









































Abstract

Storytelling is a natural means of communication between generations and is deeply rooted 
in culture. In today’s classrooms, the act of storytelling is often overshadowed by a narrow focus 
on academics. However, storytelling could be viewed as a means of transformative education by 
creating autonomous, independent thinkers as demonstrated in this manuscript. Children can use 
storytelling as a way to demonstrate depth of understanding, apply critical thinking skills, and to be 
active learners in their own education. This study details the use of a creative storytelling strategy 
implemented in an early childhood classroom which was interrupted by the COVID-19 pandemic. 
The end result is a two-phase study which concluded with pre-kindergarten aged children using 
storytelling to discuss and display their perceptions of Coronavirus in an academic setting.

Keywords: Storytelling, Early Childhood Education, COVID pandemic

Zhulamanova, I., & Raisor, J. M.
Global Journal of Transformative Education (2022) Vol 3   
DOI  10.14434/gjte.v3i1.32098

Open Access

Published by the Global Insitutute of Transformative Education (http://www.gite.education)
© Zhulamanova & Raisor, 2022. Open Access This journal is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 
NonCommercial NonDerivative 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which 
permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction without revision in any non-commercial medium, provided you give 
appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license,

The Little Red Hen and a Corona Giant:
Creative Storytelling as a Transformative Strategy  
in an Early Childhood Classroom

Ilfa Zhulamanova and Jill M. Raisor

Full listing of authors and contacts can be 
found at the end of this article.

Introduction
Storytelling is deeply rooted in the belief that 

children learn through stories verbally shared across 
generations and often involving an interesting mixture 
of folklore and history. In today’s classrooms, the act of 
storytelling is often overshadowed by a narrow focus 
on academics in classrooms. However, children can use 
storytelling as a way to demonstrate depth  of their 
understanding, thinking, lived experiences and needs. 
For example, compare the following two teaching 
strategies. First, a book is read to children which might 
be disconnected from their lives and prior experienc-
es while encouraging passive listening skills (Global 
Institute for Transformative Education, 2021). Second, 
the same story is shared through a storytelling strategy 
where the children are given the opportunity to ac-
tively engage, take ownership, and construct their own 
meanings from the content. The second example clearly 
demonstrates the type of transformative education we

hope to encourage in classrooms. The overarching goal 
of this study was to use a storytelling as a creative strat-
egy in an early childhood classroom to open space for 
children for “dialoging” (Bakhtin, 1984) with the world 
to express themselves, their emotions and feelings, and 
lived experiences in a creative way.

The following manuscript details the use of a 
creative storytelling strategy implemented in an early 
childhood classroom which was interrupted by the 
COVID-19 pandemic. The end result is a two-phase 
study which concluded with pre-kindergarten aged 
children using storytelling to discuss and display their 
perceptions of Coronavirus.

Literature Review
Oral storytelling is an ancient and may be the 

earliest form of teaching. It serves a dual purpose of 
entertaining and transmitting cultural beliefs and val-
ues from one generation to the next in many cultures 
including Latinx (Melzi, Schick & Scarola, 2018) and 
African American (Champion, 2003). Under-studied in



Zhulamanova & Raisor, Creative Story Telling as a Transformative Strategy Page 4

education (Hibbin, 2016a), it continues to maintain 
cultural practices and traditions over time, socialize 
children into their cultures, and aid their overall de-
velopment (Barton & Barton, 2017; Landrum, Brak-
ke, & McCarthy, 2019; Strekalova-Hughes & Wang, 
2019). Storytelling attracts children to books (Ritchie, 
James-Szanton, & Howes, 2003) and excite the imagi-
nation, involve the listeners, and motivate children to 
try storytelling themselves and create their own tech-
niques (Morrow, 2020).

Storytelling is a form of transformational education 
that helps children to understand dynamics between 
their inner and outer worlds and the expansion of 
consciousness and the working toward a meaningful 
integrated life as evidenced in authentic relationships 
with self and others” (Boyd & Myers, 1988, p. 261). 
What is storytelling? The National Council of Teachers 
of English (NCTE) has provided a definition of oral 
storytelling as “relating a tale to one or more listen-
ers through voice and gesture” (Teaching Storytelling, 
1992). This simple definition considers the inherently 
social nature of storytelling that requires a listening 
audience to fulfil its definitional requirements. It also 
tacitly invokes the oral nature of storytelling whereby 
the tale is ‘related’ and not ‘read,’ and the emphasis 
upon ‘voice and gesture’ implicitly denies the use of a 
script. Bromley (2019) defines an oral story as any text 
that is imaginative, a retelling of a story or a recount of 
an experience.

