Jumpstart! Storymaking

Games and Activities for Ages 7-12

Pie Corbett

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2008
• ISBN:
  9781134035663
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Didattica
• Subtopic: Didattica generale

Jumpstart! Storymaking is a collection of games and activities to develop the creative process of 'storymaking'. It focuses upon 'storytelling for writing' as well as creating a whole school culture of storytelling, reading and writing. Storymaking is the process of retelling, innovating and creating new stories.

Like the best-selling Jumpstart! Literacy, this book contains imaginative 'quick-fire' ideas that could be used as creative warm-ups and starters or developed into lessons. There are over 100 provocative and thought-provoking games and activities, intended to 'jumpstart' storytelling, reading and writing in any Key Stage 1, 2 or 3 classroom. Practical, easy-to-do and vastly entertaining, the 'jumpstarts' will appeal to busy teachers.

Chapter 1 Creative warm-ups

DOI: 10.4324/9780203886038-2

Many of the quick-fire games that teachers use as ‘lesson starters’ have a very obvious educational intent. They are there to develop spelling or the ability to create and manipulate sentences. These games are just to warm up thinking, creating a lively atmosphere with everyone engaged. It is worth modelling the games before playing them. I also find it helpful to have a pair or group play the game in front of everyone.

Guessing Game

The children work in pairs. One child thinks of — an animal, famous person, place, type of food, etc. The partner has to discover what it is by asking questions to which the answers can only be ‘yes’, ‘no’ or ‘maybe’. Only ten questions can be asked. You may need to increase the number of questions if ten is found to be generally insufficient.

Avoiding Saying a Letter Game

The players of the game have to role play, talk on a topic or tell a story, but they must avoid using a certain letter, e.g. ‘s’. This has the effect of making them watch their words a bit. If it is too easy, ask the children to talk a little faster. Soon enough, someone will trip up. Use a timer to see who lasts the longest.

The written version of the game is to rewrite a current pop song, nursery rhyme, traditional rhyme or short poem that has been provided without using a common letter, such as ‘e’.

Speed Writing

To warm up the brain and get into a creative mood give the children a topic and ask them to write as much as they can in, say, one minute. Time them and ask them to count the number of words, then try again with another topic. They should write as rapidly as possible. This limbers and frees up the mind. They should concentrate on capturing the flow of words rather than worrying about spelling or handwriting. Surprisingly, this can sometimes produce rather good pieces of writing — often superior to those that have been laboured over for twenty minutes under duress.

Speed Chinese Whispers

The class stands in teams of equal numbers. Give a slip of paper with a sentence written on it to the child at the end of each team. On the word ‘go’, they have to whisper the sentence to the next down the line. The sentence is passed on in this way as fast as possible until it reaches the front. The winning team is the fastest and the team that also gets the closest approximation to the original sentence. Tongue twisters are fun to use!

Video Writing

Play a video or film track with the sound turned down. The children use this as a basis for writing as rapidly as possible — the story of what is happening; a description; or just anything that the images trigger. It has to be fast with no pauses. If they get stuck, just look up at what is happening and launch in again. There is no right or wrong; the only wrong thing is if you stop writing. Who can write the most words down?

Making Links

Randomly select two things — objects work well. Let us say that you have chosen the Moon and a car. On a board draw two circles like a pair of eyes spread wide apart. Put a word inside each eye. Now brainstorm ideas for ways in which they are linked. Draw a line and annotate each link, e.g. car wheels are the same shape as the Moon. Ask the children to make as many connections as possible. The winner of the game is the child or pair with the most connections.

Starboard

All writers are interested in words. I own a number of dictionaries of word and phrase origins. I was looking through Linda and Roger Flavell's Dictionary of Word Orgins when this little game occurred to me. I was on the page that explains how the word starboard came into being and it drew my attention because I had been thinking about skateboards. I wondered if I could invent different ‘boards’, e.g. moonboard, sunboard, cloudboard, swimboard, tearboard, rainboard, windowboard.

