Talk Through Stories

From Pre-school (Summer Term) through to Year 2, we use Ruth Miskin's Talk Through Stories (TTS). TTS 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. That is why it has been planned specifically and systematically – step by step – to develop their vocabulary.

Talk Through Stories works on a 2 week plan - story week and vocabulary week.

In Story week, the children to get to know the story really well: the plot, the characters, and their actions and motives.
In Vocabulary week, the children explore eight words from the story. These words have been specifically selected to develop children’s understanding of each word in the context of their everyday lives. The eight words selected for focus in each of the stories are what Isabel Beck, in Bringing words to life, has called ‘Tier 2’ words. These are words that children are unlikely to hear in everyday conversation but are likely to come across in stories. In I’m in charge by Jeanne Willis, for example, the focus words are:
bellowed startled barged sneaked grinned dreadful stomped refused

How the stories have been selected

Ruth Miskin has chosen stories that are worth reading and re-reading – stories that children will love. Old favourites, such as Dogger by Shirley Hughes, Burglar Bill by Janet and Allan Ahlberg, Can’t You Sleep, Little Bear? by Martin Waddell and Where the Wild Things Are by Maurice Sendak. They also use more recent literature, such as Hugless Douglas by David Melling, Perfectly Norman by Tom Percival, I’m in Charge by Jeanne Willis, Billy and the Beast by Nadia Shireen, Anna Hibiscus by Atinuke.

At St Stephens we have created our own progression of texts from Pre-school through to Year 2, based on vocabulary acquisition, length and structure of the texts.

We have also included a Poetry Time unit for each year group, for each half term.

SSCA Talk Through Stories Progression.pdf

Example TTS Unit - I'm in Charge By Jeanne Willis and Jarvis