ‘literature, drama, music and movement’
(p116). The children developed miniperformances that drew on
an initial reading of a story. The teachers guided the processthrough six 30-minute sessions over three weeks. The more formal
role-play entailed creating a script using the children’s own words,
the children’s use of these scripts, and the performance given to a
small audience of classmates, teachers and family. Through this
process, the children heard the story read a number of times,
helped to produce the writing of the script, learned the words of
the script, and demonstrated their literacy to the family. All this
developed from enjoyment of a story.
Drawing and writing
Children enjoy drawing and writing about story characters. In one
first year class the teacher chose Four Fierce Kittens (Dunbar, 1991)
to read to them. Some of the children responded by telling and
writing the story themselves. The teacher wrote four of the key
words on a word wall: kittens, frighten, scare, and animals. The
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children’s responses and writing revealed the different levels of
confidence with print. One wrote a simple sentence of nine words:
one day fore kittens went to scare the sheep.
The sentence does not begin with a capital letter but does end with
a full stop. The child used two of the displayed words, kittensand
scare. In addition, six words are written conventionally. The one
invented spelling, fore, is an appropriate representation for the
wordfour.
Another child wrote rather more (see Figure 12), starting with the
fairy tale opening of ‘Once upon a time...’ There are four sentences,which are each marked by capital letters and full stops, although
capital letters appear at other times too. All the words are spelled
conventionally.
Both the children’s responses include the main feature of the story:
it’s about kittens scaring other creatures on a farm. However, the
author of the second piece was able to extend that idea and also
explain the kittens’ behaviour.
As the children write their own versions of a story, they may reveal
which parts they found most important. For example, Rosie’s Walk
(Hutchins, 1987) has a hen as the main character, a fox appears
only in the illustrations but no reference is made to it in the text.
Five-year-old John wrote a version including the fox in his retell-
ing, and remarked in his final sentence that he enjoyed the story
because the bag of flour fell on the fox (Figure 13).Intriguingly, John was confident enough to use decided, sneaked
and stalkingin his writing. Other children will be far more con-
strained in their writing, although they may make fewer reversals
and have clearer handwriting than John.
If Rosie the hen can go for a walk, then so can the teacher and
young children. This extends the story and leads to other writing
activities. John’s class went for a walk, talking with the adults aboutwhat they were seeing as they walked. When they returned to the
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Figure 12: Four sentences about kittens
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Figure 13: John’s version of Rosie’s Walk
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classroom, the teacher gave them the opportunity to represent the
walk with words and pictures. Michael wrote about what he had
seen (see Figure 14).
Michael’s writing is characterised by his imagination and his
observation. The rabbits may have been hopping on the grass, but
Michael was thinking beyond that when he suggested they were
looking for carrots. We can only guess at why graves appear as his
second observation.
It is not just younger primary school children who benefit from
hearing exciting stories read to them and having time to respond
to them through writing. Nicholson (2006) describes how year 5
and 6 children had complex stories read aloud to them, talked
about those books, reread them in various ways (see Chapter 6),
used drama and role play and then wrote about them. The chil-
dren appeared to develop a wider understanding of their own
writing by engaging with the texts. All primary school children
benefit from story readings that foster their writing.
Making books
Children love to be involved in making their own books. They can
do so in a small group, with the whole class, or on their own.
According to Burman (1990), both class and individual book-
making should be regular features of young children’s classroom
experience.
Michael wrote a short piece on his own, while knowing that it wasalso to contribute to a class book. The class book was titled Our
Walk, and was linked to the story of Rosie’s Walk. The teacher
pasted the children’s writing on the right-hand pages and neatly
summarised their contributions on the left-hand pages. Opposite
Michael’s writing, she wrote, ‘We went past the church. In the yard
we saw graves.’ The clear print on each left-hand page helped the
children read the book for themselves. They could recognise that
the teacher had used their words. The book was placed in the
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Figure 14: Michael’s writing after class walk
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classroom library and the children felt they had authored Our
Walkand took pride in the sense of ownership.
On another occasion the children might contribute to a class book
as part of a shared or interactive writing session as they re-create a
story (see Chapter 7). Again, this allows children to feel that they
have authored the book. The individual contributions of each
child will be less evident in the finished product of a shared writ-
ing. However their efforts from an interactive writing session will
be clear for all to see.
By producing class books in these ways, children complete the
circle of reading, writing and reading. The story reading excites
their interest and provides a basis for creating their own writing.
Their writing forms a book for them and others to read. And the
collaborative texts help build a library of treasured books in the
class.
In addition to class books, children also enjoy making books by
themselves. Burman (1990) suggests that one way to help children
start writing is to ask what they know a lot about. From this discus-
sion, the teacher can help the children create a brainstorming web
that provides a plan for the writing. The class can also create a web
about a book from a read-aloud session. Each child can then draw
and write about characters or other features of the book, recreate
the story or develop another one.
There are several ways to help children create individual books.
For example, the teacher can simply staple together the children’s
drawings and writing. Alternately, each child can write in an eight
page booklet – what Johnson (1998) calls an ‘origami book’ (p9). It
consists of front and back covers and three double spreads inside,
making six pages. This, Johnson argues, is an ideal writing project
planner. When the six pages are seen as three spreads, he writes,
the ‘fundamental story structure of beginning, middle and end fits
it like a glove’ (p8).
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Children take pleasure in making and using these little books.
They can see immediately that the task is manageable and that
when they are done they will have made their own book. I have
seen children enjoying authoring their own little books from thenursery classroom right through to year 6. As Routman observes,
the books become ‘a fantastic and favourite resource’ (1991, p90).
The attraction of being an author and having ownership of a book
they have made encourages children to draw and write about the
stories they enjoy in read-alouds.
Arts and crafts
When children use a booklet to re-create their response to a story,
they usually put in some drawings. In the eight page format they
typically enjoy creating a picture on each page, followed by a word,
phrase or sentence of description. Thus they are already linking art
to literacy as a follow-up to hearing a story read.
Children also enjoy creating larger pictures of the key characters or
events in the story. When the classroom is organised so that chil-
dren can paint at various times throughout the day, many children
paint in response to a story reading. Morrow (1989) suggests that
reception classrooms should be set up to include an art centre.
