WEBVTT - This file was automatically generated by VIMEO. Please email info@talestoolkit.com to report problems. But just really excited about having Alice here. Alice has been kind of part of the Tell's Toolkit family actually for quite a long time. Um, Alice is the director of Unit for School and Family studies and has been for the last eight years. Um, she works a lot with um, focus on behavior, mental health and social emotional development. So tonight she's kind of really well set to be giving you some brilliant information. Um, and she's got a massive portfolio of research with lots of different schools and organizations. Um, and she's been supported by organizations such as Nuffield Foundation, um, the National Autistic Society, um, mind. And she's also done, um, some work with the Department for Education. Um, lots of other fantastic stuff that Alice has been up to. She's the editor in chief for the British Journal of Education Psychology. Um, she's a board member for the National Forum of Neuroscience. And also, we were just chatting a minute ago, um, she worked on the drama series, um, born to Kiln. Um, and she was a script consultant talking about psychopathic kids. So that was really interesting. Um, but lots of fantastic stuff and for us, Alice has been part of the tell's toolkit journey for quite a long time now. Um, oh, someone's saying there's no sound. Can anyone else hear me? Uh, type and let me know if you've got sound. Everybody else. That's how I look. Otherwise, I've just been miming for a little kind of 10 minute slot there. No, we're good. Um, so yeah, so Alice has been part of our journey for a long time about, I dunno, it was a few years ago now, Alice, about Yeah. Three or four years Ago. About three years, yeah. Yeah, it was before you had your second child, so yeah, we can time it like that. So, yeah. Yeah. Um, but I kind of pinned Alice down for advice on dealing with violence. 'cause that's something that comes out in the Tells toolkit stories and we ended up working on a project together and it's kind of just grown from there. So, so Alice wrote the tells toolkit Impact report, which came out last year. Um, and she's gonna talk a little bit too about the developments that we've got 'cause we've got some really exciting stuff in the pipeline. But, but you don't wanna hear me speak. I know you're all here to hear Alice. So I'm gonna hand over to Alice now and I'm gonna go quiet in the background so you get to see Alice's face. Um, and then what I'll do is I've got my notepad and pen here, and if you have any questions at all, I'll be noting things down all the way through. And at the end we can have a chat and chat through some of the questions that you've got. So, does that sound good everybody? Yeah. So over, over to you, Alice. Thanks. Thank you. Um, hi everyone. Um, thank you for spending your evening with us. This is really, really wonderful. Um, the last time I did one of these, I think I did it with a small child sitting on my knee. You did. If I'm really lucky, that's not gonna happen this time. Mm-Hmm. Um, they, it shouldn't happen this time. They should be in bed. Um, so who knows? Um, okay. So, um, I'm gonna talk a little bit today about, um, social emotional development and storytelling and why I think it's really important. And then I'm gonna tell you a little bit about what our first evaluation looked like. So feel free to ask questions as we go along. I will attempt to chip in and try and answer them, but I might not, I might miss, um, and we may do them at the end, um, instead. Alright, so where to start? So, storytelling is the, the reason that I, I like sales toolkit so much, and the reason that I like working with them is because storytelling is, is part of what we do. It's one of the most human, um, things, behaviors that, that we see across cultures, across times. Um, and it's one of the most important ways of giving information to people, not only people that, that we, um, hang out with, um, but also kind of intergenerationally. Um, and that's what I want to think a little bit about today and why doing storytelling with, with small people is, is so important across a range of different domains. So what I hope that you get outta this is an idea that, um, of, of the power of storytelling really, and why it's, it's such a useful thing for us to build into to our learning. So what do we know? We know that storytelling is positively associated with all kinds of good outcomes. Um, so we know that a quality of a child's, um, narrative ability, um, predicts reading, um, at, uh, six years old. Um, and that predicts, um, literacy, um, outcomes a year later as well, um, at seven. And we know that they are really important because really I think narrative skills sit alongside the development of phony awareness and vocabulary, um, as one of the key predictors of literacy based outcomes for children. So we know that telling Tales is, is really an ancient activity. It's, we see it across cultures, across ages, across settings, um, and one of the reasons it's so powerful, I think is because it has this capacity to really capture attention. So we capture people's attention, people's emotions, people imagination, people's imagination. And this is true of adults for sure, but also of children. And we also know that if the opportunity is there, children preschoolers will, will jump at the chance to engage in those sorts of early skills. So children love listening to stories, being read to them, or telling a story through a song, um, or will sit and leaf through a storybook on their own and make up their own story before much before they, they've learned to read. So what storytelling is useful for is that it prepares children for later literacy practice in school, because what it does, it allows them to start using quite a sophisticated form of communication. So we call this decontextualized talk, so it's not bound by its immediate context. We're not talking about something that's concrete in here, in the room right now, or we're not talking about, you know, something that that's about me or, or about, you know, somebody in that particular conversation. It's decontextualized because it's about objects or feelings or ideas that are from the past or in the future, or in the complete abstract, in the imagination, um, you know, in the kind of fantasy world. Whereas with most of our contextualized talk with children is really about the present. You know, what, what are we doing now? Um, how are you feeling now? And sort of working in a much more concrete way. Now, this kind of talk is really important because what it's promoting is this idea of higher order thinking. So if you remember something, if you reminisce about something that happened to you last week or a few years ago, then you are needing to kind of use your long-term memory, but also your ability to organize that information in order to kind of tell it in a, in a time sensible way. Um, we're talking about, um, kind