Reading a Story to the Children

While I was on my Professional Placement 1, I was able to read to a Reception class the story of ‘The Very Noisy Night’ by Diana Hendry. The actual book was quite small in size so I had the class sat on the carpet in a way that I knew all the children would be able to see the pictures.

I asked the children to sit in their carpet spaces so that no one was squashing anyone, allowing everyone to see the book as well as continuing the routine of the teacher. I also had to talk to two children who were play fighting to get them to sit on the carpet sensibly.

The book was a good choice for me as I was able to use different voices for the characters and bring them to life. It was also a book I felt could be quite easily made into an interactive session as well.

Whilst I read the book, I used a lot of eye contact, and smiled at them just before I started. I was asking the children questions, both as a group and individuals I picked out, seeing if they would be able to make predictions on what was going to happen next using the knowledge from the page what I had just read, for example, I had to make the sound ‘Whoo whoo, whoo whoo’ and here I asked the children what they thought was making the noise. I also asked them as a class to make the noise of the owl too.

I found it a really enjoyable experience and asked the children at the end of the story if they had liked the book and they all yelled ‘yeah’ which made me feel really good.

: 28 Sep 2011 18:05 |  Comments (0) |  Report a problem