Saturday, September 06, 2003

Story Time Index

Because a Little Bug Went Ka-Choo,
Bone by Jeff Smith (A Partial Review),
Clifford the Small Red Puppy by Norman Bridwell,
Curious George by H.A. Rey and Margaret Rey,
Don't Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus by Mo Williams
Fortunately by Remy Charlip
Fox in Socks by Dr. Seuss
Green Eggs and Ham by Dr. Seuss
Harold and the Purple Crayon by Crockett Johnson ,
Hop on Pop by Dr Seuss
I'll Teach My Dog 100 Words by Michael K. Frith and illustrated by P.D. Eastman ,
Jungle School Tales (Reading Heroes) by Tina Barrett ,
Marvel Classic Comics #9 "Dracula" ,
Marvel Classics Comics #15 "TREASURE ISLAND" ,
Millions of Cats by Wanda Gag,
My First Fairytales: The Three Billy Goats Gruff Retold by Gaby Goldsack and Illustrated by Kim Blundell ,
One Fish Two Fish Red Fish Blue Fish by Dr Seuss
Peace At Last by Jill Murphy
Rosie's Walk by Pat Hutchins
Strega Nona by Tomie dePaola
The Gruffalo by Julia Donaldson and illustrated by Axel Scheffer,
The Knight Who Was Afraid of the Dark by Barbara Shook Hazen, Pictures by‎ Tony Ross,
The Loony Lunar Gold Rush by Carl Barks
The Thrifty Spendthrift by Carl Barks ,
The Time Machine Classics Illustrated 133 ,
The Town Mouse and the Country Mouse Retold by Sue Arengo and Illustrated by Kate Aldous ,
Where the Wild Things Are by Maurice Sendak,

See also:
* Write your own ending: docspub.

Google Drive Folder HERE

Notes and Explanations
First of all, pay no attention to the posting date on this index.  Some time ago, I decided to hide all my indexes at the end of my blog.  Since blogger puts the newest entries at the top of the blog, I bury all my indexes back in October 2003.  But the links will take you to posts written during 2016, and I'm writing this explanation in January 2017.
Story Time is a project I did in my classrooms with young learners (ages about 6 to 9) studying at approximately a CEF A1 level.
The project is based off of the theory that young learners benefit from lots of comprehensible input.

At my previous school, my young learners had been students 11-14, and I used a lot of graded readers as the primary source of comprehensible input, mostly from the Oxford Bookworm or Penguin Readers series.

However, when I found myself working with younger children, I was initially at a loss as to how to supply the comprehensible input.  Both their low level and their limited attention span prevented them from reading long sections of text.

Picture books were the ideal source of comprehensible input, but for large classes I couldn't photocopy and distribute picture books like I used to do with graded readers.  (It would take up way too much paper, for one thing, and often the pictures wouldn't come out well on the photocopy for another thing.)

So, I started to transfer the picture books over to PowerPoint, and created this Story Time project.

My hope was to create a bank of resources which could be used by any teacher in a similar situation.  (i.e. teachers teaching a large class of young learners who do not have access to multiple copies of picture books).

I should say provide some explanation, however.

First of all, the books I used for  this project were influenced by a poverty of selection.
There were a handful of appropriate books in my school library, which I scanned in myself.
And I managed to track down some PDFs online.
But I often couldn't track down the ideal books I wanted, and instead had to make do with what I could find.
Some of these books are not really graded ideally for beginning students.  Other books are a bit boring.
But all of them worked, more or less, in the classroom.  (i.e.--My students were able to engage with these books at some level).

To cater to the limited attention span of my students, I split many of the books into several small parts.
Other teachers using these resources with other students should feel free to edit them to accommodate their own students.  (Copy the Google docs over to your own account, and put the parts together as you see fit.)

The PowerPoints are set up so that the picture displays first, and then the text follows only after the next click.  This is so that for classes in which I wanted them to just listen, I could read out the text first before they could see it.
In classes where I wanted them to read it with me, I would press click to display the text and we would read it together.

