This workshop focuses on incorporating play into storytelling; creating a collaborative and engaging experience for both children and teachers. Improvising a story on the spot may sound daunting, but it is not, once you realise that you can rely on the children to come up with most of the ideas.

I started doing this with my K1 class back in the early 90s, long before I became a storyteller. I was hesitant and not too confident. But I soon realised that it didn’t matter how silly a story seemed, or whether the ending was lame. The children were coming up with ideas, using language and feeling a strong sense of ownership over the story they had helped to create. I would often write these stories out and put them up in the wall and it would be an everyday occurrence for me to see children clustered around helping each other read their story.

I have spent the past 25 years playing with story, much of it working with early childhood teachers. I now know a lot more about how to structure a story; knowledge that would have helped me be more confident in creating stories with my class. I can now share this knowledge with you, and help you and your children to become playful, confident story improvisers.

In this workshop we will play with stories; so that you can learn to confidently engage in story play with your class. We will

· explore the basic principles of effective story structure
· learn a simple method that will allow you to easily co-create stories with your class
· work in groups to experience creating story with a story structure template
· play together in different ways to improvise stories