Hart-Hewins and Wells (1999) also mention having a separate
paint centre, even if space allows for only one specialised centre. A
selection of paints and paper are the tools for the children to ex-
plore their interest in the story.
The teacher can use the children’s enthusiasm for representing
aspects of the story in paint. Many early years teachers create
opportunities for children to create a collage of events from a
story. This activity encourages the children to paint, work colla-
boratively and discuss the best organisation for the collage. Cloth,
cardboard, foil, tissue paper and other materials can be stuck onto
a three-dimensional collage. The children remain engrossed in the
details of the story, which character to paint, which events to de-
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pict, so that while they are painting, the children are also develop-
ing their skills in literacy.
Once the collage is completed and on display, the class can discuss
what print to include. For instance, if the collage is about The Very
Hungry Caterpillar, they might choose to write some of the words,
phrases and sentences from the story. Producing this writing for
the collage provides further opportunities for the teacher and chil-
dren to work together on literacy. We saw in Chapter 1 how a re-
ception class worked together to add print to their caterpillar
collage:
Teacher: That caterpillar is among all the strawberries.
How many strawberries have we got?
Jamie: Four.
Teacher: We have. So what shall we write here?
Danny: On ... On Thursday he eated four strawberries.
Teacher: He did.
On Thursday
he ate through
four strawberries,
but
Children: he was still
hungry.
Teacher: So I’ll write On. Who is going to help me?
Teresa: O and n.
Teacher: That’s right: On.
This short excerpt shows how the children were involved in pro-
ducing writing as they returned to the enjoyment of the story. We
can notice, too, how the teacher accepted Danny’s contribution
and immediately provided a model of the actual words from thebook. All the children know that ‘he was still hungry.’ And Teresa
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was able to help the teacher write the first word: On. From time to
time the class returned to the completed collage for shared read-
ing, an extension of reading stories in which the entire class can
see the text and focus on print features (for more on shared read-ing see Chapter 7).
Children also enjoy constructing models as part of their response
to a story. Boxes and other scrap material are useful. So are paper,
glue, scissors, boxes, egg cartons, toothpicks, cotton balls and
other materials. Dough or clay are also good. Each opportunity to
construct a model can extend the children’s thinking about the
story. Pahl (1999) argues that for some children, especially boys,model making is an important link to literacy. She was looking at
the pre-school classroom, but she also notes how a child in year
two became very involved in writing when this activity was related
to a model he had just constructed. Many children are thinking of
a narrative and developing their understanding of a text, as they
paint and construct.
Making and using puppets
Making puppets is another way of linking with a specific story. The
reception class featured in Chapter 1 used stick puppets as part of
a reading of The Very Hungry Caterpillar. This generated so much
interest that the children later decided to make mouse puppets,
after the teacher read them another book by Carle, Do You Want to
Be My Friend?(1991).
Powell and Hornsby (1998) describe how three children in a year
two class created stick puppets after they heard a reading of
Possum Magic (Fox, 1983). They used the puppets as part of their
own play activities, and wrote a script for their puppet play.
Younger children too can plan a puppet play, and a few may be
able to begin to construct a simple script.
One of the attractions of stick puppets is that they are easy to
make. The child draws a picture of the character, cuts it out and
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attaches it to a handle made of a stick or rolled paper. Objects from
the story or features of its setting, such as four strawberries, can be
drawn, cut out and attached to a handle to become part of the
story to be told by the young puppeteers.
Or children might create glove or finger puppets, or masks. Some
shy children become more vocal when the glove, finger or mask is
the main object of attention. And as the children act out or re-
create the story, its words and rhythms remain in their thinking
and are remembered.
Songs and rhymesChildren enjoy singing songs and rhymes that relate to the subject
of a book, and the activity increases their learning. Ruby Campbell
(1998) relates how a story can inspire a wide variety of learning. In
a pre-school classroom, the teacher read Barn on Fire (Amery,
1989). What appears in the story to be a fire in a barn is actually
smoke from a picnic fire on the other side of the barn. The teacher
then sang the following song:
London’s burning,
London’s burning.
Fetch the engine,
Fetch the engine.
Fire, Fire,
Fire, Fire.
Pour on water,
Pour on water.
The class went on to learn the song, together with actions such as
holding a hand to the mouth to call out ‘Fire, Fire’ and pretending
to ‘pour on water’ with an imaginary bucket. The children were at
first puzzled about why they would use a bucket to pour on water
so the teacher explained:
My song is about London a long time ago when the houses were made
of wood and they were very close together. There were no telephones
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to get fire engines and they had to use buckets to ‘pour on water.’ Shall
we sing it again?
London’s burning,
London’s burning ... (Campbell, 1998, p134)
At the end of the school day, the children were to be seen telling
the adults who had come to collect them all about the story, or
singing the song to them.
This link with parents is important to ensure that some of the
literacy learning in the classroom is further developed at home
(Weinberger, Hannon, and Nutbrown, 1990). Some pre-schools
and schools give out a list of the days when parents are en-
couraged to visit the classroom and work alongside the children.
Such visits enable parents to witness a story reading. Or the story
reading may be demonstrated and debated during parent-teacher
meetings. The link enables the parents to share some of the chil-
dren’s excitement of the learning that takes place during and
following a reading. And it means that when children continue
singing and taking part in other activities at home, long after thestory reading has taken place, their parents can enhance their
learning.
Reading stories leads into other reading activities. Some of the
many possibilities are explored in the next chapter.
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7Interactive reading activities
Shared reading
I
n The Foundations of Literacy, Don Holdaway (1979) intro-
duced and developed the important activity of ‘shared book ex-
perience’. In recent years this has become known as ‘shared
reading’ (Smith and Elley, 1994), but the nature of the activity
remains the same. The adult demonstrates the reading process
with a Big Book or other large print, and the children contribute to
the activity by reading some of the print, making comments and
asking questions. Such literacy activity is used widely in class-
rooms with young children – and for good reason.
There is an important difference between reading stories with
young children and shared reading, which is to do with the visibi-
lity of the print. The print used for a shared reading is large – to be
‘seen, shared and discussed’ (Holdaway, 1979, p64). The book may
be held or placed on a stand. Teachers place themselves in a posi-
tion that does not obscure the children’s view.
