Creating stories with children

Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

This popular series gives teachers practical advice and guidance, along with resource ideas and materials for the classroom. The tasks and activities are clearly presented, and offer teachers the information they need about level, time, preparation, materials, classroom management, monitoring, and follow-up activities. Each book offers up to 100 ideas, as well as variations that encourage teachers to adapt the activities to suite their individual classrooms.

Table of contents provided by Syndetics

• br / The author and series editor Foreword Introduction How to use this book
• 1 Story warmers (19 activities)
• The activities in this section are for helping the children to get into a story-making frame of mind
• 2 The craft of story-making (12 activities)
• The children experiment with some of the features of good story-making - particularizing details, bubbling and clustering ideas, looking at desires and their associated difficulties, planning and sequencing
• The final part of this section is 'Stories from personal experience'
• 3 Retelling (4 activities)
• In this kind of story-making the children retell a story, transforming it by changes of content, medium, or style
• 4 Beginnings and endings (9 activities)
• The children have one part of a story - first, last, or middle - and complete it or continue it and pass it on
• 5 Filling in and filling out (11 activities)
• A sequence of different bits of information is used to stimulate and to guide the children in making their story
• The bits of information can be of any kind, and can be received through any of the senses
• 6 Sorting and sequencing (8 activities)
• Children have lots of different bits of information to sort out and put into a sequence to tell a story
• 7 Starting with one thing (4 activities)
• One bit of information is used to stimulate and guide the children in to their story-making
• 8 Making books (5 activities)
• Different ways of making books can encourage creativity, as well as helping children to present their work neatly
• The way we choose to present and tell a story affects the content and the style of telling
• br / Further reading
• A brief, annotated list of publications which you might like to follow up