What improves listening skills, broadens the vocabulary, improves grammar and helps with reading, at the same time as inspiring, educating and entertaining? The answer is...

Listening to high quality stories!

I must confess that when I became a teacher some 15 years ago, I thought of storytelling as a fill-in activity; something to do before the real learning took place. Since then (after some of my own experiences and research), I have begun to realise what a valuable, if not essential skill listening to good stories is and what a strong part it has to play in literacy.  I began a story of my own.

My journey began with my own daughter who taught herself to read at age 4. I wondered how she could learn to read without me 'teaching' her. The answer, I believe now, without a shadow of a doubt, lay in the countless hours I spent reading to her. The more she heard, the more she wanted to read and the more ready she was. My son was also reading by age five; not because I was reading to him but because his sister was!

Another step along the way was attending a seminar on early literacy at a teacher conference some three or four years ago. The speaker had done doctorate level research into literacy and outlined that the number one factor which contributed to children's reading readiness, was their prior knowedge before they came to the text. I began to think of the things which helped develop knowledge connections in the brain (known as 'schema' in eduspeak) and it occurred to me that a huge amount of general knowledge could be gained simply by listening to and discussing good literature, especially if it encompassed a wide variety of genres, settings, characters, themes and plots.

As an aside, our children (now aged 7 and 11) are now avid listeners of audiobooks and storytelling CDs and I have noticed that they tend to pick up and remember what they hear. Often they can be heard quoting long passages verbatim. I would hazard a guess that this same enthusiasm would not exist if I sat them down with a page of similar length and told them to memorise it!

The final step came quite suddenly; a quick-step if you like! Convinced there must be some reason for this phenomenon, I was delighted to find there were actual studies to support the idea that storytelling was not only an entertaining and inspirational activity, but had real tangible educational effects.

Bearing in mind my 15 year journey ...I would like to suggest there are many, many reasons why listening to a high quality stories is an ESSENTIAL part of learning. I have chosen just nine.

Listening to a high quality story:

1. Inspires the imagination - Being exposed to stimulating plots, vivid descriptions and strong characterisation can only but help inspire.

2. Teaches general knowledge - This builds the connection in the brain, making it easier to read.

3. Improves grammar skills - Listening to a well written story, models correct sentence construction. The child gets used to hearing what words 'sound' right and they begin to pick up the rules and exceptions intuitively; often long before any formal study of grammar is undertaken.

4. Broadens the vocabulary - This works especially well if you read or tell stories that are above the child's own reading level. This gives the opportunity to be exposed to words they would not normally use themselves and to hear them in context.

5. Helps develop listening and processing skills - The more practice that is given at listening, the better listening skills will be. There is also ample opportunity to clarify and check for understanding.

6. Increases attention span - Children who may strubble to read or write for long periods, will often be gripped by a good story. "Don't stop!" is always a good sign that they are engaged :-).

7. Develops higher level thinking - This is inherent in a good story because of the logical connections that need to be made to follow the plot but can easily be extended by good open ended questions such as "Why...?", "What would happen if...?" and "Do you think...?" These require much more in the way of logic than the simple recall questions often found in textbooks of inferior quality.

8. Improves oral language skills - Hearing characters (especially with distinct accents and varying vocal pitch) models what makes a good oral language performance. It also helps overcome the 'embarrassment' factor if they have seen someone step into character and do a great job.

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9. Helps with writing - Although not guaranteed to help the mechanical skills of writing, having been exposed to a wide range of characters, plots, settings, vocabulary, sentence structures and literary techinques make the pool from which to draw.

Rather than being a time filler or even a time waster, you will be helping to shape a child's whole learning experience if you tell them a story today!

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