Summaries of selected speaking and listening activities
from the Story Tents teachers’ pack
Story Props
How bags of small toys and props can be used to structure storytelling
and story writing.
Sentence Stories
A group storytelling activity in which a group create a story by
taking it in turns to add a sentence on to the previous one,
the story ends when it reaches the last person in the circle.
Fortunately, Unfortunately
This activity is similar to the above, but each person in the circle
is alternatively given the word fortunately or unfortunately.
A member of the group begins a story, people in the circle must
continue the story in turn – beginning their sentence with
either fortunately or unfortunately.
Poem Bags
Create short poems using two bags of words – one of adjectives
and one of nouns e.g.
Sparkling raindrop,
Beautiful flower,
Quiet grass,
Warm sunshine
Story Chains
The activity involves groups of children learning a simple story
which they re-tell to another group, which that group then re-tells
to another group. This is a form of Chinese whispers storytelling
that looks at how a story changes as it is told and re-told a
number of times.
Drama Activities
Activities from this section of the pack look at the various ways
in which the Story Tent can be used as a performance space and
provides suggestions for activities for responding to the performances.
Music Activities
The Story Tent can act as a creative and focused space to help
children develop theor musical ideas and listening skills. This
section of the pack focuses on music activities that can be done
in and around the Story Tent.
Using non fiction and photographs
Photographs are an ideal, immediate and creative way of introducing
children to Geographical enquiry. Activities in this section
of the Teacher’s Pack develop children’s thinking
skills. They encourage children to pose questions about what
they see (enquiry), to suggest hypotheses (creative thinking),
to judge the value of what they see and develop criteria for
judging the value of their ideas (evaluation skills). Through
photo activities children can be given opportunities to sort,
classify and compare images, to select relevant information and
analyse the evidence before them (information-processing skills).
