- The authors investigated children’s talk and interactions within pre-school settings.
- They found that when children are given opportunities to talk with each other they often told their peers stories about their lives outside of the classroom.
- In doing so, they make connections between their own lives, their peers and the curriculum.
- When teachers provide opportunities for children to talk, it enables them to contextualise their learning and make it relevant to themselves, and to display their own culture.
- The authors highlight the importance of storytelling, where children can share aspects of their culture and build cultural connections.
- The authors make five recommendations for teachers’ practice:
- Facilitate opportunities for children to initiate conversations and share stories relevant to themselves.
- Allow children to tell stories to one another related to the focus of ordinary classroom activities and curriculum.
- Plan for children to work with peers (e.g., peer tutoring, pair and share).
- Consider how the physical classroom environment can be organised to encourage storytelling between children (e.g., table groupings).
- Look for opportunities to use teaching resources, such as books and toys, to generate opportunities for talk and sharing.
Publication
Theobald, M., Busch, G., Mushin, I., O’Gorman, L., Nielson, C., Watts., J., & Danby, S. (in press). Making culture visible: Telling small stories in busy classrooms. In A. Filipi, B. T. Ta & M. Theobald (Eds.), Storytelling practices in home and educational contexts: Perspectives from conversation analysis. Springer.