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“In all the wonderful worlds that writing opens, the spoken word still resides and lives. Written texts all have to relate somehow, directly or indirectly to the world of sound, the natural habitat of language, to yield their meanings. “Reading a text” means converting it to sound, aloud or in the imagination, syllable-by-syllable in slow reading or sketchily in the rapid reading common to high technology cultures.” – Walter Ong
There are significantly many benefits of storytelling for young children. Firstly, the children will be exposed to a wide range of storybooks. As early childhood educators, when we expose children to the stories, we have to speak in proper sentences structured and using the correct way of speaking the vocabularies.
Secondly, storytelling provides children the chance to write and enact out the story. By doing so, it will help them to improve their English. Furthermore, they will be able to express themselves not only with words but also with gestures and expressions. Hence, this will help children to improve their thinking skills, writing skills and language.
Thirdly, by introducing a wide range of stories to children, they will be able to share their experiences with one another. They will be able to share their home culture with one another. In this way, they will have a better understanding of other places, races and religious. Hence, teachers will be able to teach children how to respect each individual cultures and differences.
Fourthly, storytellings can also amelioration of fears. When teachers observe that the child is undergoing some difficulties and unwilling to open out to others, he/she can use different type of stories to help to heal the hearts by telling them stories to help them to overcome their inner fears.
Fifthly, storytelling can enable children to learn problem-solving skills. From stories, children will be able to explore different types of problems face by the characters. Thus, the teacher role comes in, the teacher can pause and ask children open-ended questions and see how they solve it before continuing with the story.
Next, storytelling will also lead to discussions that children are interested. From then on, teachers will be able to know what interest the children. Then, the teacher will be able to come up with ideas and plan the lesson according to the children’s interest. This will benefit both the teacher and children as children learn best when they learn the topic that they are interested.
During storytelling, teachers can use different methods to captivate children’s attention. Teachers can use props to introduce a character, underscore a key concept, build suspense, or even surprise the listeners. Teachers can also use apron to tell a story, teachers can introduce the character when they enter the story. Not only have that, teacher can used participatory telling too. This type of storytelling will enable the children to take part in the story too. Teachers can also convert the story into chants that can be recited by the children.
Story telling also plays an important role in molding a child’s creativity skills. It allows the child to let their imagination run and they tend to relate the stories into their daily lives. When they meet situations similar to the stories they once heard, they would creatively apply what they have learnt from the stories to their own colorful lives.
Apart from creative skills, critical thinking skills will be introduced into the child’s world through story telling. Story telling is a form of creative teaching that helps instill critical thinking skills. When children listen and understand a story, they get the storyline processed and pictured in their minds, and in times when they do not understand the story at any point; they raise questions pertaining to the story. It effectively helps them to use their thinking skills more.
As an early childhood educator, it would be crucial that we ensure story telling helps them in these ways as above mentioned. Story telling is inevitably a useful mean to be used to craft and mold our young children using a more creative and interactive way.
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