I am interested in finding out how lower elementary teachers (k-2) use storybooks to teach reading concepts. Also, how you may use different stories to develop literacy in students. Thanks!
I am interested in finding out how lower elementary teachers (k-2) use storybooks to teach reading concepts. Also, how you may use different stories to develop literacy in students. Thanks!
Hmmm … this question could mean two different things.
All of us who are serious about reading use storybooks all the time. Before the children can read by themselves, we read to them and talk about the stories; given half an opportunity most kids are very happy to ask “why”, and then you can answer whatever the child needs at the time. As they are learning to read, we read storybooks with them and help with new vocabulary or concepts and discuss meaning, character, setting in time and place, fantasy and fiction versus fact, believability, language variants, like or dislike, quality of the book, and on and on. After they can read independently, we go to some effort to keep them supplied with interesting and valuable reading materials at appropriate levels, and we do whatever comprehension work seems appropriate at the time. Some people use storybooks as an adjunct to other areas, especially history. My personal approach is to give students books that I enjoy myself (luckily have eclectic tastes) and take the discussion wherever it leads us.
On the other hand, the phrase “reading concepts” is one that some of us have learned to mistrust. What do you mean by that? There are two sides to reading, mechanics and comprehension; if you teach the mechanics effectively, then you can use discussions of whatever the students ask for comprehension, and give formal comprehension lessons as needed from whatever text you have (or choose one yourself) to help the students progress to higher levels.
On the other hand, if you don’t teach the mechanics effectively, then any amount of “reading concepts” will not get over the fact that the kids can’t read. Most of us who post on this board are special ed teachers, tutors, and parents who work with students who quite simply can’t read, no matter how many lovely concepts they may have; and unfortunately many of the students have picked up false and self-defeating concepts about reading that have to be unlearned. So the majority of us hold strongly to a first-things-first approach: get the mechanics working, and then go have fun with whatever you enjoy.