[Grade 1] Introducing Grade 1 students to the African Storybook Project website

I was looking forward to introducing my Grade 1 ICT technology class students to the newly launched African Storybook website and it turned out to be a very exciting lesson. I thought I would write about it.

Step 1: A discussion about the African Storybook website
First we had a discussion about the amazing African Storybook website and all its stories especially created for Grade 1 – 3 students. I showed them a little bit of the website on the big screen, and read them a couple of the stories. They got very excited at the thought that they were going to explore the website on their own.

Step 2. How to locate the African Storybook website
We haven’t done all that much Internet work in Grade 1 as yet, but what I have taught them is how to retrieve a file out of the Grade 1 section of Student Share on our network, and how to open a URL link that is written in a Microsoft Word document.  I had written http://africanstorybook.org/ on the document and so they opened this link quite easily.

Step 3. A rhyme with a catchy rhythm to help them remember the process
We  explored the website together for a while and then I taught them a little rhyme with a great rhythm as we clicked on the relevant parts of the website relevant to young readers

“Find African stories
English
First words.
Read
Clap clap clap”

Step 4. Choosing a story to read
The class was instructed to look through the stories on the page that came up.  I was interested to see how they looked down the first page of stories and generally made for the one that was in colour.

Step 5: Reading the stories
I was amazed as I walked around listening to the Grade 1s reading their stories with great enjoyment. For example, I found two of the students reading the same story together out loud. After the lesson I commended the Grade 1 teacher for enabling them to make such excellent reading progress in just four and a half months

Step 6: Reporting back on a favourite story
We finished off with a report back session on the favorite story read during the lesson. The class loved the website and said they were going to continue reading the stories at home. I wondered if they would manage to locate the website again!

The favourite story was 'Supercow!" This is a great website!