Welcome to our January update for The Story Starts with You project. This bulletin is aimed at keeping you updated about the project and what’s been happening and what’s coming up.

We’ve had a brilliant first term with our teachers and storytellers. All our storytellers have made some great connections with the teachers and schools. We’ve loved seeing some of the workshops taking place in school – storytellers sharing stories working within different age phases and getting to know the children. They’ve also spent time getting to know their two classes and teachers had the opportunity to get a taste of how storytelling could be developed within their own classrooms.

Collaborative Development Day

We recently held our second teacher development day, Jordan Campbell and Felicity Goodman led two creative storytelling workshops and we got a taster of using storytelling to support children with additional needs from Felicity. Jordan led a session on how we can use familiar stories to inspire new ones. It was brilliant to work alongside such a talented and enthusiastic group of teachers and we loved seeing some of them share their own stories! We also spent time working on developing individual enquiry questions so teachers felt they had their own personal focus for what they wanted to get out of the project.

This Term

The storytellers will be visiting the schools twice over the spring term. The focus for this term is for teachers to develop their own storytelling delivery skills, trying out storytelling techniques themselves and developing in confidence. Teachers will also be taking part in an online group reflective coaching session with Jana Kennedy.

If you’d like to learn more about The Story Starts with You, please contact hannah@z-arts.org