How to help with...writing stories
Writing stories is an important part of your child's literacy development. In this instalment of Spark Island's 'How to...' guides, primary school teacher Sean Callery shares some tips on how to develop your child's narrative skills
In a nutshell
Writing stories develops your child's imagination, as well as her language and thinking skills. A writer of interesting stories is likely to be a good communicator in other ways too - so better equipped for life. Story writing also builds confidence because it allows your child to create her own world, or to make more sense of the one she inhabits.
- Good writers read widely. Encourage your child to read a wide range of stories from all around the world. Children sometimes get hooked on one type of story, or one author, which limits her experiences. At the library, let her choose half the books, and you choose the others.
Check out these tips on how you can help your child's narrative skills:
It's story time
Make up stores to tell together. This can be great fun on journeys. Here are some ways to get started:
- Re-tell a story you both know
- Re-tell that story with key details like names of characters changed
- Agree that the story will be set somewhere you both know, like the child's bedroom or the local park
- Use characters you already know, but in different settings
One of the messages your child can be encouraged to get from this sort of activity is that every story needs conflict: there has to be a problem to be solved. How will Cinderella get to the ball, and later meet the prince again? Children often miss out this element and write a string of events. Get her to tell you what the conflict will be in her story before she tells, or writes it. This will become her plan. Planning is an important skill in any writing. It doesn't have to be tidy, or written in sentences.
Making up a story
Ways to plan a story include:
- A beginning, middle and end
- A main character, problem, resolution
- The five Ws (plus an H): Who does what, where, when, why and how?
- The reader will feel: sad, then worried, then relieved, then happy
The final planning method highlights how you are trying to make the reader feel at each stage in the story. Jack and the Beanstalk has a sad beginning, a frightening middle and an action-packed, happy ending. Children need to be pushed to think in this way - but it is invaluable.
To help with planning, ask your child to draw the story as a set of cartoons: this is called a storyboard and is how films are planned. She can then write the story from this structure.
Top tips for writing
Some other key elements in story writing are:
- A really interesting start that tempts the reader to continue
- Interesting descriptions of characters
- A strong sense of where the story happens
- A mixture of long and short sentences
- Having characters talk as well as simply report what they said
- Consistent use of the (usually) past tense
- Showing what happens, rather than saying it. For example, someone can look through a window, scream and shout 'Go away!' - and we know that something nasty is approaching
Look at your child's writing and decide which of these is she weakest at. Work on that. Do this together, by writing part of a story. This allows you to steer your child, and allows her to feel less pressured. If the weakness is characters, draw, then describe three different people - real or imagined. In addition to how they look, what do they like? And dislike? How would they react to something strange happening?
A question of style
To write in an interesting style, take the child's favourite book. Look at the first paragraph (or a really good bit of the story). Re-write it, changing the verbs, or the adjectives. This is very good training in how to write well.
To aid a description of a place, write about somewhere you both know - possibly your own house. Look for details that tell you what the people there are like - is it very tidy? What objects are left around? What do the pictures on the wall show? What can you hear? What is the weather like?
Discuss with your child the different ways a story can be written, for example:
- as a diary
- in the first person ('I')
- in the third person ('he/she')
- with flashbacks (where you start in the middle of the story, explaining how it all began later on)
- as a series of letters between characters
- using telephone conversations to show what is happening
Learning activities
Check out our Activity and resource finder where you'll find tailored learning activities to develop your child's skills in English, maths and science.
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