We enjoy listening to and telling stories, they often reflect our own experiences or emotions and we use metaphors to express ourselves. Particularly so in young children, it's almost as though metaphor is their natural language. Very young children tend to imitate the adults around them and they try to make sense of their experience through their make believe play. 

Pupils with social, emotional and mental health difficulties need to be able to share their personal narrative in a safe way in order to make sense of their experiences. Story metaphor is ideal for doing this whilst supporting the pupils’ literacy skills.

During today’s episode I discuss the use of metaphors within stories to support emotional literacy with my guest Dr Trisha Waters. Trisha is an educational therapist who began her career supporting pupils with emotional and behavioural difficulties. After that she led the MA in SEN & Inclusion at the University of Chichester and is now a director of the Centre for Therapeutic Storywriting.

Listen to find out how you can support your pupils’ emotional literacy and wellbeing through story metaphors.

Resources:

storylinkstraining.co.uk (video on home page)

Therapeutic Storywriting: A Practical Guide to Developing Emotional Literacy in Primary Schools by Trisha Waters Research papers: https://www.therapeuticstorywriting.co.uk/research/research-story-links

Video: Introducing Therapeutic Storywriting Groups - https://therapeuticstorywritingtraining.co.uk (video on home page)

‘Therapeutic Storywriting: A Practical Guide to Developing Emotional Literacy in Primary Schools’ by Trisha Waters - https://www.therapeuticstorywriting.co.uk/book

Therapeutic Storywriting Research Papers - https://www.therapeuticstorywriting.co.uk/research/research-tsw-groups

Contact Trisha:

Website: www.therapeuticstorywriting.co.uk

Twitter: @TherapyStoryhttps://twitter.com/therapystory

Facebook: Centre for Therapeutic Storywriting