empowering teachers 1.png

Great Storytellers

Empowering Teachers, Inspiring Pupils

For: Primary Teachers

Top 3 Take Aways:

  • Teachers with increased confidence to be expressive, reading to children every day

  • Children using and understanding a wider range of rich vocabulary in their writing and their speech

  • School overall progress and attainment in reading, writing and SPAG improving.

“Fun, challenging and thought provoking!”
— V. Southcott, retired Headteacher, Nailsworth CE Primary School

Online: 2 hours / 5 x 1 hour In person: Half / Full Day

Teachers and TA’s will learn to:

  • Use the breath to become a balanced, calm and confident speaker

  • Strengthen the voice so that it becomes richer, fuller and stronger

  • Use their full vocal range to project, emphasise and engage, with awareness and control of dynamics, pacing, pitch, tonality, subtext and meaning

  • Use their body, face, voice and gestures expressively to create characters, moods and atmospheres

  • Incorporate actions for storytelling

  • Activate children’s five senses so that children internalise the story and are fully engaged.

Imagine if your teachers could tell stories so that words leap from the page and children are inspired to dive into books, relish rich language and be ready to pick up a pen and write the next chapter.

We all know the value of reading aloud to children, but nearly every teacher struggles to prioritise it in an already packed curriculum. All too often, a book is only picked up if there are five minutes to spare before lunch. Is time the only deciding factor though? Or is it also something we don’t readily like to admit: not everyone likes reading aloud?  Stories read aloud may hold joyful memories for some, but for others it may be associated with fears and stigmas.

We can help your teachers and teaching assistants strip away insecurities and find their voice with confidence, so that they can use the skills they were born with: the ability to stand strongly, move expressively and speak with passion.

Teachers are taught how to model effective writing, but when are they taught how to model effective reading? There is an assumption that teachers can just do it, but reading aloud to a room of thirty children, so that they all listen, is a skill that not every teacher naturally possesses.

Great storytellers help children to:

  • Experience books as an immersive, sensory way

  • Learn how to read to be heard, guided by outstanding teacher modelling

  • Transition from reading aloud to reading in their head

  • Experience a rich range of vocabulary

  • Understand new words through vivid contextualisation

  • Empathasise and infer meanings through being absorbed in a living story

  • Activate their imaginations and inspire depth in creative writing.

Key Outcomes: 

  • Engage children so that they listen animatedly

  • Help children internalise stories so that they embed in their minds

  • Inspire children to love reading

  • Motivate children to use rich vocabulary

  • Inspire awesome writing

Sessions with parents and pupils can also be offered. Contact us to ask about this.