contextual information.
For the past 15 years both in Reception and Nursery I have taught using one story for the whole year. Stories we have covered, many more than once, have included; Peter Pan, Alice in Wonderland, Aladdin, Pinocchio, Shrek, Snow White and The Wizard of Oz.
This way of working began out of necessity and an insistence from the children that the stories we were using in themed topic work needed to be played out and embellished in greater depth. Naturally I encouraged the children's desires to continue the themes and together we created learning opportunities that were both divergent and parallel to the story. In the first instance the follow up work I had planned for Pinocchio following a visit to a puppet show performance ended up lasting 16 weeks. The children explored woodworking, puppet shows, fairgrounds, inside a whale and life in the woods with characters good and bad and philosophical challenges galore. What is a real boy? How do we know what is true? Who do we trust? And what would happen if we planted money trees?
This way of working makes so much sense. The planning is minimal. A long term team planning session involves familiarising ourselves with versions of the story and brain storming potential learning opportunities. From there we plan one provocation or stimulus a week, sit back and watch what happens.
This stimulus takes the form of a challenge or problem to solve. The children provide the ideas and questions and we go from there. The children actively create a classroom where "The walls become the world all around." (Sendak -Where The Wild Things Are)
Each week we present one or more stimuli to continue the story based on the children's ideas. This might be a letter or “gift” from one or more of the story's characters. For example when doing Peter Pan we started with the arrival of a trunk of toys and clothes, and a letter from John, Wendy and Michael asking for help to sort them. There was going to be big trouble if they didn’t tidy their nursery. We later had to decide on the wording of an advert for a nanny to help. We had applications from a variety of candidates and the children discussed the qualities of each applicants' philosophies of child rearing before voting ... the successful candidate turned out to be a dog.
The focus of the year long story curriculum is to ask and encourage questions that stimulate open ended problem solving and class negotiation skills eg What is the problem and how can we help? Why has this happened? What can we do to create a space for this to happen? The children make the decisions about resources, tasks, props and role play areas which fit the task. They become the actors and directors of their own learning.
The questions in the form of letters set the “where are we ?” scenario. These lead to the children’s ideas of where to take the story, their role playing, philosophising and storytelling within this context is a powerful voice.
The whole classroom takes on the appearance of a film set. We have storytelling spaces, construction and messy areas, reading and writing nooks, inside and out, all themed around the story we are creating.
At least 2 role play areas which expand as the children's thematic play develops and a science/nature based den. People who visit the classroom say it is like stepping into a book surrounded by the children’s artwork and creations based on the story. And of course the children remember all their learning because they have created it and lived in it.
Opportunities for community building are built in, for example, the children might be asked to organise pirate crews to ready the ship; code breakers,spies, decorators and builders, cooks and doctors.
Over the year when doing Peter Pan we covered many mini topics in the way that the children wanted to explore them. They built dens, created "Wendy" houses, built tree houses and underground bedrooms.. They mastered the art of "flying", made maps, secret codes, potions, wishes and magic. They played in mermaid lagoons and spooky dark caves. We had to fix shadows when soap failed. We built pirate frigates and counted pieces of eight. Made worm infested biscuits, shared rations, became pirates,lost boys, fairies and mermaids and covered many philosophical concepts like fairness and jealousy, loyalty and friendship, power and revenge.
Using a Year long Story Curriculum allows us as teachers to continuously find new links to learning from the children’s ideas and questions. We can use so many other books and stories and themes that may seem unrelated to an outsider until they know the context of where it came from…. One idea leads to another and this is why it needs a whole year.
I hope that this blog will become the starting point for my latest book on the value of working in this way. I call it philosophical play in the Year Long Story Curriculum. Please join me on the journey and feel free to add your comments and questions.
For more information on how to incorporate philosophical play into your classroom please take a look at my publications and website.
www.sarastanley.co.uk
Why Think? Philosophical Play 3-11 Bloomsbury 2012
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| Writing to fairies needs very tiny pencils. |
