Literacy - What are the benefits of storytelling?

Storytelling is one of the main activities that allows a child to think freely and use their imagination beyond their limits. ‘’Children’s imaginations are the most powerful and energetic learning tools’’ (Egan, 1990, p.2) This is one of the major benefits of storytelling is that children get to use their imaginations and learn at the same time as it may help children with creative skills in the future. Scientist Albert Einstein (1992, 65) said that ‘’imagination is more important that knowledge.’’ and that this side of education is often ignored at home. Imagination helps us ‘’solve problems’’ and ‘’think outside the box.’’  This shows how important storytelling in is primary education, it has the massive benefit of allowing children to use their imagination outside their comfort zone allowing them to benefit from all the creativity that goes on in their minds, it also allows them to learn efficiently as sometimes when children are so young, storytelling is one of the easiest methods to understand. 

Stories are the way in which children store information in their brain, if children were filled with perplexing, lifeless facts the information will become hopelessly lost. Stories help children remember information and tie content together which will massively benefit in their learning as information will have stuck with them (Caine and Caine 1994, 121-122; Egan 1992,11). This is very beneficial to children of primary school age, in order for them to learn, information needs to stick with them, and if storytelling can do that, then it should be used more often, when information sticks with a child is enables them to expand on their learning. A BBC article states that storytelling has many other benefits besides learning, it can help relaxation, improve listening skills, encourage cooperation between students and increase a child’s willingness to communicate thoughts and feelings (July 2003). 

Storytelling also goes straight to the heart which allows children to discover all kinds of feelings and emotions during listening or writing a story. It makes the listeners more emotionally involved and tends to make them engage more in the story. I think that storytelling is very motivating for an individual as they can get lost and let their imagination go wild. Research backs up the idea that ‘’even students with the low motivation and weak academic skills are more likely to read, write, and work hard in the context of storytelling’’ (U.S. Department of Education 1986, 23)

In our seminar group we wrote a short story/letter to a primary school pretending to be in the Victorian times. By doing this it would have really benefited the primary school pupils it got sent to as they could get a sense of idea what people were like in the Victorian times, as we wrote about our jobs and our families. It would allow them to understand what people were really like and how different everything is now. For example, jobs in the Victorian times were jobs like rat catching and leech collectors. These jobs would not happen in this day in age. Children remember things through stories, therefore, as they were leaning about Victorians, this was the perfect way for a child to fully understand and embrace the Victorian times.

This way of teaching is an approach called the Mantle of the Expert, The Mantle of the Expert approach was developed by UK-based drama educator Dorothy Heathcote (1926-2012). It is when the teacher plan's for fictional context and the students take on the responsibilities of an expert team. In this context the children will work in groups to read our letter that was sent to them and work together to send one back and research into the different Victorian jobs and roles. The Mantle of the Expert approach makes sure that the children know it is fiction, going in and coming out of fiction is a dimension of Mantle of the Expert. With this activity being fictional is ensures that the children are learning in new ways and ''learning is not bound by real-world limitations (time, power, finance, age) (V, Aitken, 2018, p.40).

Storytelling is embedded literacy in the curriculum, on the Learning Wales Gov website, it states that the literacy and numeracy framework (LNF) is designed to help teachers embed literacy and numeracy into subjects from children age 5 to 14. The government have said that within literacy learners are expected to become accomplished in, oracy across the curriculum, reading across the curriculum and writing across the curriculum. This shows that storytelling is embedding literacy into the curriculum as children may read stories to other, and also write their stories down, storytelling fits into the LNF very well. 

References

British Council BBC (2003) Benefits of storytelling. Online at: 
https://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/article/storytelling-benefits-tips. Last accessed 8^thApril 2019. 

Egan, K. (1990) Teaching as storytelling. London: Routledge. 

Hamilton, M., & Weiss, M. (1990) children tell stories: A teaching guide. New York: RC Owen Publishers. 

Moe Mantle of the Expert. Online at: https://www.mantleoftheexpert.com Last accessed 15^thMarch 2019.

V, Aitken. (2018) DorothyHeathcote’s mantle of the expert approach to teaching and Learning:A Brief introduction. Chapter three.