How to Teach Story Writing at Key Stage 1

Book excerpt: How to Teach Story Writing at Key Stage 1 is a practical manual for teachers, to be used directly in the classroom. The book begins with a series of language games, designed to warm up creativity and strengthen the imagination. This is followed by a series of creative story workshops, based on the writer's own experience both as a teacher and poet running workshops in schools. These workshops focus on growing the roots of story writing through story telling and reading, and begin with the importance of learning a few well-known tales. There are ideas for drama, role-play and art, and a few model stories are provided for story telling. Other workshops explore simple ideas for creating new stories, based around simple familiar patterns. The book also offers advice on how to organize an effective workshop for younger children, and demonstrates how to teach story writing in a dynamic, creative and imaginative way in relationship with the KS1 national literacy framework. Workshops include the story of our lives; stories that make a circle; stories about problems; days of the week tales; humbug, stuff and nonsense stories; quests; repetitive tales; wishing stories; warning stories; and cooking the story soup.