Trisha Lee joins us to explore the power of storytelling and poetry in early childhood education, the role of improvisation, and the importance of a rich story diet. Plus, she shares exciting news about her new program, Story Steps!

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Here at Early Excellence, we specialize in early childhood education. We offer expert advice and guidance through training, consultancy and classroom design. With the Early Excellence podcast, we aim to inspire and support you as well as challenge your thinking. So if that's what you're looking for, you've come to the right place.

Hello everybody, Andy Burt here. Welcome along to episode 154 of the Early Excellence podcast. In this week's episode we're joined by Tricia Lee as we talk about storytelling, wonderful poetry as well, and Tricia shares some exciting news too. So here you go, here's my Early Excellence podcast chat with Tricia Lee.

Trisha, hello, how are you?

good thank you how are you

And

very well, very well. It is lovely that you could come back and join us on the podcast. It seems like ages since the last time we spoke, ages.

Yeah, I can't even remember when it was. Years. We're older.

We're a bit older, aren't we? I think it was a good couple of years ago, you joined us, of course, to talk about helicopter stories. it was, in fact, I think we could probably date it in that you just brought out your second helicopter storage book. Yeah, it was the sort of the practical guide around helicopter stories, wasn't it? Yeah. Yeah.

I'm a storyteller, of course.

which went down a storm, I have to say, lots of people. I bump into lots of people all of the time that talk, that come up and say, listen to the podcast. And lots of people come and say, we really enjoyed listening to Tricia talking all about helicopter stories. And I also meet lots of people on training. So I deliver all kinds of different training. And some of it is kind of around sort of early literacy skills and things like that and around.

around communication and language and all of those sort of key skills that underpin literacy, I guess. And I put in a section about helicopter stories, excuse me, and talk about that and the importance of scribing stories, the importance of talking about stories, about not just reading a story from a book, but actually really being engaged in storytelling and showing the children that you're a storyteller, that you're not just picking up a book.

which of course is very much linked very closely to your work, isn't it?

Yeah, yeah, definitely. Definitely. And that idea of acting out a story, physically stepping into a story is so important in that you get that you physically embody that, you get to experience it in your whole, you live it in your bones, I think, you know, the whole of you experiences that, which is really important.

Yeah, definitely. Yeah, I often say to people on training, when was the last time you told a story to your children? Okay, and by saying it in that way, what I'm saying is not when was the last time you read a story to your children, but told a story to your children. So what I'm getting at is that idea of, you know, when was the last time you said to your children, you will never ever guess what happened to me this morning, or you'll never guess what my cat did.

you know, whatever, you know, that kind of just any kind of everyday story about something that's happened to you or something that's happened in the classroom and that you use the kind of your storytelling skills to bring something that is everyday but to life. Do see what I mean? And I don't think we do enough of that.

No, no, and that whole, the value of that and the things that children hear just from, you know, beginning to see you as outside of yourself as well. It's that empathy that you develop. you've got a cat or, I didn't know that. I thought you lived in the cupboard and then came out.

But it's right, it builds relationships as well though, doesn't it? Storytelling builds relationships that I think is key.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, definitely. Definitely. It's so important. There's so much. Storytelling is one of those things that, you know, and sometimes we don't realise when we're telling stories in that way as well. We don't realise those anecdotes, those little that we do instinctively with our friends. What happened to you? this happened. just my journey in. But actually taking that into the classroom and having those moments of little anecdotes about our lives to the children can be such a huge connection.

And such a good way. And also the other side of that is taking that risk and just starting, there was a dragon. I don't know where that's going to go now. Let's see. And actually then the children can help you. It's like, it's all right to start a story and not know where it's going to end. It was flying. where was it flying? And actually that can become quite a fun way of just opening up. I think it's not worrying about knowing it all.

about everything being planned, about everything being precise. It's going, I'm just going to take a risk and see where this goes.

Yeah,

absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah, definitely. So helicopter stories absolutely is something that I guess for you runs on and on and on. But then alongside that, since the last time we spoke, you've been doing all kinds of different things. I want to say as well, you're a whiz on social media. Every time I go onto something like Instagram or something else, you're there. it's like, where is Trisha today?

