any advice greatly received regarding keeping children interested at story time

[ziggy]

Hi there - used to be a childminder and now work in a pre school (am loving it the only problem I have is story time - this is done by me once a week and is at the end of the three hour session usually for about 15 minutes before home time - I seem to struggle holding the childrens interests (age 2 and 3 normally about 12-15 children) - had a meeting yesterday with manager and we both rose this as an issue - they run around wont sit still etc she suggested that i research ways so i thought the best people to ask would be you lovely lot

hello again, like you i used to be a childminder and am now a nursery nurse (cant wait to return to childminding). Anyway I also had to do storytime with a group of 12 two year olds (some not quite 2 years old). I found if one of the other 2 staff were free (didnt happen very often) then it helped if she sat with more fidgety children. Our room supervisor allowed ones who didnt want to listen to just wander about but i found that disrupted whole group.

I started off making sure everyone was sitting on carpet and talked about sitting comfortably and 'turning listening ears on' ( which they loved doing), explained that I couldnt read if children were talking or werent listening and would stop and repeat this many times in the beginning. I would have 3 books ready and would ask best behaved child to choose from those 3. to be honest I did read a few of the favourites a lot but didnt see a problem with this. I tried to find books where children could join in, lots of rhyming books. Luckily we had a box with laminated songs which children could choose at end of story so if session was going really badly I would give up and sing instead, thankfully this didnt happen often.. Not sure what other staff are doing at your setting but it really annoyed me when management came in to talk to either me or other 2 staff and totally ruined storytime but heyho thats another story

[Maza]

Some great ideas suggested BUT I think it was very rude and unhelpful of your manager to ask you to go away and research the issue. I agree that it would be a good idea for you to watch another member of staff do a story time - that is the best way to learn. I'm sorry that she doesn't really seem to know how to train her own staff - which is a big part of her job description. Not much you can do about it though, but just hold your head up high and remember that she is clearly far from perfect if she makes you feel less so.

15 minutes is a long time for just stories and so it definitely needs to be enhanced with songs and such. Props are the big winner though. As Floradora said - big books. It is amazing whenever I have observed lessons/carpet sessions/circle times etc that there are always at least a couple of children who cannot see the book/main resource because they are sitting slightly to the side of it. If your nursery doesn't have big books you can order them from your local library. Try and put it on a big book stand so that you are not blocking the pictures with your arms. If the book is on your left then you will probably turn towards the left and so you really need to think about the children sitting to the right of you - are you blocking their view? Definitely at this stage you need to know which book you are going to be reading. Practise reading it to yourself (in a while you'll be a dab hand and so you won't need to do it for each book). Prepare some props in a bag/box before hand and bring them out creating suspense. Make lots of eye contact with the children and use lots of facial expressions - really exaggerated ones.

When you see an experienced practitioner doing a successful story time it looks like the easiest thing in the world and so you often don't notice a lot of subtle things that they do in order to make it successful. I still remember to this day the day it all clicked and fell into place for me. I was seventeen and was doing some voluntary work in a reception class. One day I decided that I was going to take in my own familiar books and had a couple of props. The teacher kindly commented on how wonderful that session had been (probably wasn't that amazing, bless her, but much better than previous weeks). That one kind comment gave me so much confidence and I now love story time more than anything.

When I worked in nursery we always had another member of staff on the carpet to help by just tapping someone on the shoulder and helping them quickly refocus on the story, so you have got it tough, but I'm sure you can do it!

One other strategy that I used was to have some picture cues of good listening. It was just an A4 laminated piece of card with six pictures on it (eyes looking, hands still, ears etc) and if someone was turning the other way, for example, I would say their name and quickly point to the appropriate picture, eyes in this case). It was much quicker than saying "Johnny, can you please look this way..) and was less distracting for the other children. I don't know where I got it from or I would post a link, but there are loads about on the internet. If someone is sitting nicely, praise then immediately, going overboard, then all the other children will want to copy them - so much sweeter than correcting unwanted behaviour.

Do you have a story in mind? Why not let us all know what you have picked and we can all put our heads together and come up with ideas on props/complimentary activities? Also, you could put together your own little prop box for nursery rhymes so that if your story ends quickly you have some time fillers on hand.

Good luck. It's not easy. x