Aim: to Explore Narrative Structure And/Or Stimulate Imaginative Storylines/Connections

Elfins Group Night – but I think Pioneers might enjoy some of these activities too
Storytelling Activities [links to Carnival badge]

Aim: to explore narrative structure and/or stimulate imaginative storylines/connections

You may need: assorted objects; picture &/or word cards; story cubes/dice; paper; pens

Duration: anything between 20 and 60 minutes.

Warm-up game

1. ‘Little Alice’ Divide into two or more equal teams and sit in parallel lines at one side of your hall. Each member of the team is a different thing that could be part of a story (wizard, mushroom, tentpeg, Large Hadron Collider, etc.). One person tells the story, and every time your thing is mentioned, you get up, run to the end of the hall and back to your seat. When Little Alice is mentioned (she’s the protagonist in your story), everyone has to get up and run to the end of the hall and back.
2. Any other story. We used Julia Donaldson’s Tabby McTat. Two teams of five, each team member adopting one of following characters: Fred the busker, Tabby McTat, the Guitar, Sock, Samuel Sprat. Children took it in turns to read a few pages. Whenever one of those character is mentioned, the children playing them jump up and run to end of hall and back.
3. ‘Crows and Cranes’. Similar to above, telling a story about the crows and the cranes encountering lots of other things beginning with ‘c’.

Imagination stimulation

These activities are designed to stimulate imagination and mostly draw on prompts.

Story prompts can be any of the following: story cubes (story dice); assorted objects (e.g. feather, clothes peg, doll, coin, seashell, … the list is endless!);* picture or word cards; Rorschach ink blots; photographs; important item from home.

1. Sit in a circle (or two or more if group is large). First child selects a prompt at random (e.g. throws die, chooses card or object from bag) and starts a story which involves prompt. Then move around the circle, with each player continuing the story, weaving in their own prompt. The story ends either when all the prompts have been used up or everyone has had an equal number of turns or at leader’s discretion.
2. Divide into small teams (3–4 children). Each group is given (or randomly selects) five (say) prompts. Each team has 10 minutes to craft a story involving their prompts, which it then shares/recounts to the larger group.

* Collecting or making these prompts can be an activity in itself:

(i) Go for a walk and pick interesting objects;

(ii) Paint pebbles with symbols or pictures;

(iii) Make Rorschach blots or other abstract shapes.

Story structure

These activities are designed to get children thinking about the main elements of a good story: central characters; narrative arc – beginning, middle, end; setting/context, etc. This is important whether they telling their own story (real or fictional) or retelling an old story – so narrator knows which events/characters are essential and where they can improvise, adding their own details and flourish or omitting elements.

Begin by telling one or two well-known stories, e.g. ‘Goldilocks and the Three Bears’ or ‘Hansel and Gretel’.

Divide into small teams (2–4 children) and ask them to break down and map the key moments and/or elements of the story – this can be done on sheets of paper.

1. One idea is to make a small picture for each moment and then creating a ‘step’ that links the various moments – each ‘step’ be associated with an action to represent it. They then practise moving through the moments of the story, going back to the start whenever they forget the next step. One they know the structure well, they can add flourish and detail around the key parts.
2. Alternatively, ask each group to write down: list of key characters and when they are introduced; the context; key events; key revelations; to think about how the story begins (‘Once upon a time…’) and ends (‘And they lived happily ever after.’). Once they have done this, they can think about how crucial each of these elements is to the story – and whether it could be modified. E.g. lots of folk tales are set in the forest, but could a story like Hansel and Gretel be set in a city? Could their names be different? (Could also ask children to think whether this story, as so many other folk tales, are perhaps a little unfair to stepmothers and witches. If so, then is there a way the story could be altered?) What would happen to the story of Little Red Riding if we knew about the wolf right from the beginning?
3. Ask children to tell stories about their life, something funny that happened on holiday or a time they were scared. Remind them to bear in mind things they discussed in 1 and/or 2, i.e. that stories need a beginning, middle and most importantly for some children an end; importance of characters and setting.

Using imagination and awareness of narrative structure to create new stories

Once children have an awareness ways in which a good story is structured – the ‘rules’ – there are many possible activities where they introduce new elements – from prompts, say – or try stretching or breaking those rules. The following combines ideas from the two sets of activities above.

1. Pick a folk tale (at random or chosen) along with three (say) prompts. Retell the story, but incorporating ideas inspired by the three prompts.
2. Pick two folk tales (at random or chosen). Create a new story which mixes together these two stories. (A great example of this is Jan Fearnley’s ‘Mr Wolf and the Three Bears’.
3. Pick a folk tale (at random or chosen). Adapt the story or its telling so that the good characters become bad and vice versa. (Again see ‘Mr Wolf and the Three Bears’ – Goldilocks torments all the creatures in the forest, including the Wolf, whose party she gate-crashes and wreaks.) Angela Carter’s feminist retelling of folk tales is exemplary here – though for younger children an adult would almost certainly have to ‘translate’.
4. Any of the above, but using your own story.