One minute you're walking across a field on a winter's day and the next minute you're doing something else and it's like, oh, there's Trish, you know.

It's the storyteller in me. It's how can I tell stories? What are the way of doing it? I'm flattered to be called a whiz. often feel like... Sometimes I get four likes and go...

wait.

now you're a wiz. Your content is what I'm there for.

I'm honoured. You've made my day. I can go now, actually. That was all I knew.

I'm

there for that content. I'm there for it. I think it's great. It's brilliant. And you've been, so since the last time we spoke, so you launched, I think, was it a second part of poetry?

So Poetry

2, so we now have two poetry baskets, Poetry Basket 1 Seasons, which is all the seasonal poems and very much follows the terms of the year, know, the seasons of the year, I mean, so that you can actually follow it termly and it goes through autumn leaves falling down to snowy weather to...

the spring and flowers starting to grow and then much more summer. And it's a really nice way for children to connect with seasons. then Poetry Basket 2 is more theme based. So it's Poetry Basket 2 themes and that has dinosaur poems and space poems and there's six poems in each theme.

So that if your children are really interested in dinosaurs and really excited by dinosaurs, you can use the dinosaur poems with them and get excited. And that's really nice actually and can be a really, you another way of engaging children with poetry and language in that way.

Absolutely.

think poetry is brilliant with young children. don't, I generally, I feel that we don't really use poetry enough. I don't, I feel like we, I feel like when I first started teaching and through my teaching career, I feel like the timetable started to shift and become tighter to the point where actually, although everything was very, very managed, it meant that certain

certain times in the day where you used to have a spare few minutes, you now don't have a spare few minutes. So, for example, I used to often read and share poems with my children in the class. And I used to find that that was great, that I didn't even need to prepare it because I had a bank of poems in my head that we knew that I'd read to them before, that I'd memorize and we just did them. And they joined in with them and I really enjoyed it and they got...

did actions with it and all sorts of things. And they moved in a way that was very natural. And it was sort of just like, you know, if we'd finished something and we had five minutes before lunch, we'd do it. If we had a little bit of time at the end of something before we started something else, or we were about to go to assembly, but we weren't quite, but there was a queue or whatever to get into the hall. There were times when we just did certain things. Whereas I kind of feel like at the moment, everything is to the second in terms of timings.

that that sort of thing is squeezed out. And yet it's so sad because actually what we know about young children particularly at the moment is that communication and language skills are really low. You know, they're plummeters, haven't they? And so if ever there's going to be something that's going to make a difference, it's the enjoyment of the spoken word, I think. And I just feel like actually we've squeezed it out at the wrong time, really, in terms of poetry, really.

think then as practitioners, there's a real fear that we don't know the poems. Where are those poems? What is it that we can use? Or we've just got one or two that we know. Interestingly, I was talking to Gillian McNamee, was Vivian Guson-Paley's best friend. But she taught early years at the Erickson University in Chicago.

I was talking to her about the basket and she sort of looked at me really quizzically and said, my students have to learn a hundred poems. And that's part of what they have to do. And they get assessed on that. And I was like, wow, we don't have that in our early years training, you know, a hundred poems. Whereas actually over poetry basket one and two, there's 40 in poetry basket one and 60 in poetry basket two. And it's actually, you know, that's the thing that people have fed back.

to me is that whereas before they started using poetry basket, their children and they wouldn't have known that many poems. Now there are, you know, sort of literally 10, 20, 30 poems that their children can do at the drop of a hat.

It opens up a world, I think, doesn't it, that I just don't think we really tap into enough.

Well, it's that excitement with language. I think that's the thing is language actually tastes nice on your tongue and, you know, sort of the way words work and, you know, sort of just that enjoyment of it or rhythm and rhyme. mean, I do a very simple chop chop poem. Chop, chop, choppity chop. Cut off the bottom and cut off the top. What there is left we put in the pot. Chop, chop, choppity chop. And, you know, that's one of the poems in Poetry Basket 1.

But the children love it, but then I'll speed it up. let's do it really slow. Or do it like you're a fairy. Or do it like you're a giant. And actually that, you know, just playing with language in that way and then getting children to suggest ways we've done it like we're really sleepy and falling asleep as we're It will be really angry doing these poems.

