WEBVTT - This file was automatically generated by VIMEO. Please email info@talestoolkit.com to report problems. So you do the training right now, um, and you get, I think, a lot of opportunity to provide useful feedback, but also for us to think about, you know, is this useful for a particular group of children? And if so, how can we perhaps capitalize on that and do something more useful or more targeted at certain groups of children? So it, it provides us with also a kind of a decent baseline, but also avenues for, for further, um, research and opportunity. Okay. Okay. Click. Okay. So who, who is involved with this? So first of all, uh, you, all of you, um, and we plan to work with every preschool and nursery, um, who are involved in this particular training and also some that will be involved in the next training. Right. Um, so we will be, if we, if we haven't already, we will be sending packs out to you, um, that contain, uh, teacher packs and uh, parent letters. Um, and I can talk a bit more about that if it's helpful. In fact, here might be a good point for you to kind of write some questions about how things work if, if you want to, and I can address those as we go along. Um, mm-Hmm. We will come to visit you, um, if we are able, so we, we're, we're working on quite a, a, a teeny budget for this. So we, we don't have lots of money. Um, I'm afraid to come and visit everybody, but we will try and visit a decent proportion of schools. Um, and in the meantime we can happily, um, organize Skype contacts, uh, contacts or telephone conversations or email conversations or anything else that we need to, with, with people that we won't come visit directly. Our team is quite small. Um, so there are, there are four of us at the minute, um, and we are made up of, uh, me, um, my two students who will be doing a lot of the work on the project, um, up until I guess next February. Um, so Alice at the top there who, uh, has blonde hair and then below her with the lovely Kelly hair. Um, so it's, it's, it's pretty simple. 50% of our team is called Alice, so it should be reasonably simple for people to work with, um, who will be our, uh, Guinea pig, um, to, um, kind of let us run through the things that we're going to do with the children with him first. So Alice, Anita should be well trained in dealing with, uh, three year olds with a mind of their own by the time they, uh, they come to see you. Mm-Hmm. And you've been using the kit with Alo at home, haven't you? Alice? Have, I have. He is delighted. Uh, he loves it. He loves it. And I, I know that, that your children do as well. Um, in fact, when, when he saw the little thing that you had little picture of the character flash up on one of your slides, did you hear him? No. The problem He asked, sorry, can we play the problem game? He, he thinks the whole thing's brilliant. Yeah. So it's great. Alice has been showing me some really cool videos of him telling stories as well, so, so that's, so yeah. And there was some violence in his stories too, wasn't there, Alice? There's a lot, there's a lot of hitting going on in the that child, which, uh, me slightly. That's it. So yeah. Do you want me to click? Yep. Yep. Cool. Okay. So where are we doing this? So if we can, then we'll come to you. Um, so we start with London schools and we'll visit others as soon as we can. And all we need when we come to you is a quiet space, um, where we can work with one child at a time, um, on their own or, or with an adult present, if that's the most useful thing to do. Um, it does, doesn't need to be a place outside or, you know, completely secluded from room, just in a sort of quiet corner wherever you kind of might usually do more. Uh, quiet work with, with children. Mm-Hmm. Yep. Oh, hello Alice. Oh, hello. I think we, I've lost Alice for a minute There you back. Okay. Hello Alice, can you hear me? Oh, can, can everybody hear me? Have you lost Alice as well, or is that just me? Oh, okay. Right. Well, I tell you what, how about while I wait for Alice to come back in, we've, oh, hello. Alice, are you back? I'll tell you what, while we're waiting for Alice to come back, I've got a film that I could play, which is, um, showing children exploring violence tree story. And then when Alex comes back in, we can flick it back into it. So let me play this for you. What's gonna happen to the chicken? Die. She's gonna die. Oh, oh, oh. Can you show me how you die? Oh, oh, that's, Oh no. The chicken said what can we do? How is that gonna help? The Why was the goat to problem? Because he had, So the goats got horns and he wanted to fight with the cow. That was a problem. So first he tried mooing at the goat. Did the goat go away? No. No. Oh, no. So the gigantic goat was trying to hurt him with his horn. He trying to cut him in half of his, he Was trying to cut him in half with his horns that needs him. Oh no. What's the cow gonna do? He tried mooing. What else could the cow do? Solution