Title: Creating the Ending
Recommended by: David Heathfield
Origin: p. 35, Storytelling With Our Students: Techniques for telling tales from around the world Heathfield, David, DELTA Publishing 2014
Recommended age: From 5 years to adults
Objective:
- To develop creative story-making skills
Procedure:
The students can be invited to create and tell their own endings to an unfinished folk story – first in pairs, then as a whole class.
Step 1
Tell a story, pausing at a climactic point towards the end of the story and, without any preparation, invite the students to tell the ending they imagine to a partner:
- They might create two different endings.
- They might create one ending together.
Step 2
Invite a volunteer to sit in your storytelling seat and to tell their ending. The other students listen closely, and notice similarities and differences to their own endings.
Step 3
Invite another volunteer, who has a very different ending, to tell theirs.
Step 4
Once the students have listened to three completely different endings from other students, you could ask them to tell their ending again to new partner:
- They can tell their ending as before.
- They can include any ideas they liked from the other students they listened to.
Step 5
Finally, they compare their endings with the traditional ending as you tell it.
More information: www.davidheathfield.co.uk
