This year for National Storytelling Week we spoke to our Voice 21 Oracy Consultants about their reflections and ideas for how you can incorporate oracy into your creative writing and student storytelling in class. Former English teacher, Hannah, has shared some inspiration and tips from her classroom. 

“I used to lead a creative writing club at school before becoming a Voice 21 Oracy Consultant and I found that sometimes the trickiest part for my students about story writing and storytelling was generating ideas for an interesting plot. With this in mind, I developed some useful strategies to help young people in my classroom develop creative, insightful and exciting stories. 

‘Walking in the shoes of another character was one of the first tools we used – students were able to adopt an already existing character from a story they love and write from their perspective, taking the story in a new direction. If students struggled to deviate too much from the plot (and the story ended up being a recitation of a book/film), I found that it was enjoyable to give them each openings from famous novels and ask students to continue it in whichever direction they wish.

What I also learned to be a powerful tool was the connection between literacy and storytelling and oracy. Developing my students’ oracy skills not only boosted their ability to speak but also their creative writing and storytelling skills. There are various ways you can use oracy to enhance storytelling opportunities in your classroom and below are a few ideas that might help. 

Walking in the shoes of a character

Pick an extract to read aloud – preferably the opening from a book that students haven’t already read – and explain to students that they need to listen out for any characters that are introduced. If students find reading difficult to follow and are struggling for inspiration, you can show an interesting film clip opening instead (the emphasis here is on generating plot and character ideas, not reading skills). As students listen, get them to pick a character they’d like to ‘walk in the shoes of’. Explain that this character is going to feature in their stories, so it needs to be someone they are interested in; it can be anyone from the protagonist to someone passing by in the street.

Now ask students to create at least one ‘fact’ about their character for each of the following subheadings. Encourage them to be adventurous and provide sentence scaffolding if they need additional support:

1) Setting (try to think of a range of interesting adjectives to describe the place)

E.g. I am outside the…in front of… running through…

2) Relationships (pick another person or creature your character is going to interact with)

E.g. I am running away from… my hero is… I am trying to find…

3) Emotions (prompt students with a word bank)

E.g. I feel terrified/ecstatic/cautious/uneasy/giddy because…

4) Appearance (can you use figurative language here?)

E.g. My eyes are green like… My hair is as dry as… My clothes feel…

Once students have generated some brief ideas about their character, they are ready to develop their story planning further through a round of hot seating. Split the class into smaller groups of 4-5 (their planning is still in the very early stages, so we can’t expect them to present to the whole class yet) and allow each student 3-5 minutes in the hot seat.

The purpose of this game is for students to ask their peers in the hot seat skilful questions to draw out ideas and help develop their characters. Before starting, model to your class a range of good and bad questions, asking students to explain why some are better than others. Closed-ended yes or no questions (e.g., ‘are you lonely?’) don’t encourage any elaboration and therefore won’t help to develop their story. Open-ended questions on the other hand (e.g., ‘Why are you on the outskirts of the forest?’) prompt the student to elaborate and justify their choice of characterisation.

Hot seating is a great way to highlight the importance of questioning and develop your students’ cognitive oracy skills. Interesting and broad-reaching questions can help steer the plot to new directions that students may not have otherwise thought of.

After sharing ideas about their plot/setting/relationships etc, students should hopefully feel more confident and prepared to start writing their stories. This warm-up activity also sets the tone that they’re encouraged to talk through their ideas and develop their stories aloud, before writing them, ready for performance later. It can also help with alleviating the pressure from students to come up with their own storyline – because their peers have had an input too.

Listening to stories with a clear focus 

Having students perform their stories is a great way to showcase achievements, learn from peers and develop presentational skills. Giving students a clear focus of exactly what to listen out for is crucial when sharing stories to ensure they can give purposeful feedback.

You might want a couple of students in the class to watch out for skills from the physical strand (e.g., varying tone and facial expressions to convey characters), whilst another couple look out for cognitive skills (e.g., how the story is sequenced).

Story writing and telling can be very personal and the last thing we want is for students to feel criticised when receiving feedback from their peers! Instead, carefully consider how you model giving respectful feedback so students feel supported and encouraged by each other. To help with this, you could give students a scaffold sheet with prompts of what to look out for.

By encouraging students to give specific oracy feedback in this way, they are reminded of how powerful their voice is in bringing their story to life – valuing how they speak, as well as what they have written. Before giving peer feedback, it’s always worth referring to your class discussion guidelines to remind students that everybody’s voice is personal, respected and valued.