Dear parents
This week, all primary staff have received very high quality training from Talk For Writing trainer, Jo Pierce. She is helping us to develop the children's storytelling and writing abilities. This is hugely important for the children.
You can play a valuable part in this important process too.
This Tet holiday, we will have lots of time with our families. Why not turn it into an occasion for the ancient and timeless delights of storytelling.
Children (and adults!) love a good story. Reading stories from books can be a very special and treasured activity for parents and children. Telling stories from memory is another great activity you can engage in.
Storytelling has a very different dynamic when you don’t have a book. It gives you a lot more freedom to act out the story. There is something excitingly liberating about the creative act of telling a story without a written script. No two re-tellings will ever be the same!
Storytelling is hugely beneficial to your children (and to you). It developed language skills, memory, it rapidly expands children’s vocabulary and opens up new worlds and new possibilities to their minds.
You can tell stories to your children in the language you speak best, and it will enrich them and inspire them in ways that will blossom through every language they know.
If you want to try telling stories from your head, you could retail folktales that you remember from your own childhood, or you could make up stories. You could tell anecdotes about your children’s babyhood or about how you met their mother/father. Perhaps you have someone in your family who has lived an interesting life or been through unusual times? This could be fascinating for your children to learn about through storytelling.
You could also look to your own life experience to enrich made up stories with first-hand experience.
Storytelling brings people together. It’s a good way for grandparents and grandchildren, parents and children to connect and relate to each other in a new and engaging way.
Have an excellent weekend.
Warm regards
Malcolm Wood
Head of Primary
