Tell me a story

8 - 10 years

Ideas to help your child practise their literacy skills - with you, and online

Developed in partnership with Education Services Australia

The Australian Curriculum sets the goal for what all students should learn as they progress through their school life. Skills in the Year 3-4 curriculum include:

discussing how authors and illustrators make stories exciting, moving and absorbing
creating literary texts that explore students’ own experiences and imagining
creating literary texts by developing storylines, characters and settings.

It’s easy to help your child practise these skills as part of everyday life – just use these simple ideas.

Encourage storytelling

Telling stories is a great way to support many aspects of your child’s learning, including literacy skills, imagination, and their understanding of the world. All storytelling practice is valuable, whether it is verbal or written, and based on imagination or real life.

You can help your child become a master storyteller by telling stories together, and encouraging your child to tell their own stories. The more you tell stories together, the easier it becomes (and the more your child will take the lead). To help your child make their stories more interesting, prompt them to:

describe the people and places – What did the house look like?
describe people’s thoughts, feelings and reactions – How did he feel about that?
develop the storyline – What happened next?

Here are a few ideas to get you started:

a day that something changed in your family – Do you remember the day your baby sister was born?
a favourite story from your family history – Did I ever tell you the story about how grandma and grandpa met?
a crazy story featuring your child – Do you remember the day we had a picnic on the moon?
a sequel for a favourite book or movie
an adventure featuring their favourite toy.