English Storytelling for Children: Sparking their Imagination in the World of Reading
English learning starts at an early age in Hong Kong. From kindergarten, children learn the names of the people, animals, places and things that populate their imaginations and their storybooks. In primary and secondary schools, NETs work with their colleagues to combine images and text to bring English to life. While this happens naturally in classrooms and reading rooms, students also connect with English through the stories they read and the films they watch outside school time.
Since the 2015/16 school year, the English Storytelling for Children Programme, a collaborative project between the NET Section and the Leisure and Cultural Services Department (LCSD) has been implemented to provide opportunities for NETs to bring their creative arts to the wider community. This storytelling programme is a great way to promote literacy and spark the imagination of our children. Through these sessions we can provide fun book sharing experiences for kids and at the same time offer NETs an opportunity to be involved in local communities outside of the school environment.
The storytelling programme has been very popular. It has been expanding ever since its inception. In the first year, 11 NETs were involved in engaging more than 800 children in 38 sessions held in 12 public libraries all over Hong Kong. Also, thousands of children have since enjoyed listening to stories and responding through creative arts and crafts activities.
The NET Section’s support for the promotion of family literacy has expanded to make reading opportunities more inclusive since 2018/19. To cater for the needs of ethnic minority groups, our storytelling programme in public libraries has included sessions partly conducted in Urdu, Nepalese and Hindi to engage children from those language backgrounds.
Since the 2019/20 school year, our community service has been further enriched through our collaboration with Bring Me A Book, a non-profit organisation dedicated to the promotion of family literacy. After each storytelling session, this charitable organisation gives away story books to participants so that the pleasure of reading can continue at home.
Let’s continue to spark the imagination of our young minds through storytelling!
To find out more about all our Storytelling events, please visit here.