bag. Maybe, maybe there's a dinosaur in there. Oh. Oh, it's not a dinosaur, is it? You could and try to run. Oh, Okay. You could try that. Oh, if he die, he might die. He Might die. Oh, no. Bad. He's the bad Problem. He is the problem. But does that mean he needs to die? Look, his angry face. He's got a angry face. Creepy. Oh. Oh, do you know what? I don't like that. That's made me even angrier. Can you show me your angry faces? I'm so angry that I'm gonna give him a really big push on the act. Fake it. Fake it like that. Ted, how could that be the solution? Um, um, cut head. Really? Do you reckon? Could be. Oh. Oh. Hello. Hello. I've, I've lost my head. I forgot a bed anymore. How am I gonna eat my dinner? Is the bear happy or sad? Now? Sad. Oh, is he happy or sad? Now I'd be sad, cat. So we didn't end up very happy, did we? What can we do? How could we help the hair cat? Now we've got Another problem. Um, can I make better? What can we do? I put stack paper in to make it feel better. So, um, what and how, so there are two things that we want to do with, with children. Um, first is a really simple receptive vocabulary, um, test. And the reason that we want to do this is to answer one of our questions about how well Tales toolkit works for children whose language, um, is, is very good, is kind of less good, I think. So children who might have some language delay, are they, are they still able to, to kind of gain from it in the same way that other children might be? Um, it's a very, very simple task. So children are given, uh, four pictures to choose from, and then they're given a word and they need to point to the picture that matches the word. So very simple stuff. Um, the social problem solving task, um, will probably work better for slightly older children. And here we, we give children a very short scenario and ask them what they would do. So a scenario that they'd be totally used to something that might happen in nursery, somebody snatches something from them or something similar. And we ask, you know, what, what, what do you do in this situation? So we're interested in, um, kind of flexibility in, in problem solving, um, and the sort of ideas that, that children come up with and how they might change over time. So then we also want key workers to comment, and you've probably seen the pacs already on behavior, on children's relationship with peers and with staff. Um, and then we're also going to collect some story examples from you. And I know that you're already sending those, those, uh, back to, to, to Kate and to me as well. So that's really helpful. And hello? Hello. New people who are here. Hello Jackie. Um, okay. So are there any questions before I shift on about the evaluation? Got a few few questions coming in now this is, this is good. If you haven't received your pack, would you just, um, type in where you are from and then I'll, I'll be able to to, to chase it up. Good. Cool. Yeah. Good. So we, oh, we've got Saskia haven't got a kit yet. A pack yet. Okay. Pauline has, Liz has. So yeah, so lots of packs going out. That's great. There were a lot of packs. Yes. Hello? Saskia from First Steps. Yeah. Brilliant. So Alex needs some parents letters, so yeah. Great. Do, do you wanna explain Alice about how the parent letters work? Yes, I will. Mm-Hmm. So, um, we have ethical permission to work on a, um, passive consent basis. So what we do is send letters out and if parents don't respond at all, then we assume that they're okay. However, we are also interested in maybe following up some work with parents, um, which means that they may return the slip that has their kind of best way to contact them on address so that we can contact parents without to nurseries and cause extra bother. So it might be that you get a bunch of slips back from parents. Um, and if so, either send those back to us in your prepaid envelopes or, So Liz was just asking while we're waiting for Alice to get back on how she would like us to record the Charles toolkit sessions. If you are up for video in your sessions, we would love to see a video of your session. So that's ideally the perfect way, but we're also happy for you to scribe stories. Um, I know Rachel, who's just logged in, she's been using the kit for quite a long time and she scribes stories and she sends links to those to me on Twitter. Um, so that we can see the stories that our children are telling. Um, so you scribing those stories are absolutely fine, but I would say if you are scribing the stories, either have a member of staff with you during the session that can write notes or just go with the flow and then at the end make whatever notes you can to remember that session. So don't worry about fitting that in while you are actually telling the tells toolkit story. So yeah, Alice is gonna go and sign back in. Does that make sense? So Jane Shelley is online. Um, so she's asking, um, should I actually ask the children to be kind and know hurting when using the