This morning I was rung up out of the blue by Hereford Radio station who wanted me to talk about the fact that people are using technology like Lexa to read to children instead of reading to children themselves.

I think that they felt that I should be admonishing the practice and promoting reading to your child, children every night but frankly life is not so linear and not everyone can or wants to.  This is why I am becoming more and more passionate about the 'Story Gift Scheme' which is a different and yet magical approach to this whole issue.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/p077w59n?fbclid=IwAR3Sdv5qyJPlJ9COZ-31S8Eqd0iiF1KiUD6Hn_uuIyxfbzeBs99_Lkw_wOE

Please let me know what you think especially if you have kids and don't have the time to read to them, I would love to hear from you to find out how we could help with that. 

Today I had a meeting with Mrs Sarah Bowman from E.B. Primary, Mr Gavin Hetherington from E.B High school and the 12 story tellers in year 9.  The idea was to get their feedback and to see if they wanted to continue the Story Gift Scheme as much as the Primary school children wanted them too and all 12 want to continue and get better at story telling! 

The hour or so meeting was filled with how the students felt about story telling to the younger children and what they liked about it, what they could do better next time, how they could teach that to other children in year 9?  The room was just a buzz of enthusiastic creativity from the 6 boys and 6 girls that have started the scheme even though the first comment when asked how they found reading to a whole class of year 1 and 2 was 'intimidating'!  But here they are just as enthusiastic about want to do it again as the younger children are about having them come back for more story reading.

The story tellers were then shown the amazing feedback that the primary school children had given them and you could see that they were blown away by realising what a positive effect their story telling was having.  It is a magical thing to be a part of.

Now each student has been charged with finding another story to read to the younger ones as well as to recruit another student from year 9 to be their partner in story telling thus doubling the numbers of story tellers.  

We are slowly building a format (and learning from our mistakes whilst doing so) that we can offer out to other schools.  

​It's a quiet story revolution!