Curious Minds

Telling Tales together....

A great project started at Cedars Infants School in Blackburn this week. The entire staff including teachers, teaching assistants and welfare staff attended a CPD day led by storyteller Dominic Kelly  - and spent the morning telling stories to each other.

Storytelling is a basic human instinct and a natural way to communicate. Many pupils in the school have English as an additional language and therefore do not tell stories in English. To help support literacy and oracy in school, the aim is for everyone to develop the story habit: teaching and welfare staff will tell stories to children at break and lunchtimes and this will encourage the children to retell amongst themselves and in class.

A parents group will be included in the project to encourage storytelling in English at home, with the children having a chance to be the lead storytellers for their families.

Cedars Infants has been a Creative Partnerships Change School for two years already. In this third year, Creative Agent Cath Ford and school Co-ordinator  Rachel Furness are aiming to build on the fantastic achievements of the previous years  by leaving staff with lots of techniques they can use every day.

Here (http://cathintheattic.posterous.com/shoot-from-the-hip-the-shoulder-your-feet-and ) is a really good example of how one of our Creative Agents, Cath Ford is sharing her practice in an inspirational manner and a clear illustration of how documenting projects is a lot easier than many people imagine

Chris May - Chief Executive Curious Minds