PGCE English Tuesday October 4 th 2011

Why focus on story boxes in particular? It’s a rich resource to use for activities related to pretty much any aspect of literacy, and one that you might want to work with on SE 1 while you have the opportunity for group teaching. It encourages you to consider talk, listening, reading and writing as inter-dependent literacy experiences. A storybox encourages meaningful group work and the creation of a community of enquiry If you choose the English assignment for Core 1, this seminar has allowed you to rehearse the use of and purposes for a story box.

Introducing storyboxes: the role of the practitioner “..practitioners need to allow children to experiment and explore before expecting complex narratives to arise.” “It is important that practitioners look not just at the end product…the final story… but also at the process that children went through in order to produce it. Careful observations of the children while they are making their stories can offer valuable insights into how children are using language to collaborate, offer and share opinions and to share and develop ideas.” From: Bromley, H (2002) 50 Exciting Ideas for Storyboxes, Birmingham: Lawrence Educational Publications

The PNS Framework for Literacy Strands Speaking Listening and responding Group discussion and interaction Drama Strands Word recognition Word structure and spelling Understanding and interpreting texts Engaging and responding to texts Strands Creating and shaping texts Text structure and organisation Sentence structure and punctuation Presentation

What you would do with this set of contents? Would you relate them to an existing story? Would the children devise a story? Might you link them to other areas of learning in other subjects? Which speaking and listening skills might the children’s develop? Would you relate the activities to reading-based learning objectives ?

Growing a story box Now you have a book as a starter…. Read the story; how will you create a story box around this narrative?

Using a film starter for story box creation

If you choose the English core 1 assignment You will work with a small group; you will need to identify the children with the help of your teacher. You will need to know about the children’s prior learning in order to identify the most appropriate book/theme, activities and objectives for the experiences you will set up for the children. Where the theme is cross-curricular take care to focus on English objectives for talk and reading in your planning and delivery of the learning. You will need to have some flexibility in order to respond to unintended learning outcomes that are exciting and child-led. You will need to keep a journal of on-going reflection and analysis which will help inform your assignment Remember that the focus is talk and reading development rather than writing.