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Video transcript
Jo Darbyshire
Kindergarten teacher
We use stories a lot, daily, at kindergarten. And sometimes they’ll be told stories and sometimes they’ll be stories with a book. I guess it’s to introduce the story genre to them, to establish that understanding of a beginning, a middle, an end, and to expose children to lots and lots of language opportunities.
I love stories and there’s a few things when I’m selecting a story that I look at. I really enjoy reading books to children, so I think about the age of the children and whether … the time of the year as well because at the end of the year they’re ready for much more complex stories because they’ve got a lot of the strategies of sitting and listening to a story down pat.
But at the beginning of the year we’d start with really simple ones that wouldn’t take too long. So we would look at the children and their developmental level. We’d look at the interests of the children and what’s going on in our room and in our program.
Then we would look at the quality of the book as well, of course, and the illustrations and the type of the story, whether it flows and whether it’s got rhyming and rhythm and those sorts of patterns in it too that will help keep their interest.
When you’re looking at told stories and read stories … When I use a told story I feel that I can actually engage the children a little bit more because you’re sitting … I tend to sit in a circle, and you can actually watch them and look at their facial expressions and vary the pace of it and things.
Whereas, when I’m reading a story and using a book story, it’s not as easy to be with the children. I’m looking at the book and the words of the book. So they both have different purposes. I love using both of them because there’s beautifully written and illustrated books, and you can’t not use those as well.
- Last updated:
- 24 July 2025
