Māori are storytellers – always have been, always will be. It’s the way that we capture knowledge, and the way that we share knowledge through generations, the way that we connect to our identity, the way that we connect to others, as well. One of the ways that we do that is in waiata, so capture our learnings, put them in waiata, and we know our tamariki love waiata, and are drawn to waiata. So, I think our tūpuna knew that this was a really powerful way of sharing knowledge, of sharing stories, of sharing language – identity. As we are storytellers, there’s so many different ways that we share stories through weaving and carving, through oral storytelling – so, waiata as I just mentioned, pūrākau which is storytelling, and kapa haka, which is maybe oral and more embodied storytelling. These are all reference points that we can come back to, to draw from, to share stories. So, we have our more physical objects like weaving and carving, which hold symbols within them, and we can draw on those as ways to share stories. Then we have our more oral forms like waiata, pūrākau, which are shared orally.

How do stories and storytelling experiences support children’s learning and development?

So, oral language is that foundation of child development, and storytelling is one of those rich, oral practices, to help build all of those skills. So, through storytelling, we’re building vocabulary, so extending and expanding on vocabulary, either reinforcing words that tamariki already know, or introducing new words. We’re learning the phonemes of a language, so the individual sounds, which might be a ‘k’, a ‘l’, a ‘p’. So, we learn over time that those individual sounds make up a word – those individual words make up sentences, and particularly I think this is important around te reo Māori, where as adults, if we’re not familiar with te reo Māori, it can be difficult to pronounce some Māori words, specifically like the ‘ng’, or the rolled ‘r’ – so, ‘ngeru’ might be a really difficult world for people, but when we hear the sounds of te reo when we’re quite young, then we play with those sounds, as youngsters. We practise them, and then it’s easier as adults around that pronunciation. So, with storytelling, we learn that stories have a beginning, a middle, an end, which is important for reading and writing, for telling stories, for communicating, but also just a general sense … having a beginning, middle, and end helps with communication, and talking and connecting with others. 

Storytelling, as I’ve just said through most of the other korero, really creates that sense of belonging, identity, finding your sense of … providing a sense of connection and belonging to Aotearoa, even for Māori and non-Māori alike. Te Whāriki has strong links with belonging, so storytelling is one of the powerful ways that we can build a strong sense of identity, belonging – a sense of self within Aotearoa. As Māori, we often hear a lot of really negative stories about ourselves in statistics, in the media, but our stories really have such incredible stories around resilience, innovation, learning, being adventurers, being all these different kinds of people. I look to our navigation stories around this. So, our tūpuna traversed and navigated the biggest ocean in the world, a long time ago. There’s this myth out there that Māori drifted to Aotearoa, which undermines, I think, the knowledge that we had around te taiao, around navigation, around sharing knowledge between generations. So, when we hear these amazing and incredible stories of navigation, Māori can look to those stories and go, wow, we’re innovators, we’re navigators, we’re learners, we can be adaptive, we are all of these things – not just what we hear in the media or statistics. So, I think in terms of storytelling and drawing on the stories – our indigenous stories, it really gives – especially for our Māori tamariki, a sense of, oh, I am a learner, learning is fun, I can be innovative and adaptive, and our Māori stories – waiata, whakataukī – are all steeped with those powerful stories and messages that we can share with Māori, to build that sense of belonging and identity, which is also resilience-building.

What kinds of stories can we share with tamariki?

I’m going to go back to an example, again within my own whānau – an experience that I had myself with literacy as a young child. So, my dad used to make up stories – bedtime stories, and he would … me and my siblings would be the main characters in these stories. They weren’t fantastical or wildly imaginative stories. They might be stories about how we went to the beach that day, and looked at shells, what the weather was like – very simple, kind of re-telling stories of what we did that day. This is one of my earliest kind of happy memories of being cuddled up with Dad in the evening, and with my brother – warm, comfy, happy, and relaxed and, as we know, when we’re in this relaxed state, our learning brains are on.  When we go into a stressed state, we go into fight or flight mode, and our learning brains come offline. So, we were in that relaxed space, so our learning brains were online, soaking up that language. 

As we know, young tamariki also learn language from people that they have strong relationships with, so you’re learning much more language from people you have close relationships with, than with strangers, or with people you don’t know that well. So, all of the ingredients are there for a rich language experience, a rich literacy experience – we’re relaxed, we’re happy, we’re within warm relationships, we’re going back to something familiar that happened that day, extending and adding language, coming back to a reference point that we’re comfortable with, because we already know it. It’s building a sense of identity and belonging. So, it’s being reflected back to us that we’re the kind of family that goes to the beach. We have a connection to the moana – to the ocean. All of these things are just – they’re all the great ingredients for rich learning, and language, and literacy.  

So that’s one of the powerful practices that has stayed in my whānau. So, my dad shared that with us, and his dad shared that – used to do that with him. I assumed my grandad did, but I wasn’t sure, and I asked my dad, and he said, oh, yeah – he used to share stories from his ‘make-up mind’. That’s what he would call it. Then, our great-grandfather was an incredible orator, so I know that he used to share that with him, and I’m sure that has just come through the generations. So, that’s one of the examples of – one of the ways that we can share stories, but also one of the ways that we can affirm a literacy practice that has been passed down through generations.  

When I think about other whānau or kaiako in ECEs, I think it lets people know that we can just make up and share stories about anything that’s happening during the day – they don’t have to be flash or fantastical. I know one whānau shares stories about the rubbish truck that comes on Thursday morning. The rubbish truck is loud, and noisy, and the two-year-old’s very interested in this rubbish truck. So, Mum shares how it arrives on Thursday morning, and the rubbish man picks it up. They’re from Malaysia, so she also talks about how it’s different in Malaysia, the way that rubbish gets dealt with, so there’s all this beautiful learning. To us, as adults, it might seem like a boring story, but to tamariki, this is all – the rubbish truck is very new. What is it, what does it do, why does it do it, why is it so loud and interesting?  

