Context

"Children need to be able to say it before they can write it."

All pupils at Miriam Lord Community Primary School, Bradford have English as an additional language, mainly Punjabi.  The majority of learners are of Pakistani origin but the school also has 20 Eastern European pupils. Many of the children live in the lowest 5%, in terms of deprivation, in the country. On entry to school children’s language skills are under-developed and the school believed that their poor language skills are a major barrier to their writing abilities.

Having attended a course led by Pie Corbett, one teacher returned to school inspired and began to implement story-telling strategies within her own classroom.  Headteacher, Angela Ronicle and Mary Warren, Assistant Headteacher and English Subject Leader, were impressed and realised the impact that the children’s understanding of the language of stories was having on their ability to write their own stories.

Aims & principles

Having been invited to an INSET day, Pie worked alongside staff on storytelling and suggested that through children learning a range of strategies including, listening and learning to stories, re-telling them with actions, creating story maps, drama, role-play, hot-seating and reading, they will begin to acquire the language of story, the essential pre-cursor to writing successful stories.

Summary

To develop a love of story and to improve the children’s imaginations.

To develop children’s speaking skills and improve their writing ability.

To teach to children’s learning styles.

In Practice

Phase 1

Following the initial training in 2006, teachers experimented with the strategies to develop narrative writing.  The school also created a framework showing the progression from Nursery to Year 6 together with the stories to be taught,  specific openers, connectives, punctuation and when to begin to innovate and invent stories.

Nursery and Reception children are involved in a process of imitation whereby they learn selected traditional tales off by heart, re-tell them and then start to make up their own stories.

In Year 1 and 2 children begin to change aspects of these familiar stories, through innovation, i.e. changing the setting, characters, endings before creating new story maps and their own stories.

Moving into KS2, children start to use invention by keeping the structure of the familiar stories whilst creating their own stories.  Children also begin to use the techniques used by authors such as, ’drop-in’ clauses, using sentences of three, adding actions and sound effects for punctuation.

Phase 2

The school are now working with three other schools together with Literacy Consultant, Carol Sattherwaite, who has been employed by the cluster to support the project in conjunction with the delivery of the Primary Literacy Framework.  The project is involving all staff at the four schools as Heads meet regularly to discuss current progress and impact, the English subject leaders meet with Carol to share practice and assess examples of writing whilst the year group teachers, from each school, meet to plan units of work.

Phase 3

The school is now beginning to take a similar approach to non-fiction writing and have already had one day’s training with Pie.  The project has also promoted a lot of interest within the local authority from both advisers and Headteachers.

Partnerships

Pie Corbett

3 local primary schools

Local authority Literacy Consultant

Outcomes

Children in Nursery and Reception can now re-tell traditional tales, confidently, from beginning to end and word for word, a major improvement for the school.  The quality of writing has improved significantly across the school with children in Year 1 writing at Level 2.  Story maps have proved to be an excellent aid to children’s visualisation of stories and support to their later writing.  One teacher says it has reinvigorated his interest in teaching writing and has helped both teachers and children to understand the features of different text types leading to successful writing.  The project has also helped the school to develop a clear progression for teaching the grammar of writing.

Year 1 pupils’ views

"I remember the words because I keep reading them in my mind."
"I like the arrows on the story map. They help you where to go with the story."
"It helps because you have to keep going over it."
"The actions are a bit like the pictures.  I think about both of them."

Resources

Corbett, P. (2006) The Bumper Book of Storytelling into Writing at KS1, Clown Publishing Ltd.

Grainger, T. & Cremin, M. (2001) Resourcing Classroom Drama 5:8, London: NATE

Hartman, B. (2002) Anyone Can Tell a Story, Oxford: Lion Publishing

McCloud, S. (2006) Making Comics: Storytelling Secrets of Comics, Manga and Graphic Novels, London: Harper Collins Ltd.

Visit the Story Arts website with ideas for storytelling in the classroom, lesson plans and a curriculum ideas exchange.

Visit the Story Making page on the DfES’ Innovation Unit webpage.

Contacts

Headteacher, Angela Ronicle, can be contacted at Miriam Lord Community Primary School at .

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