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/

Critical Thinking

For most people, the importance of vocabulary seems very clear. We can communicate together by using incorrect grammatical patterns or imperfect pronunciation, but people will encounter difficulty in understanding what the interlocutors are saying and the communication may break down because they do not use the correct words. My students in Vietnam were also in the same situation. They did not use correct words in writing and speaking to express their ideas. The problem is that in English, there are many words whose meanings are related closely each other. The students at that time did not how to choose the words suitably in particular situation. To avoid this, in my teaching, I usually teach new words in contexts and recycle new vocabularies very often in different types of exercises. In production stage, I let the students talk to their peers freely but I finally corrected the use of word choice that the students made mistakes in front of the class and noticed them the meanings of the words when they occurred in a new context. This method has brought positive effect in my teaching. It helps my students improve the situation better.