kit, or do I just go with it? Um, I would say just go with it. So go with the flow and feed it into their play. So when we show the clips, which I'll have access feed afterwards, so you can watch those again. Um, just go with the flow and feed in things like feeling words and get the children to start recognizing when someone's sad or unhappy or it makes somebody cross and use all those feeling words and stories, um, and just explore it with the children. So I think when you start to make it about right and wrong and being kind and no hurting, then it becomes a safe, like that, that space where it's difficult for them to explore the things that they really want to explore. So everything is absolutely fine. Okay. Um, so, um, we were thinking about, um, how typical it is for children to talk about, um, aggressive and violent situations in their stories. Um, and in fact it, it's pretty normal. So I've been doing some research about this and there's some really fascinating work on children's storytelling. Um, so one study that I looked at, um, which was, um, on preschoolers in the states reported that, um, just over a third of nearly 900 stories, um, from preschool aged children included aggressive actions. Um, and while the majority of those came from boys, um, actually it was pretty close in number. So I think it was something like kind of, uh, 58% of, of, uh, the stories were boy stories and only 42 or girl stories. So really, really close, actually far closer than than we might think. So what we think is going on when children use, um, aggressive stories, um, or um, use aggressive vocabulary in their stories is, is that what they're trying to do often makes sense of the world. So to examine the world and to ask questions, but also organize it. So storytelling is a really safe place to test some boundaries. So when we have a child who does something quite, uh, inappropriate who might be, um, hitting or pushing or or hurting somebody else, what what they're really doing is, is also checking with you what that's like. So, you know, I'm, I'm hitting this thing to move it out to the way you see, often children will kind of check with the adult in the room about whether that's okay. Um, and then this is a nice point to go, well, you know, maybe we could do something else, or, or, or something similar. Some stories are about exploring what happens to the child themselves. Um, and you can, you can see that the children kind of replay scenes or stories that they know about that have happened to them or to other people and others are purely fictional, um, and related to fantasy. And they might be based on stories that they know about. Um, but also they, they might not be also quite, sometimes aggression and violence and stuff can sometimes make stories a bit more exciting. Um, and sometimes that that's something which is, is used as well. This, this is a really nice slide, I think, which shows us proportion of words used, which were different types of aggressive acts. So what's really interesting is, is the type of words used and also where the aggressive act happen. So quite often the aggressive hack acts towards, um, happen towards a non-human or some other fantastical creature. So dragons, monsters, aliens, they are kind of the, the three most likely elements in children's door or hurt. And this is really interesting because I think it demonstrates that children have an understanding between fiction and reality. So it's probably to kill a dragon or an alien because they're, they're not real anyway. Um, so it's kind of more acceptable, I think for children to explore aggression in that context. Very few children's stories also involved a weapon, or particularly specific in their aggressive act. So they say something like, I killed the dragon rather than I stabbed it with my sword, for example. And again, I I think this is about children kind of reaching a means to an end quite quickly without really thinking about what the aggressive act might look like. Um, so I think in this way we, we can feel slightly more comfortable if, if these are the kinds of stories that we're guessing quite kind of abstract and fantastical ways of, of getting rid of problems. We can feel reasonably comfortable that, that it, it's reasonably typical that these things happen. It is a little bit more concerning I think, when they're either very specific or towards specific people. So, um, one of the, the research pieces that, that I was reading about talked about a, a child who, who says something like, I shot my sister, which is pretty brutal for a, a preschooler to be, to be talking about. So what do we do about it? What should we respond? Like, okay, so we can respond to aggressive play, first of all by reinforcing the idea that plays pretend. So, okay, well, you know, this, this is a, a pretend situation. So this, this is a safe place for us to do this. Um, and to try and think about alternative behaviors and alternative