of bringing to the fore real life experiences often, um, and thinking about things that have either happened or might happen in the future, things that we hope will happen in the future. So not only is it important from those kinds of higher order cognitive perspective, but also in terms of grammar. We're asking children here to use past tense, future tense, conditional tense. Um, and all of these things are really sound basis for what we expect from children when, when they start their sort of formal schooling. So one of the advantages I think, of using story in this way at school is that it's about us being able to promote a child's imagination, their language, their creativity in a very low stakes environment. And this is one of the important things I think about Tale's toolkit, is that nobody's ever wrong. It's impossible to be wrong if you're telling a, a make-believe story. So we're giving, um, children the opportunity to engage with something where they can't get the answer wrong because it's, it's, it's an open story that everyone's learning to tell. So that was something I think about the sort of cognitive and language aspects of storytelling, which is really important. But we also know that storytelling is social in its nature, and that's something that's really important for us. So given all these foundation skills in terms of storytelling comprehension, they provide for reading and reading comprehension. Um, and one of these studies from a few years ago suggests that story-based interventions absolutely suited for what we do in a preschool environment. So storytelling needs to be social. Um, and this is something which I don't think is particularly controversial for us to think about. But one of the things which is really important is that storytelling allows us an opportunity to have a really high quality interaction with, with a child so high. We know that high quality preschool, um, and earlier settings are warm, they're stimulating. Um, children get clear instructions. And we know that using storytelling in these environments allow all of these things to happen. So we're, we're stimulating imaginations. There is often a good deal of silliness and warmth and, and fun in stories, um, which is really important I think, for helping to develop those relationships. So we know that, um, playful learning is something which helps vocabulary to develop. Um, and partly this is also because it provides another sort of avenue for, for low states learning that, that you're not getting anything wrong if the atmosphere is one of fun and warmth and support for, for children. So we're interested, we, when, when we started thinking about what tales talk, it looked like in a sort of theoretical perspective, we're interested in this idea of sustained shared thinking. Now you are practitioners and I'm not gonna tell you how to do your job because that'll be embarrassing for all of us. Um, and none of this is new, right? Interacting with children, listening to what they're saying is nothing new. What sustained shared thinking really does from, from, um, a kind of theoretical perspective is allow adults and children to cooperate. And what I really like about this is that learning then happens in a dynamic way. So we learn to problem solve together. Um, we build a narrative together and learning happens over time, incrementally, but in partnership with somebody else. So it really fits into a kind of a gosky model of learning where we're thinking about, well, what, what can we do? What can a child do on their own? What can a child do if we as an adult support them? And then where are we going to get that child to go in future? And this approach in school and also at home, and we'll talk about this a little bit later, really supports academic and social emotional development in a really positive way. Because you are allowing yourself to demonstrate to a child, um, how, how things work, how to solve problems. You're doing it as, as an adult telling, telling a child something useful for them. So our children don't start at two ready to tell a story. Um, they begin to tell stories very early, about two years old, um, using just a few sentences and a few phrases. But really we start telling stories to children far before that, don't we? So, um, there's research that shows, for example, he, um, here that reading stories and singing to premature babies has a really good impact on their, um, on their heart rate and on their sort of physical health, um, um, indexes. And this is likely because if we're singing or we're telling a story, the rhythm of our voice is neatly modd. Um, we are being able to put kind of positive emotion and expression into what we're saying. And there's, there's a nice sort of lilt to, to telling those stories that children who are extremely young find kind of comforting. We let babies leaf through books on their own. We start to tell stories using props, um, that we find around the house. So glove puppets and things like this, we take little children to, to rhyme time and we start singing them songs and then they start to tell us their own stories. So, um, you know, at two years old we're seeing children who tell us stories that might consist of just one or two words per idea. Um, but from that maybe we can get quite a decent idea about, you know, how their day has been or, or, or something similar. Now it's not until about five years old that children start to produce stories that seem to have quite an, a sort of coherent plot structure and theme. Um, but despite that, young children's narratives have an absolute wealth of information about what they can remember about their day. So what they're feeling, how they've resolved conflicts, um, things, things that have happened to them or they've done. So. So my 2-year-old, um, attends a nursery and um, he's, he's got, he's got a sort of story stuck in his head at the minute. If I ask him what he's done today, he tells me about a little boy, um, in hi in his group called Peter. Um, and he says, uh, oh, Peter awa Peter cries. Why? Why does he, why does he cry bike? What, what, did he fall off his bike? Did he bite my, my son calls himself. Did he, did he bike? Did you push Peter off the, did you want the bike? Yeah. And he tells this story again. He tells it most days. And I check, he does not push this child off a bike every day. I have checked. Um, but he tells this story and it's, it seems to be quite important to him to keep telling, 'cause it was an event that happened to him that was clearly quite important that, that this kid who he really likes, um, he has had this interaction with and it's, it gets stuck in his head and he's been able to tell the story using about five or six words, which I think is, is quite impressive. Um, and it's something that, that we can persuade, uh, children to do with a little bit of prompting, um, and a little bit of kind of pulling ideas out of them Now. Um, I have been stupid and not plugged in my computer