Picture Stories: Language and Literacy Activities for Beginners

by Elizabeth Tannenbaum and Fred Ligon

Book Overview

The Picture Stories Series is perfect for students with little or no literacy skills in English or in their first language. The authors present stories about immigrant families' experiences when they first arrived in the United States, which students are certain to understand. Literacy skills as well as more complex tasks in listening, speaking, reading, and writing are learned, practiced, and reinforced using these different picture...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0801303664
• ISBN13: 9780801303661
• Release Date: January 1990
• Publisher: Pearson Education ESL
• Length: 128 Pages
• Weight: 0.20 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.3" x 8.5" x 10.9"
• Age Range: 5 to 11 years
• Grade Range: Kindergarten to Grade 6

Customer Reviews

This is a great book for beginning ELL students.

I work with beginning ELL High School students. These picture stories give beginning English speakers a chance to improve skills by telling what happens in the pictures. We create word maps and they can use the vocabulary from the maps to tell the story and later to write it up. Sometimes they write the story out first and then tell the story. Either way, the interest level in the situations of the stories are appropriate for youth or adults even though the vocabulary is simple.

A Very Useful Book

I have used this book (and its sequel) for many years to supply writing prompts for my low intermediate ELL students in an American high school. They love the stories, and the more confident they become as writers, the more creative their writing becomes.

Well worth it

I have found this book incredibly useful in all of my classes. I give private classes to one or two students, but I'm sure a creative teacher will be able to use it for larger groups. There are six pages for each chapter, though it's not essential to use all of them. I only use three of them - quick and effective. The book professes itself to be for beginners, but I use it for all of my classes. Each student gives to it what s/he is able, which means I encourage my most beginner learners to at least form basic sentences and the more advanced will add background information and get very creative - give feelings and relatives and such to the characters! I do recommend one thing before teaching each chapter: I have printed out a little card with the most important vocabulary in each chapter and before reading we review what words they will see. This helps all levels. There's a "More Picture Stories" that I'm also about to purchase that I'm confident will be just as useful. I strongly recommend the book. My students really enjoy it and feel good about whatever they are able to say, and what better recommendation can there be!

Great Book for ELLs

This book has been a great resource for me! I use it for intermediate levels as well and give them more difficult tasks. The pictures are simple but allow the students to use their creativity to fill in the stories. Great for life skills training too.