Home Suggestions for Storytelling & Inferencing Skills
Reading books with children is helpful at any age. As children get older, you can help facilitate critical thinking skills by asking higher level questions. This will help strengthen his/her story telling skills, sharing personal experiences and inferencing abilities. Try incorporating the following ideas while reading stories with your child. Talk with a Speech-Language Pathologist for about Speech Therapy and additional questions. Storytelling can be fun for the whole family!
Sequencing information can be personal or fictional.
Encourage your child to retell one of his/her favorite books. Pictureless word books (i.e., books with only pictures) are good because your child doesn’t rely on reading the words.
Ask your child about a movie they just watched.
Use terms that describe stories: Who are the characters? What was the setting?/Where were they? What was the problem? What was the solution?/How did they solve the problem?
While book reading, encourage inferencing by asking some of the following questions:
What do you think will happen next? Why do you think that might happen?
How does she feel? Why does she feel that way?
What should she do? Why should she do that?
Talk about the main idea. What is the story all about? This should generally be one sentence.
Model good storytelling by sharing your own experiences.
Use transition words: first, next, then, last, before, after, while, today, tomorrow, yesterday.
Recall what you and your child did that day. Today we…..What did you like doing today?
Talk about what you’ll do tomorrow. Tomorrow we are going to the zoo!
These strategies do not replace speech therapy sessions. Ideas are recommended to use in conjunction with techniques and activities provided by a Speech-Language Pathologist.
Rachele Wyant, M.A., CCC-SLP
Speech-Language Pathologist
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