The Story Spinner

70% of Dyslexic children improve.

Children at Tonbridge Dyslexia Action Centre became storytellers of their own, thanks to the magic of the Story Spinner.

‘In my opinion, the Story Spinner DVDs are an extremely effective tool in highlighting to the students the importance of description and expression in stories.’

— Shobha Coutinho, Principal at Tonbridge Dyslexia Action

The results of a recent study show that children with Dyslexia can benefit from listening to and responding to oral storytelling. Using the Story Spinner DVDs, the study was conducted at Tonbridge Dyslexia Action Centre with a group of ten students (aged between seven and twelve).

At the start of each session, the children were allowed to choose the story that they most wanted to watch from their Story Spinner DVD. After viewing the performance, the children then spent a further thirty minutes responding to the story through discussion and writing.

Follow-up activities included discussion of the storyteller’s oral technique, including  his use of expression and description to make the stories more interesting and memorable. Children also drew pictures of their favourite characters and created their own story outlines by sequencing the main events.

During the course of the study, teachers completed a questionnaire to monitor children’s increased confidence in a number of key literacy skills, such as prediction, punctuation and comprehension. By the end of the study it was clear that the greatest increase in achievement was in children’s story-writing skills. Through observation, teacher’s judged that an impressive 70 per cent of children showed clear signs of improvement.   Increases in performance were also observed across all levels of reading, writing and general behaviour.

Shobha Coutinho, Principal at Tonbridge Dyslexia Action comments: ‘Quite often an area of difficulty for children with Dyslexia is their limited ability to be able to sequence events. Listening to these stories gave the children an opportunity to actively participate in the story by creating their own images in their mind. This helped in retention of the story sequence.’

It was observed that the Story Spinner DVDs also encouraged the children to become more confident storytellers. Often, children with Dyslexia have a tendency to skip out on details of a story if they can’t spell the words they would have liked to use. By listening to and watching veteran storyteller, Phil McDermott (rated ‘Excellent’ by Ofsted), perform the stories on the Story Spinner DVDs, children were made more aware of the effectiveness of descriptive language when telling a story.

This growing awareness is reflected in the children’s positive feedback:

• I really liked the descriptive words he used.
• I liked the way he narrated the stories.
• The stories made you want to go on listening to them.
• I like the facial expressions and the way in which the stories were told.
• I liked the different tones of voice used.

Shobha Coutinho believes that the Story Spinner DVDs have provided a vital stepping stone in helping children to become more confident storytellers: ‘I’m sure the stories will motivate the children to learn to use the full range of tools available to them to continue expressing themselves rather than limiting their expression due to spelling constraints.’

Throughout the study, teachers commented on the enthusiasm and motivation of the children when it came to working on their own stories. Having watched the Story Spinner DVDs, the children were keen to create interesting and memorable tales of their own – and in doing so, develop the skills and confidence necessary to become the ‘Story Spinners’ of the future.