Brave Tales Rediscover the magic of storytelling · whole-class storyboard at the front (ie. draw your scene with hybrid features from several people’s drawings). ORDER OF SCENES

Brave TalesRediscover the magic of storytellingTEACHER’S NOTES by Will Coleman

Titles in the Brave Tales seriesOrder online at www.hope-education.co.uk

Brave Tales: Rediscover the magic of storytellingISBN: 978-1-910605-06-6© Will Coleman 2015Illustrations by Jago SilverDesigned and typeset by Gendall Design

Hope Education, 2 Gregory Street, Hyde, Cheshire, SK14 4HR www.hope-education.co.uk

The right of Will Coleman to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with Sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved.

Madgy Figgy’s

Madgy Figgy’s Pig

Madgy Figgy is a dear old soul wholives all alone and all she wantsfrom the market is a piggy. But herneighbour Tom Snook beats her to it…

Will C

oleman

A traditional Cornish storywritten to be read aloud.

Will Coleman | Illustrations by Jago Silver

Brave Tales

9 781910 605028

ISBN 978-1-910605-02-8

The Ballad of Gogm

agog

BalladGogmagogof

The


Corin and his shipmates arrive atan idyllic landing place, only to findthat the natives have got there first…A Cornish creation tale in verse.

Will C

oleman


Brave Tales

9 781910 605059

ISBN 978-1-910605-05-9

Tom and the G

iant TomGiantGiantand the

Once upon a time, Cornwall wasruled by giants. And the biggestand the hairiest and the ugliestof them all was Denbras…

Will C

oleman



Brave Tales

9 7 8 1 9 1 0 6 0 5 0 0 4

ISBN 978-1-910605-00-4

Skillywidden

Skillywidden

Dicky Stoggs is afterSkillywidden’s gold,but he may get morethan he bargains for!

Will C

oleman


Brave Tales

Will Coleman | Illustrations by Jago Silver9 781910 605035

ISBN 978-1-910605-03-5

Lutey and the Merm

aidW

ill Colem

an

LuteyLuteyLuteyMermaid

LuteyLuteyermaidermaidLutey

ermaidLutey

and the

Disgruntled fisherman Luteycomes across an unusual creatureas he walks along the beach. Butwill it prove a blessing or a curse?



Brave Tales

9 781910 605011

ISBN 978-1-910605-01-1

The Myth of the M

adron Thorn

1

MadronThorn

Myth of theThe


John Trelill is not big and not strong, but he isas fast as a falcon and as slippery as a pilchard.Can he beat the burly miners and fishermento become the champion hurler of Morvah?

Will C

oleman

Brave TalesA traditional Cornish storywritten to be read aloud.

9 781910 605042

ISBN 978-1-910605-04-2

HE1434174

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These Brave Tales are written to be READ OUT LOUD.

This handbook gives suggestions to aid learning in such worthy areas as composition, comprehension, spelling, vocabulary, grammar and punctuation.

But first of all, let’s just concentrate on enjoying reading the story and being responsive to our audience.

© Will Coleman 2015 | Brave Tales: Rediscover the magic of storytelling | Hope Education 2

Brave TalesRediscover the magic of storytelling


The books are nice and small so you can hold them in one hand, leaving the other hand free

for wild gesticulation. The illustrations are minimal and pretty tangential to the action; your listeners will need to use their imagination to visualise the characters and setting of the story.

The font grows, shrinks and leaps around like a demented white hare, not only encouraging you to be playful and EXPRESSIVE with your voice but also helping you to find your place again quickly.

1Read the story

These features are all deliberate. The intention is to encourage you to make proper eye contact with your listeners and to enjoy an interactive experience together.

PLAY TO YOUR FRIENDS

When telling a story, catch the eye of a listener who is looking keen and give them a friendly twinkle.

Now find another friendly face and smile at them. In this way accumulate ‘ friends’, keeping them topped-up with regular twinkles until your whole audience is ON BOARD.

Resist the temptation to expend your energy by trying to win over any restless or inattentive listeners (this merely rewards their poor behaviour).

Rather, give extra attention to whichever of your ‘ friends’ are nearest to the squirmer or cynic.

It’s amazing just how contagious being part of a good time can be.

SHARE IT AROUND

Mentally quarter your audience, choose a listener in the first quarter and deliver the first sentence or phrase of your story DIRECTLY TO THEM.

