Storytelling And Story Reading In Early Years

When a practitioner can tell and read stories well, it is proven to significantly improve young children's early communication and literacy. In this easy-to-read and essential guide, storytelling trainer Mary Medlicott gives professionals the tools to get the best out of oral storytelling and story-reading sessions, with management, performance and language techniques. Included are examples of stories and post-story activities that are most successful with children of ages 2 to 5. Medlicott shows how to prepare for the session, spark children's imagination with props, voices and facial expressions, and encourage empathy with thoughtful use of language and variety. Importantly, she gives practical advice on how to cater for all learning needs, such as children with hearing impairment or learning difficulties, and children who are learning English as a second language.

Storytelling in Early Childhood is a captivating book which explores the multiple dimensions of storytelling and story acting and shows how they enrich language and literacy learning in the early years. Foregrounding the power of children’s own stories in the early and primary years, it provides evidence that storytelling and story acting, a pedagogic approach first developed by Vivian Gussin Paley, affords rich opportunities to foster learning within a play-based and language-rich curriculum. The book explores a number of themes and topics, including: the role of imaginary play and its dynamic relationship to narrative; how socially situated symbolic actions enrich the emotional, cognitive and social development of children; how the interrelated practices of storytelling and dramatisation enhance language and literacy learning, and contribute to an inclusive classroom culture; the challenges practitioners face in aligning their understanding of child literacy and learning with a narrow, mandated curriculum which focuses on measurable outcomes. Driven by an international approach and based on new empirical studies, this volume further advances the field, offering new theoretical and practical analyses of storytelling and story acting from complementary disciplinary perspectives. This book is a potent and engaging read for anyone intrigued by Paley’s storytelling and story acting curriculum, as well as those practitioners and students with a vested interest in early years literacy and language learning. With contributions from Vivian Gussin Paley, Patricia ‘Patsy‘ Cooper, Dorothy Faulkner, Natalia Kucirkova, Gillian Dowley McNamee and Ageliki Nicolopoulou.

Storytelling in Early Childhood is a captivating book which explores the multiple dimensions of storytelling and story acting and shows how they enrich language and literacy learning in the early years. Foregrounding the power of children’s own stories in the early and primary years, it provides evidence that storytelling and story acting, a pedagogic approach first developed by Vivian Gussin Paley, affords rich opportunities to foster learning within a play-based and language-rich curriculum. The book explores a number of themes and topics, including: the role of imaginary play and its dynamic relationship to narrative; how socially situated symbolic actions enrich the emotional, cognitive and social development of children; how the interrelated practices of storytelling and dramatisation enhance language and literacy learning, and contribute to an inclusive classroom culture; the challenges practitioners face in aligning their understanding of child literacy and learning with a narrow, mandated curriculum which focuses on measurable outcomes. Driven by an international approach and based on new empirical studies, this volume further advances the field, offering new theoretical and practical analyses of storytelling and story acting from complementary disciplinary perspectives. This book is a potent and engaging read for anyone intrigued by Paley’s storytelling and story acting curriculum, as well as those practitioners and students with a vested interest in early years literacy and language learning. With contributions from Vivian Gussin Paley, Patricia ‘Patsy‘ Cooper, Dorothy Faulkner, Natalia Kucirkova, Gillian Dowley McNamee and Ageliki Nicolopoulou.

Storytelling has long been a part of our culture, and teachers should recognize its value as a pedagogical tool. The Word Weaving program, an experimental storytelling program, includes folk tales, literary tales, adaptations, and original and true stories from the teller. In it, all stories are simply told to a class without a book in evidence. Because experience with Word Weaving techniques had suggested that storytelling provides several benefits to students, a study was conducted to investigate and document the effects of a full-year Word Weaving program. Subjects were two groups of 13 primary grade students, one control and one experimental. Teachers of the experimental group were trained in and used Word Weaving techniques. Identical procedures involving students retelling a story and then creating a new story based on it were used first in October then again in May. Four measures of language usage were obtained: fluency, vocabulary, descriptive language, and recall. Results indicated that although the two groups were equally fluent at first, by the end of the year, the experimental group told longer stories than they did earlier and also significantly outperformed the control group. Although the retelling data showed no significant differences between the experimental and control groups on any of the dependent variables, the experimental group did show greater gains on all the measures. Teachers also unanimously attested to storytelling's benefits. (Tables of results and suggestions for future research are included.) (JL)

