Princesses, Dragons and Helicopter Stories: Storytelling and story acting in the early years

by Trisha Lee

Stories and fantasy play engage all young children and help them to draw connections and make sense of the world. MakeBelieve Arts Helicopter Stories are tried, tested and proven to have a significant impact on children’s literacy and communication skills, their confidence and social and emotional development. Based on the storytelling and story acting curriculum of Vivian Gussin Paley, this book provides a practical, step-by-step guide to using this approach with young children.

Covering all aspects of the approach, Artistic Director Trisha Lee shows you how you can introduce Helicopter Stories to children for the first time, scribing their tales and then bring their ideas to life by acting them out. Full of anecdotes and practical examples from a wide range of settings, the book includes:

Clear guidelines and rules for scribing children’s stories, creating a stage and acting out stories

How to deal with taboos and sensitive issues in children’s stories

How to involve children who are unwilling to speak or act

Supporting children with English as an Additional Language

Links to show how the approach supports children’s holistic development

Providing an accessible guide to an approach that is gaining international recognition, and featuring a foreword by Vivian Gussin Paley, this book will be essential reading for all those that want to support children’s learning in a way that is fun, engaging and proven to work.

Genres: Education, Academic

118 pages, Kindle Edition

First published August 24, 2015

Reviews

[Sophiebeth · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book didn’t really give me any new ideas. I’ve followed a similar approach for years; getting children to create stories orally stories a skill they need to develop their imagination and literacy skills.

[Anna · Rating 5 out of 5]

An excellent introduction to STSA with lots of examples, funny and sometimes moving. I wish other educational books were this well-written.

[Iona · Rating 5 out of 5]

Read for work!

[Hayley McCrum (teachwith_hayley) · Rating 5 out of 5]

Amazing read! I love the links to neuroscience, writing, and language. I am looking forward to reading the next book.

[Mathew · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is an incredibly short guide on how to incorporate storytelling in the early years classroom. The helicopter-story approach (the approach relates to the children sitting in a circle and each child, in order of how they are sitting, acts in the next part of the story). Although short already (100 pages) it could easily have been shorter - 10 pages in fact. It's redeeming feature is that the idea is a very good one indeed. It's sold to the reader as guaranteeing to have an impact on children's literacy and communication skills but I think it's success would go beyond that. It's a fantastic approach to take in supporting EAL language acqusition and helping with SEN children who may have problems with language too or behavioural/emotional difficulties.
Lee explains the process with real clarity and the end of each chapter that discusses the steps to making her storytelling approach work are a series of bullet-points that summarise everything. I think, for me, these would have been enough with a chapter before and after relating to theory and importance of storytelling.
If you are an early years practitioner (or ANY primary-age year group) then do look through this book. It's approach to drama and storytelling can only have a positive impact on your pedagogy and on children's lives.