# Original literature for teacher reading · Days 21–30

The adult reads every word aloud. These stories are deliberately richer than the child's controlled print. They are fictional; a community hall, sign and park drawing here do not identify a real place or child. A child can retell with speech, sign, AAC, tactile objects, drawing or an adult scribing exactly what the child directs. Keep [fresh assessment microstories](student-checks.md) unseen until Days 25/30.

## Week 5 · The sign that faced the wall

Kori and Jules helped make a pretend story table for an invented community hall. Kori drew an open book on a large sign. Jules added the words **“Stories here”** underneath. They placed it beside a stack of paper stories and waited for a visitor to try their model.

Their visitor was a paper figure on a small cardboard floor plan. Jules moved it through the model doorway. The sign faced the wall, so the figure could not “see” its picture or words from that side. “We made a sign,” Kori said, “but it is not helping this visitor yet.”

They turned the sign towards the model doorway and asked another paper visitor to try. This time the open-book picture was visible. Jules also read the words aloud. The figure reached the story table on the model. Kori kept the first version beside the new one so the group could explain what changed.

“The picture and words both helped in our test,” Jules said. “We would still ask a real visitor what works for them.” The class had made a small model, not a map of an actual hall.

**Teacher questions:** Who are the characters? Where does this *imagined* story take place? What problem did the first sign have? What did Kori and Jules change? How did they check the new version? Was the sign's colour named? No. Does one paper visitor prove every real visitor will find a place? No. Allow a child to wonder whether larger print, a tactile cue or a different position might help; label proposals as ideas, not facts in the story.

## Week 6 · The missing middle picture

In an imagined neighbourhood art room, Ada and Neri made a three-part picture story about a paper visitor in a made-up park. Their first picture showed the visitor beside a broad path. Their last picture showed the visitor at a reading bench under a drawn shade tree. They had put a middle picture between them, but it slid under the table as they packed up.

When a new listener looked at the two remaining pictures, they could not tell how the visitor reached the bench. Ada first guessed that Neri had forgotten to draw the middle. Neri pointed to a faint pencil mark where it had been. They looked under the table and found the missing picture: it showed the visitor pausing at a paper sign before turning along the path.

They put the middle picture back and told the story again. The listener could now retell the path in order: beside the path, pause at the sign, arrive at the bench. Ada changed her earlier guess. “The picture was here all along,” she said. “We needed to check.” Neri wrote a short caption under each frame, and the listener chose one caption that made the order clearer.

The park was their own invented drawing. It did not show a real route, and the story did not tell where any child lived.

**Teacher questions:** Name the two characters and setting. What was the problem? How did Ada's idea change when she saw evidence? What did the missing middle show? What happened last? Which fact comes from the text and which is a possible inference? A child may sketch a different *invented* middle and explain how it changes plot, but should not present it as what this source says. No real child location or walk is requested.

## Short adult-read oral alternatives

These three original mini-events give a different domain when one long story is too much at once. They are **adult-read only** and may be repeated with a blank three-card retell mat.

1. **Music cue:** A paper percussion group missed its start card. They found it below the table, placed it where every performer could see or feel it, and tried the cue again. Ask who acted, what changed and what remains unknown about the sound.
2. **Maker table:** A cardboard bridge model fell flat before a toy crossing. The group widened its paper supports and tried again; the text does not say whether it held. Ask for problem/action and an honest unknown.
3. **Book corner:** A puppet wanted to share a drawing but the chosen listener could not see the small first version. The puppet made a larger paper copy and asked again. Ask what the listener's need changed about the work.

These are not claims about how all communities use signs, music, bridges or books. A teacher can choose a locally approved authentic text as a separate literature experience under its own rights and context; no external story is copied here.

Original prose © 2026 NeuroForgeIO Pty Ltd, SubjectNest, [CC BY 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). Credit, link and indicate changes.