But actually then you can kind of work a whole other way with children.

Yeah, and poetry is so, I think, enjoyable for young children. And I think it gets children, as you said, it gets them joining in with so many different things, doesn't it? The rhythm and the rhyme and the enjoyment of the word and the spoken word, all of those sorts of things. And it builds confidence and it also builds kind of a togetherness, a bit like singing together. There's a sort of a togetherness, a community being formed there within the classroom.

that I think is important. know, a community of learners, where does that come from? Well, it comes from feeling like you're in a community. And I think singing or joining in with things together is important for that reason. On that, kind of on that theme, I suppose, I'm thinking back to this, beginning of my career, and I think about kind of influential people to me at the start of my career.

Right at the start of my career, in the first couple of years of teaching, we had a poet that used to visit fairly regularly. I think he came once or twice a year. The school got him to come in and he worked with every class in the school across a day. He was called Fred Sedgwick and he wrote, he had sort of poems in different poetry collections, but he came in and he read some of his own poems, but he read other poets and he read

no, he read Charles Corsley poems. I don't know whether you've ever heard of it, who was, I think, a of a poet from about 100 years ago. And he told these wonderful poems that were kind of like very natural children's rhymes. There was sort of one that went kind of, it went, when I was a boy on the Isle of Wight, we all had a bath on Friday night. The bath was made of Cornish tin and when one got out, the other got in.

and then it goes through a list of names. And it's just such an interesting thing that kind of, it made me, I listened to him reading the poems and the effect it had on the children and then I searched which poems he was using and then I would use them. And it was really funny because the next time he came in, he started that poem thinking that nobody would have heard it and everybody joined in and he was like, what? You know, it's that kind of moment.

memory in that way doesn't it? It's the fact that you can still remember that now and you could see when you were reciting that now the enjoyment in your face of there's something really exciting and actually memory is helped because you've got the rhymes so you've sort of got them coming at the end which actually is quite secure really.

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Yeah, yeah. And it led me into thinking about my own childhood. In my own childhood, we had, I had a book of Spike Milligan poems and I dug it out for my, you know, for the children at school and was reading, you know, on the Ning-Nang-Nong where the cows go bong and the monkeys all say boo and all of it. And today I saw a little worm wriggling on his belly. Perhaps he'd like to come inside and see what's on the telly. You know, all of those sort of really simple, playful,

poems that are nonsensical, but are just about making you laugh or just about kind of enjoying it. I think there's a lot to be said for it really.

I used to love the, as a child, the cautionary tales, hairballot cautionary tales about the boy called Jim who got eaten by a lion. I was looking at them recently and they're quite, these tales of a girl named Matilda who ate string, pieces of string and died a tragic, painful death. And their titles, it's just like, quite graphic.

But actually it's that fun of poetry, and that poetry can tell a narrative, or it can just be to do with the rhythm and the rhyme of the poems. There's so many different ways that poems can kind of connect with us.

Have you ever heard of The Lion and Albert? It's a book. It's a book that again is an old book. I used to have it as a picture book when I was a child. It's a kind of a story of a family that go to Blackpool and a little boy called Albert who has a walking stick. He has like a little stick and he pokes a lion. They go to the zoo and he pokes a lion and the lion eats him. It's this sort of...

It's just brilliant. It's written as a poem and it's absolutely brilliant. It's just really funny. But as you say, we are reminiscing about things that actually, I've not read that poem for years and years and years and yet I have this sort of happy memory of the words and the language and the kind of how it makes you feel.

Yeah.

pictures that it creates in your mind as well, isn't it? actually, you know, when you engage, whether it's for a poem or with a story, that actually it does, you you start to see it, you start to see it. mean, like me, it's the boy named Jim who gets eaten first by his feet and then it's first his toes and then by gradual degrees and it kind of works off his body eating him. And it's really graphic. But I loved it. I loved it so much because

Because you could imagine it and it's kind of like, you know, they were very moralistic. It was like, shouldn't have let go of his nanny's hand. I told him, you do that. And you know, that's what happens to you. And I mean, that sort of thing I would never share with children now. But actually, I did have a lot of fun that, you know, sort of that for me was a way into poetry and was when like Milligan poems are just brilliant as well, you were saying.

