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The Challenge:
The relationship between the skills
with which children enter school and their later academic
performance is strikingly stable. For instance, research has
shown that there is nearly a 90% probability that a child will remain a poor reader at
the end of the fourth grade if the child is a poor reader at the
end of the first grade.”
The
Carnegie Foundation report, Ready to Learn, A Mandate for the
Nation
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"On the 2005 National
Assessment of Educational Progress, only 32 percent of fourth
graders were reading at the proficient level or advanced levels,
and only 31 percent of eighth graders were at the proficient or
advanced levels."
Institute of Education Sciences - U.S.
Department of Education
*
“No skill is more critical to the future of a
child, or to the future of a democratic society than literacy.
Unfortunately, California students’ reading scores rank among the
lowest in the nation. In Southern California 4 out of 5 third
graders cannot read at grade level. 70% of the students have
limited English proficiency.”
John P. Perner ,
Publisher and Chief Executive Officer , The Los Angeles Times.
Launched Reading
by 9
* * * *
The Solution:
“…the Hispanic, Native American , African
American, Irish American, and many other cultures in the United
States have long histories of storytelling. Teachers can learn
from these cultural traditions of storytelling and providing an
important home-school link. The
child who is consistently exposed to an oral tradition of stories
gains skills that prepare him/her for reading. Some of the most important skills children gain
are:
Concept of story
The many strands of plot
Comprehension of vocabulary
Internalization of character
Visualization
Natural rhythms and patterns of language
Figures of speech and metaphors
Prediction skills
Concepts about the world
Listening and attending skills
Internalizing their culture
Healthy self concept.”
Storytelling and the Emergent Reader
Eve Malo, Julie Bullard
Presented at
the International Reading Association World Congress on Reading,
2000
 *
"The emotional connection which storytellers
make with children seems to help them maintain focus and remember
details even after a long period of time has elapsed.
Areas of impact may include but are not limited to
the following: motivation to read and/or write; the ability to
remember a story and retell it clearly and articulately; the growth of self
esteem through storytelling; the ability to visualize
and either describe or draw what is in the imagination; the
ability to discuss issues raised in a story and relate them to
one’s own life and the world.”
Princeton
Education Profiles
Storytelling Arts, Inc.
Susan Danoff- Executive Director. www.storytellingarts.com.
*
“A final and integral area of impact of
storytelling … is the enhanced vocabulary, intonation,
elaboration, and use of voice that was recorded in this
research.”
Enhancing The
Kindergarten Language Experience Using Storytelling Props
by Debbie Seidel: Research Study at Deer Park Elementary School
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“Stories can enhance intercultural
understanding and communication and:
allow
children to explore their own cultural roots
allow
children to experience diverse cultures
enable
children to empathize with unfamiliar people/places/situations
offer
insights into different traditions and values
help
children understand how wisdom is common to all peoples/all
cultures
offer
insights into universal life experiences
help
children consider new ideas
reveal
differences and commonalties of cultures around the world.”
From: "Storytelling
–Benefits and Tips"
Adapted from a workshop by Paula Stoyle, British Council, Jordan
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“Storytelling
also contributes in important ways to literacy . . . one area reading researchers agree on is
that oral-language competencies are essential in literacy
development. Storytelling requires listening and
visualization-key oral-language and comprehension competencies
and strategies. It also provides vocabulary development, in
context. Talking with children and encouraging talk among
children is another facet of oral-language; storytelling stimulates both.”
From Jane Gangi,
Encountering Children's Literature: An Arts Approach.
Summer 2004 issue of
HearSay
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“… listening to stories build vocabulary;
enhance memory, imagination, and listening skills; help children
think in more complex, abstract, and creative ways; broaden
children’s range of experience; and help children develop
phonemic awareness through rhythm and rhyme. Sharing stories with
very young children . . . lays the foundation for a lifelong love
of reading."
(Barclay, Benelli, &
Curtis, 1995; Gottschall, 1995). From Thirteen Core Understandings About Learning
to Read, Northwest Regional
Educational Laboratory (Language & Literacy Team)
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“One parent in my class comments, "Anna
(pseudonym)
often recalls verbatim, 'Once upon a time...' or she
will remember the inflection of the teacher's voice and attempt
to imitate it.... although Anna is an emergent reader, her oral
language/retellings are more sophisticated than they were in
September." With this example of progress as a goal for all
students, it
is undeniable that storytelling… do indeed, enhance the language
experiences and increase the prior knowledge of
culturally diverse and educationally diversified early childhood
students in the areas of motivation to engage literacy,
comprehension of story elements and sequence, and elaborative
language development.”
Enhancing The
Kindergarten Language Experience Using Storytelling Props
by Debbie Seidel: Research Study at Deer Park Elementary School
*
“Watson concludes that participating in communicative
events facilitates the acquisition of competence to succeed in
literacy in school. Development of this communicative competence
through immersion in oral language becomes an important building
block for early success in literacy.”
