Nursery World - Storytelling

What happened when early years teacher Jessica Holme used ‘story grammar’ to get children really involved in storytelling

One of the stories centred around a unicorn

Once upon a time at Newlands Spring Primary School in Chelmsford, Essex, there was a teacher who found herself on a quest to enrich the play and learning of her children through storytelling. Like Alice following the rabbit into Wonderland, the unexpected finds and plot twists created the ultimate learning journey…

It was at the national Froebel conference last year that I first heard of ‘story grammar’. Simply put, story grammar refers to the integral elements of a story, such as character, setting and plot, as well as a reading comprehension strategy based on ‘wh’ questions, such as:

While designed as a comprehension strategy, it can also be used for creating stories with children. I was keen to try it as I felt it may have potential benefits over some other approaches.

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