Activity

1. Ask children to write a one-sentence story about a moment in their lives. Give an example: On the way to school this morning, a large red truck drove through an enormous puddle of grey dirty water, splashing and soaking my brand new shoes.

2. Give children a three-minute time limit to write their sentence. Some children could stretch to two sentences but keep things simple and pacey.

3. Pupils then pair up and swap stories.

4. Ask pairs to draw each other’s story, emphasising that this isn’t about creating a great artwork but instead is about trying to include all of the people and objects that might be in the other person’s story. What are the important people or things to include? Where is the story set? Ask pupils to think about what’s important to include in their story drawing. What should be most prominent, what in the background? Allow five minutes for this.

5. Once each story has been drawn, each pair gets together with another pair and once again, swaps drawings. Using only the drawings, each person has to tell the ‘story’ they see on the paper. Who are the main characters? What do they look like? What are they doing? How do they feel?

6. Pairs can then discuss how ‘close’ each viewer got to the written story.

Reflection

• How did you feel when someone else told your story using a picture drawn by someone else?

• What was the most challenging part of the activity?

• What have you discovered about storytelling from this?

• Is there anything you would now change about the drawing you did?

Go Further

Can they do the same exercise for the maths of someone or something they have been learning about in school?

Persistent: Sticky with Difficulty

In this activity, children are responding to words and drawings from each other. They need to interpret, use and develop the information they are given before finally receiving feedback from the original author of the story.