We are all huge fans of fairytales, whether that be the classic stories we know and love, or discovering new retellings and twisted takes on the originals. Not only are they great fun, engaging in the classroom and familiar to us, but they can also increase your children’s reading ability!
Early oral language skills can predict future reading comprehension (Hjetland et al., 2019), and strategies to improve this ability include story retelling (Morrow, 1985) and using story prompts (Pullen and Justice, 2003).
One great way to help improve long-term reading ability is to tell stories multiple times, allow your children to take part in a retelling, encouraging them to use new vocabulary and correct grammar wherever possible – avoiding oversimplification. Furthermore, you can ask questions about the stories and help the children to develop longer answers.
For over 35 years we have loved working with toys, puppets, and other props to assist teachers in the classroom when sharing stories with pupils. Below we have pulled together some of our most popular products, to help inspire and excite.
Toy Bags
Transport your children into the otherworldly tales and inspired them to create new ones of their own by using one of our ever-popular Toy Bags. Each bag is bespoke and can be created for all the popular fairy tales, nursery rhymes and traditional stories. You can expect a picture book or board book to tell the story, along with props, toys, puppets and more, all wrapped up in a reusable story sack. The bags are perfect to use in story time, to elevate storytelling of well-loved traditional and fairy stories. Children will feel transported into the otherworldly tales and be inspired to create new ones of their own.
Puppets
Using puppets is a sure fire why to captivate your young readers, whether you use them to tell the story yourself, or by getting the children involved by them using different characters each. You could use the Hand and Finger puppets, like the Gingerbread Man who comes with all of his other characters, finger puppets, or the large hand puppets like the Big Bad Wolf. From witches and wizards to crabs and whales, there is a puppet for everyone and every story! You can even use them to help make non-fiction that little more engaging.
Extra props
Aside from puppets, there is a whole host of extra props that schools can use alongside high quality books. You can choose from story telling masks, which would be a brilliant addition to really develop Expresive Arts and Design in EYFS and beyond. You can use wooden characters to help retell a favourite story, alongside board games and puzzles, story sticks and more.
Books
Of course, it wouldn't be a Madeleine Lindley post without us mentioning books, would it? Fairytales are perfect for readers right across school, from EYFS all the way up to KS2 and beyond. With so many different retellings out there, you can read 10 versions of the same story and never get bored, and with many available at each reading level, it's something you can keep up with and be progressive with throughout school.
Some twisted tales aren't retellings at all, but they do take typical tropes and subert them, opening up the opportunity for discussions with your children, and helping them to enjoy a well-loved structure with a fresh take!
