At Tales Toolkit, we love seeing how our storytelling approach supports children of all abilities in different educational settings. Nikki Gray from Foreland Fields School, a large special school in Ramsgate, shares how they’ve been using Tales Toolkit to enhance communication, problem-solving, and creativity for their students.

From outdoor learning to World Book Day celebrations, Tales Toolkit has provided a flexible, engaging way to develop essential skills.

A Word from Nikki Gray – Foreland Fields School

“We are a large Special School in Ramsgate on the Kent coast. Only a small percentage of our students follow a curriculum which looks like the National Curriculum – these are our most able students and generally are working at a Year 1/2 equivalent level by the time they leave us at 19.

We discovered Tales Toolkit whilst looking for ideas to add to a funding bid to the Bedgebury Foundation charity – it just seemed so perfect and flexible to meet our needs.

We focus a lot on outdoor learning, using symbols to support understanding and supporting students to regulate and solve problems in their everyday lives. It's been so refreshing to find a resource which can be used across the wide range of ages and abilities – the black and white symbols are just great. The resources are lovely quality and the students enjoy the variety of different sized bags and aprons.

We have been introducing Tales Toolkit since September and have seen lovely results. Students are enabled to have a structure for telling their own stories – both from imagination and real-life experience. We are seeing great support for resolving problems too, particularly with social skills.

Tales Toolkit fits well with aspects of Talk for Writing and the My Narrative section of the Equals Curriculum documents. Since the Tales Toolkit format is so flexible we have been able to add sensory aspects and symbols as needed to support students’ understanding. In many cases this additional scaffolding can then be reduced as the students become more familiar.

We have even used Tales Toolkit during our recent World Book Day whole school event! We explored the mini-stories within the story of Traction Man by Mini Grey. As each Tales Toolkit symbol appeared on the big screen, students were able to identify the corresponding element from the picture.

The support offered by the Tales Toolkit team has been fantastic from the outset. The online training is really accessible and flexible. We have enjoyed Kate’s insightful ideas and found it really easy to transfer the principles to our SEN setting. Contact with the team has always resulted in a quick response complete with ideas and a follow-up resource.”

— Nikki Gray, Foreland Fields School

Why This Matters

We’re thrilled to see the positive impact Tales Toolkit is having at Foreland Fields School! Seeing students engage with storytelling in creative, meaningful ways is exactly why we do what we do.

A huge thank you to Nikki and her team for sharing their journey with us.

Want to Know More?

If you’d like to learn more about how Tales Toolkit can support your setting, get in touch with us today!

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