Before children can read words, they absorb pre-reading skills from the times they are read to. One of those pre-reading skills is narration—the ability to tell a story with a beginning, middle and end.
You can encourage narration by showing your child “beginning,” “middle” and “ending” pictures available in flash cards. You shuffle the three or four theme-connected cards which tell a simple story. Then you ask the child to arrange the cards in order and to tell you the story the cards depict.
Another more advanced way to encourage this skill is to ask the child to draw pictures of a “beginning,” “middle” and “ending” situation such as going to school, building a tower with blocks or any familiar activity. This is a more advanced skill because it requires higher level thinking skills to imagine a scenario, sequence events and then draw the events.
Here is an example of original narration by a six-year-old rising first grader as he described his story to me.
comicphonics for early readers 