Gail on the floor :)
I read stories from either a chair or on the floor, but I especially love being on the floor with the children. In this instance, I prep them by singing, "It'll be coming around the circle as it comes", to the tune of, "She'll be coming around the mountain". This helps cut down on the cries of, "I can't see it", when I am showing the book to one part of the circle. I think that sharing a book this way encourages patience and a sense of community--why not enjoy your classmates faces enjoying the story before or after you have?
Even though it is totally OKAY to read a story to children word for word (how many books can one memorize, after all?), it is so much better to really know your story ahead of time. After you have read a book many times you begin to know it so well that you know the structure of the story (is it a repeating, or expanding pattern story? Does it have places where children can be asked, "What do you think s/he will do?" or "How do you think s/he feels?". Is there a refrain you can include the children in so that they are part of the telling? (believe me, the more they are able to participate, the better they pay attention!). After a time with the same group of children over the course of a year, I've found that some of them will guess what kinds of questions you will ask, or what the pattern of the story is.
Using props is also a very effective way of involving children in a story. Felt board stories still excite young children. If you drop a piece, they will laugh and you can be in on the joke. Mistakes by a teacher create community, too. Sharing a story in this manner is an age-old technique. Making puppets for the story is also effective. The advantages of using props is that, not only can you "hook" the visual learner with moving parts, but then you may also place the props in a literacy center for use by children. They enjoy retelling the story with them. You encourage memory and understanding by involving the visual, auditory, and kinesthetic modalities of learning. If you are all thumbs with felt, and don't have money for those expensive sets, you can use Google Images to find pictures to laminate and back with a magnet. Magnet board stories are just as effective.
I took a course at The Kennedy Center called Tiny Toy Tales, taught by the wonderful Sean Layne. We made boxes to house the props for a story, including little toy characters. They were based on story books, but we were provided with a script for retelling the stories that gave the children something to do to participate in the telling. The scripts were layered with the learning of concepts that are required in learning standards. But the children wouldn't suspect they were being "taught" these concepts. They just enjoyed the telling (and retelling). The box can then be put in the literacy center. One of my tiny toy tales (Trashy Town) was in our literacy center this week.
Story sharing from picture books needn't be a case of the teacher sitting on a chair while obedient (!) little tykes watch and listen. Children come in all different flavors...er...learning styles. We are told to differentiate instruction. We can do this with story-telling or reading, too. I have shared some of my thoughts about this. Please share yours, also.
