The pupils in Room 3 love story time! Our stories are always brought to life with props, smells and sound effects which help bring the words and ideas to life. You never know what might happen during story time in Room 3… monsters might come to chase us, Katie Morag could take us on a journey to deliver the mail, a pirate ship to jump aboard for an adventure or even up into the night sky in a rocket to visit the moon with Baby Bear. Items go flying, the room descends into darkness and there can be very loud or quiet noises – our senses are well and truly awoken and the engagement is fantastic.
During stories we have the chance to practise some of what we learn through our targets or other curricular areas – a really good chance to generalise our skills. We always leave gaps so that the pupils can join in with signs and vocalisations. It is really helpful to repeat the same stories so that we become familiar with them and can begin to anticipate what is coming next. Sometimes we find that things which can be tricky in other contexts i.e. particular textures we aren’t sure of or having to pass on something to a friend which we would rather keep ourselves is much easier to cope with or work on during all the fun of story time.
The children’s active participation in story time has developed so much, we are really proud of them. They are joining in not only during their own turns but also paying so much more attention to their peers, lots of careful watching and listening.
We are looking forward to sharing some favourite stories from home with each other and getting to know some new ones while working through our context of ‘All About Me’ and answering the question ‘Who am I and who am I within my class?’.