Traditional storytelling in an early childhood class-
room is a product of students interacting socially with 
the elements in a book (Lisenbee & Ford, 2018). An ex-
ample of a traditional storytelling activity comes from 
research conducted on early childhood students expe-
riencing the story The Very Hungry Caterpillar (Carle, 
1987; Ford, 2009). These early childhood students 
enjoyed performing the book in addition to exploring 
the life cycle of a caterpillar through literacy centers.

In the profession of early childhood, storytelling 
was promoted by teacher researcher Vivian Paley 
(Copper, 2019). In Paley’s classroom, children dictate 
and dramatize their stories. Research findings sug-
gest that Paley’s storytelling approach to teaching and 
learning positively affect young children’s vocabulary 
and language skills and can serve as a feasible alterna-
tive to the skills-dominant and teacher-neutral early 
literacy curricula increasingly prevalent in pre-school 
classrooms around the country (Nicolopoulou, 2019; 
Ripstein, 2018). Moreover, as da Costa, Davim, Barbosa, 
& da Silva (2016) state storytelling has the power to

improve a child’s oral language skills, writing, and in-
crease their vocabularies. More recent research (Gard-
ner-Neblett & Sideris, 2017) conducted with children 
who are African American has found that the ability 
to tell a clear and coherent story is important for the 
development of reading skills.

Storytelling significantly increases children’s 
literacy skills along with self-regulation of emotions, 
communication and negotiation with peers, imagina-
tion, fantasy, humor, and creativity  (Maureen, Van der 
Meji & De Jong, 2018). Dyson (2009) highlights how 
as young writers tell stories they appropriate others’ 
voices (from home, school, community and media), 
thus expanding their knowledge about social practices, 
symbolic systems and their social world. There is differ-
ence in cognitive requirement between the experience 
of picture-book reading and that of storytelling, ac-
cording to neuroscience research (Ten, Van der Putten, 
Penne, Maes, Vlaskamp, 2016; Miyuki, Sachie, Satochi, 
Masato, Kazuto, Hirooki & Sinichi, 2018). The experi-
ence of storytelling requires more demanding level of 
active imagination from listeners. When the brain is 
active, concentration and attention are at work which 
contributes to information retention and comprehen-
sion. Thus, the difference in the prefrontal activation 
between the picture-book reading and the storytelling 
may reflect the difference in the cognitive demands for 
the act of imagining.

While storytelling is a practice common to all 
cultures and most children enter school with a basic 
understanding of narrative form (Meek, 1988), it is not 
widely accepted practice as compared to story reading. 
Speaking and listening is implicitly devalued as a result 
of the elevation of instrumental literacy-based practice 
in the primary curriculum (Hibbin, 2016b). Typically, 
schools place importance on the development of narra-
tive skills in writing but provide few opportunities for 
children to create and tell stories orally, once children 
become writers (Dawkins & ONeill, 2011).

In a busy curriculum-focused environment, the 
strategy of storytelling allows space and time to stop 
and listen to students in meaningful and purposeful 
way, while facilitating their learning (Bromley, 2019; 
Cooper, Capo, Karen, Mathes, & Gray, 2007). It is a 
transformative approach as it challenges students to 
be active rather than passive learners. Storytelling 
approach encourages students and teachers to think 
critically and requires communities to rethink curricu-
la to create space for students to analyze the universe 
(Global Institute for Transformative Education, 2021).

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Global Journal of Transformative Education (2022) Vol 3

Free-ranging, teacher-scaffolded activities, storytelling 
activities and curriculum in the early childhood class-
room validate who the children are, what they know, 
and what they care about. Thus, “the need for early 
childhood teachers to retain their historical focus on 
oral language-based curricula that are directed at fair 
and equitable goals for young children—like the story-
telling curriculum—has never been greater” (Cooper, 
Capo, Karen, Mathes, & Gray, 2007, p. 273).