and that's something I need to do. So I'm gonna run, um, and fetch my charger and do this right now. I'm gonna be back in two seconds. Kate, do you want to, I don't know, fill in some gaps while I run off? That's because I haven't got my microphone on. My microphone is on now. Can you hear me? Yay. I think, I think we're back in. Oh yeah. Yeah. Um, so I was just saying that we do quite a lot of storytelling with very young children. So, um, with Tell's Toolkit we have, um, children as young as two and even lower that tells stories. Um, I dunno if anybody here has got an experience of that, but what Alice was saying about, just with a few words, we have children that will tell a story just with kind of four words. So it'll be like, um, character, uh, tiger, um, setting River Splash Splash. And so you kind of very quickly come up with really quick stories with children. Um, can you hear us Sarah? Um, so like, really kind of young children and it's interesting because I think just watching the way that they move and the things that they say and the kind of noises they put in, like Alice was saying, very quickly you can start to understand their stories. And I remember a long time ago and I was working with, um, Trisha Lee from Helicopter Stories and she was telling us about lots of stories that she would look at where, um, it would just be kind of like one sentence, but the way that a child acted that out was very interesting in terms of actually putting across the story for people. But, but yeah. Can everyone hear me? I'm getting lots of messages to say you can't hear us there. Um, yes. Good. Yeah. Does anybody else have any experiences in terms of storytelling with very young children? Um, I know for us we use lots of action and we use lots of kind of physical movement to engage children and then also you start to see them doing that themselves. So, and it's kind of like a way that then some of your more vocal, vocal children will kind of chat through stories and some of the others will just start to edge their way in and join into some of those group stories a little bit at a time. So yeah, just trying to see if anyone else has got any experiences up here, but yeah, later on as well, Alice is gonna be talking about some of the trials that we've been doing and she's gonna give you some of the feedback on those. And she's also gonna be talking about some of the work that we've been doing with parents. So, and that's gonna be really interesting because I think it's gonna be a different way again of telling stories. Oh, hello. Alice is back. Yeah. You in, you charged? Yep, I am. Can you hear me? Yep. I've been winging it. I've been winging For a little bit. Good. You're you're awesome. Thank you. Yeah, you're Always awesome. Alright, let's, let's Go back. Although we were just talking Alice, about, um, some of the kind of really basic stories that some of the younger children's house Mm mm-Hmm. Yeah. So yeah, Sharon's been saying she's been trying helicopter stories and I was saying that, um, when we used to use helicopter stories in schools and we worked with Trisha Lee, she was saying about even one sentence can be a story. I remember she talked about a child that told us. Yeah. So it can be like, the way that they act out and the things that they do can very much kind of come across even with a few words, so Yeah. Yeah. But Right. I'll, I'll I'll hand back to you, Alice. Thanks. So one of the other, um, important things when we're thinking about developing stories is how children learn the as of storytelling. Um, and there are cultural differences in this, um, which are, which are interesting and, and useful to think about, but that's, some of those differences are quite subtle. Um, I'm probably a little bit too, sort of in depth to think about right now. Um, but really children learn to tell stories through repeated very verbal interactions with important people in their lives. So, uh, their parents, their relatives, um, teachers, um, other people in their community that they spend time with. And it's probably useful for us to think about when people tell stories and you, you can think about it, you can observe it. And I've been thinking about it for myself when I tell a story, um, and what happens when I tell a story. And it's a really useful thing to observe, I think as you go through. So this, this evening, um, we've been singing wheels on the bus at dinner time. And, um, I was, I was telling my eldest about when, when we were little and we were at primary school and we used to go to our swimming lessons on a, on an old fashioned double decker bus. Um, and we used to bounce up and down like the children in the song, right? We used to bounce so down on the backseat and the driver used to stop and tell us off, so as we could walk back if we were going to be so badly behaved. And he do, you know, he was a, he found it hilarious that we were so naughty. Um, and also he just listened. He really paid attention and listened. Um, and, and I got halfway through his story and got distracted by something else. He went, no carry on telling the story. And he used the word as well. I thought, yeah, no, this is exactly what this is. So we know that people tell stories all of the time, often at the dinner table, a bedtime, a bath time. Um, but, but other times too, right? When, when we're, you know, in the car, when we're on the bus, um, and if we surround children with this kind of conversation and then we listen to them and we kind of elaborate on it and help them to grow their own story, then we're teaching them this kind of art of storytelling. And so actually by the time children start formal schooling, usually those norms around storytelling are actually quite well developed because most children will have a very rich experience of storytelling, um, for themselves, which I think is something we don't often recognize, um, brilliantly. So what does this mean for schools? So we have thought about languish and language and literacy already, and that's not, it's not really where, where I think we're, we're sort of, uh, getting our, our biggest payoff to be honest. Um, to be successful in school, children need to have the kinds of cognitive and social skills that are going to be, um, to be useful for them to be able to understand new ideas, um, but also to be able to maintain and grow relationships with, with their teachers, but also with their new peer group. Um, and really that kind of academic achievement in the first few years really is built on a good foundation of children's emotional and social skills. So storytelling is a tool that kind of promotes both cognitive, we've thought about that, but also social and emotional development. And so it, it kind of provides us with, with more grist to the idea that this is a really important thing for us to be really, um, really promoting in early years. So what do we do when we, when we, when we do storytelling, what kind of social emotional development aspects