Who is it for?

Talk Through Stories is for four to six-year-old children. It is especially for children who do not come from a language-rich home. It is designed to extend and deepen children’s vocabulary so that they can understand the books they will soon be able to read for themselves. 

Time is not on their side.

That is why it is so important to plan specifically and systematically – step by step – to develop their vocabulary.

How talk through stories works

In Story week, we help children to get to know the story well: the plot, the characters, and their actions and motives.
In Vocabulary week, we focus on eight words from the story. These are words that children are unlikely to hear in everyday conversation but are likely to come across in stories. For example, in I’m in charge by Jeanne Willis, we chose bellowed, startled, barged, sneaked, grinned, dreadful, stomped, refused.
Children’s understanding of each word is then developed in the context of their everyday lives.