We are aware of the important role played by literacy in improving the communication skills of our students. It is important that students learn to write, speak, read and listen effectively from Preparatory in school.
One way in which teachers can make ‘learning to communicate effectively’ easy is by using ‘Rebus Stories’. Rebus stories are stories that are narrated using pictures for specific words. These pictures are used through out the story to depict a particular word or character.
Rebus stories are fantastic for Kindergarten to Preparatory students. Indeed, they can be used by Preparatory students to write stories of their own. You can use ‘Rebus Stories’ even for the higher grades but remember to use challenging pictures with interesting story lines for the higher grades.
Rebus stories enable even students who are struggling with reading to ‘read’ the story since they recognise the pictures that are used for specific characters and words. You can introduce familiar stories in the beginning and then move on to more complex stories that will challenge the reading skills of students.
One way by which to make learning fun with ‘Rebus Stories’ is to help students create their own ‘Rebus Story’. Students can do this by following the procedure below:
1)Ask your students if they know what ‘Rebus Stories’ are: Start by asking students if they know what a ‘Rebus Story’ is. Create a concept map based on the information given by the students. Brain storm ideas on what ‘Rebus Stories’ are based on the concept map.
2)Read a ‘Rebus Story’: Choose an age appropriate story and read to the students. Ensure that they get to see the pictures used for the characters and words. Give students the chance to predict what the words represent.
3)Ask students to choose an appropriate story: Give students time to choose a story and create a story board based on the story line.
4)Ask students to choose specific pictures for specific words and characters: Ask students to choose the characters of words that they will be using pictures for. Based on the chosen characters and words, they can browse the web to determine appropriate pictures either through clip art or google pictures.
5)Ask students to create the ‘Rebus Story’: Once students have created the story line and chosen the pictures, they can write the story and introduce the pictures into the story line. Once this is done, they can print their story.
6)Ask students to share their ‘Rebus Story’: All students can share the story that they have created. Indeed, they can collect all the ‘Rebus Stories’ and create a booklet.
The advantage of using ‘Rebus Story’ as stated earlier is that all students can read the story inspite of the level of literacy. These stories help to increase the confidence of students. They improve the communication skills in terms of writing, reading and speaking. If you were to get the students to work in groups, then the listening skill also gets taken care of.