Ironically, the study itself mirrors the unpredict-
ability of researching during the 2019 Coronavirus 
pandemic. Our research quest was to learn how chil-
dren respond to stories presented through storytelling 
strategies involving two-step method: 1) presenting 
a story to children using puppet show and 2) inviting 
children to respond, orally or in drawings, by re-telling 
the presented story or by creating their own stories. 
The working definition of storytelling in this study is 
oral re-telling of traditional tales, modelled by a story-
teller, and taught to children. The study detailed in this 
manuscript emphasizes the importance of storytelling.

Theoretical Framework
In this study, we draw upon Mikhail Bakhtin’s 

(1895-1975), literary and cultural theorist and philos-
opher’s work that emphasizes plurality of voices. In es-
sence, Bakhtin’s work is concerned with the oppressive 
character of monologue, the monopolization of mean-
ing, and the ruling out and suppressing of all compet-
ing voices. To counteract a “monologue” of prescribed 
preschool curricula driven by developmental norms 
and academic standards and standardized practices like 
book reading, we aimed to build upon the voices and 
stories of young children to allow them to learn and 
transform through creative literacy, play and perfor-
mance. Like Bakhtin, we believe that life is an ongoing, 
finalizable dialogue taking place at every moment of 
human existence.

“To live means to participate in dialogue: to ask 
questions, to heed, to respond, to agree, and so 
forth. In this dialogue a person participates whol-
ly and throughout his whole life: with his eyes, 
lips, hands, souls, spirit, and with his whole body 
and deeds… He invests his entire self in discourse, 
and this discourse enters into the dialogic fabric 
of human life, into the world symposium” (Bak-
tin, 1984, pp. 292-293).

Such a view imposes difference, uncertainty, play-
fulness, surprise, and open-endedness as necessary, 
positive, and productive aspects of human condition 
(Sterritt, 1998). However, what crucial to Bakhtinian 
dialogue is a finely tuned sense of listening. Bakhtin 
believed that by not listening we reject, disrespect, and 
disempower the speaker and the message. When we 
listen to children, we empower them. We learn about 
their inner thoughts, emotions, fears, anxiety, and joys 
through the act of storytelling. Transformative educa-
tion such as this displays a dramatic shift in views of 
teaching and learning, a shared ownership in education, 
a true sense of what it means to have student-teacher 
partnerships within the classroom (Global Institute for 
Transformative Education, 2021).

As the profession of early childhood education 
takes a deep interest in a more culturally sensitive, 
collaborative, strength-oriented, and empowering 
approach practices, Bakhtin’s ideas seem ever more 
prominent. In current times of uncertainty and unrest, 
there is a robust need for dialoging with and listening 
to the children we serve. Inviting children to engage in 
creating and telling their own stories is about opening a 
space for plurality of voices, innovation, wonder, poten-
tiality, freedom, and creativity that transcend monolog-
ic thinking and inform and expand traditional mundane 
classroom approaches of teaching and learning.

Storytelling Procedures
This study was conducted in two phases pre-

COVID-19 and during COVID-19. Beginning in the 
Spring 2020, three researchers visited the setting to be-
gin to establish a comfortable rapport with the children, 
classroom, and school. After obtaining families consent, 
around February 2020, the researchers introduced the 
idea of traditional storytelling to the teacher. During 
this time, once a week for five weeks, the researchers 
started the project by presenting a folk story using a 
puppet show as the main storytelling method. The sto-
rytelling technique implemented in our study comple-
mented that of Bromley (2019). The teacher told stories 
and children use teacher’s story as a springboard to 
develop their own stories.

The plan was to visit each week to engage in story-
telling activities during the circle time. After presenting 
the same story a few times, we planned to invite chil-
dren to create their own stories using the presented 
story as a springboard. The first story presented to chil-
dren was a simple version of The Little Red Hen story, 
an American folk tale meant to teach children the

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importance of hard work and personal initiative. The 
main characters used in this puppet show – the hen, cat 
and mouse – were hand-made by team members. Both 
the cat and mouse were made from wool and the hen 
was knitted using a wool thread (see Figure 1). The sto-
ry characters were available to the children afterwards 
to imitate and play with the puppets.

