National Storytelling Week at Berkhamsted Prep

Berkhamsted Prep celebrated National Storytelling week.

The bookworms of Berkhamsted Prep were busy last week!

Across Prep, we celebrated National Storytelling week, which forms part of the National Year of Reading. Pupils embraced the chance to share stories across their community in an exciting series of events.

The week opened with an assembly led by Mrs Spurr, who helped pupils reflect on what storytelling could mean. They explored how expansive the definition of a story could be: from “messages passed down through generations” to “something that comes from your imagination.”

With these broader ideas to frame the week, every pupil was urged to discover their own unique story and to enjoy the stories of others. Mrs Spurr read out an excerpt from her favourite book to end the assembly, and a wonderful week of storytelling began.

For Year 5, National Storytelling week has involved bonding with the older years at Berkhamsted Girls and Boys. Each day, Year 8 junior prefects have met with groups of Year 5s to share their favourite stories and practise reading out loud. Our prefects chose a range of different books, from their own favourite novels to picture books and poetry.

One prefect shared, “I thought this would be a good experience to bond with the younger years and just enjoy reading with them. I really like reading and hopefully Year 5 enjoyed it too!”

In Years 3 and 4, pupils discovered how they could share stories through rhythm in a webinar with rapper Alim Kamara. Kamara showed them how Rap, or ‘Rhythm And Poetry’, was really just a construction of personal expressions, put to a beat and bars. After joining in with some of Kamara’s raps (and enjoying a few classroom dance breaks), pupils created their own rhyming couplets about their personal superpowers. This webinar was a great reminder that storytelling comes in many forms- all of which could be powerful and creative in their own way.

These events were not just one-off opportunities to remember the value of storytelling: at Berkhamsted Prep, we believe that fostering a love of reading is fundamental to every child’s development. Through exciting author visits, frequent library sessions and ample reading time in class, we nurture pupils to become confident, creative readers with outstanding literacy.

“Our ethos at Berkhamsted Prep is that we really value play and we value children’s enjoyment of experiences,” English Lead Rachel Willis explained after a visit from bestselling author Jeff Kinney. “We want them to enjoy reading, and see reading as something that can be fun and playful as it really inspires their imagination.”

By engaging with a range of storytelling and reading opportunities, we develop remarkable young learners. We will continue to support a range of opportunities to encourage our pupils, helping them to become eager readers and storytellers for life.

Next in the calendar- the ever-popular World Book Day! Watch this space…