Language Experience Stories are a teaching strategy that I have used across all of my careers…teacher of the Deaf/HH, Primary teacher, teacher coach and mom to preschoolers. They allow a group to collectively create a story, involve listening, speaking, writing and reading skills all at the same time and develop language, grammar and vocabulary. But most importantly, they are just plain fun! They are especially important to emergent readers and writers because they are about a topic that is of interest and they are at the student’s level…because it’s his/her language.
With my boys I have started doing these after we go on particularly interesting outings…the zoo or children’s museum specifically, but you can tell/write a story about anything that you do. When we get home we talk about what we did. I ask what was their favorite thing and try to get them to recall some details. Then I direct the story into a framework of first, next, then and last. (We went to the zoo today. First we saw a…) I write their stories in a journal and then we go back and read it together. It’s much easier for them (well Connor) to “read” because they already know the stories in the journal. It’s also a great way to keep track of the fun things you’ve done as a family and go back and read later.