During shared reading, the teacher is likely to talk about the print
more and to draw from the children’s comments and questions
about the text. This replicates the one-on-one read-aloud ex-
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perience the children may have at home, when they can see the
print easily. In addition, shared reading provides additional
opportunities for the class to discuss characters, events and story
meanings.
Holdaway (1979) describes an example of a shared reading as it
was first developed He reports on the reading and the questions
the teacher asks. The blanks indicate where the children joined in.
Teacher: One day she met a frog. ‘Who is she talking to?’
She said – - —: ‘How many words?’
‘Frog, frog,
please play with me A repetitive section suitable
I’m all by myself for chiming in.
As you can see.’
‘Yes,’ said the frog,
‘I will — — —, ‘What does she want him to
do?’
We will play at j—-. ‘Perhaps discuss names
beginning withj.
(Holdaway, 1979, p69)
This account shows how the teacher encourages thinking about
the text and the print. For instance, just as in a story reading, the
children are encouraged to join in with the repetitive section of the
story. Then the teacher’s question ‘What does she want him to do?’
prompts the children to consider the events of the story. The
teacher may also use the story’s letters and letter sounds to link the
wordjumpingwith children’s names beginning withj. This helps
them consider letters and sounds within the context of the story.
Slaughter (1992) also examines shared book experiences. Like
Holdaway, she argues that the use of Big Books enables the class-
room teacher to ‘simulate the bedtime story experience’ (p16).
Slaughter suggests a range of activities that could follow from
reading the story, and indicates a number of simple but valuable
practical points for the classroom teacher to note.
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Teachers should use the same criteria for selecting books for
shared reading as they do for story reading. The stories should
have the familiar features of repetition, rhyme and rhythm
(Rhodes, 1981). In some instances, a particularly appropriate bookthat fosters predictability may not be available in Big Book format
so the teacher may decide to create a Big Book from the text. Other
material may be produced in large format for the purpose of
shared reading, such as nursery rhymes, songs, poems and
notices.
Shared reading also gives teachers an opportunity to read from
various non-fiction texts, including dictionaries (Goodwin andRedfern, 2000). As teachers read passages from science and social
science texts, they can draw pupils’ attention to the use of layout,
headings, numbered sections, bold print, contents, index and
glossary. Such discussions help young children understand the
differences between narrative and informative texts. This under-
standing assists the children’s own reading and writing of different
genres.
The teacher in one reception class selected the Big Book of Rosie’s
Walk (Hutchins, 1987) for shared reading. During the first reading,
the emphasis was on the sheer enjoyment of the text. Never-
theless, the teacher followed the print with a pointer as she read.
During the second reading, she talked about some of this print:
Teacher: Can you remember what this first page says?
Rosie the
Children: hen went for a walk
Teacher: Yes. Rosie the hen went for a walk. So where does
it say hen? You come and show me, Brian.
[Brian points to the word hen with the pointer.]
Teacher: Yes, that’s right. How many letters are there in
hen?
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Anna: Three.
Teacher: Yes, that’s right. What are the letters?
Tina: h-e-n.
Teacher: Yes, h-e-n.
Later in this shared reading, the children commented on the other
main character in the story:
Sam: It doesn’t sayfoxanywhere.
Teacher: No, it doesn’t, but we know the fox is in the story
don’t we?
Michelle: We can see the picture.
Teacher: Yes, that’s right, the fox is always there. What is the
first letter forfox?
Sam: f
Teacher: Yes, the letterf.
Jane: And it’s got anx.
Teacher: It has, but there is another letter in between. I’ll
writefandx, but what else do we need forfox?
[She places an emphasis on the o.]
Engaging the children thus, the teacher continued talking about
the three letters in fox. This excerpt shows how the enjoyment of
the story was followed by a consideration of the words used aboutthe two main characters. Even though the wordfoxis not written
in the text, it became significant.
Slaughter’s (1992) also writes about work on Rosie’s Walkwith a
first year class. After the teacher read the story, the class spent a
week engaged in a various activities based on the text. The letters
R and H became a major focus of the print. On the Tuesday, a
group of children looked through the book in search of words be-ginning with R or H. Then they identified the children in the class
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whose names started with these letters. The class worked on
charts of words that begin with R or H. In addition to those words
they found in Rosie’s Walk, the children added others. In all, they
produced eleven words for each letter. They followed the story bywriting, making puppets, and listening to other stories by Pat
Hutchins.
Teachers do not have to choose between story reading and shared
reading. Both have a part in children’s literacy development. The
daily story reading is about the story and sometimes the activities
that flow naturally from it and from the children’s interest in it. The
shared reading allows for closer consideration of the print,although many additional activities can flow from the reading. But
the enjoyment of the text is in all cases paramount. As Brenda
Parkes (2000) notes, ‘the first purpose of shared reading is to pro-
vide children with an enjoyable reading experience’ (p1). The
nature of literacy activities must not be allowed to become so
analytical that the children lose interest in the stories, books and
reading.
Sustained silent reading
Sustained Silent Reading (SSR) is a natural activity that gives sup-
port to story readings. When young children are given a chance to
engage in SSR, they can act out reading-like behaviours. And they
have the opportunity to read a well-loved book on their own, using
the model that has been provided by the adult through numerous
story readings and shared readings. Not every child will readsilently. The youngest will vocalise as they read, and some children
will comment on a picture or the relationship of the story to their
own life. But each child is moving toward silent reading.
Other acronyms have been used to describe SSR such as Sustained
Quiet Un-Interrupted Reading Time (SQUIRT) and Drop Every-
thing and Read (DEAR). In one year 1 classroom, the children had
an allocated time for BE A Reader (BEAR). Capitalising on theacronym the teacher encouraged an exploration of books about
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bears. Pictures, models, toys, and the children’s own writing about
Winnie the Pooh, Paddington, Big Bear, Little Bear and other bears
added to the children’s excitement and interest.
Typically, teachers use a short period for SSR every day. For ease of
organisation, this is usually just before or after a break. Trelease
(1995) describes a classroom where the children selected a book
before they went to lunch and left it on their desk ready for SSR
time in the ten minutes after lunch. This short period of silent
reading adds up to almost an hour of concentrated reading each
week.
