Intent

We have chosen to use the Tales Toolkit Scheme in order to develop our children's speech and language skills, and also to develop early reading and storytelling skills. Children must be able to tell stories before they can begin to write them. 

Implementation

We currently alternate our Tales Toolkit sessions between Mondays and Fridays over a fortnight to ensure the majority of our children get the access the session during their Nursery week. 

Impact

Our children are much more confident when talking about stories, using and understanding words such as character and setting. Their storytelling language has improved greatly as have their storytelling ideas. The majority of the children leave our setting as confident storytellers.

Here's what our children have to say: 

"I like to fix a character's problem" 

"I like to choose a character"

"We don't read a book because we write the story. We are authors"

What is Tales Toolkit?

In the Maintained Nursery we have begun a project to help us to support your child’s Communication and Language skills and also their storytelling skills. This is called Tales Toolkit.

Tales Toolkit focusses on four key areas for storytelling:

1. Character – who the story is about?
2. Setting – where the story will happen?
3. Problem – what problems will the characters face?
4. Solution – how will they solve the problem to get to the happy ending?

We use 4 different objects – one for each of the areas – and use these objects to tell a story. The children have all enjoyed their special storytelling times and are all very eager to help with the story telling. The children love our Tales Toolkit Sessions when they get to become authors for the day. We have found that it is really improving the children's vocabulary and storytelling skills. 

How you can help at home:

When looking at a book, or even watching a favourite television programme, use the Tales Toolkit Language including problem and solution, and encourage your child to talk about the story.

Here’s what Tales Toolkit say…

Tales Toolkit is a learning tool that effectively develops children skills in lots of areas of learning and including language, literacy, social skills, creativity, confidence, empathy, writing, problem solving, maths and lots more

• It is fun and engaging for both children and staff
• Children working at different levels and with different needs are all involved and learning
• Children lead the stories. They use props linked to the community and their interests to help them with their story telling

• Lessons are easy, simple to follow and lead to consistency in staff practice
• Tales Toolkit resources are used across many settings as an effective assessment tool

For more information about Tales Toolkit and suggestions about how to support your child at home click on the link below.

Tales ToolKit Website

"They need enjoyable, playful opportunities of being included and involved in the literacy practices of their home, early years setting, and community environments. They need experiences of creating and sharing a range of texts in a variety of ways."

(Birth to 5 Matters - 2021)