‘Imagination is the manipulation of what you already know – if you don’t know any stories you won’t have any imagination’.
Last week I attended the first session of a Story Making course run by trainers Julie Read and Lin Oakley. This quote was displayed at the front of the room and we were asked to try to recall memories of stories when we were young. Many people talked of stories being ‘told’ rather than being ‘read’ to them.
Active Story Making puts talk at the heart of writing. Spoken language is the first, most important resource that children as writers will have. If children haven’t got pencil control and command of phonics – the ability to tell stories orally is so important.
Active Story Making is about improving children’s spoken and written language in creative contexts using storytelling as a vehicle.
Through a process of listening, speaking and verbal rehearsal Active Story Making helps children to internalise a bank of story language patterns and structures.
The initial stage of Active Story Making is called the ‘Imitation’ Stage. This focuses on learning a bank of stories and internalising narrative patterns. The stories need to be known so well that they have entered the long term memory.
Learning a story through imitation is quite simple when a multi-sensory approach is used and the story is visited daily.
VAK – Visual, Auditory and Kinaesthetic learning. (Using our senses).
Children and adults learn in different ways. Through Active Story Making we shall be addressing these different learning styles. The ‘Visual’ input will be in the form of a ‘Story Map’. The ‘Auditory’ input will be the ‘Words’ and the ‘Kinaesthetic’ input will be the ‘Actions’.
Over the next four weeks the children and adults in the Burrow will be learning an adapted version of ‘The Three Billy Goats Gruff’. Eventually a story map with words will be sent home so that you will also be able to engage in the Active Story Making process.
We look forward to sharing this with you.
Thank you for reading. (Feel free to share your memories of stories from your youth).
Soraya