does it promote? Well, it promotes chil, it promotes school readiness because it allows children a space to process emotions. So we spend quite a lot of our time talking about emotions to small children. And as a result, uh, a fairly young preschool level children can talk about basic emotions. So, so my my 2-year-old with really fairly basic speech still can identify happy, sad cross. Um, yeah, they're, they're his, his main ones. Um, and they can notice those in other people and they can, you know, kind of think about them in relation to how they feel. Um, and they're starting to kind of provide stronger elaborations about, about why somebody else might be feeling that way as, as they move or pre, uh, they move through preschool, um, into formal school. So they begin to understand that emotions come perhaps because of interactions with other people. You know, I am crossed because you did this or somebody, or this happened, or I am sad because, you know, um, somebody, somebody said something mean to me. Storytelling can also help us to identify, um, and also resolve conflict. Um, so it's about sort of as well as problem solving. It's also about kind of building our own sense of self-identity. So we might use props sometimes with children to think about aspects of, of life that are sometimes quite complex for children to try and work out on their own. So if a child is going through a tricky life event, then actually telling a story and thinking about that life event in quite an abstract way, it can be a very useful thing to do in order to help children kind of develop that sense, um, of, of identity, uh, more more broadly. So what does that mean for what we've done so far? So I'll tell you what schwart I'll do. I think before I start telling you about the evaluation that we did. I think probably now is a good time to take some questions about social emotional development more broadly. Is there anything that people want to ask now before I start to think about the, um, the evaluation? Um, one of the things that came through Alice was um hmm. Charlotte was saying that in a lot of schools stories aren't given importance in the timetable. Right? I just wondered what your thoughts were on this or, but yeah. What are your thoughts on this, Alice? I think they're vital. I think they're completely vital and I think there's, for a few reasons Mm-Hmm. I think it for all the things that we've talked about, yes. I think it gives children a really firm foundation in new vocabulary. Mm-Hmm. Um, so many stories involve words that children have never heard before. Yes. You know, animals they've never come across before. Absolute made up words. All of that is, is wonderful for them. Thinking about, um, about how language develops so many stories will include things like rhymes, um, and the opportunity for children to be involved, which is, is wonderful. But also, do you know what they remember stories? Yes. And if I, if, if, if you ask your child about, you know, what, what have they done today? They'll remember the story that was read at the end of the day Mm-Hmm. And they'll be able to tell you what happened in that story. Yes. And that I think is, is really helpful from a sort of stealth homeschool relationship building perspective as well. Mm-Hmm. So, you know, if you want to, to start drawing families into, into learning as well, then a child who goes home and goes, oh, we read this story is a great way of starting to do it because you ask your child what they did at school, they'll say, I dunno, can't remember. Yeah. But they'll remember the story they were told. They just will. Mm-Hmm. It's true. Um, one of the things as well, we say to um, teachers, 'cause I know that often teachers are struggling with quite formal timetables or maybe a head that doesn't understand, um, early years or kind of the, maybe the way that they teach. So, um, and this is probably something that you've got a lot of information on, Alice, is that Mm-Hmm. Back it up with research and tell them like, like why it's good, why it works, and then kind of point out some of those things that are like, look, this shows because a lot of your schools will be interested in the literacy and interested in the scores for SATs and interested in that kind of stuff. And ultimately reading stories is gonna impact all of that. So is there any good research that you can point towards people? Um, do you know what, I can certainly find you the best Mm-Hmm. I think, I think that's probably the most useful thing to see. There's, there's, there's a nice review paper that I read, um, which I will locate and send over to you that, that Yeah. Can be shared. Um, which I think is a really nice basis of this is why storytelling is great for young children. Um, and covered lots of the things that I've talked about already. Brilliant. That'd be really good. Yeah. Um, one of the other things that, um, people have been chatting about here is about kind of physical movement and active storytelling and Hmm. Yeah. I dunno if you've got anything on that. Yeah. So, um, well, other than I think it's a great idea. Um, I don't think I've come across any firm research about kind of active physical storytelling. I'm not, no, I don't think I have. I don't think I've come across any, I can certainly look for some That's our next project. Yeah. I think, I think that's a really great idea. Thinking about the embodiment of, because you know, children, you know, when they're learning phonics and things, often they are embodying those sounds, aren't they? They're using kind of robot arms to think about passing out words and things. So, Mm-Hmm. I think it makes perfect sense to include some of that kind of, you know, it's things like going on a bear hunt. All of that involves movement, doesn't it? Yes. Everyone knows how to kind of swish and, and, you know, draw the movements to that. So I think really from a kind of multisensory learning perspective, it's completely sensible to do it. Yes. That's it. Yeah. And Lucy saying links with children with all their senses. Exactly. Exactly. Yes. Yes. That's it. I'm a big, I'm a big fan of, of kind of the Yeah. The idea of multi-sensory learning. I think it's, I think it's wonderful. Yes. I did notice that a couple of people here were talking about being silly. Yes. I know. It's tricky for people and I understand that. Um, and I think it's one of the most important things that we can do is, is to demonstrate that we know how to be a bit silly. Mm-Hmm. Yes. Um, because young children love it. Yes. Um, and bizarrely I've seen that it's one of the best ways for children to learn to respect their teacher if they've seen them kind of ballet dance across the floor or, you know Yes. Kind of told them something faintly ridiculous. They get on board with it immediately. Yes. Um, I think stories and I think particularly using something like Tell's toolkit provides a nice structured way for you to be a bit silly. Yes. You know, you can put on a silly