But again, it's that the way that language is played and how you can play with language.

Yeah,

is. Yeah, no, absolutely. So yeah, so from the last time I spoke to you, you've then done Poetry Basket 2, and then you've done all, yeah, you've done other things sort of after that as well, haven't you? So you've got, I understand you've got an exciting thing coming up that you wanted to tell us about as well, haven't you? Is that right?

Yeah, we have, we have, while we're recording this, obviously, this will be after the name has been revealed, but I haven't actually said the name to anyone outside of the secret group. So you'll be like, where's where's I'm actually saying it to? Although by the time this is shown, it'll be. But the name is Story Steps. And Story Steps is a new program. It's going to be similar to Poetry Basket in that it's videos of me.

but rather than doing poems, I will be telling stories. And they're stories that I've created. They're very simple stories with a simple story arc within them. But rather than just being something that children passively watch, which you can get anywhere, the idea for these is that they're interactive. So right from the start, I say to the children, let's stand up.

And I get them to do a look around you. Imagine we're in Max's bedroom. And so there's his bed over there. There's the wardrobe and he's lost all his teddies. So can we help? We need to help him search for them. And so the children look under the bed and they open the toy box. But I've been working with Dave Baird, who's a musical director that I've been working with for years, who's amazing. And so he's added sound effects and original music.

They're just beautiful. The music underneath is really, really lovely. The children searching the fridge and the clanking of the fridge door as you can hear the milk bottle going, within it. And in Teddy Bear's Picnic, which is this one, the story that I'm describing.

They're searching for the teddies in the sink and they put their hands in the sink to see if the teddies, but someone's left water in there and it splashes all over them. They have to shake themselves dry. So it's completely interactive and it's for the whole class. So unlike Helicopter Stories, where we go around the stage, getting children up individually, it's actually all the children joining in together.

And, you know, in, in Teddy bears picnic, they're searching for the Teddy bears. They step through a wardrobe, they end up pushing all the clothes. I guess a bit lying the wicks in the wardrobe and they end up.

It does sound amazing. What was the spark for it? Was there a moment where you thought, do you know what? That's where we need, this is where we need to go next. Was it an experience in school or was it a conversation you had? did that come from? Because that's amazing. I think that sounds brilliant.

There's a few things that have built to this and part of it is, part of it is obviously is my belief in the Para story and you know, sort of how important it is. And also, I mean, for years I've been talking about what Vivian Gussman-Paley used to do within her classroom. And one of the things obviously that everyone knows and that I talk about all the time is helicopter stories, storytelling and story acting.

But the other thing that Vivian used to do that is lesser known about her is she would act out everything. They would act out nursery rhymes. So, you know, they'd start doing a nursery rhyme. She'd let's just act that out. Let's see. let little Miss Muffet. OK, let's have somebody being Little Miss Muffet. And they'd suddenly take the story of the nursery rhyme and act that out. Or they she loved theatre. Vivian wasn't a theatre practitioner, but

her and her husband loved theatre. But the other thing that she would do is something like The Gingerbread Man or, you know, sort of any of those stories and put down the book and go, we're going to act this one out. And she'd just orally tell it, but stop and invite the children to join in. And then she did things which I've actually never done and I really want to try is she'd split the children into two groups and one group to say The Gingerbread Man.

would be the gingerbread man and the other group would be all the other characters. And so they would be acting chorus, because she loved, I mean, like her knowledge of theater was like, well, let's have a Greek chorus about this, we'll have two parts. And so she'd really experiment with how theater was used within her classroom. And of course that fed back into the children's knowledge of the story and the way that the children

were, you when they were telling their own stories, this, that language, that experience, those ways of working fed into there. you know, anyone who's read Vivian's books will see the beautiful richness of the stories that the children were telling from, you know, sort of some of the children were from poor neighborhoods, some were affluent from the student population, but in real variety, a real mix of students in her classroom. So that's always been something I've been

asking, inviting, saying to people too, we need to act out stories more. need to try it. Try just doing Gingerbread Man, doing the enormous turnip, put the book down. They're stories we know really well.

just go beyond it. yeah, absolutely. And it's interesting as well. And I think for many, for many people in classrooms, for many children in a class, their and their idea of performance is the sort of thing you probably do at certain key times in the year. So it's a Christmas performance, or it's a class assembly, or and it's a big deal, because you're in front of potentially what 100

children and lots of other, know, and parents as well. And it's massive. You know, as an adult, I can't think of anything worse than something like that. And yet, you know, we do, we have that for our four and five year old children. think, crikey, that's huge, isn't it? In front of a massive audience. So, this is different.

