“If you want your children to be intelligent, read them fairy tales. If you want them to be more intelligent, read them more fairy tales.” ― Albert Einstein Fairy Tales are essential stories for childhood. These stories are more than just happily ever after, they portray real moral lessons thru characters and virtue shown in the stories. They do not only captivate the imagination of young minds, but also enhances their creativity and reasoning skills.
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1. Early Literacy Development
Storytelling plays an important role in Early Literacy development. It acts as an essential building block to literacy. Children’s imaginations are further enhanced through listening to fairy tales. You can engage children to discuss how the fantasy land or amazing worlds from these stories can be different or the same from our real world. Through such interaction with your children, it will help them express their ideas easily. Studies also show that regular storytelling activities can help broaden a child’s vocabulary. 2. Positive Problem Solving Skills Children learn from the characters in the stories and this helps them connect the situation with their own lives. The stories show children how to have a positive outlook amidst any anxieties, battles and problems in life. It also teaches them critical thinking skills. |
3. Building Resilience in Children
The world today can be seen as frightening place. Many families and most specifically children can undergo tremendous stress. In such situation, children need to be aware that bad things happen to everyone. Fairy tales can help them develop emotional resiliency by helping them connect the stories to real life issues where most of the time the hero triumphs. These stories show them that we all go through life challenges and that they must always be prepared and believe that they can succeed in life. 4. Cultural Literacy Reading Fairy tales to children or storytelling is not only a foundation to literacy development but also give emphasis to various cross cultural values and behaviors. |
5. Fairy Tales teaches the Basic of a Story
Fairy Tales are great tools for teaching kids about story development, conflict resolution, the development of characters, heroes and villains and simply broadening their imagination. Furthermore, it helps them differentiate fiction to non-fiction stories. Whilst often forgotten, story tales should be considered as timeless. As parents and teachers it is a good idea to research ways you can introduce this genre to children and allow them to enjoy the stories you, your parents, grandparents and so on, have maintained as part of the story telling tradition of our cultures. |
- Storytelling, the art of narrating a tale from memory rather than reading it is one of the oldest of all art forms, reaching back to prehistoric times. Storytelling involves two elements – selection and delivery. Many EFL teachers are interested in storytelling as a resource in teaching. A successful storyteller chooses adequate stories and must be a good performer, for the delivery is crucial and requires both preparation and rehearsal. Storytelling is the original form of teaching and has the potential of fostering emotional intelligence and help the child gain insight into human behaviour.
- Storytelling also promotes language learning by enriching learners’ vocabulary and acquiring new language structures. Moreover, storytelling can provide a motivating and lowanxiety context for language learning. The storytelling tips given in this article are meant to help the teacher–as–storyteller as s/he prepares for a storytelling "performance" for students.
- In this wonderful world nothing is too wonderful to the child. He knows his own power to do.; so to his mind all things that do will to do also; the wind, the trees, the sun, even sticks and stones, seem like himself powers that exert their will. He knows but little of the laws of nature without, and of nature within self; but in his soul there is an instinct of wanting to know; there are longings, hopes, a groping for the truth. The demand for stories is an expression of the child's desire to learn more of the wonders of the world around, to get at the heart of things, to come into personal, intimate contact with the universe. The fairy-story expresses the unconscious longings, hopes, and struggles of the child. It speaks to him in a language he understands; it gives expression to that which he feels but dimly and sees but darkly; through it he catches glimpses of laws governing human life; it interprets his own thoughts to himself; it gives him a perspective of this world and uncon- sciously influences his actions. But if this is the educational value of the fairy-story, the question naturally arises: Where are the stories to be found which may be such forces in the education of our children? Is there a test that will show the genuine value of the story to the child ?
