Reading cafe

On Thursday we held our second Reading cafe. The focus for this cafe was to share how we develop children's ability to retell stories using actions and then how they can tell stories using pictures by way of a story map.

We enjoyed sharing (again) the story of ' Owl babies'. It is important to note that we want children to really get to know a few really good stories, and so, they will need to hear them often. Owl stories is one of the books recommended for Reception aged children.

So, we listened to the story and then I chose a part of the story for us to work on putting actions to. This normally would be done over a period of time and would have been a longer section. I chose the beginning but we might choose middle/end parts to work on with other stories.

We then went onto showing how we link these actions to develop using pictures ( actions from earlier) to re tell the story. 

Here are some of those lovely story maps.

(There were 3 baby owls, Sarah, Percy and Bill. They lived in a hole in the trunk of the tree. The hole has sticks and leaves and owl feathers. It was there house).

The children enjoyed making owl stick puppets - puppets are a lovely way for young children to tell stories and take on roles of different characters. 

There were other story activities out for the children to enjoy and develop imaginative and creative story telling.

Stick puppets and puppet theatre.

The children also enjoyed using big headbands with pictures of the characters from the story on them.

And there were other reading and writing activities for the children to enjoy.

Owl stories...

Using sounds to spell words. Daddy's as well as children😉

Fishing for phonics...

We hope that those who were able to attend enjoyed time with your children and that this gave you an insight into how you can develop story telling and writing at home. Thank you to those of you who helped and supported children who didn't have a visitor too.