It's interesting what you're saying as well, because that's so much about, we need to rehearse, we need to give lines. They've got a loud voice. I always used to be the one who'd get the lines because I've got a loud voice. it is actually like that. They can do this, these children can't. And it's all about, you you're looking for those best children who are going to make you look good and are just stressed. Yeah, who can carry it? Which children can carry it? Whereas actually, I just have always

believe that all children can carry it, because they do it in their own way and that's what's wonderful. It's about what we bring rather than all of the others. But yes, you're right, there's very structured performance time. But that's not theatre for me. That's adult-led, often. I know, sometimes people find other ways, but actually it tends to be very adult-led and it tends to be very...

end goal orientated, which, you know, so to, there's nothing wrong with that, I think, but it's, it's a different type of theatre. It's a different way of doing theatre. Whereas actually for me, the theatre that I love is improvisation. It's, and it's messy, you know what I mean? Acting is messy. It's not about going, want everyone lifting their arm at exactly the same time, because this is what we're doing. It's like going, actually, I want to see you.

How do you do this? You know, what is interesting? How do we play? Because it's play. That's what it's linked to.

Yes. Yeah, yeah, you're right. It is messy. It is unpredictable. well, then the early years is messy and unpredictable. know, so really,

that, isn't it though? Because I do think, I mean, I totally agree. I think, I think as early years practitioners, we're quite comfortable with mess when it's like, you know, sort of the mud kitchens are messy, know, we paint messy, sand and water is messy. All of these things are really messy. And actually, kind of, if you're not, you really shouldn't be in early years.

But it's like, you know, I've seen some settings hang up the t-shirt on the wall to parents going, this is what your child will come home and it's got green stains and mud stains and, you know, that messy. But I think where sometimes, unless you're comfortable with theatre, acting can be messy is a harder one to do because actually children might get overexcited or they might get...

carried away or you might lose control because they might start carrying all over the place or being too loud or being too engaged.

Yeah, does make confidence, think, doesn't it, as an adult, to do something where you don't know exactly where something's going and that you're going to try and feed off what they bring to it and try to sort of unpick kind of their ideas and bring everybody together with that. It takes real skill and confidence, I think.

Yeah. And some of it is, you know, some of the skill of that, and I talk about this a lot with helicopter stories and it's what I'm doing in story steps is it's the asks. It's what do we ask? If a child, if we want a child to be a princess, I've heard teachers saying to children, can you show me what the princess looks like? But the child

doesn't move and then they don't know why. it's because actually to do that, your brain has to go from what does it look like? What does that mean? How do I? And there's a step that you've got to take. Whereas actually if we add, can you show me how the princess walks around the stage? We're putting a verb in and we're asking for an action and it's different kind of ask. And immediately the child starts walking because actually they can see that.

It's a subtle difference, isn't it? But there is a difference there. It's kind of helping the child to understand what is expected or what is it that they're going to try to create here.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And actually those things, those are the things that provoke action. And sometimes children don't move and that's fine too. know, sometimes they won't, you know, sort of engage straight away. But actually I do find when I work with children, they do tend to move a lot quicker because of the asks. It's that, it's opening up. It's actually using the questions I ask from them. And that's

In improvisation, I'm trained in improvisation and that's what side coaching is. Directors will do that. can I see you do that? Okay, do this. It's good side coaching. It's not, you know, sort of anything particularly skillful. It's actually just knowing what questions open up. And if it goes too literal, if it is like, what does the princess look like? You actually go, should I...

Is that the answer? Do I put my hands on my head and pretend I'm wearing a crown? What look? What is that? What is that question? So that's sort of one of the things. So part of it is inspired by me desperately wanting everyone to experience Vivian Guss and Paley's classroom to its infant degree and realizing that actually, you if I do it, I can share how that could work.

