Stories with a moral

[rebl]

What age would you expect a child to be able to read a story (e.g. The boy who cried wolf) and be able to tell you the moral of the story and give you examples in their life of this moral?

This was the homework sent home today with my dd, 1st day in yr 1. She's not struggled at all with the reading or comprehending the "obvious" story but seeing the moral has been difficult and she's struggled to get it. It seems a level of comprehension that a just 5yo wouldn't get because they just don't have the life experience.

They struggle with this still at y3 and 4. I have discussed stories like this with classes; the children give me the moral as 'Wolves eat sheep', 'Wolves are dangerous', etc. The powers-that-be always demand inappropriate feats of deduction and achievement from children. This is why teachers spend far too much time 'teaching to test' - no choice, since the majority of children couldn't achieve it independently.

Those are exactly the sort of answers she's given me. We spent over 30 mins going over and over it and I gave her a number of examples but when I then went back to the original question, "What is the moral of the story?" she answered things like "If I shout wolf daddy will come to me" or "If I tell lies a wolf will eat my sheep.". We don't even have flipping sheep!

That is entirely appropriate to her age. Tell her that people what people want her to say, but don't stress about it - the task is wrong, not the child! (Don't get sheep.)

Thats what I ended up doing but thats not really her comprehending it is it.

This morning I asked her if she knew what it meant if a story had a moral to it and she said that the story is trying to teach you something about your life. So she understands the concept at least.

Good answer from her, rebl. Could you talk about more examples together? Or better still borrow Aesop's Fables from the library? It does seem quite a tricky idea for a just year 1 child to understand though.