How can storytelling be used in Primary Education?

How can storytelling be used in Primary Education?

Stories permeate everyday life – to explain, persuade, argue or entertain. These daily narratives often warn, encourage and pass on ideas of ‘what we do in our family’ or in our community. Narrative not only plays a part in social and cultural development, but also has an essential role in effective or emotional development, helping to organise feelings and make sense of experience. Narrative is central of learning. It occurs in anecdote, gossip and everyday conversation but even these forms pre-suppose a certain ordering and selection of experience of fulfil specific intentions. Telling anecdotes about any incident is not just a re-running of events like an unedited recording, it is necessarily selective. In these selections, experience is categorised: a cognitive operation which sets mental frameworks for more complex forms of categorising, selecting and generalising experience or facts – the basis for constructing more formal kinds of leaning. In their play and reading, young children use story to wonder about the world, to make hypotheses as they explore the possible worlds of ‘what if’ (Cremini et al.,2017). (Bearne and Reedy, Teaching Primary English, Routledge,2015)

Recent research into young children’s storytelling and story acting (Faulkner, 2017) shows how early years practitioners and children as young as 3 and 4 co-constructed stories through guided participation (Rogoff et al., 2003) which was accompanied by collective story-making between the children through play. As Vygotsky states: ‘Play creates a zone of proximal development of the child. In play a child always behaves beyond his  average age, above his daily behaviour; in play it is as though he were a head taller than himself’ (Vygotsky, 1978: 102)

Storytelling, story acting, imaginative play and drama are essential to secure early language and literacy development. However, Wohlwend and Peppler (2015) warn the play is losing out to the demands of standardised measures, particularly in early years class-rooms. Similarly, creativity is in danger of being squeezed out of the primary curriculum because of high-stakes testing (Moss, 2017). Since these activities are not only necessary to children and adults, it is important to foster story and imaginative play in all its forms.

(Campbell and Hlusek, 2015) have explored the role of storytelling performances in the classroom. This investigation was carried out to investigate the use of anecdotal storytelling as a means of augmenting writing (Campbell and Hlusek, 2009). Hlusek wanted her students to ‘preform’ storytelling telling as an art, which would help them appreciate storytelling and emphasize reading and storytelling for pleasure. The goal of this investigation was too ‘boost oral fluency along with achievement levels in reading fluency and comprehension.’ (Campbell and Hlusek, 2009).

Campbell and Hlusek’s (2009) investigation led them to believe that ‘activities built on storytelling and talk can provide practice in speaking and listening skills.’ this quote then become true as their research showed that whole-class storytelling project showed that 25% of Hlusek’s class needed to improve their oral language fluency along with reading fluency and comprehension. This targeted 4 certain children with special needs, which was then part of a schoolwide ‘school improvement plan’ targeting improved achievement in reading fluency and comprehension for lower achieving students.

Copies of Arnold Lobel’s (1983) one-page tables for the students to use for their own storytelling. Terry Campbell modelled how to tell a story orally and provided a series of steps (10 steps for storytellers) used when learning a story for ‘telling by heart’.

There are 10 steps for storytellers:

1 – choose a story you really like. Read several storied to find the right one.

2 – read the chosen story silently two or three times, picturing the story in your mind as you read.

3 – read the story aloud to your partner.

4 – visualize all the details of the story and discuss them with your partner.

5 – create a storyboard, using at least three cartoon boxes, to show the main events of the story with pictures and captions.

6 – tell the story to your partner using your storyboard. Don’t worry about using the exact words from the book.

7 – tell the story again without the storyboard. Visualize as you tell.

8 – reread the story to check for missing parts or special words you want to remember.

9 – PRACTICE! PRACTICE! PRACTICE!

10 – trust the story and yourself. Tell it to your circle.

(Adapted from Parr and Campbell, 2012)

Campbell and Hlusek (2015) concluded that activities within the classroom improved children’s reading fluency and oral fluency.Storytelling does not always involve books, there’s something called digital storytelling, and this is can be used to reinforce subject matter, to share and experience or present some new information in a creative and interesting way, which will be more interactive to children of a primary school age. Digital Storytelling can be used as homework, classroom work or group work projects. These tools can be used to help bring a story to life.

As part of a university practical involving storytelling, we’ve been involved in lectures where storytelling has been the main focus, we have created iMovies on apple products such as iPad and iPhones. This included me and my peers holding a variety of different style and shape books, Welsh books, kids books, adults books etc. We did this in our seminar times and was a very fun and interactive way to get us all apart of the storytelling experience and how it shapes people’s minds to be around books and how books have a big part in educational needs for children and young adults like myself.

Vygotsky: learning and teaching as essentially social activities
Vygotsky outlines a theory of learning and development. Key elements of Vygotsky's theory are;

• learners move through age related stages in which learning undergoes qualitative changes: thus, children may learn in different ways from adults, including their adult teachers.
• learning is an active meaning-making process in which the learning process itself needs to be understood and prioritised.
• it is important to distinguish what we might call 'meaningful' learning and concept development from 'rote' learning - described by Vygotsky as 'a parrot like repetition of words by the child, stimulating a knowledge of the corresponding concepts by actually covering up in a vacuum' (Vygotsky 1962, p. 83) Vygotsky believes that social activities help with children's learning strategies as mentioned above.

As part of our teaching course, the seminar groups have been involved in lots of activities related to storytelling, we have used our narrative in forest school to create woodland houses, we have gone to the library to read some children’s books which brought back so many memories from primary school. We also played in the sensory room which was very beneficial as there was many activities in place for storytelling such as puppets, books and visual cards.

References

Introduction to Education Studies; 3^rd edition. Bartlett and Burton (2012) Sage.

Storytelling for Fluency and Flair; a performance-based approach. Campbell and Hlusek (2015) Canada

Professional Learning  Board – available at https://k12teacherstaffdevelopment.com/tlb/how-can-i-use-digital-storytelling-in-the-classroom/ (accessed on 26/04/19)

Teaching Primary English; Bearne (2015) Sage.
Teaching and Learning: Pedagogy, curriculum and culture; 2nd edition. Alex Moore (2012) Routledge.