Storytelling in Kindergarten

In kindergarten during Reading Workshop, the children have been working to become storytellers. They've heard repeated readings of a few stories that they are now familiar enough with that they can retell using storyteller voices. We've read "Miss Bindergarten Gets Ready for Kindergarten", "The Kissing Hand", "Chicka Chicka Boom Boom", "The Very Hungry Caterpillar", "Caps for Sale", "Harry the Dirty Dog", "The Three Billy Goats Gruff" and "Five Little Monkeys Jumping on the Bed". 

Books like these are great for children to use to work on retelling with a storyteller voice. The children are looking closely at the pictures, recalling details from what they heard when it was read to them, and using some of the same story language to invent/approximate the text as they "read" the story. (Betty Gootson, Head of The Experiential School of Tampa Bay, recently gave parents some similar prereading and storytelling tips in this article.)