voice when you tell a story. Um, you can allow, you know, a particularly silly story to develop from children. You can be okay with them saying poo or something, you know, because they're all gonna, they're all just gonna fall about laughing because somebody said it. But if you're kind of okay with it, you know, if you kind of go, oh, that's ridiculous, and kind of let them go with it. Yeah. So you know that they're gonna go home and, and say that you said poo. Um, but also it's going to be something that they, you know, that they remember and that they, they kind of run with. I think that, I think children are also absolutely fine at managing to compartmentalize that. So if you're silly in one situation, I don't think they're going to necessarily think, well this is what happens in all situations. Yes. I think, I think they're perfectly okay with, okay, yeah. In this situation, actually we behave like this and in this situation it's okay for us to, you know, try some more stuff out and be a bit daft. Mm-Hmm. Um, me and you've had quite a few conversations, Alice Mm. People might be interested in around playfulness and kind of learning a new language. And this came through first when we were, we were talking about children that were, um, deaf, that had parents that weren't. Yes. And, and this was something we were saying, uh, 'cause you were approached, weren't you at one of the conferences where a practitioner was saying that often for children that are deaf, the parent is having to learn sign language alongside them. Yeah. And some of that playfulness is lost in the conversation of Absolutely. Yeah. And also we've been talking about that it's really, really important to get parents to interact with their children in their home language because yes, they're a lot more playful in their home language and they'll use that kind of playfulness with words and sounds and things. But yeah, It's exactly, no, it's, it's exactly that thing. And actually, I guess the, those two situations are kind of similar. Mm-Hmm. So you, 'cause you're using your sort of second language, whether it be sign or if you are, if you are, you know, if you would usually speak another language with a child, you're, you're sort of thinking that you should speak English with them. Yes. You lose Some of that ability to be playful with language because you're thinking about how to get it right yourself. Yes. Yeah. So when I think about, you know, kind of, I dunno, teeth cleaning with small children. Mm-Hmm. No one's favorite job is it? But, you know, if I'm learning sign for the first time, maybe all I've really got is, you know, it was time to clean your teeth. Mm-Hmm. Maybe I don't have all that kind of richness of, you know, kind of, well, you know, what, what do I have to do to get my child to clean their teeth this evening? Um, you know, we've, we've talked about having pirate teeth if we don't clean our teeth Mm-Hmm. And, you know, all of these, all of these kinds of things to try and persuade them that it's actually a reasonable idea. Um, we, we make up songs. We, you know, all of these things I can do, we can do because I'm using a language that I can mess around with and play with. And if I can't do that, then actually I'm left with just some quite concrete instructions. Mm-Hmm. Um, which precludes I think some of that bonding experience as well. Mm-Hmm. So, yeah, I'm, I'm very much of the mind that, that parents, wherever they can need to use a language that works for them, and you see a lot of parents want to use their home language with their, or their native language with their children, even if they're quite fluent in English. They often like to use their native language with children because that's The way they were spoken to as children by their, by their mother. And that's the language, the kind of childish language that they've internalized and they know how to use. Yeah. That's it. 'cause you were saying the other day, Alice, that when you speak to your children, you often need your mom's accent. I do. I do. Yeah. And that's why my children grown up in South London have got weird kind of northern inflection sometimes That don't belong today. Yeah, it's true. It does. It comes out. So, so yeah, it does. Mm-Hmm. Yeah. Okay. Alright. So should I talk a bit about the evaluation that we did? Yeah. Alright. So I, I will go through this fairly briefly because I think it's important and it's, and it's useful I think as kind of, Um, You know, a sort of ballast if, if you want to sort of approach senior management about why this kind of thing is a really good idea. So what you, I think you know, enough about what Tales Toolkit is for me not really to go into great detail about it. Kate, is that right? Uh, yes, I'm happy. Okay, Cool. So I'll crack on. Okay. So, um, we carried out an evaluation of, um, Settings that we using Tale Toolkit, um, versus those who were not yet. So all of the settings that took part ended up using Tales Toolkit. So I think from a kind of ethos perspective, we can be fairly confident that these schools were interested in this method of learning, um, that had kind of literacy and, and language building at, at, you know, at the forefront of, of their priorities. So we worked with, uh, just over 460 children age between two and five who were attending a setting currently using Sales Toolkit during that academic year. And then about 200 children who, who were in a setting who were not using Tails Toolkit during that year. Um, it was possible for us to match those groups according to age, um, and according to gender. Um, and we collected data from schools, um, from their, um, development matters from the UIFS development matters levels, um, from the Autumn baseline. And then from the summer, um, we looked at gains over the year compared By groups. Um, We Also did some qualitative work with practitioners, which I'll talk through a little bit about at the end. We also aimed to look at groups where we think often there is disadvantage in literacy and language learning. So we looked at, um, English an additional language. We looked at pupil premium children, um, and also there were a very small number of students, um, that we had information about documented, um, SEND. So hopefully you can see these graphs. I'm gonna go into each one in more detail, so don't worry if you can't see, there's enormously clearly against the white background. But what I hope you can see overall is that, um, the orange bars on the top here are showing a kind of breakaway from the blue bars who are our control scores, our comparison scores in each of these settings. Yeah. So in each of the settings, the orange and blue bars start in fairly much the same place. There are some very, very small differences between some of the set, um, between the settings for some of these areas. Um, but what's more important is that by summer those gaps have widened in quite an important way. And that's what, um, I'm gonna try and go through in a bit