How do stories and child development intersect?
Reading stories to children is often recommended to parents as a way to encourage later literacy. It also promotes healthy emotional development through the sharing of special time with parents. A parent reading provides terrific role-modeling for children--"my Dad/Mom reads! I will, too, when I'm bigger!"Parents and grandparents telling stories should also be encouraged. Nothing in my early life do I remember more fondly, and with more enjoyment, than the stories my Greek grandfather, a survivor of Turkish genocide, told me about his early life as a boy in Asia Minor. The stories were always about a young boy who braved dangers all alone while running between towns selling goods for his father. Wolves, bulls, bears were all easily defeated by my grandfather's trusty knife. I thought he was the most amazing man who ever lived. In adulthood I learned that a Greek grandfather traditionally has a similar array of stories that he tells to his grandchildren--none of them true! This influenced my teaching practice. I tell stories as well as read them. Some of them are even true!
The story language children hear from adults enriches their literacy. It gives them a structure that lodges inside their hearts and minds, helping them comprehend how a story works, Not only does it have a beginning, middle, end, or who, what, when, where, why. A story has a sense of conflict, and resolution of conflict. These are literacy conventions taught in elementary school. Children also learn about how others solve their problems, how other humans see reality and each other. Stories heard together bind children to each other and create a shared context for future discussions, or future stories.
When children go to kindergarten how many of them have created stories already? I don't mean captions on pictures, or vignettes. I mean progressively more complex and sophisticated stories that interest and entertain their peers? Vivian Paley, the most deservedly revered teacher/researcher/story teller in recent years, wrote about children writing their own stories and then acting them out. I have done this with young children for many years. I ask them to illustrate their stories as well, and we post them for all parents to see when they come to pick them up.
When I read children's stories aloud to the whole group, the look of pride and confidence in the eyes of the author is worth the price of admission. They glow.
Today I experimented with a new (for me) technique. See if you think this would work for you...
We bathroom after both outside times at our center. One of us usually reads to those who are waiting their turn. But each time we go to sit for stories some children scramble to sit in the teachers chair. Today I asked, "I notice that someone always wants to sit in the teacher's chair. Why do you think that happens?" One boy responded, "Maybe we want to tell stories". So I made a list of the children, checking them off one by one, as they came to sit on the teacher's chair and tell a story. Any story, but originals preferred. As each child came to sit and tell a short story, the children listened respectfully, with minimal horsing around (they ARE four). Spontaneously they began to applaud.
Development of social, emotional, and language skills is an important part of this practice. But what is more important to me is the development of a shared sense of community. As they say in Reggio, which I've written about earlier in this blog, everyone is a protagonist. Everyone is their own story, and their stories connect with each other.