But that's not the only reason. Another part of it is realizing that we're seeing firsthand communication and language plummeting, as we were saying. I mean, it's scary to see the changes. I work with reception and preschool. I have one school that I'm linked with and I work with their reception. And then I have a few different preschools that I do work with throughout the year.

But I do it to make sure I maintain my practice and I keep knowing what's happening and I go in, you know, sort of one session a week and I do a helicopter story session, I trial things, they've had story steps tried on there, you know, all its different guises so that I work it out there. They do all the poetry, so they kind of have a sort of hot intensives.

Isn't that brilliant for them that they're getting that straight from you? I was going to ask you actually, in that I'd assumed that you had kind of trial the story steps and that you'd had to go with it with groups of children and things like that. And I was interested to know, have you learned anything new yourself through doing that, through going through that process of sharing something new that is new to you? How do you learn something when you then shared it with your children?

Yes, so initially I was going maybe it could be audio only because I didn't want to be on the screen. I didn't want to be. I think YouTube is full of people on screen badly telling stories.

Hahaha

And I kind of always went, you don't need that. We don't need me on screen doing that. I do it with Poetry Basket, but that's because I'm modeling actions alongside it. And actually the teachers can take those, learn them and do them without me. They don't need me. So it was never my intention. What we found with audio only was as an adult working and I couldn't, some of it Ila, my colleague has to do, because it's quite hard being the one on the screen, the voice and in the room.

very confusing for the children. And for me, Isla was trying it and she filmed it so I could watch it and it was painful because they couldn't, when the action would happen, they'd just go off and you couldn't pull them back in. It was really hard because it became too big. So it didn't work. It really just felt like it wouldn't work. And it felt wrong. It felt like we were going, no, come back and listen now to this bit and come and do.

Although, you know, initially on move, music and movement used to happen on the radio, didn't it? Yeah. But I think it will take a while. I don't think children are there yet in this generation in this time. I think it, cause that's where I was thinking it's like that or Peter and the Wolf. Do you remember Peter and the Wolf?

Yeah, yeah.

Weirdly, that's my memory of music and movement at primary school is that we would all go into the hall and in the corner of the, I think it was on a record player that they had Peter, this just shows my age. there was a record player. They would put Peter and the Wolf on and it would play that music and we would all kind of skip around the room in a kind of clockwise or anti-clockwise direction.

That was...

and then there'd be another direction and you'd all have to stop and you'd have to pretend to be Peter or something like that and walking on tiptoes or something different. Yeah.

Well, that was the inspiration. mean, that kind of was, because I loved Peter and the Wolf. It's the same as when we're talking about poetry. That music has stayed with me and that notion of actually being able as a community to move together, to act together. But what I discovered through doing this was I just think it's too difficult at the moment. I think we were much more used to listening to things.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And I think for children, it's harder to actually be able to do that now, to have those moments of going, I can just listen in, I can listen to that and then start acting. And we did find we had to, so that was one of the big pieces of learning. But we tried lots of other stuff as well.

We tried action cards and I had all these action cards with pictures of me going, okay, let's see if we can try this. And they just were like, no, this is too... I'd get videos because we were also working with another school who use helicopter stories and I sent everything to them and they've been trialing them and videoing and you sort of look and go, no, that's really not, that's too late. So all the time I've been testing things and going, what is it that can make this a round program?

And we now have, that's why we went for actually having the videos at the end. The videos really were, and the children are facing and you need the adults in the room to support to get the children to stop facing for, you know, after a while. But what I found is the more children watch it, the more they engage in it, the more they start to move away from the screen as well and start to open up and move around. I've got some amazing footage of children.

One of the stories is about Kofi, the caterpillar, and there's a part where he weaves his cocoon. they're literally, these are sort of like reception age children and they've got this beautiful music playing and they're a cocoon and you just watch it and go, this is beautiful. This is really, really beautiful, inspiring and engaging with something in a way.

that really, know, like a cocoon's quite a hard concept, but actually if you start to build it around yourself.

Yeah, and it's that holistic learning, isn't it? You you're not you're talking about storytelling, you're talking about communication and language, you're talking about understanding the world. There's a whole wide range of different things that you can tap into there, of course, through the power of story and poetry and drama and all sorts of things.

