Read-Along Story Time for Beginning Readers, 1/24/13

 

  Read-Along Story Time for Beginning Readers, 1/24/13

Welcome Message: 

This week's welcome message commented on our weather and the theme of our story time. 

Dear Friends, 

I am glad to see you on such a cold day. We will warm up with a story time about soup. 

From, 

Miss Katie 

The kids read right along with me, and the only words that stumped them were "friends" and "about." 

Activity: What's Cooking? 
Each child was handed a paper bowl containing an assortment of felt letters and a plastic spoon. The idea was for them to fish out a letter, then make the letter sound and name a food beginning with that sound. I expected to have about ten kids when I planned this activity, but with only four, it quickly got out of hand as they pulled out whatever letters they liked and essentially made up their own words, or refused to name any words at all. We did manage to make a list, but they were not into it, and I found myself questioning whether this is even an appropriate activity for story time - maybe it's more like something they'd do at school.

Story
This story time has been running very long, which has annoyed the parents, so I stuck to just one story this week - the "Birthday Soup" story from Little Bear. The kids wouldn't open their books, then decided not to use them. I read the story, and asked them to look for clues in the illustrations that would tell them what each animal had brought for Little Bear's birthday. A couple of them did it, but again, it was too basic for them, and they were bored.

Activity: I Feel Silly So I Jump In My Soup
The final activity was based on the Laurie Berkner song, I Feel Crazy So I Jump In My Soup. I wrote each of the kids' names on a sentence strip, then let them tell me what they would do if they could jump in a big vat of soup. Their answers were very descriptive, and it occurs to me as I write this that they might have done better if they could have written them down themselves. They liked the silly premise, but what they really wanted to instead was write on the dry erase wall. And since I wasn't prepared for that, they sort of lost interest. I was going to read another story from Little Bear, but decided to just let them go color. I wasn't feeling great

Comments
This story time continues to puzzle and surprise me. This week's group was made up of two girls and two boys, all of whom already know how to read above grade level. They were clearly bored by the activities because they were too easy, and I didn't feel like I knew how to make them any more challenging or interesting. (I asked one of the girls as she was leaving what she might like to read in future story times, and she said Magic Tree House - I have no idea how to make that work.) In this story time, more than any other, I feel real pressure from the parents to teach their kids something. Though the parents didn't stay in the room, I still felt as though they were judging the story time, and then the kids started getting wild, I worried they would think I wasn't doing a good job. (I have already had one parent quiz me extensively on the purpose and content of this story time, and I keep waiting for that to happen again.) I think over the next few weeks I have to concentrate on a few things, namely:

• coming up with ways to include kids who can read, even when the non-readers are present, and vice versa
• making the story time less academic and more fun, while still focusing on learning and literacy 
• figuring out how to keep the "read-along" component without boring the kids (the read-along part is the main draw for the parents, but so far, it doesn't really work for the kids, mostly because the stories we read are too long.)

It's a tall order, but I still think it will work once we figure out the bugs.

Read-Along Story Time for Beginning Readers, 1/10/13

Read-Along Story Time for Beginning Readers, 1/10/13

When I first read about Miss Julie's Beginning Reader story time, I had two thoughts: "That is so cool!" and "I don't know if that would go over very well at my library." I was determined to try it, though, and today, after months of thinking it over, and several weeks of careful planning, we had our first session. There are a lot of kinks to work out and things to think about, but I had so much fun and the parents and kids seemed just as happy and excited as I felt.

Opening Activity
I have a set of felt letters that I purchased from Discount School Supply, so I took the time to spell out each child's name on a flannel board so they could then find their name and put the letters in a bowl. What I didn't realize would happen is that everyone who signed up would show up, along with at least 10 more kids. So I was scrambling at the last minute to put more names up on the board so they could find their names. Next time, I think I'll put the letters out and have them find the letters for their name.

Once everyone's name was in the bowl, I picked out some letters and asked kids whose name contained that letter to stand up and do a particular motion.  That went over like a lead balloon, but possibly only because I was so frazzled from the whole name / flannel board situation. 

Welcome message

I almost forgot about the welcome message, so my reading of it was somewhat rushed, but it amazed me how much the kids got into it, and how they laughed when they heard the phrase "sad elephant."

Hello! 

Welcome to story time! Today we will read about a sad dog and a sad elephant. We will find ways to make them happy again.

From, 

Miss Katie

Poem 
I printed out the words to a poem by J. Patrick Lewis called "Home Poem (or A Sad Dog Song)".  The speaker of the poem is a dog who names the homes of various animals - cloth for a moth, a hole for a mole, etc. - and then laments that the home of a flea is "me!" I left the last word of each line out of the text and replaced it with a picture. Then we tried to figure out what each picture was. After that, we matched the picture to a little square of paper that had both the picture and the corresponding word on it. The kids got really into this, and they loved going back and reading the poem again once we had finished figuring it out. Of everything we did in this story time, this was the best activity.

Read-Along 
Today's book was My Friend is Sad. My hope was to give every child a copy of the book to read with me, but attendance was so high, we ran out. I have put holds on twice as many copies of next week's books, so we should do better then, but this read-along was a bit difficult. Kids who knew the book kept skipping ahead to find their favorite pages, and kids who couldn't yet read had trouble keeping up with the page turns. Part of this is just nerves on my part. I'll spend some more time practicing with next week's book so that we stick together and actually read the story instead of jumping all around. Otherwise, this was a pretty good idea - the kids liked having their own copy of the book, and it was much easier for them to see what was happening on each page.

Song
I felt awkward reading and leaving, so we did my beloved Hat, Coats, Pants, and Shoes song. They laughed harder than any group I've shared this song with. They were the exact right age to enjoy it, and all of them said they had fun. We also sang my usual goodbye song just to make it feel finished.

Handout 
I handed out a write and draw activity at the end, just as a bonus for them to take home.  Not everyone took one, so I might revisit the idea and try to incorporate it into the story time some more. Click the image below to download a copy of the handout.

I suspect the structure of next week's session will be somewhat different, but after the overwhelming success of today, I feel like the sky's the limit. I'm very excited to see what future weeks will bring!