Story Sacks

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Story Sacks in Primary Education
This blog post will discuss the importance of story sacks and how it is good for a child’s development and the benefit of story sacks for children and parents. A story sack is a drawstring bag that contains a range of items to support a book with materials and props including CD, soft teddy, a plastic character from the story, music or role play, story sack is found in the library or in school or nursery settings, they were developed By Neil Griffiths in 1990s (Miller, s and Pennycuff, L. 2008). Story sacks are a great way to deliver story time as it makes it more exciting and intriguing.
With the items that come in the bag, it encourages children to be involved in storytelling and allows them to use their imagination. The objects in the bag are provided to allow children to bring the story into real life which really enhances imagination and thinking skills. The great thing about story sacks is that it fulfils children with all needs such as learning difficulties and hearing loss as it allows children to look at the objects and play with the items that come in the bag, for example, soft teddy. Story sacks also promote multi-sensory experience for those children that struggle in communication areas.

The aim of story sacks is to encourage parents and children to create a bond through reading books together as it is an enjoyable activity, especially with the supporting items that come in the story sack allowing parents and children to share experiences. Surrey County Council (2011) receive feedback from parents stating their opinion on the use of story sacks. After reading the Handa’s Surprise story sack, parent states how this story promoted her own Asian culture ‘'I am amazed at how the learning tale facilitates a child's creativity. Sheena came up with the idea of making a ring shape, rolled cloth over her head to the fruit basket will stay.” This story sack session between parent and child enhanced and improved communication skills and experience of connection which gave parent and child to express their views and opinions about the story. It is vital to understand that although story sack is found in the library or school setting it is easy for parents to make their own story sacks as resources and materials can be found at home. That way parents can observe their child’s development at home. According to a study managed by the National Center for Education Statistics, they found that children who received a “richer home literacy environment displayed higher levels of reading knowledge and skills than did their counterparts with less rich home literacy environments.” (Words Alive, 2018).

When working in a primary school setting, I can reflect upon experience with children on story sacks. Some pupils will lack in confidence when being around other children, but I found that when certain pupils will have one to ones, they are more confident and engaged and can openly express their thought using the objects in the bag to engage with the story. Freire and Paulo (1996) suggest that an effective way to maintain engagement with children is to keep them visually involved. Promoting visual experiences allows children to react to the story and express and act upon the story by themselves. I believe that story sacks are a great way to enhance literacy, reading and communication skills within a child’s development. Story sacks are also an incredibly fun way to promote learning through play as role play could also be involved when delivering stories. As mentioned in my previous blogs that storytelling can be done through movies and acting.



Reference
Alive, W. and Alive, W. (2019). The Importance of Family Literacy. [online] Words Alive. Available at: http://www.wordsalive.org/blog/2018/3/5/the-importance-of-family-literacy [Accessed 12 February 2019].

Freire, Paulo. (1996) Pedagogy of the Oppressed. Penguin: London.

Miller, s and Pennycuff, L. (2008) ‘The Power of Story: Using Storytelling to Improve Literacy Learning’ Journal of Cross – Disciplinary Perspectives in Education. Vol. 1, No. 1. 36-43.

Surrey County Council (2011) Story sack case study: Engaging parents. Online at: https://www.surreycc.gov.uk/__data/assets/pdf_file/0004/49891/Story-sack-case-study.pdf (Accessed:12/03/2019).

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