Foundation Class 

STORYTELLING IN THE PREP ROOM

In the Prep classroom we have been making oral language experiences meaningful in a way that enables me to help student develop different skills. 

Picture books have been a terrific source of language modelling in our class. They contain much more complex vocabulary and sentence structure than spoken language. They also engage the student’s imaginations. 

We have a lovely selection of picture books in our school library which I use as a ‘jumping off point’ for learning.

We have chosen a mentor text called ‘Room on the Broom’ for the Junior classes for the last few weeks of this term. The Prep students have been listening to the story, exploring some of the vocabulary in the story and discussing how to retell the beginning, middle and the end. We have also been looking at the rhyming words in this text and how we can recognise and generate new rhyming words ourselves.

The students were given an opportunity to retell the story by becoming the characters and acting out the story. This allowed them to understand the story and to understand how the author uses rhyming words.

Storytelling/story acting supports the student's language and literacy skills, social and emotional development, and creativity. Allowing the student’s to act out these stories has assisted them to build their comprehension and how to generate their own rhyming words to make the story their own. The student’s gained an understanding of the characters, the structure of how the author used rhyming words to tell the story, and the themes in this picture book.

It was also great to see the confidence of the students as they became the characters. They will all get an opportunity to be a character in the text. I definitely have some Logie award winning actors and actresses in this class! 

(L to R )   Michael was a superstar as the cat. He purred like a real cat. Stazka played the bird and she added her own bird calls to make the character her own. Ruby was a fantastic witch and said her lines like a real actress. Taylor was the frog who came out of the bog. She jumped around and was excited when the witch made a new and improved broom. Oakley played a great dog and was able to join the witch and cat on the broom. Charlie's award-winning performance of the dragon was fantastic.