Story Telling

We have a rich culture of story telling and story acting at Rachel Keeling.
We share stories and books each day, play imaginatively and encourage children to draw and write their ideas.
For many years we have followed the Vivian Gussin- Paley Helicopter Story methodology whereby adults write children's words verbatim and then children act their creations out in a small group on a stage. 
A few years ago we noted that despite our rich environment of storying, some children were not developing and using story language and some children's oral storytelling were not developing structure. 
We started to use the wonderful Tales Toolkit method, whereby children use the 'scaffolding' of 
SETTING
CHARACTER
PROBLEM
SOLUTION
to tell their own stories orally, with props and objects, through photography, film and even some children beginning to write captions. 
Below you will see some children enjoying their Tales Toolkit workshop and then a few samples of stories. There are more to come and children have been proudly walking through the nursery telling everyone their stories (some children had small zig zag books to make make). 
Watch this space as the next best selling authors, poets, script writers and playwrights are in the making at Rachel Keeling!!!