276°
Posted 20 hours ago

Princesses, Dragons and Helicopter Stories: Storytelling and story acting in the early years

£9.9£99Clearance
ZTS2023's avatar
Shared by
ZTS2023
Joined in 2023
82
63

About this deal

Two children from around the stage came up to take on the role of her parents. Another group of six children created the walls of her bedroom. They stood around her, forming a prison. The girl in the story looked out through the walls of children, peering at the class with the saddest of eyes. Martha was in her element. A child tells their story. The adult scribes it word for word. The child decides which character they would like to play and then the class gathers to act the story out. This is child-centred learning. The story belongs to the individual and because the teacher does not lead, instead allowing the child the freedom to create in the way they want to, beautiful tales are born and rich learning takes place. Revealing confidence Helicopter Stories at Home can be a great opportunity for families to act in stories together. Other siblings can also join in, each taking on different roles. Or if there are only two of you, the adult can move seamlessly from being the mummy lion to becoming the tree under which the baby lion sleeps. Think of it as joining in with their play and bringing their words to life. And most importantly, having fun. Vivian Gussin Paley lived till the age of ninety. During her lifetime, she made an enormous contribution to Early Years education across the world. I had the chance to chat to Trisha Lee, founder and artistic director of Make Believe Arts, a theatre and education company. Trisha helped introduce Helicopter Stories to the UK, and has even written an entire book on it. We thought she’d be the perfect person to chat to about Helicopter Stories and their potential for children’s learning.

Trisha named the approach after one of Vivian’s books - The Boy Who Would Be a Helicopter. Think of it like a child stretching their arms far and wide to embody a helicopter! Ms Lee believes that in many cases, children’s creativity is masked by the complexities of constructing sentences, and through worrying about punctuation, grammar and language, their stories get lost. Now mark a large square with masking tape on the floor - this will be your stage for the children to perform.

Bonnie Mendoza says: “It helps them to understand their own development. To begin with, stories are filled with fictional or imaginary characters, but as they progress, they bring themselves into the story and the tales become more real.” In short, Helicopter Stories provide excitement and creativity that has children rushing to put pen to paper, even if they’re not able to do the actual writing yet. It’s all about giving children exposure to language, vocabulary and grammar - in as many ways as you can.

Again, we learned so much about the child, his passions, what interested him and his own type of expertise. This child might not have been able to communicate the depth of his knowledge through language, but one look at the detail contained in his acting out, and I could see the intricate knowledge he had about his specialist subject. Helicopter Stories are actually really simple - the core idea is to let children dictate their own story, see it written down on paper, and perform it alongside their peers. They use their hands, their whole body and their voices to perform.In today’s digital age, how often do our children see adults write? Perhaps for a shopping list, or a scribbled note, or to record an observation. In Helicopter Stories, the thing that is most precious to the child, their story, is written as they watch. They witness first-hand how writing captures their words, and perceive how ingenious mark making is. Often they become self-motivated and find their own way to explore the connection between the spoken and the written word that is such a vital part of early literacy. I think a good dose of play is something all of us could do with at the moment. Helicopter Stories at Home And there is great potential for this to be develop; how wonderful it would be to show him pictures of other countries, or objects from around the world, to enable him to explore the tastes and flavours of these different places for example?

The training goes into great detail about Helicopter Stories and how to make it a regular part of your Early Years practice. Allows children to explore early literacy and the power of words as they see their stories come to life, and develop their ability to use and adapt language to communicate; The children become storytellers, actors, and an audience, and their teachers emerge as scribes, narrators and stage managers: the classroom is transformed into the make-believe worlds that children love best.” Childminders, or small Early Years settings with only one or two members of staff needing training can apply for a discretionary 50% discount. Helicopter Stories are a fantastic way of seeing how much a child has developed over time. “You can see their stories develop from simple characters to full narratives over time,” says Trisha.Read an introductory story, stopping after the first sentence to enable children to begin acting out the roles. As the whole class say the words to Furry Squirrel, some children will act out the poems. One child might use the squirrel finger puppet, while another will use their body to become the tree. We might even work on their understanding of the world by asking ‘the tree’ what kind of tree they are… ‘Would you like to be an evergreen tree? A coniferous tree? A deciduous tree? If you’re a deciduous tree, are you an autumn tree or a summer tree?’ A few years ago, I started Super Six for books. The idea was that every term, we’d have six wonderfully diverse texts that the children would learn at school and also share with their parents. The books would be organised into themes, both as a record of what they were learning, but also to encourage a holistic approach to the Early Years.

Asda Great Deal

Free UK shipping. 15 day free returns.
Community Updates
*So you can easily identify outgoing links on our site, we've marked them with an "*" symbol. Links on our site are monetised, but this never affects which deals get posted. Find more info in our FAQs and About Us page.
New Comment