‘How can storytelling be used in Primary Education?’

Areas of Learning and Experience Blog post - Literacy

Storytelling has been a common feature of primary education for a long time. Traditionally storytelling is something which is apart of our childhood, something which we grow up with. Many children benefit massively from storytelling as it can be incorporated into their education and varied in many ways. For example, storytelling can be rehearsed aloud and ‘the activities that students engage in when preparing, and performing a story aloud have many built in benefits, not the least of which develop greater fluency.’ (Campbell, T and Hlusek, M. 2009) this shows how adding a purpose to storytelling it becomes more engaging and children benefit subsequently from this, and they exceed expectations and develop their reading and fluency further.

There are many ways in which storytelling can be incorporated into this classroom and there are many ways storytelling can be personalised in the classroom, for example; adding drama,writing in the role, making the story memorable, reading as a writer, using the writing journal, practise words and sentence features, innovation - developing from known stories as known stories. (Corbett, P) According  to Belet, D and Dal, S (2010) storytelling would develop the primary school students’ skill of evaluating the events from different perspectives and gain them different thinking ways, contribute to develop the questioning and research skills. According to Campbell, T and Hlusek, M. (2009) ‘Stories can stimulate student interactions with one another and with texts and activities built in storytelling and talk can provide practise in speaking and listening skills. Gordon Wells also considered the educational significance of hearing stories read or told at an early age is influential.

Storytelling Schools (2019) have incorporated storytelling dynamically into primary education with their method of ‘effective, engaging and empowering’ these three stages were designed to engage children and promote reading within school, they designed this to help teachers. Effective - the purpose of effective storytelling is to narrow the attainment gap and raising standards for storytelling in the classroom. Engaging -  is to have have interactive workshops which are designed for teachers to give tips and provide new methods of having inclusive story time for pupils. Empowering - providing teacher with skills to provide creative and inspiring story time, the purpose of this stage in the method is to create a time that children are excited and look forward too. The purpose of Storytelling schools is to equip teachers with methods and skill to promote storytelling in primary education and give children a free space to look forward to being imaginative and fun through the use of storytelling. Lui, S (2016) has developed 5 ways in which storytelling can be used greatly in the classroom: sharing your own experiences, use stories to introduce a new topic, use stories to illustrate concept, nature listening skills and storytelling attracts less motivated learner. Its known that storytelling is a great way to engage children in more than one way and it is a consistent pattern that practitioners / researchers believe that storytelling is a fantastic way to engage those pupils who are the least interactive and unmotivated. ‘Children love listening to their teachers telling stories. While they listen, they begin to focus and follow the story through until its end.’ Lui, S (2010) so not only does storytelling engage pupils it’s also very enjoyable for them to listen because they develop their imagination and thought process beyond the story. ‘Storytelling is, we must remember, the oldest and most universal art-form in the world, that preceded the more sophisticated developments of literature and books, education, religion, drama and the media.’ (STELLA) storytelling has a larger importance to children’s development and education than people tend to realise. Collins, F (2006) says that beginning with connections between oral and literate skills allows examination of the relevance of storytelling in education to the learning of literacy skills, she is connoting the use of literacy and oral skills within storytelling to gain greater connections to the story. Rather than just read a story and expect children to connect and understand we need to develop narrative and Myra Barrs (1990) has categorised some of the narrative competences which children display in their stories, when writing and reading texts. These idea connote the perspective of children's narrative are relevant to storytelling, as she claims that listening to stories plays a key role in shaping 'children's personal theories of narrative' (p.38). In addition to this she also stressed the importance for teacher-storytellers to recognise the child's developing understanding of narrative as more than 'a simplistic theory of modelling' (p.32).

According to Lui, S (2016) stories come in more than one form and those forms being;

• ONE OF YOUR TRUE LIFE STORIES.

• A TRUE STORY BUT NOT YOUR OWN.

• A STORY BACK IN TIME.

• A FICTIONAL STORY.

References -

• Barrs, M. (1990). 'Children's theories of narrative' in English in education, Spring 1990, Vol. 24, no. 1, pp. 33-38.
• Belet, D and Dal, S (2010) ‘The use of storytelling to develop the primary school students’ critical reading skill: the primary education pre-service teachers’ opinions’. Pp 1830 - 1834. Doi; 10.1016/j.sbspro.2010.12.409
• Campbell, T, Hlusek, M. (2015) 'Storytelling for fluency and flair', Teaching Tip, Volume 69, Issue 2, doi: 10.1002/trtr,1384
• Collins, F (2006) ‘The Use of Traditional Storytelling in Education to the Learning of Literacy Skills’.Early Development and Childcare. Pp 77-108. Doi: 10.1080/0300443991520106
• Corbett, P. (no date). Storytelling and story-telling. Available at; https://learn.cardiffmet.ac.uk/pluginfile.php/868721/mod_resource/content/1/Storytelling%20and%20story-making.pdf (Accessed 24/4/19)
• Lui, S (2016) ‘ the power of storytelling in the classroom: 5 ways it can be a great help’. Available at: https://teach.com/great-educational-resources-the-power-of-storytelling/ (Accessed 20/4/19)
• Software for Teaching English Language and Literature and its Assessment (STELLA) no date. Available at; https://www.arts.gla.ac.uk/STELLA/STARN/journal/stories.htm (Accessed 17/4/19)
• Storytelling schools (2019). Available at: https://storytellingschools.com/ (Accessed 20/4/19)
• Wells, G. (1987 edition). The meaning makers, Kent, Hodder and Stought