Stories

 
Broadcast: 22 Jan 2002, 11.20 - 11.40 am, BBC Radio Ulster, MW
 

 
The programme demonstrates how children can make their stories more imaginative through the art of good story-telling. It show how you can capture an audience by paying attention to detailed description of character and using adjectives to make characters and stories come to life.

The programme features three children, Rose, Sarah and Tom, who are sceptical about a story-teller’s visit to their school. They expect ‘boring old stories’, but once Mr Doran starts to speak, they are captivated by his gentle, mystical voice and his gripping story. (He tells of a young man who went up a hill to investigate strange lights and music and came down to find that 100 years had passed.) After the story-teller leaves, the children’s teacher asks them to write down what they remember of the story, and they compare and contrast Rose’s dry account with Mr Doran’s version. After school, the children face a situation that’s eerily similar to Mr Doran’s story...

Teachers can follow up this programme with a variety of activities practising different kinds of writing such as narrative, factual report, or report-writing.
 

 
Story-teller; suspense; descriptive language; character; fairy rath; brambles.
 

 
Whole class

• Group stories into different categories, for example folktales, fables, myths, legends, ballads, modern fantasy, science fiction, short stories, picture books. Ask the children to sort stories such as The Lion and the Mouse, Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, The Pied Piper of Hamelin into these categories.

Discussion points

• Discuss with the children the different types of stories they like.
• Ask the children what makes a good story.
• Discuss with the children how they heard these stories: Did they read them? Did they hear them on tapes? Did they hear them in school? Have they ever heard stories from a story-teller? Have family stories been passed down from their parents to them?

 
Discussion Points

• Discuss with the children what made Joe Doran’s story so effective.
• Discuss possible endings to Joe Doran’s tale.
• Discuss the changes the young man in the story might have noticed in his old home as he walked up to the house.

Pair or individual work

• Using the evidence from the radio programme, work out what kind of school report their teacher Miss Jones might give either Tom Curran or Rose (see Worksheet 1).
• Devise a front page spread for a local newspaper, detailing the rescue of Mrs Kellahan by Rose, Sarah and Tom. Discuss with the children a suitable title for a local newspaper and what they think is needed to make a well-written headline (see Worksheet 2).
• Get the children to write what happens next in the story – how does ‘the young fella’ cope with living 100 years after he went up the mountain?
• Devise five to ten questions ‘the young fella’ asked the man who he found living in his house 100 years later.
• Write a review of the radio programme.
• Draw a portrait of any of the characters in the programme, e.g. Joe Doran. Use appropriate adjectives to describe each character.
• Tell the children to ask their parents or grandparents about stories told to them which have not necessarily been written down.

 
WORKSHEETS

 
Click on the arrows below to download the worksheets for either this programme, or all the worksheets for this series.