Any year 1 teachers there? Question about storytelling.

[Honesttodog]

DD is 6, is going thru a big storywrtiting phases, but it's all rebelling stories she knows - hansel and gretel, Matilda by roald Dahl, Cinderella... Just wondered if this is a typical phase of learning to write and tell stories. Do many 6yos make up stories? Just want to fire up her use of language or taking stories in different directions, but won't worry too much if this is a developmental stage in her learning.

Bought a couple of books to get her thinking about story telling but am just interested to hear what a teacher sees at this age when it comes to making up written stories...

I'm not a teacher but have a 6 year old daughter. I wouldn't worry at all, to be honest she sounds reasonably advanced where she is. My daughter isn't the slightest bit interested in making up her own stories yet and I hadn't even thought to be worried about this at such a young age

I teach Year 1 and a lot of children find story writing really tricky.

The great thing is that your daughter enjoys writing. Retelling familiar stories is a good starting point.

If she's confident and happy to have some input from you then try to catch her when she's going to write and have a chat about what story she's going to be retelling. Then you could ask some open-ended questions like "I wonder what words you could use to show how ugly the witch is/ mean Mrs Trunchball is/ beautiful and kind Cinderella is" etc. If she's been introduced to things like connective/conjunctions or sentence openers at school then you could mention those as well.

You could also talk together to plan a twist on a familiar story. Eg use the structure of Cinderella, but change the ball to something different so a little girl who loves Frozen gets an invitation to Elsa's birthday party, or a girl who loves singing auditions for the X Factor.

But if she doesn't welcome that kind of support and feels like it's being back at school then leave her to get on with her writing on her own, and be the appreciative audience once she's finished and wants to read her stories to you.

Websites like www.twinkl.co.uk/ have resources like word banks and writing frames that she might enjoy using.

Not worried, just interested in the progression. Thanks for replies, I guess I just want to know how to support her learning at home. She is enjoying exploration of describing words so I will encourage her in that direction for now. Thanks for the tips cariadlet nice name!

I really recommend Rory's story cubes if she enjoys storytelling. They are brilliant for sparking imagination, and great fun too. We have a few different ones and I've keep a box in my bag, great for keeping dds occupied.

I have a very distinct memory of being asked to write "news" and writing about "the little red hen" when I was very small

Very typical and retelling a story is a key part of writing development.