Storytelling Week 2026

Storytelling week was the second event in our calendar of events to support the National Year of Reading 2026. We enjoyed a range of events to highlight the importance of listening to, telling and reading stories.

 

On Tuesday, Year 5 and 6 enjoyed a ‘Soundtrack Your Story’ workshop from the National Literacy Trust where they learnt about rhythm and rap with Alim Kamara.

On Wednesday, we held a storytelling assembly where each class shared their Talk for Writing text. Reception told ‘The wheels on the bus’; Year 1 told ‘Lost and Found’; Year 2 told ‘Edgar’s Adventure’, a warning tale, and Year 3 told a suspense story ‘The Manor House’. Year 4 carried on the suspense stories with Zelda Claw; Year 5 shared the non-chronological report ‘The Rhiswanozebtah’ and Year 6 told the story ‘Red’, a twist on the traditional version of Little Red Riding Hood.

 

On Thursday, we had a special visit from Sal Tonge who is a storyteller. Each class enjoyed a workshop with Sal where they listened to and joined in with lots of stories and songs.

 

We have also held a class reading swap where the older children read with the younger children.

We hope that our storytelling events will have provided enjoyable experiences for all!

What do nursery rhymes tell us about the past?

We focused on two different nursery rhymes: Wee Willy Winky and Polly Put the Kettle on. Some of us dressed up as the characters from the nursery rhymes and compared them to the present. We talked about the differences and the similarities.

Nursery rhyme catastrophe!

We received a parcel from the King of Nursery Rhyme land, a letter telling us that the Great Nursery Rhyme book had been muddled up and some of the nursery rhymes had been muddled up like: Humpty Dumpty sat on a cow! The only nursery rhyme that was correct was the Wheels on the bus, we read the nursery rhyme and made a text map of it. We talked about our favourite nursery rhymes.

Catching a star in Forest Schools

We have been reading a book called “How to catch a star” by Oliver Jeffers in reading skills sessions. On Wednesday we tried to catch our own stars and also read a story called : “My Pet star” we then personalised our own stars and took them on an adventure in the woodlands, told them stories and sang them nursery rhymes. Lots of us let our stars help them build the den we have been working on.

The Runaway train science investigation

We read a story called: “The Runaway Train” investigated our own runaway train. This time in the science investigation we were focusing on making predictions; we made predictions about which material on the ramp would slow down the train the best. Lots of us used the existing knowledge we had to help make our predictions. At the end of the day we carried out the investigation, some children from the class took on roles such as: investigator, health and safety officer, recorder, measurer and fair test checker.

Mr Gumpy’s picnic

To finish our project about journeys and writing a new version of the story Mr Gumpy’s outing we had a picnic in Forest Schools. Mr Gumpy kindly sent us all the provisions for the picnic, we iced biscuits (decorating them with the initial phonemes of our names) and buttered bread. We played some parachute games and enjoyed our picnic outdoors.

How can we manage our worries?

This week in PSED we helped Ziggy with his I wonder…. what can I do when I am feeling a bit worried? We talked about what a worry might be and how we can identify it in our bodies. After that we read a story called: Ruby’s Worry and we talked about what we could do if we were feeling a bit worried about something. We made a top tips display which we talked about at the end of the day.

Bike day

On Tuesday we bought in our bikes and scooters to school. We learnt about how to be safe on our bikes and how we can ride safely, especially when there are other riders around. We used road signs, pedestrian crossings and traffic lights. In the afternoon we also looked at art work inspired by bike wheels and drew our own versions of them.

Broom and den making

The fairies wrote to us about a vehicle that we had not thought of for Mr Gumpy’s journey – a broom! The told us that these were easy to make in forest schools and they left us the string to make them. They also left us a book called “Winnie’s broomstick”. Some of us made broom sticks and some of us helped make a den, working together and thinking about cooperation which we had learnt about in our PSED session on Monday.

Year of reading for pleasure

2026 is the year of reading for pleasure! Reception class has kick started the year with a year of new books; there are 12 books wrapped up one for each month of the year. We will open one book per month.