The children select their own books during this reading period and
are not required to report on what they read. Trelease (1995)
stresses that adults in the room must also read during this time, as
this gives children a strong model of reading. Hart-Hewins and
Wells (1990), however, suggest that the teacher may want to use
SSR as a time to hold individual reading conferences. Considering
the differing views, Campbell and Scrivens (1995) note that the
best course of action will be determined by the overall ethos of theclassroom. In classrooms where there is a dynamic literacy pro-
gramme operating, with an enthusiastic teacher who supports
literacy activities, modelling during SSR is not essential. When
there is less emphasis on literacy, modelling appears to be re-
quired to keep the children reading. The real issue may be to en-
sure that SSR is organised so that the young children are aware of
the nature and importance of this worthwhile activity.
Individual reading
The individual reading activity can be viewed in a number of ways.
First, it might be seen as a one-to-one interaction where the adult
reads to the child. This type of interaction is especially important
for children who have not had experiences of story readings before
they began school and even though they have daily story readings
and shared reading in the classroom. Individual story readingsallow the teacher or other adults to ensure that the child is
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involved and is contributing to the story and beginning to pick up
on print features.
Alternatively, the individual reading activity can be used for indivi-
dual reading conferences. It is the child who reads to the teacher
during these conferences, especially in the later years of primary
school. Holdaway (1979) maintains that the shared book ex-
perience fosters individual reading as the child rereads a book they
have heard read by the teacher. After the reading, adult and child
can discuss the content of the text and discuss various aspects of
print.
To see how this works, I studied 6-year-old Leah’s individual read-
ing of Good-Night Owl (Hutchins, 1972) with her Year 1 teacher
(Campbell, 1990, p47-53). In the following transcript, the original
text appears in parentheses after her miscues:
Leah: The starlings chittered,
tweet-tweet (twit-twit) tweet-tweet (twit-twit)
and owl tried to sleep.
The jays screamed,ark ark,
and owl tried to sleep.
The cuckoo croaked (called)
Teacher: The cuckoo
Leah: called
Leah could read a good deal of this book, partly because she re-
membered the text and partly because she paid attention to theprint. The teacher had to determine when to mediate in the read-
ing. She ignored the miscue of tweet-tweet(twit-twit), but she did
support Leah’s reading when the child read croaked for called. Us-
ing the simple strategy of starting the sentence again, the teacher
gave Leah time to reflect, to consider the word in context, and to
self-correct.
Later, once the whole book had been read, the teacher developeda dialogue with Leah that emphasised meaning:
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Teacher: Why couldn’t he sleep?
Leah: Because they were all making a noise.
Teacher: Why do you think they were all making a noise?Mmh?
Leah: Because it’s still-umh...
Teacher: In when?
Leah: Because it’s not night yet.
Teacher: It isn’t night time. And what do owls do at night
time?
Leah: They – They don’t – umh – They don’t sleep in
night and they wake up....
It was evident that Leah knew about the story even though she was
hesitant in some of her attempts to explain. With support from the
teacher she was able to sustain her involvement with the text
throughout the individual reading. Individual reading activities
build children’s confidence and enable them to behave like
readers.
Buddy reading
The everyday demands of the classroom limit the time the teacher
and other adults can spend working alongside a young child with
a book. Consequently, some schools have initiated schemes such
as buddy reading (Cunningham and Allington, 1999) and pairing ayear four or five reader with a younger child. Once a week, the
older child goes to read a book with the younger child.
Buddy reading has a number of benefits. First, the older children
must practice reading the picture book to ensure that it is read well
for the younger ones. For some 9- and 10-year-olds, that practice
can be important. As Cunningham and Allington indicate, it ‘legi-
timises the reading and rereading of very easy books’ (p38).Further, the important teaching role helps the older children with
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their own reading development, and does much for their self-
esteem. At the same time, the younger buddies benefit from the
interactive experience of the story reading.
In addition, the buddy system gives the younger children positive
role models. In particular, young boys may benefit from the pre-
sence of successful boy readers, especially as most early years
classrooms are staffed by women. As Cunningham and Allington
remind us, ‘most elementary teachers are women and...most poor
readers are boys’ (p37). Some schools extend buddy reading to in-
clude adults from the community.
As the front cover of this book shows, buddy reading also occurs
naturally in a home setting. The secondary aged child in the pic-
ture is reading to a nursery child, who is utterly involved. During
the reading a primary aged child was attracted by the story and be-
came part of the audience. When young children know how
interesting stories can be, they are on the lookout for someone of
whatever age to read to them.
Paired reading
In addition to buddy reading, classmates can work together to
read a book. So paired reading (or partner reading) can operate
with two 5-year-old reception children or two 6-year-old Year 1
children helping each other to read a book. Cunningham and
Allington (1999) suggest that the teacher designate a number of
different activities to create some variety for paired reading:
During a ‘take turn day,’ the two children read alternate pages. They
also help each other as the need arises. This is likely to be the most
frequently used form of paired reading; the children soon become
familiar with the approach and are able to use it successfully.
An ‘ask question day’ requires both children to read each page silently
and ask each other a question about the text before proceeding. In
some first- and second-year classrooms, the teacher may encourage
the children to ask questions about features of the print on one day and
to encourage a greater attention to the story content on another day.
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Another day might be used as a ‘sticky note day.’The teacher gives the
children a limited number of sticky notes to mark what interests them.
Alternately, the children can concentrate on what they consider to be
important or aspects they find confusing.
A ‘you decide day’ permits the children to make their own decision as
to how they will operate the paired reading on that day.
As Cunningham and Allington note, these different forms of
paired reading create variety, encourage the children to engage in
both silent and oral reading, and lead them to reflect on what they
have read.
Guided reading
In a typical guided reading time, the teacher works with a small
group of children. Six is the ideal size for a group. Each child has a
copy of a book they can manage and enjoy. For younger children,
their management of the text is supported when the book has
already been read aloud to the class. The purpose of guided read-
ing is to ‘develop independent readers who question, consider
alternatives, and make informed choices as they seek meaning’(Mooney, 1990, p47). She sees the teacher’s role as being to guide
the children to predict as they read, to sample features of print, to
confirm that meaning has been maintained, and to self-correct
using other strategies to regain meaning.
