Reflection – Story telling

Challenge and Selection:

What is a story? Each moment of your life is a story. But how to make that moment a memorable story is in our hands.

Stories play a vital role in growth and development of children. In this study, I adapted reciprocal teaching strategies for use with my kindergarten students. Using puppets to help model strategies, I implemented a series of lessons that showed students how to retell, ask questions, and predict what would happen in a story that was read aloud. The purpose was to provide students with comprehension strategies and enable them to engage in role-playing and interactive discussion of text.

Application:

Two to three stories a day was a target. It can be a fable, experiential story, imaginary, spy stories or any genre. A lot of puppets in the class room display and environment were kept for easy access and exploration. It doesn’t really matter what kind of puppet you use – in fact you can just talk with your hand and kids find it funny and they pay attention. Have you ever watched a live puppet show? There is just something about having a little puppet talking to you that draw you in.

Puppets can be used as part of the classroom experience in numerous ways…

a) A special puppet that said hello and introduced itself to the preschoolers.

Then asking for the students names in return and telling them it was very nice to meet them.

b) Creative art - Children can make their own paper bag puppets, stick

puppets, string puppets, and finger puppets.

c) Music - Children just love to sing along with a puppet. No need to have a

fancy puppet or stage, just throw a puppet on your hand and make it sing.

d) Puppet stage - Setting up a little stage, add a puppet, and then let the

puppet introduce the letter A! Let the puppet lead the children in a song. Let

the puppet count out loud, say the days of the week, spell the kid’s names, and so on

e) Circle time activity: Sharing personal stories and expressing the same using

puppets.

Insight and Approach:

Storytelling is an approach to teaching and learning that develops from the lived experiences of every one. This challenge of storytelling process helped students explore personal roles and make sense of their lives; they became responsible for themselves too, they too created their own stories. I gained insight on the connections students made between their prior knowledge and the text, which allowed me to assess and develop students' understanding so further knowing the needs of my learners and helping them. Even very young children with varied learning styles can benefit from metacognitively oriented comprehension strategy instruction.

This course helped me grow as a teacher; I gained lot of self confidence, satisfaction which built strong bonding between my students, parents and me.

