Foundation Class 

Why do we have a 'Story Book of the Week'

In the Prep classroom we always have a ‘Story of the Week”. There are so many benefits and learning opportunities to reading a language rich story for a week. Reading aloud helps develop positive reading habits, exposes the students to advanced vocabulary, demonstrates fluency, models reading with voice and expression, and creates lifelong readers in the students.

The ‘Story of the Week’ in our classroom incorporates both reading and writing concepts and activities. It allows the preps to learn new vocabulary that they may not have heard before, gives them the chance to act out the text, allows discussions to write character descriptions and gives the students the opportunity to share and reflect on the story.

Last week we had an in-depth look at the text “Feathers for Phoebe”. We have been focusing on retelling in our reading and using more describing or WOW words in our writing and this book allowed for some great retelling and descriptive language. The students loved the colours and the character dialogue in this book.

Being able to retell the story in their own words indicates that the students are understanding what is being read to them. The Prep students were given the opportunity to write what happened at the beginning and in the middle of the story. Having a story book for a week gives the students multiple exposure of the text and allows them time to have a deeper understanding of the story.

Below are some samples of the fantastic writing the Preps produced for this text.

The Prep students were also very lucky to have Miss Kennedy help them create beautiful and elegant crests just like Phoebe. The students enjoyed making their crests and parading and dancing around the classroom just like Phoebe did in the book.