Table Of ContentOnce Upon an If
Also available in the If series:
The If Machine by Peter Worley
The If Odyssey by Peter Worley
Coming soon:
The If Man by Peter Worley
Also available from Bloomsbury Education:
100 Ideas for Primary Teachers: Developing Thinking Skills by Steve Bowkett
Getting the Buggers to Think by Sue Cowley
How to be an Outstanding Primary School Teacher by David Dunn
Once Upon an If
The Storythinking
Handbook
By Peter Worley
Illustrations by Tamar Levi
Published 2014 by Bloomsbury Education
Bloomsbury Publishing plc
50 Bedford Square, London, WC1B 3DP
www.bloomsbury.com
978-1-4411-6526-8
© Peter Worley 2014
A CIP record for this publication is available from the British Library.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any form or by any means –
graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or information storage
or retrieval systems – without the prior permission in writing of the publishers.
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Typeset by Fakenham Prepress Solutions, Fakenham, Norfolk NR21 8NN
This book is dedicated to all the good teachers I have had the
honour of meeting, being taught by or working with. I will
name two:
Joan Lagden, who was my final primary school teacher. She taught
with stories and said to me as I left the school that I should get
back in touch with her when I had written my first book. I did.
Paula Kitson-Moore MBE, who inspired me towards a teaching
career and who taught me that teaching young children matters.
I would add that very little matters more.
Contents
Acknowledgements xiv
Foreword by Anne Fine xv
Preface xvi
Introduction xviii
Storytelling animals xviii
What is in this book? xxi
Online resources xxi
Who is this book for? xxii
How to use this book xxii
Part 1
The ‘How To’ of Storytelling and Storythinking 1
1
Thinking about stories 3
What’s the story to storytelling? 3
Types of story 5
As if: truth and lies in fiction 8
Rehearsal for life 10
Telescope of the imagination 11
Ethics through narrative 12
The virtue of stories 13
Stories and thinking 14
Received and operational beliefs 14
‘Thinking with’ and ‘thinking about’ 16
Stories and thought-experiments 17
Concepts 18
Wrong in the right way 18
2
Sheherazad’s handbook: how to tell stories 20
The virtues of storytelling 20
Direct communication 20
Improvisation and embellishment 21
Moving ‘the walls’ 21
vii
Contents
Varying perspectives 22
The omnipresent narrator 22
How to tell a story 22
The Goldilocks Principle 23
How to begin and end a story 24
Tenses 25
Nowness 26
Persons – first, second or third? 26
The second person – putting the audience into the story 26
Point of view and sympathy 26
Extension activity: the Rashomon effect 27
Speaking and ‘lifting from the page’ 28
Voice and voices 29
Breathe 29
Whose voice? 30
Volume and projection 31
Clarity 31
Pace and pause 32
Take stock 32
Transition 32
Audience anticipation 33
Learning stories 33
Word and phrase-ticks 34
Story-memorising and memorising stories 34
Keyword lists 35
Chunking 36
Three – the magic story number 36
Story sequences 37
Character desire and motivation 38
Tone and register 39
Tone and meaning 39
Invisible punctuation 39
Matching the register: adapting for different audiences 40
Extension activity: exercises in style 40
Eyes, eye-telling and eye contact 41
Movement, gestures and expression 42
viii
Contents
Less is more 42
One-spot storytelling 42
Working in large spaces 42
Gestures 43
Contradiction 43
Substituting 44
Anticipation 44
Physicalisation 44
Slight physicalisation 44
Full physicalisation 45
Audience participation in physicalisation 45
Using ‘story space’ 46
Structure and the withholding of information
(or the Odysseus Principle) 46
Minimal prop principle 47
Visualisation (or how to follow a recipe) 48
How to describe a story 49
Vocabulary 50
Developing your instant thesaurus 51
When and what to describe 52
The smell of old books – engaging the senses 53
Picture books and how to tell them 54
3
Storythinking 56
Enquiry 56
First Thoughts 57
Talk Time 57
Questions 58
Task Questions 58
Nested Questions 58
Emergent Questions and Enquiries 59
Finding the right question 59
A good Task Question… 59
Emergent Questions as Task Questions 60
Socratic Questions 60
Creating stories around questions 61
ix
Contents
As Clear As The Edge of A Cloud 61
Extension discussion idea 62
When to ask a question 63
Making effective use of the moral 64
Books with shortcomings and errors 64
Ask a question from the story 65
Concrete and abstract 65
Real-life analogies 66
Narrative enquiries 66
Narrative problems 67
Child-centred questioning 68
The Thinking Kit 70
Concept map 70
Carve it up: drawing distinctions 71
Break the circle 71
Examples and counter examples 72
Examples 72
Counter examples: ‘But what if…’ 73
Counter examples and falsification 73
Imaginary disagreer 74
If it, anchor it, open it up 74
Anchoring 74
Opening up 75
If-ing 75
Debates 76
Split debate 76
The walk across debate 77
The Concept Box 77
Bite and sting: tense and person for thinking 79
Give the audience a role in the story 80
Re-toothing a dilemma 80
Put your audience into the story 80
An exercise in second person thinking 81