more detail. Um, Alice? Yeah. Um, just a quick one. I just thought if there's anybody in the audience that doesn't know what Tells toolkit is, um, just to kind of give you that it's storytelling for young children and it's about children creating their own stories, and it's very much about those back and forth playful interactions. So just in terms of this research, it's very much based on what Alice has been talking about, that this is the results that you get when you offer those playful opportunities for storytelling. So just thought I'd show that in there in case anyone didn't know what tele toolkit was. Thanks. Okay. So I'll go through, um, each of the stages quite briefly. Um, you don't need to care too much about the statistics, but I'll tell you the interesting bits. So, um, communication and language, um, by the summer baseline, we've got, um, statistically significant differences between, um, between tales, toolkit settings, and control settings. Um, there's no effect of gender here. Boys and girls are doing similarly well as each other at baseline and in the summer. Um, and these differences equate to something like three months. Um, difference in, in terms of, um, scaling on, on the development matters. Um, I don't think you can see that. Maybe it's just my screen, that means you can't see this brilliantly. Um, here again, in ps uh, personal social emotional development, there's no effective gender. Again, um, boys and girls were doing just as well at baseline as for summer. Um, and here the difference, um, has an even stronger, um, effect size. So previously the effect size was about 0.07. Here is 0.1, these are quite large effect sizes. And what effect sizes are useful for is first thinking about, well, something statistically significantly different. Okay, fine, we've got quite big numbers, that's quite easy to, to achieve, but what does it mean? How, how important are those differences? Um, you know, how much attention should we pay to them? And differences of something over sort of, I dunno, about sort of 0.5 upwards, tell us that there's, there's at least a sort of medium to large effect size, um, occurring in, in, for, for each of these, which is, is something which is worth thinking about if it's translating to about three months difference, um, in development between our tele toolkit settings and our, and our comparison settings. So for literacy, again, we see something quite similar, um, in terms of the overall and, um, also for expressive arts and design. So for creativity, we see really similar findings that our sales toolkit schools are really breaking away by the summer term. Now, one of the things that we've been interested in are what gender differences look like. So we had gender differences in creativity, um, and also, um, in literacy. So in creativity, this is what this looks like. So in our tales toolkit at school, our boys are doing slightly worse at baseline. By the summer, they're not doing worse. So these, this, this gap is statistically significant. This gap is not, so by the summer term our boys are doing just as well as girls. In terms of, um, EAL um, ratings in our comparison settings, these lines are pretty much parallel. And in fact, I think there's a slightly larger breakout here between girls and boys. So boys aren't making those gains in the comparison settings here. The same is true for literacy. So in literacy, um, what we managed to do was to, to close the, the literacy gap. So one of the reasons I think that some schools have, have kind of looked at this is, is because a lot of schools have gotta focus on boys literacy. Um, now to some extent that literacy gap is developmentally appropriate. Girls learn language a little bit faster than boys on the whole. Um, and so it figures that their early literacy is also kind of slightly ahead. However, what we don't want to do is lose boys at this point. So there's a difference between kind of attainment and, and there being a potential difference in attainment in sort of temporary way in early years. And then losing boys because they lose the motivation because they think I'm not good at it, because it's not interesting because girls are so much better, other people are so much better. That's the point where things really are quite tricky here. What we show is that literacy scores, um, the, the gap between girls and boys Intel stalk at schools reduced by 62%. So there's no difference between girls and boys, um, at this summer term. Um, in our comparison schools, the gap widened slightly. It widened only by about 22%, but that gap remains and it's an important gap. So we also talked to teachers about what they liked and probably, I don't need to tell you too much about this, but the things that, that we found really interesting, the things that I found really encouraging actually first of all was, was, um, actually, I'm gonna skip skip around just a bit on this slide, but about training, because I think it's really important that staff can all train together. That here there's an opportunity for everyone to sit down at the same time, um, and learn something new regardless of, of your status, um, in the school. So, you know, teachers training alongside TAs, um, and everyone's sort of learning at the same time. So being able to share practice, um, and being able to ensure a bit of consistency, um, of approach in, in each classroom. Um, we like the idea of tales toolkit, it being used in a very inclusive and flexible way. So for a student who might need a little bit more, um, support, um, for children who have additional needs. And we have some really nice stories from schools about how they have used Girls' Toolkit with children who, um, are on the autistic spectrum, who have specific difficulties with language. Um, and I think it's, it's really interesting to think about how we might grow this in future. Um, and I love the idea that children are taking ownership of their stories. So these are quotes from things that teachers have told us. So children take real ownership of their stories. And this is brilliant. The child goes home at the end of the day and tells a story that they have made up. It's a wonderful thing. It's a wonderful sense of pride in something that they've, they've done as a group, as a class, um, especially if they found it sort of funny and, and, and interesting and it's something that they can remember. So I think the last thing I want to do is to tell you about where we're going next. Um, Kate, do you want to chip in with anything here before I start? Or do you want me to, to do that, Alice? I'm happy. Okay. I'll just sit in the back and look really pleased. All right then. Um, so, um, where is this gonna go next? So we have a ton of ideas about where this might go next. Um, but the thing that we're, we're working on right now is, um, is to bring this home to families as well. Mm-Hmm. Um, and this year we've been funded by the OVO Foundation. So ovo, the energy company, have their own