Who is it for?
Talk Through Stories is for four to six-year-old children. It is especially for children who do not come from a language-rich home. It is designed to extend and deepen children’s vocabulary so that they can understand the books they will soon be able to read for themselves.
Time is not on their side.
That is why it is so important to plan specifically and systematically – step by step – to develop their vocabulary.
How talk through stories works
In Story week, we help children to get to know the story well: the plot, the characters, and their actions and motives.
In Vocabulary week, we focus on eight words from the story. These are words that children are unlikely to hear in everyday conversation but are likely to come across in stories. For example, in I’m in charge by Jeanne Willis, we chose bellowed, startled, barged, sneaked, grinned, dreadful, stomped, refused.
Children’s understanding of each word is then developed in the context of their everyday lives.
Time required for teaching
All you need is:
- your usual 20 minutes for Story time
-
a further, separate 10 minutes for Vocabulary time.
And a bit of time for you to practise before each lesson. Let’s get children talking!
The stories
We have written detailed lesson plans for over 54 picture books, and more are being added each term.
We chose stories that we believe are worth reading and re-reading – stories that children will love. We began with old favourites that many teachers are likely to know, such as Dogger by Shirley Hughes, Burglar Bill by Janet and Allan Ahlberg, Can’t You Sleep, Little Bear? by Martin Waddell and Where the Wild Things Are by Maurice Sendak. We then moved on to more recent literature, such as Hugless Douglas by David Melling, Perfectly Norman by Tom Percival, I’m in Charge by Jeanne Willis, Billy and the Beast by Nadia Shireen, Anna Hibiscus by Atinuke.