Next time I was in school, I provided a list of compound words and asked the children to split them, select ten openings randomly and ten different endings and then to create new words — plus their definitions. So starboard and stepchild and tadpole might provide:

• starpole — the short pole that is a form of telescope. It points at a star and a small screen shows all the details about it.
• stepboard — a moveable step made out of a board.
• tadchild — small child.

Try using the following compound words:

Blindfold	Buttonhole	Firecracker	Scapegoat
Bonfire	Cartoon	Kidnap	Snapdragon
Budget	Coconut	Magpie	Sunday
Bugbear	Cowslip	Masterpiece	Unwanted
Bullfrog	Deadline	Nightmare	Uproar
Butterfly	Earwig	Sandwich	Voiceless

Pattern Spotting

Searching for patterns is an important brain activity. As human beings we exist through patterns of behaviour that help us cope with the world. Try any game where children have to find a pattern or spot where it is broken. This might be a list of words that rhyme and spotting the one that does not within ten seconds:

Rough, Tough, Enough, Bluff, Cuff

Through, Duff, Dough, Fluff, Gruff, Stuff

Identifying the underlying patterns in sentences is important and quite demanding. Try listing three examples that follow the same pattern and then ask the children to imitate and come up with the same pattern themselves, e.g.:

Before Donni sang, everyone hoped he would keep in tune.

While Donni was singing, everyone put their hands over their ears.

After Donni finished singing, everyone cheered with relief.

Try using just one sentence and ask them to write it out and then, directly below, imitate it, e.g.:

As they came to the last tree in the row, where the field ended, Mrs Wentleberry halted, wondering whether she should climb all the way to the top.

As they reached the corner shop, where the road curved left, Mr Snaggletooth stopped, hoping there would be some jelly babies left.

As he ran down the hill, where the stream trickled, Johnson paused, expecting there would be at least one tunnel into the hillside.

As with all things — start simply, e.g.:

Angrily, he stormed out of the room.

Happily, she whistled a tune.

Gleefully, he ate the doughnuts.

Unfortunately, she had one too many.

New Experiences

The brain is stimulated by new experiences — it makes us curious and generates language. First-hand experience makes brains grow. Each weekend, try looking for something curious that you could take into the classroom — photos, a mirror, a key, a Salvador Dali picture, an old watch, a gnarled piece of bark. Use these for rapid drawing and writing. To write, you could just brainstorm words and ideas as a class or individually in a few minutes. What does it look like/remind you of? What do associate with this? What might it be used for? Invent five new things you could use it for. What might a martian think it was?

Keep your ongoing collection of curious items in a ‘writing box’. Let the children take any angle they wish. Steven, aged 7, wrote this short piece about an old watch that I popped in:

The Silver Watch

The back is smooth and round. It has hinges to open it. It has a gold wheel that spins round. It has springs. The spring beats out and in like a heart. It has a silver plate with patterns. The patterns are curls. The best part I like is the gold colour inside. The time is quarter past six. That is all I know of the silver watch.

Deborah, aged 8 years, wrote about a small box and the unicorn that it contained.

What has the box ever held? A diamond? A ring? A heart of rubies? Or a unicorn with a sapphire collar? The inside of the box is as black as ebony. The unicorn can never feel happy or sad. The unicorn is trapped between both, never will he move again. The person who owned the box was a merchant who staggered around. The merchant rode a golden camel. The box was his favourite possession. Yet only he knew what it contained. He passed on the secret to me. Inside the box was a key, a key to let the soul of the unicorn out into the world…

Playful Writing

The brain develops when it has to play hard at working. Being playful with ideas and language engages the prefrontal cortex and develops our highest cognitive functions. Novelty and innovation are important for brain growth. Whilst routines help to organise, regiment and make sure that children feel safe...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half-title Page
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table Of Contents
• Acknowledgements
• By word of mouth: the story of the story
• Introduction
• 1 Creative warm-ups
• 2 Strengthening the imagination
• 3 Sentence games
• 4 Character games
• 5 Games to develop settings
• 6 Storymaking games
• 7 Twenty things to do with a story
• 8 Story reading detectives
• 9 Creating a storymaking climate in school and classroom
• 10 Resources