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QKLG 2024

Reading stories to build literacy

This resource allows you to record your own reflections after watching the video below.

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Teaching scenario

Jo Darbyshire
Kindergarten teacher

Let’s have a look at the cover. What can you see on the cover?

Child

Pineapple.

Jo

Fruit, pineapple.

Child

A person wearing a pineapple and fruit hat.

Jo

Her name is Handa. It’s called Handa’s Surprise and it’s … the lady that did the writing of the story also did the drawings. She’s the author and the illustrator. And her name is Eileen Browne. Now remember if you’ve seen this book, what are you going to do?

[Children give answers]

Keep it a secret. Don’t tell them. But you need to use your ears to hear the words and you’re going to need to use your eyes to get the whole story. Because the pictures tell some of the story.

Handa’s Surprise by Eileen Browne. Handa put seven delicious fruits in a basket for her friend, Akeyo.

Interview

Jo

Sometimes I’ll introduce the book by looking at the cover and trying to predict what the story might be about. We might talk about the author. Sometimes I might just start to read the story, read the title, read the author and start the story. Depending on what we’re doing and the time of the day and what the purpose of the book is as well, of course.

Teaching scenario

Jo

‘Hello, Akeyo,’ said Handa. ‘I’ve bought you a surprise.’ ‘Tangerine,’ said Akeyo, ‘my favourite fruit.’ ‘Tangerine,’ said Handa. ‘That is a surprise.

Child

At the end the animals took all the other fruit, didn’t they?

Jo

He got a surprise. Let’s have a look. On the front, this end page, are lots of pictures of the fruit that she put in there … into her basket. How does she carry her basket?

Child

On her head. She put it on her head.

Jo

Do you think this girl lives in Australia?

Child

No, she lives in India. Or she might be in Africa.

Jo

I think that you could be on the right track, Eva. I think she lives in Africa. At the back of the book it tells me that the lady that wrote it used to live in Africa. And she went to a village in Africa where these children live and used them to make up the story.

Interview

Jo

When I’m using questioning with books, I guess it’s to help the children to focus on the element of the story that I think is important. Or to focus on some aspects of the story that they may not have seen.

In that story that I read in the library today, a lot of the complexity of the story is happening in the illustrations. It’s not in the words. The words are just flowing along and it’s quite a nice story.

But if you’re looking at the pictures as well you’re seeing so much more of the complications of the story. So the questioning was to help them to focus on that and be aware of that.

Sometimes it might be to pose problems or to get them to predict the ending of a story. So there might be other times when we’ll use questions for different reasons. We might stop halfway through and say, I wonder what’s going to happen next? Let’s think about it.

So there will be lots of … questions are used in various ways depending on the books.

Last updated:
24 July 2025

Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)

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