Children As Storytellers

At Children's House we recognise our youngest children as storytellers. Everyone has a story to tell and we ensure we are available to listen to and value children's words. 
Our environment has many books: from classic favourites, to information books, leaflets, comics and books made by our children. Children are encouraged to access these and handle, enjoy and share them. 
Children hear stories every day in school. They use books for pleasure, for research and the each have a book which documents their learning - their own Special Book. 

From exploring books and learning how to handle them, children are encouraged to recall parts of familiar stories, retell them. We support children to recall previous learning and share it. Children are encouraged to play imaginatively and develop a narrative in their play. This then moves onto encouraging children to tell their own stories. 

This can be done in a range of ways:
Children might pick up a book and read the pictures, telling the story in their own words.
Children might mark make and talk about their marks. 
Children might draw a picture and describe what is happening in the picture.
Children might tell you a story completely from their imagination.

At Children's House we use many strategies. Two storytelling methods we use are Helicopter Stories and Tales Toolkit.
Helicopter Stories is a simple approach where children tell a grown up their story and the adult writes down verbatim what the child says. The story is then acted out by the children in a taped off area of the classroom (the stage). This develops confidence, self esteem, language and is such a beautiful tool to use with children. 
Tales Toolkit is a way of supporting children to tell their own stories using the scaffolding of setting, character, problem and solution (the basic format of most stories). The children are supported to use props to develop a story which can be acted, drawn, photographed, written or recorded. 

​There will be more photographs to follow below...

Shazna led a workshop for families last week, exploring stories and storytelling. 
Please keep an eye out for more workshops and get involved.
Remember to borrow books from school and share bedtime stories every night together.