Teaching Primary: a story idea

Kids love stories! Any parent or teacher will tell you that a good story can keep children quiet and engaged. The messages of the stories, and the information they contain carries through the years even if the nuance of character and narrative don't.

To do this all you need is a soft toy, some free time, and a camera.

Think of a story for the content. If you're teaching ESL maybe the target vocabulary, If you're teaching history maybe some events, if you're teaching geography some places. Find the items, a place with information, or even print some A3 pictures with a background.

Take some photos with the soft toy and the above (5-10 different photos should be enough). Form some kind of narrative. If you're not a natural storyteller use these prompts.

• One day/Just the other day/once upon a time (name of soft toy) went to...
• he/she was excited/hungry/scared/happy... (introduce any other characters and provide some information about the situation)
• When he/she arrived, they did/saw/ate/played... (you can use a few things and pictures for this)
• but then (something happened: insert a problem)
• Suddenly (something that helps overcome the problem happens).
• Finally (what happens at the end)

To introduce the class topic, you can put the pictures on a google slides presentation and change slides at each scene, or you can print the pictures out and put them on the board like a storyboard. 

If you want to use it as a listening task you can cut the pictures out individually and get students to rearrange. Additionally if you want to get students speaking you can get them to make a story with the pictures.

Alternatively you can use the camera, soft toy, and the other materials for a storytelling project where students go out and make a story.

Meet Hugo

Hugo likes adventures.