Yeah, yeah, totally. And I think the other thing that because of the children that I'm working with and the area that I'm working in Chippenham is one of the poorest areas in wheelchair. And what I've noticed, and it started the year last year and then this year's children cohort even more so you can really see, and I see it in their helicopter stories, the deterioration of their

story knowledge of their ability to construct narratives. And I've always been really a real believer in going, it's fine, children come to it. And you know, the growth of a storyteller is about when they come to it. But it is interesting to see there's less of children coming to it now. There really does feel like it. And I was talking about it with the teacher.

particularly about this year's reception children. I was going, but something's missing. What is it that's missing? And I started to really look and I went, it feels like they're still parallel playing. There doesn't feel like those pockets of cooperative play happening. And that fantasy play is missing. It really is. you know, sort of there's a little bit of them

Associative play where they're sort of next to each other and a little bit of sharing and connection, but not a lot. It's almost like they're in their own pocket.

And such a lot is built on that, isn't it? Because if you are at that stage of parallel play, then you're not then engaging with another child really to that point in terms of communication and language. You're not at that point in terms of sharing ideas or compromising on a story and deciding, well, I think it's here or no, I think it's there or this is a castle or no, it's not. It's a turret or whatever.

It's that all of that is important, it? Getting to that point is important and such a lot flows from that. And so it's understanding all of the small steps to support children in getting to that point, but that's hard when they're at that early stage still.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, definitely. And you can really see how that impacts on their story, how that impacts on their speech and language. All of those areas get impacted by that because, know, normally I'm coming home, you know, after a session, I'm like, wow, look at the imagery in this story or look at this. you know, whereas what I find, and I'm still wowed by the children, but I'm like, my gosh, they did this and that's unlikely for them.

rather than what their story content is. And it took me a little while working with the group, because always at first, you kind of never know what stories, but as somebody who's used to the stories developing, I'm not seeing that development in their story. And that became quite a big push. And for me, I've always talked about the story diet. I don't think children are getting good enough story diet. And more and more that's...

Definitely.

they're not being read to at home. They're not having those experiences and you know, sort of that has such a big impact. You know, the children who are read to, I can tell in a class.

tell straight away. In the same way as you can tell the children who've had conversations, that kind of ongoing chatter on the way to the supermarket or on way to the park or as we're walking into town, that ongoing conversation about what we're going to do now, who we're going to see later, what are we going to buy, what do we need, you know, just simple stuff, but actually it's important stuff, isn't it?

Yeah, yeah. And it's that that feels like it's dwindling and that is actually, and that is having that impact for various reasons. Technology comes into that as well. If you're on your phone or if you've got, and I don't want to diss technology, actually, but I do, it is having a massive impact on our children and on their communication and language. And so I started to look, I'm

I really love brain science, neurology. wouldn't claim to be an expert on it. I'm totally, know, lay girl on this. But I sort of started to really think and wanted to know more about, you know, what is the difference? Because actually, from what I see, children are engaging more and more with story through animation, through video games, through that kind of technology.

rather than through picture books or oral storytelling or acting stories out or fantasy play. And so I started to look into that and there was, I've come across some really interesting research by a guy called Dr. John Hutton. And he's the director of reading literacy at the Discovery Center in Cincinnati.

And he is a pediatrician and a researcher and he worked with the team and they were looking at monitoring children, three to five year olds, what happens in their brains when they're looking at picture books versus what happens when they're watching animated cartoons. And the things that he was talking about is really interesting because what happens when children watch cartoons

is there's an overload on their visual networks. So they're stimulated and overstimulated because of its fast moving, because of the bright colors. And so that reduces the integration that happens with story normally. So they're not engaging. You know, you kind of, I've always felt this, but I just wanted to find the site.

that's where I wanted to find out what that actually meant. So this notion of it's like an overload on the visual networks really made sense to me. And it's not, whereas actually when children are listening to picture books and looking at pictures, it actually stimulates the visual processing areas.

as well as the language networks, as well as the imagination.

Yeah, absolutely. So storytelling in lots of different ways, so important. I know people will be listening to this and hearing you basically launch Story Steps. I know people will want to know more about Story Steps and where they can find out more about it, where they can maybe sort of try some of the materials or whatever else. What's out there? How do people find out more?