Figure 1. The Little Red Hen characters

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic the research came 
to an abrupt halt in spring 2020 after seven visits to 
the site. The study was able to resume in fall 2020 
during COVID-19; however, many barriers existed. The 
participants were all new to the classroom and non-es-
sential visitors were not allowed in the classroom due 
to COVID-19 precautions. Therefore, research contin-
ued in an online synchronous mode through the use 
of Zoom. The children were gathered around a Swivl 
which held an iPad. Swivl is a robot which can hold an 
iPad and rotates automatically to the marker. The mark-
er is similar in shape to a remote control and allows 
for virtually interactions to feel more in sync. Minimal 
issues occurred when utilizing the technology; however, 
one concern was that the iPad screen size was limited 
for the children to view.

Study Context and Participants
The school was intentionally chosen because of its 

proximity to the researchers, openness to research, 
and a shared history with the researchers. The school 
consists of 464 students, preschool through eighth 
grade (see Table 1). The classroom is nestled within the 
preschool wing with approximately 110 children. The 
participants in phase one included 15 preschool chil-
dren. ages three and four (see Table 2). The participa-
tion rate for the class was 94%. The participants in

phase two included 11 preschool children ages three 
and four (see Table 3). The participation rate for the 
class was 85%. Additionally, one lead teacher and one 
assistant, consistent in both phases of the study, con-
tributed greatly to arranging the technology and report-
ing information back to the researchers.

Table 1. Demographics of school by ethnicity

Table 2. Demographics of participants in phase 1

Table 3. Demographics of participants in phase 2

Storytelling Technique Phase 2
Due to COVID-19 precautions, all storytelling 

times in phase two of the study, were completed vir-
tually through the use of Zoom. During phase two, 
the research team virtually presented a Corona Giant 
therapeutic story to help children to deal with anxiety 
and stress they experience with all the changes and 
adaptations they deal on a daily basis. The children 
were presented this story three times within a week 
for approximately two weeks. The children were given 
the opportunity to contribute their own stories using 
the Corona Giant as a springboard. They could share 
their stories right after the presentation or later to their 
teachers orally or in drawings.

During phase two, the research team virtually pre-
sented a therapeutic story to help children to deal with 
anxiety and stress they experience with all the changes

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and adaptations they deal on a daily basis. This story, 
inserted below, was originally created by Susan Perrow 
(2012) and was slightly modified by the researchers to 
adapt to the current pandemic situation.

Corona Giant

Once upon a time, not so long ago, there lived a 
giant who was the strongest, largest, and most 
destructive creature ever to have lived on earth.

The strange thing was that no one had never seen 
the giant, but many had experienced its dark 
shadow as it traveled around the earth, leaving 
destructions everywhere. People called it the 
Corona Giant.

The Corona Giant was continually busy every day 
and night, moving around the world, stamping its 
dark presence on the Earth, in every city,s every 
village, and every home making children and their 
families stay. away from each other and making 
them feel lonely and fearful. No one knew where 
the Corona Giant lived and how to conquer it. No 
one was safe from it– not the adults or children.

The Giant, who lived high up in the Silver Castle 
above the clouds, heard news of these terrible 
events from the birds. She was very worried about 
the Corona Giant and the evil work it was doing 
on the Earth below. She decided to call a meeting 
and sent out an invitation to all the birds of the air 
everywhere in the world.

On the day of the meeting, the Giant was seat-
ed on her silver throne, beautiful in her flowing 
gown. All around here were gathered many birds: 
birds from every part of the world, birds of all 
colors and shapes and sizes, birds o the land and 
birds of the sea, birds of the day and birds of the 
night.

Patiently and carefully, the Giant listened to each 
and every bird. When all the stories had been 
told, the Giant spoke to the gathering:

“There must be a way to overcome this dark force 
that is taking over the earth. Every enemy has a 
weakness! Fly back where you have come from 
and try to find where the Corona Giant lives. 

Then you can observe what weakness it may have. 
Report back to me as soon as you can…There is 
not a moment to lose!”

 So, the birds flew back to their homes around the 
world and kept a careful watch where the giant 
lives. Days passed, weeks passed, months passed.