Choose a listener in the next quarter and give them the next sentence or phrase.

Carry on delivering each subsequent chunk to a new child in a new chunk of audience.

Do not short-change anyone but let them have a FULL phrase-worth of eye contact each.

Avoid sweeping eye contact; communicate c l e a r l y with ONE person at a time.


CHARACTER AND DIALOGUE

Putting on voices can be daunting. But it is not necessary to have a full array of accent, pitch and tone at your command. It can be equally effective to choose ONE very small and simple physical endowment for each character in the story (shoulders held back, nose wrinkled up, eyebrows raised…).

You might just simply decide in advance that one character always looks to the left, the other to the right. When using direct speech, a subtle attribute

like this will differentiate between characters without having to go into full-blown acting.

ACTION

Similarly, it is not necessary to leap around the

room fervently gesticulating (though feel free to do so if you wish). Initially, try to use gesture and action sparingly; pull the audience in towards you rather than pushing yourself out to meet them. An understated physicality means that as the story builds, you have always got a little in reserve to top what has come before.

WHAT’S IN THE BAG?

Find a relevant prop (a scarf, a ball of wool, a hob-nail boot. . . ) and put it

inside a BOX or BAG.

Create interest and anticipation by looking inside the bag or holding it

t h o u g h t f u l l y but without revealing the contents. How long can

you delay the moment of production?

When it makes its appearance, handle the object with great care, endow it with status; even a bit of crumpled paper can assume magical significance.

Revealing an object like this can be an effective way to end the story – lending veracity to the whole y a r n .

BE OPEN TO FEELINGS

Rather than some tremendous feat of acting prowess, all you, the storyteller, need to do is be

o p e n to feelings.

This includes recalling the feelings that such stories evoked in you when you were young as well as the meanings they may have for you as an adult.

If you are sensitive to the reasons why a child may derive personal meaning from a story, then the child feels understood and affirmed.

DON’T EXPLAIN THE ‘MEANING’

Fairytales are not concerned with providing useful information about the external world. Rather, they offer constructive pathways for dealing with inner (psychological) experiences.

Through contemplating, fantasising about and role-playing fairytales, children can work through their DEEP anxieties and hidden hopes without feeling exposed and i s o l a t e d.

Whilst it is important that you actively participate in children’s experience of fairytales, allow them to do their own internal work . Never make a child feel that you can see inside them.


Having enjoyed the story-reading with a crowd of

engaged and motivated listeners, we will want to get

as much learning as possible from the input.

The first priority is to get a good grasp of the STRUCTURE and FUNCTION of the story at a whole-text level. The most powerful tool to do this

is the storyboard.

A storyboard is just a sequence of pictures that depicts a plot – no rocket science here!

HOW MANY PICTURES?

The problem with an unlimited number of scenes is that children tend to move the action forward in miniscule stages and very often fail to complete the WHOLE story.

1. Introduction 2. Build-up

3. Climax 4. Resolution

2Picture the story

Also, with dozens of small pictures (as in a ‘story map’) the re-telling can become a l o n g sequence of staccato moments without any real understanding of the story structure.

For very little people (Foundation, Y1) storyboards can be three pictures; our well-known friends Beginning, Middle and End. Dealing with

three chunks of story is a MASSIVE step forward from just ‘draw-a-picture-and-write-about-it ’. One picture is an event, three pictures are a plot (however rudimentary).

In most instances however, you may find it most effective to use four-scene storyboards, not least because it is simplest to divide your sheet of paper that way!

1. Introduction

FAR MORE than just a beginning, this word has connotations of a meeting. We need to say ‘hello’ to the main character(s) and be given an idea of the setting, the world in which the story will take place.

2. Build-up Here is where we need to lay our ‘hooks’ for later on. Initiate some sort of PROBLEM or ISSUE but be very careful not to solve anything or sort anything out.

3. ClimaxSome people use the term ‘Problem’ or ‘Dilemma’ or ‘Conflict’. ‘Climax’ can include any of these. You can translate the word as meaning ‘the most exciting bit ’. Every story needs some kind of crisis!

4. Resolution

This word has connotations of solving or sorting things out. We might also return to some sort of status quo; an ‘ending’ or ‘epilogue’ (depicted separately if using a five-scene storyboard).