Secondly, while creating these PowerPoints, I included a lot of vocabulary work, because I was under the influence of The Lexical Approach by Michael Lewis at the time.
Michael Lewis believes with Krashen that grammatical forms are best acquired through comprehensible input and not conscious study. But Michael Lewis argues that vocabulary actually can be acquired through conscious study.
This made sense to me, so I included a lot of vocabulary work in each story.  I introduced all the vocabulary at the beginning, and then quizzed the students on it at the end.
In the longer stories, I didn't realistically expect the students to master all of the vocabulary, but I was hoping that if I threw enough stuff at the wall at least some of it would stick.  If the students could remember the vocabulary item at the end, great, if not we just briefly reviewed it and then went onto the next word.

Because I was working with elementary students, I felt I could only include vocabulary that could be symbolized by a picture.  (Their level was too weak for any dictionary based definitions.)  So words that couldn't be represented by a picture just got skipped over.

I didn't include any comprehension questions based on the theory of I.S.P. Nation (and others) that traditional reading comprehension questions only test the student's comprehension, but don't actually help the student to understand the text any better.  Instead, I used gap fills, which supposedly are more beneficial because they draw students' attention to the features of the sentence.
Because I was teaching young, low-level students, I kept the challenge very low.  For each section, they only had to match 5 words.
Again, other teachers should feel free to copy these materials into their own Google docs accounts, and edit them as they feel fit (adding in comprehension questions or other tasks, or increasing the number of words for the gap fills).

Other Ideas
Once I had created these PowerPoints, I brought several of them into my adult classes as well.  (My theory is that everyone loves a good story, adults as well as children.)
With adult classes, I would often adjust the task.  Some of these PowerPoints and worksheets have already been edited to reflect that, and others have not yet been edited, but easily could.  (Again, just copy them over into your own account, and edit accordingly.)

Often for a post reading task, I would give the adults the story in a scrambled order, and they would have to re-assemble the text into the correct order.

Or I would show the adults the pictures, and they would have to re-tell the story in their own words to their partner.

Sometimes I would stop the story in the middle, and then give the students this worksheet in which they can write their own ending. docs, pub.

Order of Difficulty

In my own classes, I didn't do a very good job of staging these stories, because I just presented these stories to my classes as I managed to track them down.

If I had to do it all over again, however, I think I would try to stage them in order of difficulty, starting with the easiest book, and gradually working up.

It's a bit difficult to determine the exact order of difficulty, because difficulty is a non-linear concept.  Some of the books may have difficult vocabulary, but simple sentence structure.  Other books may have difficult sentences, but an easy to understand story-concept.  Et cetera.

But here's my best stab at it.

1. Jungle School Tales (Reading Heroes) by Tina Barrett ,
2. Rosie's Walk by Pat Hutchins
3. Hop on Pop by Dr Seuss
4. The Fat Cat Sat on a Hat by Nurit Karlin ,
5. The Town Mouse and the Country Mouse Retold by Sue Arengo and Illustrated by Kate Aldous ,
6. The Cat in the Hat by Dr. Seuss,
7. The Cat in the Hat Comes Back by Dr. Seuss,
9. I'll Teach My Dog 100 Words by Michael K. Frith and illustrated by P.D. Eastman ,
11. Clifford the Small Red Puppy by Norman Bridwell,
12. Green Eggs and Ham by Dr. Seuss
14. Fox in Socks by Dr. Seuss
16. Peace At Last by Jill Murphy
17. Fortunately by Remy Charlip
18. The Gruffalo by Julia Donaldson and illustrated by Axel Scheffer,
20. Curious George by H.A. Rey and Margaret Rey, 
21. Millions of Cats by Wanda Gag,
23. Harold and the Purple Crayon by Crockett Johnson ,
24. Strega Nona by Tomie dePaola
26. Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day by Judith Viorst and illustrated by Ray Cruz,
27. The Knight Who Was Afraid of the Dark by Barbara Shook Hazen, Pictures by‎ Tony Ross,
28. A Cool Deal by Carl Barks 
29. The Thrifty Spendthrift by Carl Barks
30. The Loony Lunar Gold Rush by Carl Barks
31. The Golden Fleecing by Carl Barks
32. Marvel Classics Comics #15 "TREASURE ISLAND" ,
33. The Time Machine Classics Illustrated 133 ,
34. Marvel Classic Comics #9 "Dracula" ,
35. Bone by Jeff Smith (A Partial Review),

However the order I actually did these books in is below.