The teacher then guides the children with their reading of a certain
book, but does so in ways that will help the children to read other
texts independently in the future. Fountas and Pinnell (1996) pro-vide detailed information on this activity. Chomsky-Higgins (1998)
suggests the choice of a book that the children can read
successfully but that does offer some challenges. If the book is new
to the children she tells them the title, and together they go
through the book to get an idea of its meaning and she asks the
children to read certain specific words. After this supportive intro-
duction, the children read the book aloud, while she moves
around the group to listen in and guide when needed. A brief
discussion may follow the reading.
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Literature circles
Young children also need reading to help them make sense of life
(Short, 1999). Short argues that children should not have to wait
until they’ve developed extended reading strategies to find outthat reading involves critique and inquiry. In literature circles, as in
guided reading, the teacher works with a small group of children
who each have a copy of the same book. During literature circles,
however, the primary interest centres on thinking about and dis-
cussing the story.
When quality picture books are read aloud, the children want to
discuss what they see and hear. They are keen to express theirthoughts and feelings about the books that are read to them or
that they have read in small groups (Roser and Martinez, 1995). At
first the teacher will have to prompt and guide them, but even-
tually the children will offer their own comments.
The children’s participation in literature circles is not surprising:
even toddlers at home respond reflectively to stories they hear
read aloud. When I read The Very Lonely Firefly(Carle, 1995) to mygranddaughter Alice when she was 3 years 11 months old she im-
mediately requested a repeat reading. But within a few pages of
that second reading, as the lonely firefly searches for other fireflies,
Alice interrupted me to remark: ‘It will find the other fireflies on
the last page. Then it won’t be lonely anymore.’ The last page, with
its illustrations of flashing lights, is a particular attraction of this
book. Alice returned to her theme when we reached it. ‘There’s all
its friends’ (Campbell, 1999, p89-90). Her comments show Alice’s
involvement with the story and her empathy for the firefly as it
searched for others.
Adults and teachers can encourage children’s responses to reading
at home and in the classroom as they read aloud with them. And
such responses can be developed in literature circles as the chil-
dren progress through the primary years.
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What children learn from story readings provides a strong base for
their work during other interactive reading activities. In addition,
as Chapter 1 showed, reading stories with young children can also
serve as the foundation for interactive writing activities. This sub-ject is examined in Chapter 8.
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8Interactive writing activities
Just as teachers point out print features in Big Books to assist
reading, they can write in front of the class to help children
become better writers. During shared writing (Cambourne,
1988), the teacher talks about the piece as it’s developed, so mak-
ing the children aware of the writing process. Interactive writing,guided writing and writing conferences also require the children’s
involvement as they contribute to the writing, or share their own,
by considering their thoughts, sentences, words and letters.
Shared writing
The stories, songs, poems and rhymes the children already know
are good starting points for shared writing. I observed how a
teacher in a pre-school class used the popular nursery rhyme,
Humpty Dumpty, to create a brief shared writing time with the
children (Campbell, 1996, p51-52). The class had talked about the
rhyme and had often sung it. The teacher wrote on a large sheet of
paper in front of the children encouraging them to tell her the
words:
Teacher: So if I write
Humpty Dumpty
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Now, what comes next?
Children: sat on a wall
Teacher: I’ll write
sat on a...
Children: wall
Teacher: wall.
There we are.
Humpty Dumpty
Teacher/children: sat on a wall.
Teacher: Now
Humpty
Children: Dumpty
had a great fall.
This simple example illustrated how the children recited the
rhyme and the teacher tried to keep up with their pace. Her goal
was to support the children in understanding the writing process
and the link between words spoken and words presented in print.
She encouraged their contributions by asking questions such as
‘Now, what comes next?’ and by using rising intonation and paus-
ing such as ‘sat on a....’
This shared writing activity sometimes included shared reading.
After she wrote down the first sentence, the teacher pointed to the
words and recited them with the children. When the rhyme was
complete, she put the printed rhyme on the classroom wall beside
other rhyme sheets that had been created during shared writing.
The class used the sheets all through the year to recite the rhymes
while the teacher pointed to the words.
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Teachers of reception children usually spend longer considering
each word as it is written. They might comment on letters and
letter-sounds, and make links between the first letter of some
words and of other words the children know.
Geekie, Cambourne, and Fitzsimmons (1999) observe a reception
classroom where the teacher followed a structure they describe as
follows:
i) Making a clear statement about what is going to be written.
ii) Identifying each word in succession.
iii) Either
a. recalling the identified word from memory
b. finding it in the print environment of the
classroom and copying it
c. segmenting it into phonemes and making
sound-symbol matches
iv) Re-reading the developing text in order to remember what hasalready been written and what remains to be written. (p40)
The teacher used what she called ‘blackboard stories’: stories
developed with the children, to link to other print in the classroom
including the word wall. This regular practice enabled the children
gradually to write stories on their own.
Anderson (1995) adopted a different strategy in a Year 1 and 2
mixed classroom with 6- and 7-year-old children. To encouragethe children to think about choices when writing, she selected a
text they knew and loved – The Very Hungry Caterpillar – and
printed the story in large text for all the children to see. She asked
them whether they would have used the same words and phrases
as the author had. A great deal of discussion ensued as the chil-
dren changed aspects of the story. The start of the story became
One dark cloudy night a tiny speckled egg lay on a leaf.One bright Saturday morning the warm sun came up and – crack! – out
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of the egg came a tiny and very hungry caterpillar.
She scrambled about to look for some food.
On Sunday she ate through one nice ripe apple. But she was still
hungry.On Monday she ate through two red shiny apples, but she was still
hungry.
On Tuesday she ate through three squidgy plums, but she was still
hungry. (p48)
Every redrafting involved discussion, which meant that the chil-
dren were talking about meaning, sentences, phrases, words and
letters. And because it seemed natural to do so, the teacher found
herself using terms such as adjective, pronoun, noun and verb. At
one point, they even discussed the notion of tense in story writing.
We see that the caterpillar became ‘she’ rather than ‘he.’ Starting
with a Saturday changed the link between days of the week and
events. The class added adjectives to describe each fruit. For a
while they played with alliterations, debating the use of ‘plump
purple plums’ before settling for their own word: squidgy. The
teacher typed up the revised text on the computer put and put it in
book format for the class library, where it became one of the most
popular books.
