When reading a story to toddlers or kindergarten children, we would always go through the whole book, over and over again. They enjoy it because children at this age are always fascinated by how an event happens - how it starts, what happens next and how it ends. They may not have the language skills to tell a complete story, but they are becoming aware of the pace and the progress of a plot.By the time children enter primary school, they have stored many stories in their head. With the help of their imagination and their eagerness to voice out, they really enjoy participating in the storytelling process. That's why at this age, children are particularly attracted to stories with an open ending. Earlier on, I have introduced the musical story written by the Russian composer, Sergei Prokofiev - Peter and the Wolf, in which the brilliant ending naturally triggers imagination and discussion in music class.
You can check out Scholastic's Story Starters which is a cute site for young students to start writing a story.
Here is a a clip with five different traditional "story starters" for lower primary students which facilitate creative writing. Only the first halves of these stories are performed (through different forms of stagecraft, which makes this resource more valuable), children would have to continue the stories with their imagination. I find this an excellent approach to storytelling not only to English teachers, but to parents as well. When we read stories, most of the time, we read the whole thing; perhaps next time, we'd pick a place to take a pause, let the children continue on with the story, be prepared to go an imaginative tour!
(Note: KS 1 = Key Stage One; "Key Stage" is the term used to differentiate different age groups in the UK curriculum; KS 1 refers to Age 5-7, Year 1-2)
Website recommendation:
Click here if you're interested in reading more about the UK's primary curriculum (its music curriculum, namely, is the most comprehensive among all the countries' music curriculum I've come across!!)
