EFFECTS OF STORY TELLING AND READING

Effects of Story telling and Reading

Effects of Story telling and Reading

All people have a basic need to share stories. Stories organize experiences and record important happenings. Listening to stories provides children with a language structure and a pattern(eg once upon a time) to retell their own stories, to recount experiences and events. The teacher needs to model story telling for the children. This may include a recount, a narrative or a description. It is also recommended that children should hear recordings of professional readers or invite a storyteller to visit the class to tell stories. It is a good idea to have a storyteller's chair or to dress up for story telling. With younger children a magic carpet could jet you off to story land.

There are many opportunities for storytelling in the classroom: news time, recounting experiences, retelling familiar stories, sharing assemblies, circle time, puppetry and drama. It is important to provide children with opportunities to retell and create stories. It is also a good idea to record the children telling their favourite story. Telling a story puts the storyteller in a very powerful position and can do wonders for a child's self esteem. Link with writing experience charts, create a book or a talking book As common forms of discourse, stories are of great interest and significance in language and literacy development, especially when considering the increased linguistic and cultural diversity of students in Pacific classrooms. (Rebecca Isbell et. al. 2004 Pp.157)

Stories enable teachers to learn about their students' cultures, experiences, and meaningful relationships. Stories first arise in the context of relationships when small children acquire the ability to verbalize their experiences. With this verbalization, children become the “narrated selves” of their own lives, sharing interpretations with others. Before oral storytelling, we observed the students during writing mini-lesson as well as during their writing time. We found that many students talked a lot during their writing time. Some of the students seemed to be off task and were not getting enough writing done.

Most students took more than two weeks to complete a book. Some students were struggling to select a writing topic. Many of the students were writing random thoughts on each page of their book. After introducing oral storytelling, students were listening to each other and seemed to enjoy sharing stories. We noticed that when a student began telling a story, other students made connections and wanted to share a similar story. Like adults, children use narrative to shape and reshape their lives, imagining what could have or should have happened, and reviewing what actually did happen.

It is important for children to make up stories, just as it is important for them to hear and respond to stories told by other people. When presenting stories to children, teachers should keep the following premises in mind: The affective domain—the world of feelings and emotions—is relevant in education; children experience the world as a whole; words are not separate from life ...