When it was almost a year, an old owl finally 
found the giant. He was flying high around moun-
tains searching for something to eat and flew into 
a deep dark cave. Inside this cave was a huge, 
dark, mumbling, rumbling. figure. It was of no 
definite shape. In fact, its shape seemed to change 
sizes and form with every sound it made. Some-
times, it looked like a giant red squid with many 
tentacles, other times, it turned into a scary, bear-
like figure and stomped angrily. As he stomped, 
he the repeatedly chanted these mumblings and 
rumblings:

All for me and me for all, 
Eating all things big and small.
Greed is my game and Power is my name

The owl hid in a far corner of the cave and 
watched and listened, as owls can do very well. 
Finally, the ugly, dark creature fell asleep. The owl 
quickly and quietly flew out of the deep mountain 
cave. Then, he began the long journey across the 
sky, all the way to the castle of the Giant. As he 
flew higher and higher, he kept saying the awful 
mumblings and rumblings so he would not forget 
them.

All for me and me for all, 
Eating all things big and small.
Greed is my game and Power is my name

When the Giant heard the story from the owl, she 
immediately recognized Giant’s weakness:

The Corona Giant only cares for itself - it only 
wants power for itself.

Then the Giant called for her helpers, the birds 
and she said: “Fly out around the world and sing 
this message to people. If they work together 
and care for each other, then they can slowly, but 
surely win this dark shadow that is harming the
children and families”.

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Strength in caring, strength in togetherness, 
Can overcome the giant’s selfishness.

The birds flew out to all parts of the world and as 
they flew, they sang the message from the Giant 
for all people on Earth to hear.

And to this day, the birds are signing their song. 
Sometimes they even drop feather messages 
which flatter softly to the ground. When people 
find these feathers lying on the ground (in the 
garden, on the street, or in the forest they know 
that this message has been sent directly to them. 
They pick up the feathers and they remember the 
message that has been send to them by the Giant:

Strength in caring, strength in togetherness!

And slowly but surely, the wisdom of the song of 
the birds is helping the children and adults of the 
world to overcome the dark power of the Corona 
Giant.

Data Collection and Analysis
Data in this two-phase basic qualitative study (Mer-

riam, 2002) came from children’s drawings, audio re-
cordings of children’s stories, photographs of children’s 
work, and recordings of all virtual storytelling visits 
with the children. Data collection and analysis were not 
separate processes but were interconnected and simul-
taneous (Hesse-Biber & Leavy, 2006) to gain insight 
into the main themes that emerged from children’s 
responses to the storytelling intervention. The record-
ings, images of storytelling episodes were reviewed and 
analyzed using thematic coding and inductive analysis 
(Hatch, 2002), that promotes proceeding from specific 
to general. The two faculty researchers analyzed the 
data separately and then compared findings to validate 
thematic findings.

Findings
The overarching goal of this study was to use 

storytelling as a creative strategy in an early childhood 
classroom to open space for plurality of voices that 
transcend monologic thinking driven by adults’ agenda 
and inform and expand traditional mundane classroom 
approaches of teaching and learning. As Pushor ex-
plains, “When they come to school, they come with this 
multiplicity and contextuality, not independent of it” 
(2010, p. 7). Therefore, it is important to create a space

for helping children to express themselves and their 
lived experiences in a creative way. Storytelling is 
about innovation, wonder, potentiality, freedom, and 
creativity that arise through plurality of voices, ideas 
and perspectives. Having such space in a classroom 
challenges, expands, and transcends traditional routine 
of teaching and learning practices. The following two 
themes emerged from the data analysis: 1) Storytelling 
makes children story makers, story tellers, and story 
actors and 2) Corona and children.

Storytelling makes children story makers, story 
tellers and story actors. Children in this classroom 
always engaged in various pretend play activities using 
prompts in dramatic play area. It was observed, how-
ever, that storytelling intervention provokes children to 
play with the story prompts and imitate the observed 
presentation. Having a shared play idea, stemmed from 
the story plot, provides a topic for conservation moti-
vating children to socialize, engage, construct scenar-
ios elevating their play to mature level that results in 
learning (Bodrova & Leong, 2008). It became visible 
that storytelling intervention provokes children to play 
with the story prompts and imitate the observed pre-
sentation. The concrete prompts and story table setting 
provide some direction inexplicitly making the children 
storytellers. These items were intentionally left in the 
setting during phase 1 to encourage interaction and 
retelling of stories. Engaged in dialoguing with each 
other (see Figure 2) they either repeated the same plot 
or come up with their own remarks for the characters. 
Children carry their ideas on into their dramatic play 
and the story continues to evolve and change includ-
ing new toys, materials, and players. The conversation 
enhanced social interaction and communication among 
children.

