How many different ways are there to tell a story?

What better way to celebrate National Apprenticeship Week this week than by sharing some fun and exciting ways to support our apprentices? Here at Swift, we are developing the next generation of education professionals one step at a time, and one of the most common areas that our apprentices want to develop, particularly at the beginning of their apprenticeships, is with storytelling. I have stretched and challenged many of my apprentices over the last month to introduce a new and exciting way to tell stories.

Throughout the year there are many book celebrations that we celebrate in the early years. There is National Story Telling Week which, this year, is 29 January 2024 – 4 Feb 2024, there is World Book Day, which is 7 March 2024, and Children’s Book Week gets celebrated TWICE this year, from 6-12 May 2024 and 4-10 November 2024.

Thinking about and telling stories with children has always been one of my FAVOURITE things to do with the children, and there are so many ways to enjoy books and stories! I wanted to share a few of these with you now.

Storytelling is a great way to start a whole range of activities, and as an apprentice, this is a great starting point to spark your imagination to set up some more exciting provocations for the children.

Traditional book reading – this is a great starting point, especially for those of you who are not quite confident enough yet to make storytelling your own and go a bit wild with the different ways in which you can tell stories.

There is nothing quite like holding a real book. Talking about the front and back covers, running your finger down the spine, reading the blurb on the back, flicking through the pages and reading the words with a child or group of children is absolutely magical. Listening to and responding to the children’s comments and questions about what they can see on the storybook pages can really enhance that storytelling experience, and take the book you are reading in a whole other direction. Asking the children questions that start with “I wonder…” and “What do you think about…” really get the children thinking and coming up with some wonderful ideas of what's next and how the story might go.

But do we always need to be reading stories on the carpet, sitting up, and at circle time? NO! Lay down on your bellies with the book on the floor, set up a campfire in your role play area and tell stories around the campfire, go and sit under the tree, or on the grass, and make a story den using your climbing structure and read stories that way – the more interesting and unique ways that you find to read stories will help both you and the children really really love books.

Story sacks with props – these are fabulous, and they don’t need to cost your setting the earth! Grab some cloth bags, and take the children on an adventure around your setting to find props to match the story and use them when reading the book to retell the story too! Of course, you can buy very professional ones, which are also absolutely lovely - I always found that the children were keen to use the story sacks over and over again when we built them up ourselves using props from the nursery rooms to make them up.

Using story sacks is great. You don’t even need to get the book out of the bag if you don’t want to! Just use the props and let the children tell the story through their play.

Sequencing cards – why not print out and laminate (we practitioners do love a laminator after all) some images from your favourite books? You can use them to retell the story with the children, they can remember the beginning, middle and end and retell the stories using their own words.

Story maps – these are one of my favourite activities to do at the mark-making table. When I worked in settings we would often have one main book that we would focus on each week, towards the end of the week, when the children started to know the story well, we would create a story map of what happened and when – the children would make marks to represent the events in the story and create a visual representation of what happened, who was involved and when – they were lovely pieces of work that the children were super proud of, and they always wanted to take them home to show their own adults! My son brought one home once, and he looked at the story map with me at bedtime for 10 days! He absolutely loves that he could share the story with me in his own way, whilst using his own creation that he was so proud of!

Acting out the story/role play/Dressing up/putting on a show – another firm favourite of mine. Turning stories into play experiences is great fun. I remember working in a setting around the harvest festival time – we were reading The Enormous Turnip and one day, in the garden, my colleagues and the children acted out the story, all of the children were keen to get involved to pull and pull out the turnip – SO MANY parents came to me over the following days asking what that story was because the children were playing “the enormous turnip” at home too – it was great! Another time I remember setting up of carpet with boxes, mark-making materials, colanders, sieves, wooden spoons and a few copies of the book “Whatever Next!”

I have been lucky enough to visit settings where the children have been playing “Going On A Bear Hunt” and “Handa’s Surprise” with their adults, and have had some wonderful props to support that play also – can you think of any stories that you have in your setting that you could role-play or act out with the children?

Puppets – of course, PUPPETS! Now these can be hand puppets, finger puppets, shadow puppets, wooden spoon puppets, puppets on strings, shop-bought puppets, homemade puppets, paper plate puppets… I’m sure there are so many other kinds of puppets. I just LOVE PUPPETS!!!! And the opportunity for storytelling with puppets is so vast, there are so many different ways it can go – it can be adult-led or child-led, you can retell existing stories or create your own, it can be a big event or a small activity, but whichever way you do it, its pure magic, every time!

Puppets can really make a story come to life, they can help a child to process what they are learning or experiencing and can give us a little glimpse of what and how they think.

Kamishibai – I was only introduced to this way of telling stories a few years ago when a lovely friend and ex-colleague of mine showed me. Kamishibai is a Japanese way of telling stories. They use picture cars in a frame, which leaves your hands free (for Makaton or being expressive). The story is more about the artwork on the page, and the words are printed on the back of the previous card, with a small picture so you can also see what the children can see.

Singing the story – I often do this with core books such as “Dear Zoo” – it goes “I wrote to the zoo to send me a pet, to send me a pet, to send me a pet, I wrote to the Zoo to send me a pet, so they sent me a Lion, He was too fierce so I sent him back, I sent him back, I sent him back, he was too fierce so I sent him back, so they sent me a …..” and continue like this all the way through. The children really get into the rhythm and can recall the story much more as a song than if I was just reading it to them using the words on a page – what other books do you think you could sing with the children instead of reading them?

Drawing/Mark-making stories/bookmaking – this is a great way to get those children who don’t often use the mark-making area to use it – maybe they have been outside running around playing with cats and dogs all morning, or maybe they have been goodies and baddies? They might have a favourite character that they like to play or a persona who they are when they come into nursery each day – well, of course, we set up the provocation, and have the conversations with the children “I can see that you have been super busy putting out fires today, Jonah. You and Mira, Daisy, Jamil and Faiza have been firefighters! We want to read a story about those firefighters at circle time today, don’t we? I wonder if anybody will make us a book so I can share the adventures you guys have been on today?”

Of course, this is just a small selection of the millions of different ways to share stories with children, and really celebrate books and storytelling in your setting.

During National Apprenticeship Week, I challenge you to try out some of these different ways to tell stories and try to find some more too! Show your settings the real value of having an apprentice, and learn something new too!

What a happy coincidence that Storytelling Week is the same week as National Storytelling Week!

Happy storytelling week, all! Please, please, share your storytelling week stories with us too!

Roxy Sachdev

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