Elsewhere, a year 6 class rewrote the picture book story Giggle,
Giggle, Quack(Cronin, 2002), but changing it so that the story was
written from the duck’s perspective. As always a reading of the
story to the class and discussion preceded the writing. The chil-
dren’s recreation of the story was quite imaginative, as we can see
from the way one of the boys in the class rewrote the beginning of
the story:
‘Hmmm... Farmer Brown is going away and Bob doesn’t
know a thing about farms. We can do anything we like if
we utilise this note system.’ Duck walked over to the shed
where the other animals were.
‘What do you want for dinner?’ he shouted.Twenty-nine minutes later the pizza arrived and all
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the animals started to eat. He had left a note for Bob saying
that every Tuesday was pizza night.
‘Oh, that Bob is so gullible!’ duck laughed.
Well-known stories are a good basis for other shared writing ex-
periences. Johnson and Louis (1985) assert that writing literary
letters also creates genuine opportunities for writing. They suggest
that children might write their own letters to a character in a fami-
liar story, such as Mike fromMike Mulligan and His Steam Shovel
(Burton, 1977), and the teacher could reply. In a classroom where
The Very Hungry Caterpillar has been read, the teacher might
choose to reply to a letter such as the one shown in Figure 15,which was written by a Year two child.
In particular, the teacher might wish to pick up on the scientific in-
quiry which appears in the last sentence: ‘How long are you going
to stay in your cocoon?’
In an example drawn from work with older primary children,
Johnson and Louis suggest that the class could work together to
compose such a letter, the teacher leading the discussion with thechildren and scribing their thoughts. The teacher can emphasise
on different features of the writing process to suit what the class
needs at the time. The emphasis will be mainly on meaning, but
the teacher may also draw the class’s attention to the print features
of the letters, words, phrases and sentences the children select.
Interactive writing
McCarrier, Pinnell and Fountas (1999) suggest that while shared
writing is an important literacy activity for young children, it’s pos-
sible to involve the children even further in what they call inter-
active writing. Interactive writing proceeds like shared writing, but
the children take turns writing the words in front of the class, sup-
ported and guided by the teacher. The teacher also writes some of
the words as part of that support.
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As these authors point out, ‘sharing the pen is not simply a ritual’;instead, there is instructional value every time the child writes
with the pen in front of the class (p21). They argue that interactive
writing works well for children from a range of linguistic back-
grounds and ‘for those transitioning into English literacy’ (pxvi)
because the children are actively engaged in the writing.
They maintain that the primary value of writing activities lies in
the process, not the end product. Interactive writing provides anexcellent opportunity for teachers to determine the children’s
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Figure 15: Letter to the Hungry Caterpillar
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learning needs and plan an activity accordingly, whether for the
whole class or a small group. In both cases, the conversation about
the writing topic is continuous. The teacher should also discuss
the composing process, the conventions of writing, and theinteresting features of certain words. For example, when the class
is working with the Humpty Dumpty rhyme, the teacher might
want to make the rime unit of all, wall, andfalla central feature of
discussion.
In one of the many examples given by McCarrier, Pinnell and
Fountas (1999), the writing was stimulated by a classroom story
reading of Pancakes, Pancakes(Carle, 1990). The book linked withthe class’s study of food and nutrition, and Eric Carle was one of
the children’s favourite authors. During interactive writing, the
class produced a list of pancake ingredients, a list of favourite
pancake toppings, and a recipe for making pancakes. Each piece
of writing required the children to think and talk about writing and
also to help in the process as they shared the pen.
Guided writing
In guided writing the teacher also works with a group of, ideally,
four to eight children. The time is generally used either as a group
shared writing enterprise, in which the teacher and children work
collaboratively on a piece of writing or as a mini-lesson, in which
the teacher works with a small group of children with similar
needs on a particular feature of writing. For example, the group
may decide to write a letter to a character in a story, the teacheremphasising both meaning and form. Because the group is small,
each child can input more and remain involved. Collaborative
writing concentrates on the production of the content, but fea-
tures of print are also discussed.
Graves (1994) describes the beginning of the writing in one recep-
tion classroom:
Teacher: What do I want to say? Let’s see.
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‘Billy and I go for walks.’
Help me.
B...il...ly (She says the word very slowly)
Help me with the first sound ‘B.’What letter do I write here?
Brendan: B. I’ve got that one in my own name. It’s easy. (p49)
This is an example of aspects of print being discussed. Like many
children in reception, Brendan can use knowledge of his name to
help in producing other writing.
As a mini-lesson, guided writing gives children concentrated time,
in a small group, to consider some aspect of writing conventions.The objective of the short lesson may be to think about letters and
sounds, punctuation, vocabulary, or spelling. For instance, a
teacher working with a small group of Year 1 children wanted to
remind them of sentence conventions began by looking at each
sentence of a short book and talked about the uppercase letters
and punctuation. Then they read a piece of classroom print
developed from a shared writing, again concentrating on the
uppercase letters and punctuation. Finally, the children moved on
to independent writing, and the teacher confirmed that their use
of an initial capital letter and sentence ending was correct.
Although mini-lessons in guided writing are brief, they can
support children’s literacy development, especially when directed
by the teacher to meet their needs at the time.
Writing conferencesAs they respond to stories, children write in a various formats.
They might create a drawing accompanied by writing or make
their own book. One-on-one writing conferences (Calkins, 1983)
are particularly useful if held immediately after the child has
finished writing, so this is still at the forefront of the child’s mind.
Furthermore, focusing on a single aspect of writing enhances
understanding of that feature.
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In one classroom, the teacher chose It’s My Birthday (Oxenbury,
1993) for a story reading. The central theme is about making a cake
– a number of animals work together to make it. The second page
of the book reads:
‘It’s my birthday and
I’m going to make a cake.
I need some eggs.’
‘I’ll get you some eggs,’
said the chicken.
After several readings of the story, some children decided to make
their own recipe books. Five-year-old Kate wrote about making afruitcake (see Figure 16). She was clearly in charge of her writing
and used several invented spellings and a mixture of uppercase
and lowercase letters in her recipe.
After Kate finished writing, she had a writing conference with the
teacher. The teacher praised Kate’s writing and talked to her about
one of the words she had written unconventionally:
Teacher: I think this would make a great fruitcake. You’ve
done well with your writing.
And to finish we have to ... [She points to 6- Bac in
the ovn]
Kate: Bake in the oven.
Teacher: That’s right. When we write bakeit is b-a-k-e. It is
just like cake.
