This was a session I did with Bennell Care Services Ltd at one of their residential homes for adults with learning difficulties. The session was an organic one, and I did end up changing my plans as we went along. Ultimately the key was using the ideas/strictures as inspiration for a story, which we made up collaboratively, wrote down and drew illustrations for.
Aim: To generate a story that includes certain words, plus quotations from some poems. Target Age: Would work with a wide range of ages and abilities.
Key Skills: Spelling, grammar (I was quite strict on these as we went along), generating creative ideas, and collaboration.
Resources: Storytellnig signs, tin with colours written on pieces of paper, tin with quotes from some poems, tin with magnetic words (optional), tin with animals (optional), wipeboard, bluetack, wipeboard pens.
Steps: 1. As a warm-up I did the storytelling with signs exercise. (I bring in signs with certain things on e.g. lipstick, fishermen... and the group hold these up when the want me to include them in the story I'm making up.) 2. We then looked at the 'ingredients' for the story. In the end we did not use the magnetic words, just the animals, colours and poem quotes. I had intended to have people pick two/three of each of these, then try to write a story, but what we did instead was.... 3. We started making up a story and gradually picked out the words/phrases: essentially we picked them out, then had to include them in our story as we went along. 4. One person in the group wrote the story down on the wipeboard as we made it up, and we bluetacked on the phrases/words once we had managed to include them. 5. Then we each picked something in the story to illustrate.