So we're launching the program on the 24th of March, actually. So over the coming months, as we build up to that, we're going to be doing pre-sales. So if people do want to buy it early, the first 100 people will get a Story Steps bear. Cuddly bear. You heard it here first. And basically, I mean, the idea of it, and it's interesting what we were saying about

you know, stories on the screen. And that's why I didn't want it to be me doing a story. So obviously it's an interactive story, but the other thing we've contained in it, or I put in the thing in the program is a script so that teachers can actually take the story and they can lead the acting out of it with their children themselves. So they can actually do it that way. And also we've created six pictures, one, three, you know, so we've divided the story into six.

So it works like a picture book as well, so that you can actually, because what I want to be doing is looking at all the ways we can get maximum brain stimulation out of it, so that all of those areas of the brain are working, that children get to experience it through their motor cortex, so they're actually physically enacting the stories, but that they also get to work together as a team and they collaborate.

What's lovely, I've got some lovely footage of children being the caterpillar. And I even doing it, I was going, how are they all going to go down? I'm like, they shouldn't be crawling as a caterpillar. And I'm on screen, no control at all. But then seeing the children finding that spatial awareness to get down on the floor and start crawling around like caterpillars. Cause of course children can do that. Of course they can. That's what you, you don't go, I'm just going to sit on top.

Tommy, you know, you find your place, don't you? You sort of wait. And it is brilliant to see, you know, that's why we've been trialing it to go, this work when you're not the adult in the room going, make sure you don't tread on Tommy.

But actually, you know, it's been really, really successful. So there is going to be bits of videos launched so that people can see. And you were talking about my social media, will be lots of stuff on there about how to go about and order it. But I'm really excited about it because I do feel, I feel like we need this. We need to be getting children to be acting out more.

because that will lead into their fantasy play. And I feel like with the children, particularly that I'm working with, that's something they haven't clicked over into doing yet. And there's not as much as that because our children don't play in the street as much. don't, well at all, they don't get those opportunities and you don't get to just play in that way. And then when that's being taken away from our early years settings,

that becomes even harder for them to find those moments to just be and find those stories. And that, I think is really key. for me, what Story Steps is doing is supporting that. So I'm really excited about it.

Yeah, no, absolutely. It's basically what you're describing is that you are supporting and scaffolding that imaginative play, that step that we talked about, that the children were not there yet, that actually you're giving them that helping hand to get to that point by doing something that actually will open doors in terms of imagination that will lead them into playing with an idea and exploring an idea and taking that one step further. It sounds amazing. It really does.

And

I suppose it's also because it's also supporting practitioners as well, because if you're not, you know, for people who already use helicopter stories, they are more confident about, you know, and they're obviously, you know, experienced and skilled at getting children up and acting and all of that. And actually going you can do that with the whole class as well. Let's try it with a big group rather than just

individually going around. But also for people who are not, that's one of things people are always saying to me is how do get my children to act or they don't act? I'm constantly trying to say how do you ask the question because it is the asks that get children moving. I think that's for me what Story Steps is modeling and then there's scripts if cheap.

if people want to use that, and so you can take it outside and you don't need me on the video. You can just go, okay, actually let's act out this story here and here's some asks to prompt and support the practitioner in leading them.

Yeah, definitely. Yeah, amazing stuff. It's yeah, it is exciting. Really, really exciting. think I think it's going to it's going to go down an absolute storm. can yeah, I can predict that right now. It absolutely is. Definitely. Yes. Tricia, thank you so much for joining us on the podcast today. It's been amazing to talk to you again. It's always great to hear from you. You are one of those people who

who absolutely brings such a lot to life, I think. know, just talking to you, you can tell that you are involved in storytelling and drama because you are such a natural at it. You absolutely are. And yeah, it's great to chat to you. Thank you so much for joining us. All the very best.

Thank you so much. I've really enjoyed it. You are also joyful to talk to, so I've enjoyed it too. Thank you.

there you have it. Thank you very much to Tricia for joining us this week on the podcast and sharing your exciting news with us. Yeah, watch this space, definitely one of those, isn't it? Yeah, thank you very much for joining us and thank you to you people at home for listening along as well and take care everybody. Have a good week and we'll see you next time.