Curious Minds

Children tell Curious Minds how to develop a good story

'Down, down, low underground, with more than a million stars twinkling above, was a cave'

This was the opening sentence of a story created by children at St Edward's Catholic Primary School in Runcorn, Halton.

All year groups have been working with children's author Hilary Keating to talk about what's good about stories and what's difficult about writing them.

On a huge roll of paper spread on the floor, children offloaded their problem areas: keeping going with writing, spelling, full stops and finger spaces. Children could see they weren't the only ones struggling with these challenges. Hilary then facilitated children to create stories as a group, taking the pressure off each individual. To help with spelling each child made a word bag in which they collected difficult words they wanted to use, to refer to when writing.

Alice Demba, Programme Manager, observed a Year 1 group practice a technique Hilary had developed to help them structure their stories. Children explained to Alice the significance of the following stages of story writing

Opening line • Setting • Character • Problem • Solution 

Children used the fingers on one hand to memorise these tricks. Sitting in a circle they shouted them out to Alice and then began to work through each stage. Lots of children contributed ideas for the story and the class voted for their favourites. They described a house in a forest, some sad flowers whose petals were falling off and a fairy coming to the rescue with glue and sellotape.

Now that they had their basic story structure, Hilary and the staff let children transform their classroom space into the setting, to inspire them. Splitting into groups, children took over each corner of the classroom and used bamboo poles, cloth, pegs, masking tape, scissors, pens and paper to create a forest, flowers, a house and the sky. Then someone from each group described their setting. One boy in the 'sky' group created 'soft, comfy clouds' that he could sit on to watch the flowers and the fairy in the forest. Another boy spread out sparkly cloth which was 'the sun shining on water'.

As a result of the project, children are able to tick off the problem areas on their big sheet of paper, knowing that they have found solutions. And staff have seen children's story structure, spelling, full stops and finger spaces improve dramatically, what a result!