Kate: C-a-k-e.
Teacher: I know another one that begins with m.
Kate: Make.
Teacher: That’s right, make.
Kate: M-a-k-e.
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Teacher: Good girl, that’s how to write make. Well done,
Kate; it’s a lovely recipe.
Kate: Takeis one as well.
Teacher: It is, isn’t it?
The teacher helped Kate examine the word bake, then they dis-cussed other rime words in the -akefamily. Interestingly, although
the teacher was ready to end the conference, Kate was in full swing
and came up with another word: take. The conference may have
been short, but it was personal so there’s a good chance that Kate
would recall the -akewords in the future and write others like it,
such as lake and rake(Goswami and Bryant, 1990).
Reading stories can lead children into a variety of interactive writ-ing activities. Sometimes the teacher leads the children in certain
directions at others the children want to explore further the story
they have just heard, such as when the children decided to create
recipe books after hearing It’s My Birthday. The next chapter dis-
cusses other directions in which story reading might take.
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Figure 16: Kate’s Fruitcake Recipe
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9Mathematics, science and
social studies activities
S
ome stories bring other curriculum areas to the children’s
attention as they ask questions related to the story. Their
questions may lead to discussions about content relating
to mathematics, science and social studies.
Mathematics
In Chapter 2 we saw how The Very Hungry Caterpillarled a recep-
tion class to explore aspects of mathematics and science. The chil-
dren encountered the sequence of numbers 1 to 5 as the cater-
pillar consumed the apple, pears, plums, strawberries and
oranges. For most children, the sequence became firmly esta-blished, and they began to recognise the quantities of 1 to 5. When
drawing pictures of the five fruits labelling them and creating their
own list of five other fruits, their understanding of numbers was
established more firmly. The children enjoyed drawing other
pictures of the caterpillar, especially recapturing the bold face, and
their interest led to other mathematics. The teacher encouraged
the children to measure the length of their drawn caterpillar with
math cubes. Counting those cubes involved numbers up to 14.
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Many storybooks have mathematical features that the teacher can
emphasise or follow up as the children begin to talk about them.
For instance, in Hairy Maclary from Donaldson’s Dairy (Dodd,
1983), each dog can be seen coming from its house as they join thepack. The houses are numbered 86, 84 and 82. In one reception
classroom, the children noticed these numbers in the illustrations
and they wanted to talk about the number on their own houses.
Children and teacher asked a numerous questions, such as ‘Which
is the largest number?’ The class then proceeded to create a
collage of the ‘roads where we live,’ painting the numbers on each
house. In this instance, the teacher had planned none of these
activities; the children’s interest set them on the mathematical
path. The children were excited by the attention given to the num-
bers in the story and the numbers on their own houses and they
learned from this and from concentrating on ‘big numbers’.
A teacher might collect books that are exploring a mathematical
theme. For instance, One Tiger Growls(Wadsworth, 1999) provides
a sequence from 1 to 20 as various animals and their sounds are
presented. Accordingly the sequence of 1 to 20 can be learned, or
consolidated with an enjoyable story reading. Shatzer (2008)
demonstrates how she used The Wolf’s Chicken Stew(Kasza, 1996)
to develop some mathematical themes with her pupils, and list
other books she has found helpful in linking literacy and mathe-
matics.
ScienceIn the reception classroom presented in Chapter 2, the children
explored aspects of science after hearing The Very Hungry Cater-
pillar. The life cycle of the butterfly became part of their know-
ledge base simply from the rereading of the story plus a song about
it. Importantly, as the children sang the song, they recognised that
the life cycle could ‘go on forever’. The story also generated interest
in what other animals eat. Then the class explored which foods are
nutritious and which are not. It is not difficult to see how The Very
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Hungry Caterpillar led to thinking about such matters and thus
about aspects of science.
In Sniff-Snuff-Snap!(Dodd, 1995) the story of the animals and the
water hole creates scientific interests for young children. The se-
quence or cycle of rain and evaporation are part of the story, and
this intrigues children. So does the role of the animals that are sus-
tained by the water from the water hole in the otherwise arid land.
This generates questions about not only the water supply but also
their own water supply. Knowing about a wide range of children’s
books enables primary school teachers to make connections from
stories into science.
Social studies
A story like Sniff-Snuff-Snap! can also take children into other
areas of the curriculum. What is it like in a country such as the one
shown in this story? Discussions about desert lands often arise
from stories such as Sniff-Snuff-Snap!An interest in geography
may start from other stories, too. Possum Magic(Fox, 1983) con-
tains a map of Australia that indicates the route taken by the two
possums. The possums’ journey and the ‘people food’ they eat
capture the attention, feelings and minds of young children, and
many want to learn more about Australia, the animals that live
there and the foods mentioned. Creating a collage of the unique
animals of Australia is an obvious follow-up to hearing this story as
the possum, koala, wombat, kangaroo and duck-billed platypus
all intrigue young children. Mem Fox’s other books such as KoalaLou (1988) and Wombat Divine(1995) add to the children’s know-
ledge and, most important, are stories they will love.
There are no maps in the story of Rosie’s Walk(Hutchins, 1987), but
Rosie creates a trail that can be mapped by children as they follow
her path through the farmyard. A wall collage of Rosie’s journey
helps young children envision the story and begin to understand
the nature of maps. When the children are captivated by the story,the teacher may decide to take them on walks in the local environ-
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ment and then create maps of that walk. Creating a map of their
route to school is another possibility. In this case the geography is
local, helping children understand their own environment.
The simple story of When I Was Little Like You (Walsh, 1997) also
links to other curriculum areas. Here a little girl named Rosie talks
with her grandmother and shows her various sights such as a train
and an ice-cream van. In each instance, the grandmother observes
that ‘When I was little like you it used to be different,’ and tells her
how things used to be when she was young. The historical changes
over two generations are the most important features of the story,
although relationships are also significant. The story captures thechildren’s interest in how life used to be long ago, and stimulates
an interest in history. Often, the class can link this story to family
and community history. It inspires children to explore how things
used to be when their parents were young.