From S.B. Neuman and
D.K. Dickinson, Editors:
Handbook of Early Literacy Research: New York: Guilford Press
Publications (2001)
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“…the extent to which a child's word
recognition departed from the level predicted from their decoding
ability correlated with their oral language skills. These
findings suggest that children's oral language proficiency, as
well as their phonological skills, influences the course of reading
development.”
Nation, K. &
Snowling, M.J. (2004).
Beyond phonological skills: Broader language skills contribute to
the development of reading.
Journal of Research in Reading, 27, 342-356.
*
“Children's ability to mark the significance of
narrated events through the use of evaluation at age 5 predicted
reading comprehension skills at age 8. Children's ability to
represent informational content in expository talk at age 5 also
predicted reading comprehension at age 8. Control of discourse
macrostructures in both narrative and expository talk at age 5
was associated with written narrative skills at age 8.
These findings point to a complex and differentiated role of oral
language in supporting early literacy.”
Griffin, T.M., Hemphill,
L., Camp, L. & Palmer Wolf, D. (2004).
Oral discourse in the preschool years and later literacy skills.
First Language, 24, 123-147.
*
“Storytelling
is an essential, perhaps the essential activity of human beings.
It serves a myriad of functions for the young
child. Stories allow children to learn about their culture, but
also serve as a kind of passport into the culture.”
From the Northwest Regional Education
Laboratory Language & Literacy Team
*
Developing
Literacy Skills Through Storytelling
By
Linda Fredericks
North Central Regional
Educational Laboratory (NCREL); National Association of Service
and Conservation Corps (NASCC).
Reprinted by permission.
Storytelling, once viewed by many educators as being a pleasant
way to spend time at best, and a complete waste of time at worst,
is now being recognized as a powerful tool that can help build
literacy and critical thinking skills.
Author and educator Joseph Chilton Pearce, in
his book Evolution's End, asserts that the repeated exposure to
stories and the subsequent triggering of mental images stimulates
appropriate neural development in the brain. It is the reason
that children will insist on hearing the same story again
and again--the hearing of a story causes neural pathways to form
and strengthen within the brain, and the strengthened connections
between the different parts of the brain allow the child to more
easily incorporate additional learning.
Researchers who study brain and behavioral
development have identified imagination, not only as the essence
of creativity, but as the basis for all higher order thinking.
With imagination, with the ability to understand symbols, create
solutions, and find meaning in ideas, young people are more
capable of mastering language, writing, mathematics, and other
learnings that are grounded in the use of symbols.
Improvement of
Reading, Writing, and Speaking Skills
Children who listen to
stories are exposed to many new words. They may not know what all
the words mean, but hearing or reading a story helps them to
understand the meaning of the words through context. By
developing vocabulary lists based upon the story, the teacher
takes advantage of children's natural curiosity to understand the
story, and children are more motivated to consult a dictionary or
use the new words in stories of their own creation.
Symbolic
Learning
Researchers who study brain
and behavioral development have identified imagination, not only
as the essence of creativity, but as the basis for all higher
order thinking. With imagination, with the ability to understand
symbols, create solutions, and find meaning in ideas, young
people are more capable of mastering language, writing,
mathematics, and other learnings that are grounded in the use of
symbols.
Strengthening
of Critical Thinking Skills
Traditional stories from
throughout the world address many difficult issues of life; they
teach how to face adversity and move through it. A close look at traditional
stories from any culture reveals stories dealing with death,
loss, separation, abandonment, fear, and anger. The stories also
show that love, compassion, understanding, and courage can be a
part of stories as well. Students grapple with painful realities
of life: parental divorce, poverty, substance abuse…and stories
can help them negotiate these difficulties of life and can be of
inestimable value.
Stories are also effective in increasing
tolerance and understanding of people from other cultures.
Through the medium of story, the listener can safely explore what
all human beings have in common as well as how they differ from
each other. Stories have the power to gently remove the child
from his or her usual reality and for a time immerse the listener
in a different time and place. Through imagination, each child
can venture beyond the boundaries of individual experience and
know what it is to share in another person's travels or feel
another's sorrow or celebration. No one could return from an imaginative
journey to another culture without retaining a greater
appreciation for the unique wisdom and experiences of its people.
Self-Esteem
The capacity for imagination
has profound implications, not just for academic learning, but
for behavior as well. Several recent studies have shown that
children who lack imagination are far more prone to violence.
Such children cannot imagine alternatives to their immediate
perceptions of anger or hostility; they are able to react only to
what they believe is the situation in front of them. On the other
hand, children who possess imagination have a very different
experience. They can be exposed to the same hostile situation as
an aggressive child, but with their ability to imagine, different
solutions can be reached.
Literacy
and Critical Thinking
Stories are not just
incidental to the development of literacy in young people--they
are essential. They are a powerful and indispensable tool to
teaching literacy and critical thinking skills to students.
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