Wednesday, April 22, 2009

Northridge Elementary - A Day of Stories

Northridge Elementary held a school-wide program in honor of National Library Month. Yesterday guests from the public library, other school principals, professional story tellers, and many others told stories in the classrooms. Fifth graders coordinated the check-in with the help of one of their teachers. The library hosted the volunteers and provided wonderful snacks for everyone.

"Go Dog Go" was the book I chose to read to a wonderful class of kindergartners. I used the video with the sound turned down to enhance the story. The movie ran slowly enough that I was able to tell the story, and students were able to act out the story - we had our own "party" like the dog party on top of the tree!

I arrived early and stayed late to enjoy some other presentations as well. Traci, one of our Clinical Professors, wowed the kids with three stories: a flannel board rendition of "The Rainbow Fish" by Marcus Pfister, "The Big Wide-Mouth Frog" pop-up book, by Martha Hamilton, and "Somebody and the Three Blairs" by Tolhurst and Abel. The kids favorite, I think, was the pop-up book - they cheered for a second reading! The guest after me was an editor for the newspaper. As you can see from the picture, his animations mesmerized the kindergartners. Wouldn't it be awesome to have a day where different folks read to you all day long! You could enjoy yourself, imagine creatively as you listened, and perhaps brainstorm a story of your own in the process.

The benefits of listening to stories out loud include developing an ear for language, cultivating a deep vocabulary, and familiarizing the listener with many of the seminal stories of western culture. For further benefits check out Little Ones Reading Resource. For online read aloud stories check out: Story Time Online for stories that you can listen to and watch from a computer, an interactive white board, or projected on a screen or wall when the projector is connected to your computer.

Thank you to everyone that participated in this fun, learning experience for the students of Northridge.

What other resources do you know of that are great for elementary story time?

1 comment:

Blogger In Middle-earth said...

Kia ora Connie!

Story telling is of course an ancient practice. I think that it is almost a genetically linked activity. There are a few cultures that are built on story telling. The Māori culture is one. Their language is traditionally not a written language either, so the legends, of which there are hundreds, have all been passed down the generations by telling alone.

Now, of course, these legends can be read from a book, a blog post or a web page. But their occurrence in books in the last hundred years or so is testimony to the cultural practice of story telling over thousands of years.

Without the telling there would be none to read about.

Catchya later
from Middle-earth