resolutions also to help children kind of humanize their enemy in this, in this context. So helping children to understand the effects of aggression and violence. Um, so thinking about how we can help children to understand that the person they're killing or being aggressive towards is, is a person. Um, depending on the context, it might be, um, interesting to think about what's being said more closely. So with some children, it might be okay to kind of let the story develop in this way in another group of children who that might have, um, experience domestic violence or something similar in the home, then, um, we might need to, we might need to think about working in it in a slightly different way. Mm-Hmm. So the point is that the stories can be used as a starting about violence and aggression, um, that helps us think about working with particular children. Um, does that make sense? Yes, that makes sense. Um, Alice, is there any detriment if you've got children that are exposed to violence at home, um, and that's the normal way of life for them and that's what happens for them and their families, is there any detriment in you talking about it being wrong? What's the best way to go about discussing violence with children that are exposed to it in their daily life? I think it's definitely fine to say, I think children know it. They know it's wrong. They do. Um, because all the modeling that, that you get at nursery or, or somewhere else kind of and, and any aggressive behavior that they demonstrate at nursery is going to be, you know, kind of dealt with in inappropriate way. So I think children have a very strong sense that hurting other people and behaving aggressively to other people is wrong when it's about in a story context, I think it's okay to explore that a little, little bit gently and help them make sense of what's, what's going on in their lives as well in some ways. Mm-Hmm. So I think it's nice to say, well, do you know what I, I'm not sure that's the best way of dealing with this situation. Is there anything else that we can do Mm-Hmm. So without maybe kind of saying words like, no, that's wrong or that's that bad, but just, just allowing a, a kind of exploration for the child to think about a, an alternative or a different way of dealing with things. Yep. Yep. That's good. Um, is anybody, do you want me to click to the next one? Is that the Sure, Yeah. Yeah. Um, so I think that was kind of pretty much a kind of whistle stop tour to Mm-Hmm. As a, as a starting point. And then I'm really happy to answer question and, and think about it with you in, in useful way. Yeah. Uh, and it's quite interesting. We've got some great stories coming through. So Rachel was saying that, um, just a minute ago that she's seen development over time in terms of her children's storytelling. Um, and that last year they used to hit the character or punch or bite, but then they started to make magic spells and find more prosocial solutions in their stories. Um, and Liz, Liz eighties come up, she said that, um, her group, uh, was beating up the big bad wolf with blocks, but then when he used the sad voice and said, stop, you're hurting me, then they showed empathy and one little boy said, okay, let's be friends. So there's some interesting stories coming through or have you, you've seen some really good Strategies there, can't you, about kind of humanizing and, and suggesting that we empathize. So giving a fantastical creature like the big bad wolf, um, an emotion that children can easily, easily kind of recognize and, and correspond with is, is a really neat way, I think, of kind of helping to develop empathy towards a, a character who, who you call bad, that that's what we call them, right? Mm-Hmm. Yeah. Um, what are your thoughts, Alice, on um, the use of words like naughty or bad, um, and things like that in stories, The words which children use, they pick up on those words really, really easily. So, um, I'm not sure whether those words are really used in preschools, anniversaries anyway. Mm-Hmm. So the words that children might bring, um, and in which case that that's kind of fine 'cause that's their vocabulary. But again, I think it's fine to just explore those words and check them a little and go do, do we mean, you know, well why is that naughty and is it naughty and you know, is it really bad or, or is there an alternative? So in just the same way that you would a, a child calling another child naughty Mm-Hmm. Would usually check that Yes. Or Think of an alternative. So the same kind of thing I think is okay. Okay. Um, Oh great. So we've got a comment from Alex saying, uh, she feels better prepared to deal with issues that are likely to come up because they will come up in stories. I know from everyone that uses tells toolkit stories, it's something that does come up at the beginning. Um, and it will be something that you'll all be exposed to and it's really worth as a school, having those discussions.