- The story must bring joy- and this is, if we understand rightly what joy means, a good test for a story. A mentally healthy child will never come to love literature which is merely entertaining, merely instructive, or merely moralizing. His de- sire is for more than this. The child wishes to know, to think, to feel, to grow, and develop in all directions - this is a funda- mental law of his nature
- Fairy Tales for sure motivate our imagination, but can sometimes give us a false sense of reality while incorporating realistic scenarios. This is the main reason why some parents choose not to read them to their children. As an adult, I wanted to go beyond the surface of fairy tales and find out what their role may be in our children’s education and social development. All fairy tales talk about relationships and people, and the negative and positive interactions between them. I decided to do my research on this theme because I think even the worst stories can be used as tools for teaching.
- Fairy tale books that contain educational element will also be very useful as supporting material for the learning process especially if the materials presented in them are a subject matter that the students are learning. The materials in a lesson that might be brought by fairy tale is able to provide a sense of interest to students, to provide convenience to students in understand the material, and to generate meaningfulness of students in learning process. Therefore, based on the survey results it might be concluded that both the teachers and the students have good perspective on the use of fairy tales that present the subject matter. As a result, these fairy tales might be used as supporting learning materials that will not only entertain the students but also facilitate and generate meaningful learning process to the students.
Preparing the Story and Fairy Tale Environment
Here are a few simple approaches you might take to include storytelling in your classroom:
Share your own stories, just for fun: Tell them about when you were their age, about times you failed, succeeded, or about memorable lessons you learned. This builds a strong connection between you and your classroom, letting them know that you can relate to them and vice versa.
Use stories as introductions: Just as we encourage students to use attention-getting devices for their essays and speeches, we can use the same technique as educators. Begin class with an interesting story but one that is relevant to the lecture’s focus.
Use stories as illustrations: When you’re hammering through a relatively difficult concept with your class, one easy way to explain it is to illustrate the concept with a story. When facts and figures won’t do, simple narratives sometimes can.
Tie storytelling to learning goals: We want our students to develop listening skills, and we can incorporate storytelling into the larger picture of achieving these outcomes.
Tell stories to engage reluctant learners: Some students experience difficulty connecting to drab textbooks or abstract concepts. However, those same learners typically have little struggle connecting to stories. Through telling stories, you make life and learning more relevant, giving reluctant learners a better angle of engagement.
Have Students Tell Their Stories
As you incorporate your own stories, recognize how they connect with students on a different level. But why keep the power of storytelling to yourself? You can also actively help students become their own powerful storytellers, too!
Allow students to write, illustrate, and tell their own tales. The way you incorporate this may vary depending on your curriculum goals, but it is essential that children understand how to tell a good story and how this relates to effectively accomplishing an objective. Students can use stories in their essays and argumentation—they can help in remembering processes or formulas or in connecting events with one another. The opportunities are endless and easy to employ.
Share your own stories, just for fun: Tell them about when you were their age, about times you failed, succeeded, or about memorable lessons you learned. This builds a strong connection between you and your classroom, letting them know that you can relate to them and vice versa.
Use stories as introductions: Just as we encourage students to use attention-getting devices for their essays and speeches, we can use the same technique as educators. Begin class with an interesting story but one that is relevant to the lecture’s focus.
Use stories as illustrations: When you’re hammering through a relatively difficult concept with your class, one easy way to explain it is to illustrate the concept with a story. When facts and figures won’t do, simple narratives sometimes can.
Tie storytelling to learning goals: We want our students to develop listening skills, and we can incorporate storytelling into the larger picture of achieving these outcomes.
Tell stories to engage reluctant learners: Some students experience difficulty connecting to drab textbooks or abstract concepts. However, those same learners typically have little struggle connecting to stories. Through telling stories, you make life and learning more relevant, giving reluctant learners a better angle of engagement.
Have Students Tell Their Stories
As you incorporate your own stories, recognize how they connect with students on a different level. But why keep the power of storytelling to yourself? You can also actively help students become their own powerful storytellers, too!
Allow students to write, illustrate, and tell their own tales. The way you incorporate this may vary depending on your curriculum goals, but it is essential that children understand how to tell a good story and how this relates to effectively accomplishing an objective. Students can use stories in their essays and argumentation—they can help in remembering processes or formulas or in connecting events with one another. The opportunities are endless and easy to employ.