Media release
20 August 2003
When making up stories is the very best thing for children
Sharing a story a day with your children is one of the best things parents can do to encourage, not only literacy, but also imagination, empathy, problem solving and the development of a range of other skills.
And as Children’s Book Week is celebrated around Australia from August 18 – 22 about 100 of UniSA’s future teachers will be spending time with primary school students from Gilles Street Primary School to tell stories and to hear some special stories from the children themselves.
Gilles Street Primary is one of the most multicultural schools in the state with children from as far afield as the Sudan and Bosnia to Iraq and Korea.
UniSA Associate Professor in early childhood education, Dr Susan Hill says stories help children make connections between themselves and the world around them.
“Stories have the capacity to engage children from very different cultures and help them to make connections about shared human experiences,” she said.
“And there are some amazing examples of archetypal stories that cross cultural barriers – such as the ‘Cinderella story’, which exists in different versions, about 600 versions in fact, in almost every country in the world.”
Dr Hill says good stories engage the reader’s feelings and passions and explore people’s motives, plans and hopes for the future.
“Stories deal with more than events - they make feelings and emotions visible for children, show relationships between actions and outcomes and help children understand how to learn from mistakes. By portraying real people struggling with real problems, they invite us to speculate on what might be changed and to what effect,” she said.
“These aspects of sharing stories are of enormous importance to children’s development. Stories encourage children to go on and write their own stories.”
Dr Hill is an Associate Professor at UniSA’s School of Education and was national project director for two federal government funded national studies looking at early literacy development in Australian children. The published results of that research can be found in two books 100 children go to school and 100 children turn 10.
News editors please note: UniSA’s future teachers will be at Gilles Street Primary School reading with students at the following times:
- Wednesday August 20 from 2.00pm-3.00pm
- Thursday August 21 from 11.30am -12.30pm and again from 1.45pm
-3.00pm
Media contact
Michèle Nardelli (08) 8302 0966 or 041 8823673