Storyteller Julie Della Torre acts out story with students at Head Start in Morristown
Morris Arts is pleased to announce its partnership with Storytelling Arts, Inc. to expand early literacy programs with the students and teachers at the Morris County Head Start in Morristown and Dover. This program designed for students who face substantial socioeconomic obstacles that impede their ability to achieve “school readiness”, uses storytelling to help develop emergent literacy skills, including: listening, vocabulary, comprehension, sequencing, and recall. These are the building blocks of reading, writing, and oral communication.
The National Association for the Education of Young Children posits that readiness is more than basic knowledge of language and math, and those expectations should include physical, cognitive, social, and emotional competence, as well as a positive attitude towards learning. Storytelling specifically addresses human emotional development and provides a lens through which children can study and understand the world around them.
This year, through funding from Morris Arts, the program was expanded to provide over 35 additional classroom visits.