Figure 2. Children presenting The Little Red Hen

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Analysis of data also illustrates that children use 
the presented story characters and some elements of it 
as a springboard for making stories. For instance, see 
Figure 3 below. The child created his own version of 
the Corona Giant story by twisting the plot in his own 
way. In this picture, the Corona Giant is imprisoned, 
and the queen and birds are celebrating their victory. 
It is important to notice here, that the illustrations are 
solely a product of child’s imagination since the story 
was presented orally without the text. The child “trans-
lated” the auditory information onto the paper giving 
a shape and form to story characters he envisioned in 
his mind while he listened to the story. These mental 
representations derived from his previous knowledge 
and experiences.

Figure 3. A child’s story

During the storytelling time, children immersed in 
the spirit of presented stories. The children became not 
only story makers, but story tellers and story actors as 
well. Consider the four-year old’s child’s dictated story 
below:

It is actually like the queen and the prince live is 
a mountain on a castle with bears. And the prin-
cess was actually abandoned because she stealed 
[sic] all the joy and then they found the real prin-
cess at the witch castle. And then the birds pecked 
her and then she heard it so much, and then they 
fall to the ground, and then they go back to the 
castle and then the end.

This simultaneously simple and complex creation 
indicates the author’s expressive and receptive vocabu-
lary, awareness of words in sentences, phonemic aware-
ness, and understanding of the meaning of the words. It 
has a beginning, some drama in the middle, and the end 
and represents a child’s world of thinking and living.

Children take the story ideas and words into their 
dialogues, exchanges, and act them out in their dra-
matic play by intentional storytelling. For instance, 
consider this children’s dialogue that was observed on 
01/31/20. Three girls are playing in dramatic play area:

Child 1: Pretends to be a hen from the Little Red 
Hen story and ask her two playmates:

      Who wants to sweep the floor?
Child 2: (standing on her knees, pretending to be a 

cat) Not I!
Child 3: (sitting and presenting to be a mouse)  

Not I! 
Child 1: Who wants to help me to eat breakfast?
Child 2 & Child 3: I do, I do! 
Child 1: Promise me you help me, and I will share 

the breakfast with you.
Child 2 & Child 3: Nod their heads.

The presented Little Red Hen story plot was used 
here by these three children to organize their play, 
communicate, socialize and learn. Stories enhance the 
child’s inner world and result in imaginative play. Thus, 
the provided stories have a power to stimulate and fos-
ter dramatic play in early childhood classrooms.

Corona and children. This theme emerged in most 
of the children’s stories, drawings and dialogues in the 
forms of a germ, princesses, and giants. Analysis of 10 
children’s drawings collected resulted in one about a 
germ, four on princesses, and five on giants. The draw-
ing featuring the word “germ” was of a child keeping 
the germ from entering the child’s house (see Figure 4). 
Of interest, was the fact that the child felt confident in 
preventing the germ from entering the home; thereby, 
able to protect the family. Additional analysis would 
have been beneficial to explore how the child planned 
to keep the germ from entering the home. Would it have 
been health measures emphasized in the classroom, 
school, and community such as washing hands, staying 
at least six feet apart, etc.? Or would the child have cre-
ated an imaginary world in which superpowers would 
have served as a protective force?

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                   Figure 4. Child’s drawing - germ

Four of the drawings collected featured princess-
es. All princesses were smiling in the drawings. Ideas 
emerged such as a princess being saved by a knight, the 
princess getting to see her family (see Figure 5), the 
princess and her friends, and the princess enjoying the 
sun. Of interest to our study, was the drawing of a prin-
cess getting to see her family. Additional analysis would 
have been beneficial to determine why the princess was 
unable to see her family. Was the princess in quarantine 
which would have mimicked reality or was the princess, 
as often pictured in fairytales, captured and waiting to 
be rescued?

