Storytelling Teacher as Inquiry 2017

For the year 2017, the staff at Belfast School undertook a Teacher as Inquiry on their Storytelling journey with 1-2 focus children.

It was a long journey with many ups and downs and a change in my views and practices. The children loved Storytelling and all of the activities we did to enrich the story. In the Junior Syndicate we all worked collaboratively to create a range of resources we could use for our stories. We based our Discovery program and planning around the current story to help give further background and interest to the story. We did a range of oral language experiences, arts and craft and construction, along with a range of other activities.

Making Bread like the Little Red Hen

We discovered after two terms of Storytelling that using two storytelling stories a term was going to be too much for the age of our children and we wouldn't be able to do the story justice. We decided to do one story a term, and do it well.

Initially I found getting up in front of the class to share the story and "perform" difficult. As I went through the stories i relaxed and came to enjoy myself more as I saw the enjoyment on the children's faces. They used to love joining in on the stories and doing the actions, which was great. I was pleasantly surprised at the willingness of some of the children to get up and retell the story to the class. As the year went on all of the children in the class wanted to get up and share their retells of the story. They loved it!

Through the Storytelling Teacher as Inquiry and Introduction to Storytelling we chose 1-2 children in our class to track their progress. I chose a low level emergent writer and a very able writer to focus on as I wanted to see the progress in the different levels.

My low level Writer was very negative in his attitude to writing and did "magic writing" when he was writing independently. As the year went on his attitude to writing changed and he came to enjoy it. He particularly liked to get up and retell the story to the class. His phonemic awareness advanced with him being able to hear and record dominant sounds, he could find and write his high frequency words (click words) on a word card and write independently. He was proud of his efforts.

My advance writer started the year at 1P. As an advanced writer for her age she was able to write independently and record what she pleased. Her storied lacked structure and interest. As the year went on she started using more interesting language to describe what she was writing about and her stories became more structured and sequenced. She also came to want to share her story in front of the class, where previously she was very shy.

Overall, I was impressed with the storytelling programme and I look forward to seeing how the school continues to develop the programme.

Teacher as inquiry is at the following link.
Teacher as Inquiry- 2018.