Sara Stanley is in inspired infant practitioner and I invited her to Swansea to work with teachers in four different schools for one day each. She worked alongside teachers in the Foundation Phase (age 3-7 in Wales) to introduce them to philosophical play in the classroom. One of the teachers, Lucy Martin in Glynncollen Primary School, decided to take on the challenge of introducing a year-long storytelling curriculum into her classroom. Mid-way through the year I visited her for a morning and documented some of what was happening through video, photographs and field notes. Later in this article I reflect on what I saw, but before we join Lucy in her nursery classroom I report on an interview I carried out with Sara who explained what the year-long story curriculum looks like.
Sue: Hi Sara, I’m sure you will be delighted to know that following your visit to Glyncollen last year Lucy, the nursery teacher has set up a year-long story curriculum in her classroom using the ‘Wizard of Oz’. Can you tell us more about what’s behind this storytelling curriculum?
Sara: I am so pleased to hear that, the Wizard of Oz is a wonderful story and really lends itself to a year-long curriculum, I’m looking forward to hearing all about it. For the past fifteen years both in Reception and Nursery I have taught using one story for the whole year. Stories we have covered – many more than once – have included; Peter Pan, Alice in Wonderland, Aladdin, Pinocchio, Shrek, Snow White and The Wizard of Oz. This way of working began out of necessity and an insistence from the children that the stories we were using in themed topic work needed to be played out and embellished in greater depth. Naturally I encouraged the children’s desires to continue the themes and together we created learning opportunities that were both divergent and parallel to the story.
Sue: Tell us how this all began.
Sara: Well, in the first instance the follow up work I had planned for Pinocchio following a visit to a puppet show performance ended up lasting 16 weeks. The children explored woodworking, puppet shows, fairgrounds, inside a whale and life in the woods with characters good and bad and philosophical challenges galore. What is a real boy? How do we know what is true? Who do we trust? And what would happen if we planted money trees?
Sue: It is really interesting to me how you have embedded philosophical thinking into your curriculum. Many of the schools I work with have adopted Philosophy for Children in the whole school, but often it is the Foundation Stage teachers who struggle to incorporate this into their planning and practice. But let’s start by thinking about how the whole- year story evolved out of your work on Pinocchio.