This book offers pre-school teachers, kindergarten teachers, daycare workers, and parents ways to help young children begin to read and write, by placing stories at the very center of the early childhood curriculum. The book includes an in-depth discussion of the crucial pedagogical and developmental roles that stories can play in early childhood education, as well as a practical guide to having children tell their own stories and perform them with their classmates. The book also discusses the use of videos, and the uses and misuses of Whole Language, invented spelling, and the writing process. Chapters in the book are: (1) Stories in Search of Classrooms; (2) Lessons from Home; (3) What I Had to Learn about Stories in Classrooms; (4) When Young Children Dictate and Dramatize Their Own Stories; (5) Portraits of Young Storytellers; and (6) A Guide to Storytelling in the Classroom. Appendixes present sample stories dictated to teachers, sample transcripts of dictation, a list of books and stories children like to dramatize, and brief descriptions of related classroom literacy activities. (RS)

Stories and fantasy play engage all young children and help them to draw connections and make sense of the world. MakeBelieve Arts Helicopter Stories are tried, tested and proven to have a significant impact on children’s literacy and communication skills, their confidence and social and emotional development. Based on the storytelling and story acting curriculum of Vivian Gussin Paley, this book provides a practical, step-by-step guide to using this approach with young children. Covering all aspects of the approach, Artistic Director Trisha Lee shows you how you can introduce Helicopter Stories to children for the first time, scribing their tales and then bring their ideas to life by acting them out. Full of anecdotes and practical examples from a wide range of settings, the book includes: Clear guidelines and rules for scribing children’s stories, creating a stage and acting out stories How to deal with taboos and sensitive issues in children’s stories How to involve children who are unwilling to speak or act Supporting children with English as an Additional Language Links to show how the approach supports children’s holistic development Providing an accessible guide to an approach that is gaining international recognition, and featuring a foreword by Vivian Gussin Paley, this book will be essential reading for all those that want to support children’s learning in a way that is fun, engaging and proven to work.

Originally published in 1992. This book brings together the work of a number of distinguished international researchers engaged in basic research on beginning reading. Individual chapters address various processes and problems in learning to read - including how acquisition gets underway, the contribution of story listening experiences, what is involved in learning to read words, and how readers represent information about written words in memory. In addition, the chapter contributors consider how phonological, onset-rime, and syntactic awareness contribute to reading acquisition, how learning to spell is involved, how reading ability can be explained as a combination of decoding skill plus listening comprehension skill, and what causes reading difficulties and how to study these causes.

Margaret Carr′s seminal work on Learning Stories was first published by SAGE in 2001, and this widely acclaimed approach to assessment has since gained a huge international following. In this new full-colour book, the authors outline the philosophy behind Learning Stories and refer to the latest findings from the research projects they have led with teachers on learning dispositions and learning power, to argue that Learning Stories can construct learner identities in early childhood settings and schools. By making the connection between sociocultural approaches to pedagogy and assessment, and narrative inquiry, this book contextualizes Learning Stories as a philosophical approach to education, learning and pedagogy. Chapters explore how Learning Stories: - help make connections with families - support the inclusion of children and family voices - tell us stories about babies - allow children to dictate their own stories - can be used to revisit children′s learning journeys - can contribute to teaching and learning wisdom This ground-breaking book expands on the concept of Learning Stories and includes examples from practice in both New Zealand and the UK. It outlines the philosophy behind this pedagogical tool for documenting how learning identities are constructed and shows, through research evidence, why the early years is such a critical time in the formation of learning dispositions. Margaret Carr is a Professor of Education at the University of Waikato, New Zealand. Wendy Lee is Director of the Educational Leadership Project, New Zealand.