Have your say... guest post from an upper primary teacher
Often, we hear from schools that they think Story Box Library is mainly for lower primary students, even though the benefits of using with upper primary have been widely discussed. Read our blog post Story Box Library - not just for little kids!
So, it was refreshing to hear from school subscriber, Fairlie Pritchard, who teaches grade 5/6 at Meredith Primary School in Victoria, that she successfully uses Story Box Library widely with her students.
“I have used Story Box Library in a number of different ways with my senior classes. It’s great to have them listen to someone different read the books. We talk about how their use of voices changes the way the books sound and adds to the engagement in the story. We’ve also used it as a teaching tool to practice our own reading out loud (which we’ve then done with the younger students).”
“We’ve done summaries of stories such as ‘Little Lunch’, used it to identify the main idea, used stories to spark discussions on particular HASS topics (particularly the indigenous stories – it’s also great with these because they hear the stories read by a native language speaker, so the words are pronounced correctly).”
“We used the ANZAC stories to enhance our unit and discussions around ANZAC Day – because we owned a lot of these books, the students were able to then go back and look at the books and the illustrations.”
“We’ve done author studies (who doesn’t love Aaron Blabey!!) and learned more about the authors we love (Morris Gleitzman). We’ve also just used it for fun. Because listening to books being read is fun. There is so much to offer on Story Box Library for senior students. All it needs is a little creativity, and thinking outside the box to produce and engaging and interactive lesson that your students will enjoy!”