Figure 5. Child’s drawing – princess

A giant was the most featured object in the chil-
dren’s drawings. Consistently, the giant was angry or 
mad as evidenced by the children’s wording of “The 
giant is mad! Something is in his way!”; “The giant is 
mad! He didn’t like the people!”; “The giant stomped all 
over the world!”; “The giant is walking to the city.”; “The 
giant is being watched by the birds!”. The last quotation 
was the only giant pictured as smiling. All other giants 
had straight lines for a V shaped mouth, a horizontal 
line (see Figure 6), or a sad face. A likely correlation to 
the Corona Giant story was that the birds were helpful 
to the giant; therefore, the giant was pictured as smil-
ing.

               Figure 6. Child’s drawing - giant

This topic is also captured in one of the dialogues be-
tween the researcher and the children:

Researcher: So, what happened when Corona 
Giant came to your city? What did you do?

Children: Wear a mask! 
Researcher: Mask. Oh, yes. That’s how we 

changed. 
Children: And be safe.
Teacher: And where can’t you go now?
Child: I can’t go to Chuck E. Cheese now until 

Corona’s gone.

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Child: I can’t go to McDonald’s playground.
Child: I wanted to go to the movie and they said 

no, it’s closed.
Researcher: Yes, so the Corona Giant is making 

us do and not to do so many things. This is 
what I would like you to do children. Since I 
cannot see you guys, I mean I cannot come to 
your school. Can you draw your story for me?

Child: Yes! 
Child: I already made a book. I can make another 

book about Corona the Giant.

Discussion
The limited amount of collected data due to 

COVID-19 pandemic suggests that a storytelling ap-
proach to teaching and learning can positively affect 
young children’s learning and development by making 
them story makers, story tellers, and story actors. To 
become a story maker, one needs to listen to absorb the 
language and ideas of others.

A well-crafted and intentionally chosen narrative 
helps children to make sense of the world, imagine and 
“give birth” to their own stories to express, communi-
cate and ‘dialogue’ (Bakhtin, 1984). As it was observed 
in data, for a child as young as three or four, a simple 
dot on a paper or drawing is a story. When there is a 
story, there is a point to communicate, idea to express, 
and reason to participate in the “carnival” (Bakhtin, 
1984) of the social world. Creative storytelling strate-
gies promote active engagement in the learning process 
which can become transformative in nature. This way, 
telling stories promotes children’s language skills that 
stimulates overall development (Nicolopoulou, 2019; 
Ripstein, 2018). Practicing and mastering listening and 
oral language skills establishes profound foundation 
for children to become confident readers and writers 
at later stages (Hibbin, 2016b). It was also found that 
young children who heard the stories told demonstrat-
ed improved story comprehension in their retelling, 
while children in the story reading group improved 
their language complexity (Isbell, Sobol, Lindauer, & 
Lawrence, 2004).

Moreover, the creative storytelling intervention 
provokes young children to engage in dramatic play by 
imitating the observed practice. Normally, preschool 
children participate in physical play, object play, pre-
tend (or socio-dramatic) play, and guided play. Togeth-
er, they comprise four broad categories, each of which 
is based on the developmental purpose it serves and 
the relationship of each type to children’s learning. 

This is important for today’s world where not all chil-
dren know how to play (Bodrova, 2001, Karpov, 2005) 
and their play does not elevate to level when it results 
in learning (Gudareva, 2005). Only mature, sophis-
ticated level of play triggers cognition and promotes 
self-regulation (Bodrova & Leong, 2008; Bodrova & 
Leong, 2003).

Storytelling is different than reading and it requires 
more active work of the brain. When the brain is active, 
concentration and attention are at work which contrib-
utes to information retention and comprehension (Ten, 
Van der Putten, Penne, Maes, Vlaskamp, 2016; Miyu-
ki, Sachie, Satoshi, Masato, Kazuto, Hirooki & Sinichi, 
2018). Children need to use their imaginative powers to 
illustrate the story scenes in their mind to project it on 
paper or play later. However, the child’s response/cre-
ation does not directly mirror the adults ‘story but rath-
er intertwined with his own inner worries, concerns, 
thinking and understating of the world. This became 
visible in children’s illustrations of Corona Giant narra-
tive as they work was ‘painted’ by their fears of germs, 
separation of families, concerns about safety and 
overall underling anxiety about the pandemic situation. 
Telling and expressing their inner needs and emotions 
has a power to foster positive identity, empathic under-
standing of self and others and bi-directional communi-
cation (Hibbin, 2016a).