1. The Town Mouse and the Country Mouse Retold by Sue Arengo and Illustrated by Kate Aldous January 9, 2016
2. Peace At Last by Jill Murphy January 12, 2016
3. Jungle School Tales (Reading Heroes) by Tina Barrett January 14, 2016
4.  My First Fairytales: The Three Billy Goats Gruff Retold by Gaby Goldsack and Illustrated by Kim Blundell January 15, 2016
5. The Gruffalo by Julia Donaldson and illustrated by Axel Scheffer January 30, 2016
6. The Cat in the Hat by Dr. Seuss February 8,  2016
7. Green Eggs and Ham by Dr. Seuss February 9, 2016
8. Fortunately by Remy Charlip March 7, 2016
9. Fox in Socks by Dr. Seuss March 9, 2016
10. Curious George by H.A. Rey and Margaret Rey, April 11, 2016
11. Clifford the Small Red Puppy by Norman Bridwell, April 12, 2016
12. Where the Wild Things Are by Maurice Sendak, April 21, 2016
13. Millions of Cats by Wanda Gag April 26, 2016
14. Don't Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus by Mo Williams April May 1, 2016
15. I'll Teach My Dog 100 Words by Michael K. Frith and illustrated by P.D. Eastman , May 2, 2016
16. One Fish Two Fish Red Fish Blue Fish by Dr Seuss October 24, 2016
17. Strega Nona by Tomie dePaola November 9, 2016
18. Hop on Pop by Dr Seuss November 30, 2016
19. Harold and the Purple Crayon by Crockett Johnson , December 2, 2016
20. Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day by Judith Viorst and illustrated by Ray Cruz, August 2, 2017
21. The Cat in the Hat Comes Back by Dr. Seuss, November 8, 2017
22. The Fat Cat Sat on a Hat by Nurit Karlin , December 28, 2017
23. The Knight Who Was Afraid of the Dark by Barbara Shook Hazen, Pictures by‎ Tony Ross, January 3, 2018
24. The Thrifty Spendthrift by Carl Barks January 5, 2018
25. A Cool Deal by Carl Barks January 7, 2018
26. The Golden Fleecing by Carl Barks, January 13, 2018
27. The Loony Lunar Gold Rush by Carl Barks January 16, 2018
28. Marvel Classics Comics #15 "TREASURE ISLAND" , March 19, 2018
29. The Time Machine Classics Illustrated 133 ,April 10, 2018
30. Marvel Classic Comics #9 "Dracula" , May 30, 2018
31. Bone by Jeff Smith (A Partial Review), October 18, 2019
32. Rosie's Walk by Pat Hutchins July 20, 2020
33. Because a Little Bug Went Ka-Choo, January 28, 2024

There are a few changes I made along the way.
As I progressed, I started accompanying some of the pictures with a text definition.

I also started to include Youtube videos at the end.  (Many of these books have a read-along video on Youtube.)
These Youtube videos were put on in the background while the students completed the worksheet.  (Just for a little extra background input).
In cases where I split the story up over multiple parts, the Youtube videos only on the last part.
Some of the links no longer work because the Youtube videos were taken down for one reason or another, and I will need to find new videos if I re-do these videos in the future.

The beginning books were all done on PowerPoint (although I've also converted them to Google Slides.)
In mid 2016, however, my workplace changed over to Google Slides only, and after that all the Stories are only on Google Slides.

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