Another way that stories can be shared is through waiata. We know tamariki are drawn to waiata, to songs, to moving, and I think out tūpuna knew and understood this, and that’s one of the reasons why we would capture our stories and knowledge in waiata. One of the incredible examples that we have is oriori. So, oriori are waiata written specifically for babies, and within those waiata contain the whakapapa of that child – the ancestry of that child, some of the iwi or hapū or whānau histories, the hopes and dreams that whānau or iwi would have for that child, and within these oriori were some of the most rich poetic and dense language. So, it wasn’t stripped down or done back for our babies. It was, here's the most beautiful, rich language that we can wrap around our babies, so they know who they are, where they’ve come from, and it’s got all this beautiful language in it. So, often shared with babies before they were born, so in the womb, or during birth, and afterwards, the whole whānau or the whole tribe would learn this waiata, as well. Some of these oriori are really old, and have been passed down through generation and generation. What these oriori tell me is that our tūpuna understood that babies were wired for language-learning – they were wired for language-learning in the fact that they didn’t strip this language back. It was so dense and rich, but they knew that laying the foundation of this language with babies, even before they were born, was the way of laying a foundation for language, identity, culture, knowing who they are, and growing into the kind of person that whānau wanted them to be. So, a really incredible practice and way of storytelling with our really young tamariki, and through waiata.

Angela: I think stories are important as a foundation, because it’s how we primarily communicate with each other. Even as adults when we talk to each other we’re sharing stories, we’re sharing anecdotes, we’re sort of enjoying each other’s company and presence, and you’re really building that relationship. Yeah, even when the children are very young, and they can’t do the traditional verbalising their stories, they’re showing it through their facial expressions, their gestures, their body language, their songs, their tone of voice. It’s just the way of kind of communicating and getting to know one another.

What kinds of stories can you share in ECE settings?

Angela: We share a lot of small stories throughout the day. So, even when the child gets dropped off, and we talk to them a little bit about, what have you gotten up to, and they might just say, ‘Mum’ or ‘Dad’. We can extend over that and go, ‘oh, yeah – Mum dropped you off – she’s off to work – bye, Mum’. Those kinds of things – just again, extending on their knowledge and understanding, their vocabulary. It’s just also a nice way to keep building that relationship between us, between the families.

Irene: Stories also that come from books, so we read a lot of stories to the children. So, they often get the chance to choose what book they would really like the teacher to read to them, so they get that book, and we read stories from that book. Stories also that are through songs, because there’s a story in the song. So, we know what songs they like, for example, the songs in their own language so we play that one. Stories from conversational stories like what they are doing, we describe what they are doing, so that’s also a story for the children, or maybe stories that are shared by the parents, so we extend on that, we build on that story that’s mentioned by parents, and then we describe it to the children. So these are just some of the stories that we build on.

Angela: And also, just because of the pictures around the environment of past experiences, as well. That’s another story to sort of build on, what was happening previously – remember when we went to this, or pictures of when we went to Te Papa, and you played with this. They just get excited to get see their friends, and they talk about their names, and so they just say, ‘this is Emma, this is Mia’. They just get very excited. It’s nice to see that enjoyment, because that’s also an important part of telling stories – enjoying being with each other, and talking with each other.

Irene: I remember you made the book. Angela made the book that has the pictures of the children. It’s a book about the farm, so who’s behind the door – who’s behind the horse?  Then, behind that would be the picture of the children, and the children really love it, because they’re able to identify the names of their friends there, and they’re happy to see their photos in the book. So, that’s really a good – it’s a hit. It’s a good resource.

How can teachers actively support children’s learning about and through stories?

Jodi: My favourite type of story is oral storytelling. I love it because there’s lots of gesture.  There’s lots of expression, and there’s lots of opportunities for interpretation. So, we do a lot of oral storytelling. We often do the process by introducing a book, or the child will introduce a book to us. We’ll read it a couple of times, so children become really confident and familiar with it, and once they’ve understood the concept of the book, then there’s opportunities where we will dress up and act the story out, so children can see that language is not always through conversation – it’s definitely through body language, and those facial expressions, which really supports those non-verbal children. Once the children have become comfortable with that process, we offer props and resources, and the opportunity through the child-led programme for children to go and access these whenever they like.  We have noticed on many occasions, children will dress up and re-enact the story, and it gives them the opportunities to re-interpret what they’re hearing – to really strengthen those sounds, the words, and develop their own sentences, and start structuring things together that maybe us, as teachers, have never thought about. So, giving them those opportunities to be really expressive and free to become really curious is really important. We’ve just seen children thrive with confidence, to engage in conversations willingly.  

Kelly: We also branch that out into other curriculum areas to provide other opportunities for children who may not have that confidence to do that yet. So, for example, we’ve just been doing a project, and we had the story of Jack and the Beanstalk, so what we did – we re-enacted it, we’ve done all that with them, but to provide other opportunities, we brought it out … so a curriculum area which everyone is familiar with is playdough. So, we had provocations set up with the playdough, with the characters, and we had a teacher intentionally sit there, and the conversations that flowed – the children who might not have had those conversations before, in front of the large group, were able to sit there in an intimate small pocket, and express themselves verbally, using playdough, and the props that we provided. So, it just shows that there’s so many ways that you can introduce the storytelling, in many mediums. Having art experiences with that same Jack and the Beanstalk, the children creating the beanstalk, and the characters, using those open-ended resources that we obviously have in our kindy, which we’ve talked about, having things – acorns, leaves, all of that as well – by providing that, they’re able to use art to story-tell, and verbalise what they’re creating, as well.