In 2007, Jo Weinberger, a researcher at the University of Sheffield, interviewed primary school family learning development officer Anne Stafford about a course she had devised for involving parents actively in young children’s literacy learning. With the parents on the course, Stafford drew up a grid as a tool for discussing the educational content of story sacks, along with resources and activities to accompany favourite picturebooks and nursery rhymes.
The grid initially included space for reflecting on children’s engagement with the story, but grew from recording learning in literacy to illustrating and evidencing learning across every area of the EYFS curriculum. The ‘communication skills’ that the story sacks nurtured did remain ‘absolutely paramount’ to the project, as ‘the richness of language, reading and books’ comes ‘into every area of learning’. However, the story sacks also provided parents with a means of coming to understand the Early Learning Goals not as something distant, unintelligible, or ‘weird and wonderful’, but interconnected, approachable and understandable.
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