There are, in fact, many good reasons for choosing a five-scene structure. Many mnemonics rely on

that handy number. My friend Pie Corbett

advocates five scenes (the very useful ‘story mountain’) and Christopher Booker analyses each of the Seven Basic Plots into a five-stage format.

The main hesitation in using five is simply the difficulty in dividing up the page into five boxes!

DRAWING STORYBOARDS

Do not leave pupils working alone with a blank piece of paper and an unlimited amount of time –

that way lies pr o c ra s t i n a t i o n and DISASTER!

First, ask everyone to close their eyes and work at visualising the component details of the introduction to the story. Then try using one whiteboard between two and taking it in turns to describe and draw, practising important speaking and listening skills at the same time as creating the storyboard. Make sure this is STRICTLY time-limited (eg. “ You’ve only got three minutes. . .”).

Everyone is allowed to have their own personal version of the pictures; be sure to celebrate the diversity of images. Collect in contributions and transfer them to your whole-class storyboard at the front (ie. draw your scene with hybrid features from several people’s drawings).

ORDER OF SCENES

Having completed the Introduction picture, shall we wipe our boards clean and move on to draw the Build-up?

No!We do not know how far forward to crank the story. Remember, children tend to move forward a tiny bit, then another tiny bit and before you know it, once again we’ve used up seventeen squares before we’ve got to the Climax! OUR CHALLENGE is to depict the whole plot in four (or three or five) scenes.

So, we will jump to the Resolution next. Children can now visualise and draw the final scene.

With the top and tail complete and working backwards, it is usually easy to identify the Climax of the story; it is normally the most memorable moment. If there’s blood and gore, that’s probably it.

Working backwards again, the Build-up becomes pretty self-explanatory… what has to have happened earlier so that the Climax makes sense?

Before you know it you have a completed storyboard!

Having created a large whole-class storyboard, you might want to allow everyone to draw their own A4 versions. If you have done the collaborative storyboard on an interactive whiteboard, you can just print everyone a copy.


STORYBOARDS

A storyboard means that you don’t have to remember the story – the pictures are there as memory-nudges. Model re-telling the story yourself

by pointing at each object or character as you mention them. Ask your audience to spot if you miss any detail out before moving on to the next picture.

STORY TAG

Ask pairs of pupils to re-tell the story one scene at a time. If they get stuck they can either:

– look at the picture or – pass the story to their partner.

Explore passing the story in mid-sentence or at the FULL STOP. Often mid-sentence (or cliff-hanger ) passes generate great hilarity.

MAGIC MICROPHONE

With five pupils sat in a circle, knees touching, re-tell each scene with a magic microphone or ‘speaking conch’. Make explicit the non- verbal transactions taking place as some people eagerly reach for the microphone and others

have it THRUST upon them.

STORY PIANO

Arrange five pupils on chairs facing the audience, stand behind them and ‘play’ them like a piano; when you place your hand on a shoulder, that

pupil must carry on the sentence and HALT

IMMEDIATELY when you lift your hand.

You (the piano player), may add linking phrases or cliff-hanger part-sentences to aid the performance.

3Re-tell the storyTABLEAUX

Ask pupils to ‘sculpt’ their partner into a statue of a character and share the results. Then ask them to swap roles and sculpt another character from the same scene. Having practised in i s o l a t i o n, can they put the two together to depict the interaction?

Pay particular attention to eye-line and facial expression. Choose a pair to demonstrate and then add in further pupils to depict all the missing details from the scene (a house, a boat, rocks…). Create and share all four scenes of the story in groups.

HOTSEAT

Being a statue in a tableau gives a pupil a nugget of

experience which helps them to sustain a role. Sit

them in a hotseat when they are in character

and gently interview them about what they saw and what they were thinking at certain points in the story. Once they are comfortable, it is possible to ask more searching questions and find out all

sorts of amazing backstory details about their character’s previous life and future hopes.

CHORAL SPEAKING AND RECITATION

It is immensely useful (especially for very young

children) to learn an entire story off by heart and then recite it together. Pie Corbett has popularised this approach, together with learned gestures, as a great way into storytelling.

However, older children will often become frustrated when sticking rigidly to this approach. This is because real storytelling always has elements of solo improvisation and interaction (although it’s often supported by chunks of formulaic language and a known plot structure).

eagerly reach for the microphone and others

Arrange five pupils on chairs facing the audience,

It is immensely useful (especially for very young


COMPREHENSION

The Brave Tales books work extremely well as group readers. The playful font encourages expressive reading and helps everyone keep track without losing their place.

