QUALITY STORYTENTS

A resource for family, early childhood and community literacy workers

During A Tent

The range of methods used in a Storytent to support children’s reading include

• reading aloud to children
• listening to children read
• promoting specific reading strategies
• shared reading
• guided reading
• independent reading
• interactive writing
• independent writing

This list represents most elements of a balanced literacy program (Fountas & Pinnell, 1996), and is discussed in more detail in Section II.

Although children may show an increase in reading level, the Storytent program is not about instructed reading. Talking, laughing, playing, and sharing are all part of the content of the program. Sometimes children dictate stories to workers who write them down. Other times they write notes to each other, copy out text from books, or just doodle.