Stories can be a useful means of introducing young children to
history. Hoodless (1998) devotes a complete book to history and
English in the primary years, exploring the numerous connectionsthat can be made. The children might also link a classroom story
to a theme that is already being pursued: in a case study of recep-
tion children in England, Hoodless reports how after enjoying The
Three Billy Goats Gruff, the children made a connection with an
existing theme on Sir Robert Peel and the police. They decided to
use the role-play area, which was already arranged as a Victorian
police station, to create and hang ‘wanted’ posters of the troll.
Wendy Hood (1994) shows how one teacher worked with a class of
Year 3 children from diverse ethnic backgrounds to link story read-
ings and social studies themes. The children began by trying to
find information about Native Americans. Their research over a
period of weeks led them in a various directions. They pursued
such questions as ‘Where did they live? Where do they live now?
What holidays do they celebrate?’ Their findings also raised ques-
tions about slavery. So to develop their understanding, the teacher
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10A last word
Story readings are enjoyable and instructive. Every teacher
of young children can name a story with which they have
particularly captivated children. In one classroom, the chil-
dren particularly enjoyed Hairy Maclary from Donaldson’s Dairy
(Dodd, 1983). The main characters are all dogs. Among them are:
Hercules Morse
as big as a horse
and Hairy Maclary
from Donaldson’s dairy.
As the dogs’ adventure unfolded, the children’s excitement per-
sisted, and when the reading was over, more than one child asked
for it to be read again. Because the characters are so loveable,
young children want to return again and again to the story. Andthe children learn more from each reading.
Luckily for the children, there are several stories about Hairy
Maclary (e.g. Dodd, 1985a, 1985b) and other central characters for
children to enjoy. Children who are familiar with Hairy Maclary
and his friends become excited when the characters unexpectedly
reappear in Slinky Malinki, open the door (Dodd, 1993). In one
infant classroom, the 5-year-olds became involved in a form ofauthor study as they listened to, discussed, commented on and
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followed the many rhyming books by this author. And there are
numerous other authors who have produced stories and
characters that capture children’s attention. We noted earlier the
rhyme in Fix-It-Duck(Alborough, 2001)
A leak in the roof.
Oh, what bad luck!
This is a job for...
Fix-It Duck.
and how it encouraged one child’s involvement and love of Duck,
Sheep, Goat and Frog in this and other Duck books. Koala Lou
(Fox, 1988) and The Gruffalo (Donaldson, 1999) are among themany picture books which lead children eventually into reading
chapter books.
The enjoyment children receive from story readings sparks their
desire to read for themselves in a way that no worksheet can ever
emulate. The thousands of delightful books available for reading
aloud provide the foundation for literacy learning. Guided by the
story, the children follow their interests by drawing, writing, paint-ing, making puppets, acting, reciting and moving on to areas of the
curriculum. Moreover, children develop their phonic knowledge
from the meaningful contexts of story readings (Campbell, 2004).
The characters from stories have a way of reappearing as part of
children’s imaginative play. Chambers (1995) gives a vivid account
of a little girl who found a way to walk alone along a poorly lit path
by imagining that she was escorted by Little Red Riding Hood. Thecharacters from children’s stories become the children’s friends.
And words, phrases and sentences transfer from the stories into
their own lexicon.
Each chapter in this book has emphasised the literacy learning
which can follow from the well prepared and enthusiastic reading
of a story. Little wonder that so many teachers recognise the bene-
fits of Reading stories with young children and ensure that it is animportant part of every day.
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Morpurgo, M (1999) Kensuke’s Kingdom. London: Egmont
Oxenbury, H (1993) It’s my birthday. London: Walker Books
Radcliffe, T (1997) Cimru the seal. Harmondsworth, UK: Puffin Books
Seuss, Dr (1960) Green eggs and ham. New York: Random House
Seuss, Dr (1963) Hop on Pop. New York: Random House
Waddell, M (1988) Can’t you sleep, little bear?London: Walker Books
Waddell, M (1991) Let’s go home, little bear. Cambridge, MA: Candlewick Press
Wadsworth, G (1999) One tiger growls. Watertown, MA: Charlesbridge
Walsh, J (1997) When I was little like you. Harmondsworth, UK: Puffin Books
Wilhelm, H (1985) I’ll always love you. London: Hodder
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READING STORIES WITH YOUNG CHILDREN
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131
activities 5, 75-89
alliteration 60, 64, 66-
68
alphabet 64-65
arts and crafts 85-87
author study 119
be a reader (BEAR) 95-
96big books 91-95
blackboard stories 105
book making 82-85
book quality 45-62
boys 8, 99
buddy reading 98-99
class book 30, 84
collage 27
counting 113-114
cultural heritage 48-51
dictionaries 69
drawing 26-30, 78-81
drop everything and
read (DEAR) 95
enjoyment of literacy 2-
3, 9, 19, 119-120
fairy tales 50, 55
geography 115-116
getting started, 37-44
guided reading 100
guided writing 109-110
history 116-117
home link with school
89
individual reading 96-98
interactivestory
readings 15-36, 41-
44
interactive writing 107-
109
International Reading
Association 4
invented spellings 30,
48, 72-73
letter learning 10-11, 65
letter writing 107-108
literacy development 6-
8, 9-11
literacy development at
home 4-6
literature circles 101
maps 115
mathematics activities
35, 113-114modeling reading 10
model making 87
narrative 45-62
nonfiction 61, 93
number learning 113-
114
nursery rhymes 49-50
one-to-one story
readings 10
onset 71
own names 70
paired (partner) reading
99-100
parents reading 4-5, 89
Index
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personal development
51-53
phonics 65-68
play 120
poetry 61, 68
predictable books 54-
55
preparing for a reading
38-40
print features 63-74
puppet-making 23, 87-
88
recipes 112
repeat readings 20-23
repetition in stories 56-
57
rhymes 3, 57-59, 88-89
rhythm 59-60
rime 71-72, 111-112
role play 76-78
science activities 30-34,
114-115
selecting a book 37-38
shared book
experience 91-95
shared reading 91-95
shared writing 103-106
singing rhymes 24-26
skills 46-48
social studies 115-117
songs 24-26, 88-89
spelling 72-73
stick puppets 23story performance 40-
41
story structure 10, 47
sustained silent reading
(SSR) 95-96
vocabulary
development 5
web for activities 77
word walls 69-72
writing 26-30, 78-81
writing conferences 84-
86
READING STORIES WITH YOUNG CHILDREN