| Many storytellers, educators, researchers, and scholars (including myself) advocate that storytelling can contribute significantly to early literacy development. As teachers and/or parents, you might have already noticed that storytelling is indeed a social experience with oral narrative, incorporating linguistic features that display a sophistication that goes beyond the level of conversation. Thus, storytelling acts as an effective building block easing the journey from oracy to literacy. A lot of storytelling experiences incorporate word play, such as rhymes and tongue twisters, and a good children’s storyteller will invite children to actively participate in these repeatedly throughout a story, until the children are playing with these words for the rest of the day and perhaps for many days or weeks after. For example, the stories that we will be focusing on this week are “Goldilocks and the Three Bears” and “Little Red Riding Hood” by The Grimm Brothers. |
The classic story of “Goldilocks and the Three Bears” has a repetitious syntax pattern (i.e. Goldilocks will not favour the first two choices but will say that the last choice is “just right”. Baby Bear’s discovery parallels Goldilocks’ journey through the Bears’ house.) Similarly, “Little Red Riding Hood” has a repetitious syntax pattern when Little Red Riding Hood questions "Grandma's" (the Wolf in disguise) appearance. | |
The K-2 students were asked to make finger puppets afterwards. We’ve decided to go with “Little Red Riding Hood”. Once the students are done, they were asked to form small groups and reenact the story to their groups. We’ve had a lot of fun and this activity enabled for a greater contribution of ideas and verbal word play. You can say that there was a lot of literacy development going on, and I was very pleased to see such good progress with the K-2 students.