The key to building deeper understanding is

always about SKILLFUL QUESTIONING. P a u s e regularly during group reading to initiate discussion. Prompt children to predict what might be coming next but also, importantly, nudge them to explore what is not explicitly stated by reading between the lines.

DIRECT SPEECH

Add written speech bubbles to the storyboard. Then, during re-telling, perform each of these

with a different speaking voice. In group reading, allocate each character’s speech to a different reader. Pupils quickly understand that speech marks are the written form of the drawn speech bubble.

It is also fun to add speech bubbles to a tableau. Write them on a whiteboard and hold them up by the statue; the speaking voice can be supplied by the statue’s partner.

PLAYFUL FONT

Pupils enjoy the way the font in these books shrinks and grows. CHALLENGE them to come up with a similar playful font for a passage of their own writing. This can of course be done by word-processing on the computer, but it is also a very useful handwriting exercise. Allowing pupils to break the rules whilst maintaining legibility creates an opportunity to focus on the usual expectations of neat handwriting.

COMPOSITION

The biggest CHALLENGE for most young people is to compose a satisfying story structure. The storyboard ensures this. For very young pupils, even a single sentence relating to each picture will create a real sense of plot. CHALLENGE older pupils to write no more than three (or four or five) sentences for each picture; they will then have completed a written story in no more than twelve (or sixteen or twenty) sentences. Later, use the storyboard to transform the story, retaining the plot but changing the setting and the characters. There’s no such thing as a new story plot so teach pupils to pinch their plot from a story they already know!

VOCABULARY

Use chooser boards (large displays of target vocabulary, eg. adverbs, powerful verbs instead of ‘went’, connectives…) whilst re-telling the story. CHALLENGE pupils to include at least one word from the collection as they re-tell each scene. Once they have been incorporated orally, adventurous vocabulary choices will also be used in writing.

SPELLING AND GRAMMAR

Whatever the target area of spelling or grammar (eg. adding –ed, –ing, –er to verbs, possessive apostrophe, appropriate choice of pronoun or noun), simply ask pairs of pupils to find and share examples in the Brave Tales storybooks.

Grammatical exercises can suffer from being arbitrary and divorced from real language use. Researching and exploring examples from real texts that pupils have enjoyed gives greater relevance.

4Re-read & write the story


So, it’s time to be really honest with you; the ULTIMATE aim is that the Brave Tales storybooks become completely unnecessary and you get to the point where you can put down the books and enjoy telling stories without them!

Eh? Why would a series of books be working towards making themselves redundant?

Here are some reasons why:

EYE CONTACT

Without a book forming a BARRIER ‘twixt teller and audience it is possible to share the experience around and make sure that everyone

gets a dollop. People become ENGAGED

and ATTENTIVE and behaviour management

issues evaporate (yes, they really do!).

DYNAMIC

Why should holding a book calm down your performance so much? Dunno, but it does. Suddenly, without a book, tellers will leap and

h o o t, gesticulate and become the characters in the story.

IMAGINATION

Telling a story places greater demands on the teller’s imagination – much more so than reading someone else’s words. The audience too are

CHALLENGED to visualise and imagine . After

all, as Granny said, you get the best pictures on the radio!

FLEXIBILITY

The story itself could be a tried and tested,

well-known, well-loved classic BUT

we can still revel in the flexibility of detail, content, timing, pitch, delivery and style. The point is that even the most well-worn story can be

refreshingly personalised.

OWNERSHIP

Storytelling s i d e - s t e p s the distant, worthy (and sometimes long-dead) author to bring the act of creation to the immediate moment. Of course we wish to switch on young people to the wonders of all manner of great authors but, first of all, how about you modelling the creation of something worthwhile right here and now?

5Close the book


Audience and teller collaborate in a two-way experience

that is immediate, unique and personal .

Fairytales are the result of generations of storytellers responding to and shaping tales to the subtle requirements of generations of children.

We know that many children today

miss out on this vital interaction.

So, we can but do our best to O P E N U P for them the symbolic and ultimately therapeutic world of fairytales.

Enjoy!

To sum all this up:storytelling is interactive!

Documents

Brave Tales Rediscover the magic of storytelling · whole-class storyboard at the front (ie. draw your scene with hybrid features from several people’s drawings). ORDER OF SCENES