SERA Early Years Network: Exploring language and emotions with storytelling and puppets
Channel: SERA - Scottish Educational Research Association
Date: 2022-05-27

Presentations from three speakers explore aspects of emotional and linguistic development:

Thursday 19th May 2022

SPEAKERS: Catriona Gill (University of Edinburgh), Dr Joanna Wincenciak (University of Glasgow) and Tania Czajka (Le Petit Monde)

Catriona Gill will explore ways in which a Froebelian play based approach can support the development of children’s enactive and discursive narrative. It will look at the role of the adult in supporting children to translate their narrative abilities in play and oral storytelling, into their written storytelling, through the use of story grammars.  This research was part of the Players & Storytellers practitioner research project which was published as Putting Storytelling at the Heart of Early Childhood Practice, 2020 (Bruce, McNair & Whinnett eds.)
Joanna Wincenciak will talk about her work on the Puppetry and Emotional Resilience programme, which is a collaboration between Puppet Animation Scotland and University of Glasgow. The programme harnesses the power of puppetry to improve and enhance communication, confidence and problem-solving amongst young children, particularly among those with emotional, developmental or social vulnerabilities. The program has been adapted to remote/blended delivery due to the COVID-19 pandemic and is being piloted in the West of Scotland.
Tania Czajka will describe her use of creative puppetry focusing on her MEd project which included 2 pieces of research exploring the use of creative puppetry as an early years language learning tool.  In 2022, with the support of SCILT, Scotland’s national centre for languages, Tania began working with early years practitioners and P1 teachers to introduce creative puppetry to twenty early years settings and P1 classrooms across the country and the presentation will include observations about children’s confidence, wellbeing and engagement with creative puppetry from the EY practitioners and P1 teachers involved in the current partnership project.