‘StoryBoards’ is a simple and fun game resource to help children with language and communication difficulties develop their narrative skills. Using game boards and colourfully-illustrated picture cards, StoryBoards helps children to visualise and practise telling a story through identifying the essential elements, how these should be sequenced and providing a basic vocabulary.
– There are individual boards for four players – larger groups can work in pairs to develop individual stories or work on a single story as a group. Each story element – location, time, transport, object, feeling and weather – is colour-coded for ease of identification.
– The activity is presented at two levels – a simple picture framework excluding the concept of time, and a higher-level activity that includes time.
– By picking story cards from the different sets, stories can be silly or sensible and children can either stick with their choices or negotiate for a change, which encourages discussion and reasoning. For example, if a child is going to the zoo, would they travel there in a submarine?
– Hugely flexible, other activities include: Throwing a story; Lotto; Vocabulary ladders; and Asking questions. StoryBoards can also be used for news time; preparation for visits or holidays; and narrative development.
– ‘StoryBoards’ will develop basic vocabulary and encourage active listening, turn-taking, topic maintenance and inferential reasoning. It will help children to contribute at ‘News time’ and to describe what happens on their school trips or holidays.
A structured and accessible resource, StoryBoards is ideal for use with individuals or groups by teachers, speech language therapists and teaching assistants working with young children. It can be easily incorporated into classroom activities and relates directly to the English National Curriculum Key Stage 1 and 2.
“All the pupils and staff who used it were delighted with it…emotion cards were received particularly well…easy to understand and play.” – NAPLIC Newsletter
8 StoryBoards, 2 story cards boards, 90 story cards, 6 lotto boards, 1 double-sided photocopiable story planner, 1 colour-coded die 56pp manual, boxed
