“Ma’am! Ma’am! Story? Story?”

It is the last period of the day, and I walk into an English medium first standard classroom. The chaos that takes over the children at the end of the day can be heard even in the hallway, but as soon as the children see me the chaos has a different face. Immediately, the children start to clear their desks, some fold their hands and put their fingers on their lips, and some run up to me and try to look at what I am holding behind my back. “Ma’am! Ma’am! Story? Story?” I smile and then and give them a quick nod, but remind them they must sit down quietly and clear their desks before story time can begin.
Principal Madam wanted Dalena and I to take over some Library periods in the English medium, as an opportunity to have an extra period to work on the students listening and oral reading skills. She assigned me all of the classes in first standard, and told me to ask the librarian for the books the school had for these classes. I browsed the books, and I mostly saw small fable books, without many pictures and difficult English—in other words, nothing so promising. However, I worked with the materials I had and read those small stories to the children. At first, I had them sitting in their chairs and I would go around, reading the story aloud and take time to show each child the picture in the book. Not only did this take a lot of time, but I realized the children started to get really bored if they were not instantly getting the satisfaction of looking at the pictures as well.
From then, I started a search of English books that were filled with fun pictures and easy text, so the children can easily understand what they were hearing, and also continue to stay interested. I found some books at a huge retail store called Big Bazaar, but still their selection was limited. Luckily, a few weeks later my school had a Scholastic book fair and I was able to get my hands on some quality books I thought my children would really enjoy. Now, I just had to overcome the next hurdle—keeping them interested.
The biggest challenge I was up against was changing the schedule of the children and their expectations of their library period. Since the library periods are in the last period, I also have to ensure that they know they need to stay calm, and that it isn’t a free period to just have fun and listen to a story if they feel like it. Having the children stay in their seats clearly wasn’t working so I decided to use the classroom set up to my advantage. In the front of each of my classrooms, there is a small platform in front of the blackboard. I decided that I would sit on top of the platform and I would have all my students sit in front of me, like how I remember having story time when I was small. No hitting, touching, talking or playing rules were implemented and very quickly, all the children were captured by the story I read them. They stayed still staring at the pictures, murmuring “wow” as the images came across their eyes, and even erupting into applause at the end of each page because of their excitement. It is really a sight to see! They are so excited about getting this story time each week that sometimes they forget the rules they must follow before they can get a story, but being clear about my expectations each time I walk into the class has really helped.
Now after 4 months of being there, they are getting the hang of Library period, they know what to do when I walk in the door (after some reminders of course), and they are getting used to breaking from the norm and sitting together to enjoy a story as a class. Now that I have gotten this far with my students, I really want to take it a step farther and have them begin to read stories on their own. I would like to take advantage of having two teachers in the class to do guided reading in smaller groups, buddy reading projects, and other fun reading/story based activities. My ultimate goal for the end of the school year is for the students to write their own short creative stories, illustrations and all. Wish me the best and I will let you know the progress of my work! Of course, if anyone has ideas please feel free to contact me with tips or suggestions. I would love to hear from you!

Until next time!