I always found this a really effective way of getting children to put their initial ideas about a story down on paper! Planning and generating ideas is really tricky, especially when faced with a blank piece of paper but if you add a bit of a game element in, it takes away some of the fear of not knowing what to write. If you wanted to, this activity could lead on to sentence writing but you could also just leave it there as this is a key skill in itself. If they want to write a few sentences about one of the boxes too then that’s great!
🖊 I’ve written who, where, special object, opening, problem and end in each box but you can choose what you would like your child to plan ideas for and change the headings if you want.
🖊 Talk to the players about what type of story they’ll be planning (always easier to pick something they’re interested in as they’ll already have lots of ideas).
🖊 Then ask them to choose which box they would like to start with.
🖊 Explain they will now have 1 minute (or more if you think they’ll need it) to draw and write their ideas down. It’s quick, simple sketches and words or phrases, nothing more.
🖊 When the time is up, they could talk about their ideas and if you’ve had a go too, you can both share your ideas.
🖊 Continue in the same way filling the boxes and before you know it, they’ll have a whole story plan written without thinking about it too much!