charity arm and they have funded us a decent amount of money to sit and think about how we, um, develop resources to bring this home to families. So we know that some schools are already inviting parents in to think about what this looks like. I mean, these are pictures of parents in, in the classroom. Yes. Um, getting involved, being a bit silly. Um, so what we want to do is to show parents what's possible and then give them some resources to take home so that they can do this at home as well. Mm-Hmm. So our job for this is to develop some training for schools because we're not going to train a hundred school year parents. Um, here we want training sessions to be run by teachers. So to bring parents in to tell them what you're doing in the classroom, to bring them in to some of your sessions, maybe to show them what you're doing, um, and then give them the resources so they can do exactly the same thing at home. And so you can start to share the stories in two directions, stories coming from home, and then stories coming from the classroom. And what we hope is that as a result of this, it might be possible to engage some parents who previously were a bit more tricky to, to bring into school or to engage with kind of school activities. Parents who feel a bit worried about some of those activities. Um, parents, you know, who, who, when you start doing some early years work, you know, some of the first introduction you have as, as a parent into school is come and learn about phonics. And, you know, we, we didn't do phonics at school. Mm-Hmm. Um, we have, there's a whole kind of, here's a whole new vocabulary that you've suddenly got to learn. And it seems a bit intimidating, I think for, for some parents to have something which is simple and structured that the child is already an expert on because they've been doing it in the classroom. And to be able to kind of grow that dynamic relationship at home, we hope is, is gonna be quite a powerful thing, um, for, for families and schools to be able to build on. Mm-Hmm. So we've done this in a very small way so far, rather, schools have been leading this in a, in a, in a small way so far. Yeah. And these are some of the things that, that parents have told us. So parents are getting hold of the same vocabulary. So they, they're using this, this, you know, observe weight and, and this an idea, it's hard not to ask questions, but I'm trying, this is wonderful. Um, they're doing this at home, especially when real problems occur. So parents are thinking for themselves now about how to embed that vocabulary into what they're doing, um, and how to embed it into, into what happens, um, in, in their lives at home. And we've got I think a small video, Kate, that we can, we do, I'll put show how parents are feeling about this. Yeah. Um, what I was gonna say as well is, is this anyone in the audience? 'cause one of the sessions, so three of the sessions will be for parents to listen to with sort of staff in the school. But one of the sessions is gonna be about how to engage those tricky parents. And we're working with some really great people on this. So we've got, um, Kathy Brody, Alistair, Bryce Clegg, uh, Kathy Silver, uh, Bonnie Oliver, um, Julian Grenier, um, alum Shaha, um, and Monet co Bayer are all gonna be working really closely with us. And one of those sessions is gonna be all about really how to engage parents that are kind of more difficult to get in. So if anybody has anything that they've found that worked or top tips or information, then feel free to send us that. 'cause we're gonna be collecting a lot, aren't we Alice? We are. We are. Yeah. But all ideas are welcome. All ideas are very welcome. So, so yeah. So this video is, um, some of the parents that have been using the tele toolkit training and the kicks, and this is some interviews that we did with them. Benjamin had a really poor speech. He's really struggled with his speech. It's coming so much since, since nursery. But I do feel like the tales toolkit it and having that kind of avenue to practice his speech with and to try and gain his confidence to speak up in front of the group as it's really helped him come on leaps and bounds actually. 'cause he knows this, he knows the self, you know, it's a structure. It's very predictable, you know, and I think it's just, obviously that adds to confidence of the child, doesn't it? So his speech has just come on so much this year. We'll say, well, what's the problem with this? And like, how can we resolve it? So it's mainly we've brought it into like, sort of our everyday living, not just making it like a story and a game. And I think even with Thomas and he's seven, he's loved doing it. Even if we're out and about, he'll just randomly say, oh, that's a character, that's a setting and, and things like that. So it, we have had lot, lots of enjoyment doing it. I think without the training, I wouldn't have thought to take it to that level of bringing music in and song in and actions and having the confidence, but seeing how much it brings on their story and how much they remember it, it's just fantastic. Yeah. And not to be afraid of making yourself look silly and stuff, Just letting they go with the flow, you know, letting the children, um, have their imagination. So if, if Alex was saying, um, I don't, if Zo did such a thing, then, um, not to say, well, did she do this or did should not do that. Not discourage him from, from saying his part because I think that's what he should be saying. Um, so letting him do free flow really. It's really good for the children to bring the confidence out of them. And I've definitely, definitely seen a different difference in Alex and he loves doing it and I don't think it's sort of a thing that they have to do. I think it's a thing that they want to do. And I, um, I think when we've been to the sessions of like, there's so much that you can get out of it. Um, so I definitely think it's worth doing and carrying on as well. Cool. Yeah, I put that back over for you, Alice. Thank you. Yeah, I think, I think I'm kind of drawing to a close really. Okay. Yeah. Um, but yeah, what would people like to ask? Is there any kind of questions that you'd like to ask Alice while she's here? Um, could be about the trial that we're gonna be doing over the next few years. We've got, um, we've got a research assistant coming to work with us, haven't we Alice? Yes we do. Yes. Which is good stuff. Yeah. But also about any social emotional stuff. And Alice is very good in terms of kind of violence and all of that kind of stuff. And story great at, she's great at violence, so Yeah. But, but anything that you kind of wanna ask Alice about storytelling, anything that she's touched upon tonight, then feel free. So Yeah. Yeah. Um, uh, we've got a comment here about, oh, have you any idea when there should be something available to give to parents? It's gonna be, well, it's going slightly slower than we thought, isn't it Alice? So yes, we were due to