Storytelling has been a constant source of fascination for children of all ages. They enable your children to explore the world and understand complex emotions in a fun way and provide a window to a world of possibilities. However, the benefits of storytelling are not limited to entertainment. With how deeply it engages your children, storytelling can be a powerful tool in supporting their holistic development when used in reverse.
Storytelling as a Learning Tool
To tell stories, children must be able to visualise the events taking place and think outside the box to create a cohesive and believable tale. Your children will learn to explore different ways of looking at the world and develop innovative solutions. As a result, practising storytelling hones their creative thinking and important cognitive skills such as problem-solving and sequential thinking. Creativity can be useful when applied to your child’s academic learning, such as problem-solving in maths and essay writing. It can also extend to making your children better communicators by improving their ability to express themselves.
How Storytelling Improves Children’s Communication Skills
Beyond gaining creativity, storytelling can profoundly improve your child’s communication skills in the following three ways:
1. Learn Behavioural and Verbal Cues
To bring a story to life, your children must use facial expressions, expressive gestures, and verbal cues such as inflexion and volume to emphasise certain points in their stories. Through storytelling, your children constantly polish their ability to appropriately utilise behavioural and verbal cues. This training is further reinforced when your children change their behaviour accordingly after observing their audiences’ reactions. By gaining mastery of cues, your children can be more adept at interacting with others and resolving conflicts effectively. In the school setting, this helps them develop strong relationships with peers, which can create a better learning environment conducive to learning.
2. Improve Language Skills and Fluency in Communication
Language mastery and fluency in communication are critical for your children to organise their thoughts into a clear story with richness and depth. By practising storytelling, your children are essentially encouraged to expand their vocabulary and understanding of grammar, sentence structure, as well as the nuances and subtleties of the language. With constant exposure to the proper use of language and opportunities for practice, your children’s language skills and fluency will improve. Consequently, they can clarify doubts and understand explanations better, bolstering their learning. Your children can also place greater focus on more critical aspects, such as analysing and building on ideas, instead of being bogged down by poor self-expression. This can then elevate their academic performance in areas that heavily focus on insights, such as language subjects.
3. Increase Communication Clarity and Confidence
When children tell stories, they become more aware of their choice of words, how they sound, and how their delivery affects their audience. This trains them to articulate and enunciate with greater clarity, which increases the likelihood that their message can be understood, and their desired outcome can be achieved. Clear communication helps project an image of competency and confidence that can inspire others to have faith in your children’s abilities. Knowing the effectiveness of their communication and others’ trust in them empowers your children to approach life with greater confidence.
Master the Art of Communicating and Learning with MindSpace
At MindSpace, we also believe in nurturing your child’s communication skills to benefit them academically and beyond. We realise this through our forward-thinking, research-backed After School Enrichment Curriculum, which incorporates many communication-based activities. These include public speaking and performance presentation, which are interwoven into the concepts that your children learn in school. Your children will be able to gain communication skills and put them to practice. They can also benefit from applying these skills to deepen their learning through enrichment programmes supported by this curriculum, such as the MindSpace After School Programme. Set your child on the right track to develop into well-rounded individuals who can better navigate the world with MindSpace’s programmes. Reach out to us today or visit any of our MindSpace centres to learn more about how your child can benefit from our special curriculum.