What is the Tales Toolkit Package?

Our core training is delivered online with 5 videos, each roughly 50 minutes long.

We highly  recommend watching these videos together as a team to ensure consistent  implementation of the training and, more importantly, because it's fun! Timed activities within the videos are designed to get you and your  colleagues thinking creatively and get you excited to start telling stories  with the children.

Each video will focus on  a different topic or resource. You will learn why storytelling is such a  powerful tool for learning, how to follow our storytelling model and ways to  implement all our classroom resources easily and creatively. The 5 videos  should be spaced across 3 or 4 months to allow time for embedding. By the end  of your first term with Tales Toolkit, you'll have everything you need to make inspired stories with the children and the children will be making leaps  and bounds in their own stories.

Our  training videos are further supported by additional resources including webinars with experts available to stream from the members area. Get a preview of the training by creating a Free Account.

It sure can.  Many of our settings use Tales Toolkit alongside other interventions, such as  Helicopter Stories and Talk for Writing (Pie Corbett). These methods can  complement each other and we recognise that the best approach to teaching and  learning is multidimensional.

Absolutely! Tales Toolkit's methods and resources (including our symbols and story  bags) were designed for accessibility.

Non-members are welcome to purchase our shuffle book by creating a free account and visiting the shop in the members area. The rest of the resources are only available to paying members.

The package was designed by and for early years practitioners working with children aged 0-5 but is not restricted to this age group. Tales Toolkit is also used in KS1, KS2 and in settings with varying age ranges (e.g. special educational needs or high levels of English as an additional language).

We recommend that once you complete your first training video, you and your team deliver at least one story session a week. These can be integrated into other  activities and also form continuous provision. And remember, Tales Toolkit  sessions are designed to be Low-to-No Planning.

Where to start?! Tales Toolkit has shown incredible  benefits for many of the key areas of the EYFS: language and communication, creativity, confidence, problem-solving... In a study carried out with  Goldsmiths University, it was found that Tales Toolkit also helps to close  the gender literacy gap, bringing boys' writing up to match with girls.

Tales Toolkit is also a great for continuing professional development, brings the whole team together and is designed to reduce teacher workload. Both children and teachers agree that Tales Toolkit is great fun too. Get more  detail about the benefits of Tales Toolkit.

Yes, it  does! The Tales Toolkit package encompasses training and ongoing development  opportunities that satisfy legislative guidance for teachers' professional development.

Yes -  we're actually designing a separate training programme for families with  support from the OVO Foundation and we hope to release it in 2025. Until the  new training programme is complete, there is a collection of videos and  resources created specifically for parents and guardians to use at home.  Please note that currently available content was created during the Covid-19 pandemic. If you'd like to hear more about getting access to home-learning  resources, email us.