The oral tradition of telling stories is the oldest way we have of passing on
human history to each other and making sense of our lives, for example every
age and culture tells its own creation story.
As Michael Rosen so brilliantly described in the ‘What Makes us Human?’ series
on Radio 2 last week, it is history, or more precisely the telling of that
history, that makes us human.
A job interview is the story of our skills, a chat with the cashier is the
story of our day and a child at play tells the story of their imagination.
Narrative skills in children, the ability to sequence ideas together correctly
to tell a story, are essential for academic success. For some children this
is difficult and can affect their literacy development and ability to
socialise with others as they are unable to share their experiences with
their peers in a cohesive way. Parents and teachers can support a child’s
narrative skills by:
• Embracing family literacy as a part of everyday routines. Regular
exposure to stories and books helps a child understand the features of
narrative structures and the more formal style of language used in
storytelling.
• Making specific features of narrative structures tangible and easy to
understand. Concepts such as ‘beginning’, ‘middle’ and ‘end’ or ‘first,
‘next’, ‘last’ are vital to a child’s grasp of how stories work. Knowledge
of words like ‘who’, ‘what’, ‘where’ and ‘when’ are also essential. Using
pictures or objects to support understanding of these words is always
helpful.
• Schools often use writing frames to help children scaffold stories.
Parents can give an extra-curricular boost by using the same frames at home
to help their child keep a diary of exciting events or by writing their own
scripts based on favourite films.
• Freestyling every once in a while. At bedtime try making up your own
stories or retelling familiar ones to your child from memory. See if they
can have a go themselves, or create a story together taking it in turns to
add unexpected twists to the plot.
Every story will shape us in some way, whether we like it or not.