Description
This handbook describes a revolutionary way of delivering primary education. In a storytelling school all children learn to be storytellers, retelling and improving stories from memory as a way of learning both language and subject content across the curriculum. Children graduate with a repertoire of their own stories to tell. This approach has been shown to raise standards and fire imaginations in schools throughout the UK.
Chris Smith and Adam Guillain show you how to make this happen in practice. The handbook draws on more than ten years experience researching and developing this way of teaching. Piloted, researched and up-dated, this second edition includes new chapters on non-fiction teaching and cross-curricular integration across the school. It is packed with practical activities, examples, theory, charts, diagrams and photocopiable pages. It explains step-by-step how to become a storytelling school including how to:
- Tell stories to your class
- Develop and innovate on a learned story
- Invent new stories
- Link storytelling to improving writing standards
- Apply the method to non-fiction teaching
- Plan across the curriculum using the Storytelling School approach
The Storytelling Schools approach has had a transforming effect on our approach to literacy and the teaching of writing. In a relatively short time the impact on writing outcomes, pupil motivation and teacher expertise has been profound – it’s an approach that every school leader will want to know more about.
– David Lewin, Head Teacher, Wood Farm Primary School, Oxford
Storytelling, taken as seriously as this, delights pupils and teachers alike and provides a foundation for the most remarkable growth in pupil confidence and competence in writing. All the evidence I have seen is that it also extends the skills of teachers.
– Sir Tim Brighouse, former Schools Commissioner for London
