What Good Stories Look Like in lower primary ELA!

“The dinosaur crept under the bed and hid from the mouse. It was very scared of mouses” she said solemnly.  It was another amazing story that the learner was telling as she pointed to the blob under the table. The mouse was a speck that was looking for the dinosaur behind the door. Our Primary Google Meets are full of such enthralling stories by our budding authors.

Stories are a doorway through which our learners explore their creativity, imagination, and learning. Writers document their stories in different ways. Some may use symbolic writing- the blob that was the dinosaur and the speck that was the mouse, some recount oral stories, while some craft amazingly illustrated stories that sometimes contain labels and invented words depending on their writing ability. Let us explore some of the writing stages that our learners exhibit through their stories.

Story writing develops through a lot of stages of writing such as: Pre- literate, Emergent, Transitional and Fluent stages. As our learners explore their creativity, they sometimes tell audio stories, picture stories, stories with labels, stories with some words (inventive spellings) and move on confidently to becoming fluent writers.

Here is a graphic which explains the different stages of writing in young learners.

Do watch out for any of these types of stories shared by your children at home- treasure them and share them with your family and us at school. These are veritable masterpieces to be treasured as memories. Encourage your children to make up stories, spellings, words, and ideas in their storytelling. Provide them with materials that will help them find their voice on paper like pencils, crayons, markers, and pens. Then, sit back and watch your author regale you with colourful, imaginative, and inventive stories.

What stands out in all these stories is the creativity, the imagination, and the sheer joy of storytelling.  We as teachers and parents are privileged to be observers, partners, and an audience for their creative efforts. Listening to their stories is such a joy. We celebrate the stories created by our learners with you here through some pictures. Enjoy yourself!

Picture stories created by our ELA P1 learners.

Sam found a worm!

Sam found a worm- A story with a few labels
Sarahs day 1

Sarah’s day 2
A fluent writer’s story with pictures, speech bubbles and sentences

A colourful picture story of a cat with pictures, speech bubbles and sentences.

Citation:

https://empoweredparents.co/developmental-stages-of-writing/

https://www.whps.org/uploaded/Offices/Curriculum_Instruction_and_Assessment/Families_-_Academics/Stages_of_Writing_Development.pdf

https://www.writereader.com/blog/stages-of-writing-development/

By PYP English Language Acquisition Team