SomeTips For Telling/Reading stories

Some tips for telling/reading stories

1. Be prepared so that you can tell stories smoothly
* practice telling it out-loud to yourself
* know what happens in the right order
2. Be prepared with materials and facilities
3. Make sure that everyone is comfortable, and that they can see you
4. Begin the story by welcoming the listeners, using a carefully controlled voice, neither too high
nor too low
5. Engage the children as you tell the story
* Use facial expressions and gestures as well as your voice
* Meet your audience in the eyes: don’t be shy
6. Be playful with your language
* repeat words or phrases, use rhythm and rhyme or alliteration
* be clean and clear
*tease kids a bit when only you know what is going to happen next.
7. Try telling the same story -but swap over to make sure you don’t retell the same bits
8. Ask children if they do not understand the story- raise your hands
9. Assign comprehension jobs such as author, illustrator, predictor, main ideas, nouns,
verbs, word detective (Amber, 2008)
10. Use puppets, stuffed animals, paper cutouts, and flannel board to illustrate stories that
you tell without reading
11. Combine songs, body movement, and fingerplays in story telling time

Credits for
*Amber Swedenborg
* Vickie Dworkin

References
Some tips for telling stories adapted from

http://library.thinkquest.org/J001779/telling.htm
http://www.storyquest.org.uk/families/tips-for-telling-stories/