start sort of in August, but we started really last week. Yeah. Um, but we're hoping to get something together over the next year. Um, and then the second year then we'll be measuring some of the impact on that. Yeah. But yeah, so this year you're gonna start to see some stuff coming through. Yeah. Yeah, I think so. And I think some of that might be really available on a sort of, you know, trial this and see how it works for you kind of a basis. I think so. But the plan is that we've, we've got something fairly set down by the end of the end of this academic year Yes. That we can send out for a proper trial, um, next September. Yes, that'd be lovely, Sarah. We would love your hands on. Yeah. Thank you. So yeah, So, and I think actually one thing we need to think about, and one thing I'd, I'd really appreciate is, is the sort of the critical friend, you know, the sort of what is tricky about engaging parents? What is going to make it more tricky? Um, what challenges do we need to overcome? Yes, yes. Yeah. And I think there's gonna be quite a lot, Every setting's gonna be slightly different in terms of their challenges and we need to be able to think about and provide an answer for as many of those things as we can. Yes. Yeah. One of the things we've been talking quite a lot about is, um, the kind of, when do you get 'em in? Is it after school? Is it during school? Do you need to crash? How do you cover it? Staff? So lots of questions that that will be coming out too. So. Yeah. Um, so Leanna said a suggestion for engaging parents is to just actually get out to the playground and approach them. It's, it's true. It's just about being approachable and being there and, and often I think that, oh, still can't hear me. Let me see. Can you hear me Alice? I can, yeah. You're fine. Yeah. Okay, cool. Um, Charlotte's having problems tonight with the sound. Um, so, um, well, well there'll be a recording Charlotte afterwards that you can watch. Um, so yeah, I think a lot of that is kind of being available. And we've spoken a lot Alice, about, for a lot of parents, sometimes it's for them too, because if they've got issues at home that they wanna offload and speak about, there's, it's often that they wanna talk about their children, but also about the problems they might have too. So. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I think so. And I, I think this is especially true for parents of children who are finding school tricky. Yes. Um, for, for various reasons, you know, children with kind of documented SEND children who are finding school tricky because home is a bit tricky. There are, I think the, I I spend most of my time working in SMH settings, um, and I know that, that parents, even very young children, they, they, you know, develop a sort of fear that they are blamed for their child's presentation and behavior very, very quickly. Yes. And sometimes they're in terms that's not, you know, paranoia on their part, but they find it tricky, I think to trust schools and to sort of, you know, they kind of wanna get in and get out quite quickly before somebody says, oh, and your kid did this, you know? Mm-Hmm. Oh, this happened the other day and that wasn't great, was it? You know, they, they hear a lot of negative stuff and to hear something that's positive and that's, you know, kind of, oh, but what if we do this and this, this will go really nicely, is wonderful. Yes, it's true. And Leanne's just said also lots of parents didn't have a good experience at school themselves for for sure, For sure. That's Yeah. Yeah, that's true. Yeah. They are, they're, yeah. Parents scared to read. 'cause one of the things that we are looking at really giving them lots of opportunity to do is just to have those playful, fun Yeah. Non sort of pressured opportunities with their children. So it's not about their reading level, it's not about kind of getting in and having to know a lot of information. It's just about having fun really with their kids. Yeah. And you find that a lot of these parents have got hidden skills that they've forgotten about. You know, they might, they, and this is, you know, when when you do tell talk at school, you can, you know, you get a big piece of paper out on the floor and do some scribbling, you find that some of our parents are, you know, pretty decent at drawing cartoons or, you know, got some, got some are quite musical. They've got some skills that they haven't really thought about using for a long time either. And it's, it's wonderful for those to be recognized. Yes, it's true. Yeah. Um, Sharon's just saying that a lot of the time, there's younger parents that feel uncomfortable around older parents. Yeah. So, yeah, it's true. Yeah. That's it. Yeah. I used to run the, um, young parents group actually for one of the boroughs I worked in. Mm. Yeah. Which was really interesting. I really enjoyed that was one of my favorite jobs. Yeah. So, yeah. But it's, it's just finding about what resonates with them, isn't it? Yes. Yeah. But we have Thought about children's centers. We have, we've, we've had this discussion with, well, well, one borough that doesn't have any anymore. Isn't that right? It's all about where, where we can find, we can, we can still find children's centers. Yes. Um, but I think that's something that we'll be able to do and at least one borough that we're working with. Mm-Hmm. Yes. That's it. And we've also talked about libraries. Yes. We've looked, uh, we've talked about, looked after children. Yep. Uh, what else have we talked about? Alice? Child minders. Child minders we've been starting to work with, so, yep, Yep. Yeah. But no, children's centers are just a wealth of knowledge, so Yes. They're really keen to link with children's centers. Yeah. So, yeah. Yeah. Is there anything else you'd like to say, Alice? No, I don't, I don't think so. Thank you. Mainly thanks. Yeah. And Alice said to me before, she was like, do people actually come out and, and do this in their evening after work? And I was like, yeah. I was, I was amazed. It's like, Seriously, like more than two people want to do this in their evening. It is astonishing and wonderful. That's it. Good. It's, yeah. I'm, I'm incredibly grateful. Thank you. Yeah. We've got enthusiastic teachers are our favorite kind. Oh, They're, well, they're my favorite kind too, but I'm full admiration. Thank you. That's it. But has anybody else got any questions just before we let Alice go off and have an evening? Brilliant. Yeah. Thank you, Lucy. I'm big thank you to everybody for coming along. So it's been really lovely to have you out tonight. Sorry about all the problems with the sound. I hope you got to hear most of it. Um, but the recording will be going onto the member's website afterwards, so you can look at that. Yep. But yeah, big. Thank you Alice. Thanks Kate. Yeah. And you'll be seeing more of Alice around. She'll be with us, so for sure. That's it. But yeah. Big thank you everyone. Good. Okay. Good night. Thanks. Good.