Story Time, Innopolis

Story Time is a weekly bilingual book club and community library program for preschool children between the ages of 4 and 7 in the town of Innopolis, Tatarstan, Russia. I present and perform a story from an English picture book, assisted by a native Russian speaker. The children respond and negotiate with the story through art, music and games. Since its inception in June 2020, more than 100 sessions using classic works of children's literature in English have been documented in an ongoing action research project. The project explores the construction of affective categories like 'pleasure', 'affect' and 'interest' in learning a new language through an in-depth study of children's responses to storytelling.