Ideas for All Teachers

Twelve Tips for Inspiring Story Creativity in Kids

“Creative writing to often begins with writing,” says Sheila Dailey Carroll, a former teacher turned professional storyteller. This approach, she notes, can be overwhelming to students who don’t recognize the relationship between spoken and written language. As an alternative, Carroll suggests using story types and verbal exercises to strengthen creative impulses.

Following is a step-by-step breakdown of her teaching technique:

1. Select one of the eight basic story types (see the box on page 6), and get as many examples as possible from the school library. Tell them, read them aloud, assign silent reading, or provide reading-and-listening centers with recordings of the stories. The idea is to saturate your students with the story type.

2. Encourage discussion about the tales. Explore students’ likes and dislikes. Ask what makes one story better than another.

3. Discuss two or three tales from a single type. Invite students to find similarities between different versions of the same story.

4. Write on the blackboard the patterns that repeat in each story. These are the tale’s “bare bones.”

5. Brainstorm a class version of the bare bones of a given story type. Developing the story as a group will model the process for students. Keep the tone light, and suggest rather than direct.

6. Divide students into groups of three, giving them 10 minutes to brainstorm their own version of the story. Make sure they incorporate the main elements of the story, make creative story alterations, and keep to the 10-minute limit. Additional time encourages digression.

7. Appoint a teller from each small group who will share the new stories with the entire class. The students will be surprised at how different the stories are despite their common structure, Ask for comments and critiques.

8. The next stage, oral revision, is critical. Help students understand the process by asking the small groups to identify two things they liked about their own stories. Next, have them name two things they’d like to change. The goal is to teach children how to work with ideas and language until a satisfactory product results. Modeling the process using the class story may be helpful.

9. Once the stories take shape, encourage the children to write them down as a group or individually. Have students practice their tales aloud in small groups, encouraging further oral revision.

10. Ask them to write their stories in full narrative form. If problems persist at this stage, consider discussing them with students individually, or have them read their tales aloud to the entire group for feedback.

11. During a separate session, have the children rewrite and proofread for grammar and spelling errors. Emphasize the importance of producing a polished product. Point out that writers often make changes in their work at this point.

12. Publish the stories in some form. Tell them to underclassmen at the school. Read them over the school’s public-address system. Or turn them into a class storybook.

Story Types

Circle story: A tale that follows a circular pattern, ending just as it began. The main character learns by the end that he or she is the best or the strongest.

Cumulative tale: This is a chain tale in which each time a new part is added, a refrain repeats. One Fine Day (Macmillan, 1971) by Nonny Hogrogian is a good example.

Fable: A brief story with a moral, usually with animal characters. Aesop’s fables and, more recently, Arnold Lobel’s Fables (Harper & Row, 1980) include good examples.

Ghost story: A story about the supernatural, usually a ghost or an apparition. Often the apparition returns because of some unmet need – revenge, lost love, to give a warning – or to retrieve a misplaced meaningful object.

Scary story: A type of tale that focuses on common fears. Two types are the jump story and the horror story.

Tall tale: Exaggerated stories about extraordinary people – e.g., Paul Bunyan or Pecos Bill – or animals.

Why story: A tale that explains the origin of some trait (e.g., why cats have nine lives) or fact (e.g., why there are stories in the world).

Myth: A story, usually about gods or demigods, that explains a natural event or the creation of the world or a race of people. Myths differ in scale from why stories.

The latter tell the origins of traits or situations; the former deal with the creation of worlds or natural phenomena.