Therefore, it can be concluded that storytelling in-
vites children to become story makers, story tellers and 
story actors to think creatively and engage in dialogue 
with others and the world. The intentional organi-
zation of storytelling activity can be used as a tool to 
promote language, literacy, vocabulary, socio-emotional 
development, self-expression, identification with story 
characters, empathic understanding of self and others, 
culture and identity. It stimulates intrinsic motivation 
for play. The concrete prompts and story table setting 
provide some direction inexplicitly inviting the children 
to play. The classroom with storytelling and play can 
serve as a feasible alternative to the skills-dominant 
and teacher-neutral early literacy curricula increasingly 
prevalent in pre-kindergarten classrooms around the 
country.

The oral re-telling of traditional tales, modelled by 
a storyteller and taught to children in school, can be 
understood as ‘non-instrumental’ practice in speaking 
and listening that emphasizes oral language over the 
reading and writing of stories. Hibbin (2016a) suggests 
that psychosocial development of young people in 
school can be encouraged and actively pursued with

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Zhulamanova & Raisor, Creative Story Telling as a Transformative Strategy



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Global Journal of Transformative Education (2022) Vol 3

opportunities afforded by oral storytelling for self-ex-
pression, identification with story characters, empathic 
understanding of self and others and bi-directional 
communication.

In a busy curriculum-focused environment, the 
strategy of storytelling allows space and time to stop 
and listen to students in meaningful and purposeful 
way, while facilitating their learning (Bromley, 2019; 
Cooper, Capo, Karen, Mathes, & Gray, 2007). Free-rang-
ing, teacher-scaffolded activities storytelling activi-
ties and curriculum in the early childhood classroom 
validate who the children are, what they know, and 
what they care about. Thus, “the need for early child-
hood teachers to retain their historical focus on oral 
language-based curricula that are directed at fair and 
equitable goals for young children—like the storytelling 
curriculum—has never been greater” (Cooper, Capo, 
Karen, Mathes, & Gray, 2007, p. 273).

Conclusion
Storytelling is deeply rooted in the belief that 

children learn through stories verbally shared across 
generations. It is about innovation, wonder, potentiali-
ty, freedom, and creativity that arise through plurality 
of voices, ideas and perspectives. Having such space 
in a classroom challenges, expands, and transcends 
traditional routine of teaching and learning practices. 
However, in today’s classrooms, the act of storytelling is 
often overshadowed by a narrow focus on academics in 
classrooms. Therefore, it is important to create a space 
for helping children to express themselves and their 
lived experiences in a creative way. Children can use 
storytelling as a way to demonstrate the depth of their 
understanding as well as express emotions such as fear, 
worry, etc. In closure, the following poem was shared 
with the researchers by an older child.

Quarantine nothing to do.
Quarantine is it something for you?

Quarantine nothing to do.
Quarantine is a boring thing for me and you.

Watch out for germs, they are as hairy as worms.
Take some turns and you will find those germs!

Children have stories to share with us and it is 
our responsibility as educators to listen. Whether it is 
through stories, drawings, or poetry children are cre-
atively expressing themselves. This manuscript details 
the use of a creative storytelling strategy implemented 
in an early childhood classroom in two distinct phases 
due to the interruption of the COVID-19 pandemic. The 
result documents a beautiful display of children’s cre-
ative storytelling ability and its connectedness to real 
world events. Work such as this lays the path for trans-
formation in education. It demonstrates the importance 
of providing young children with the opportunity for an 
education better suited for global interconnectedness 
(Global Institute for Transformative Education, 2021).

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Acknowledgments
We would like to express our sincere gratitude to 

the school, teachers, children, and families who par-
ticipated in this study. We would also like to thank the 
contributions of Norah Baehl who assisted with this 
research.

Ilfa Zhulamanova (izhulamano@usi.edu) is an Assistant 
Professor in the Department at Teacher Education, Early 
Childhood, University of Southern Indiana, Evansville, 
Indiana, USA.  ORCID ID #0000-0002-3167-3289

Authors

Jill M. Raisor (jmraisor@usi.edu) is an Associate 
Professor in the Department at Teacher Education, Early 
Childhood, University of Southern Indiana, Evansville, 
Indiana, USA. ORCID ID #0000-0003-3333-4237

Zhulamanova & Raisor, Creative Story Telling as a Transformative Strategy

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