How Can Stories Change Us?

Project Overview

Children heard stories from inspiration members of our community. Rodney Williams from National Grid shared a story about never giving up and trying hard to succeed, Georgie Okell discussed how helping others leads to true happiness and Selina Nwulu talked about overcoming shyness to achieve her life long ambition. Children then adapted the stories that they heard into fables. They learnt how to engage an audience, use grammatical techniques and redraft their work. We drew upon a range of religious fables to inform our moral understanding.

How was it assessed?

Each year 2 class had their fables published professionally and these were presented at exhibition. These were peer-assessed and teacher assessed.

What skills were developed?

We discussed the skills needed to be an author such as, the choice of language and how that can impact a reader, the structure of a fable and how to effectively convey a moral. We experimented with different styles of sketching and practiced drawing our characters in different situations and with different emotions. We sketched the settings for each of the scenes in our story and then added the characters to create our final illustrations.

What the teacher says

This was a community based project involving the real stories of inspiring adults. Through oracy and shared writing, children were able to create truly authentic fables to motivate their peers and to give back to the original storytellers.