ABSTRACT
The hardest aspect of storymaking is not so much the children being able to learn, retell and invent stories, but whether the busy classroom teacher with ten or more subjects to teach in a primary school or 400 to teach in a secondary school has time to learn to tell stories themselves. The resources below list various useful sources. But let me first share my approach to learning a story:
Choose a story that you enjoy and think the children will enjoy.
Read it and sketch a story map to act as a visual reminder of the key scenes.
Rewrite the story, simplifying it down to the bare bones. Sometimes I build in key language features that may be at text or sentence level.
Hold the map in your hand and pace around, telling the story to yourself — I need somewhere quiet where I am on my own.
After a few tellings, a version begins to emerge. The more you tell it, the stronger and more fluent it becomes.
Often I make a recording of my version and listen to this in the car. It can help to leave a space between each sentence so that when I am driving along, I hear a sentence and then repeat it in the space. This is very handy for learning simple repetitive stories.
When telling a story to a class, it can help to pin up your map or have key incidents on cards if you feel you will need the support. However, if you have told it a number of times to yourself and can really ‘see’ what happens in your mind then you will be fine. Teachers make good 116storytellers because storytelling lies at the heart of good teaching. You do not have to be noisy and showy — a quiet teller can be highly effective.
