Once upon a time, I had the fun privilege of visiting an after school/work tutoring program that runs in the center of the city. A strong king invites people to come and pay to be part of a class for extra English lessons. This is open to kids, fairies, and adults a like! I have been in contact with one teacher and a shepherdess who has asked me a couple of times to come and be a part of her class. My most recent visit involved me and a talking shoe to take part in one of their teacher seminars and afterwards teaching a short lesson in a classroom in a cave.

Speaking to teachers (not in a cave)

I like to use a fun little game called Once Upon a Time when I teach. This is a game that is all about storytelling as you may have gathered. Stories usually sound like the one above, just complete nonsense. (The previous story is true if you take out the randomness.)

Making a storyline

Students have fun learning to create a story based on cards that they drew from a deck. The objective of the game is to weave a tale using storytelling cards you pulled from a deck to arrive at a predetermined ending. These can range from a wide variety of cards, you can have words like strong or weak, king or queen, forest or castle, fairy or giant, ruins or broken… the list goes on. The ending of the story is also chosen from a deck of possible endings. You can have the classic, ‘and the lived happily ever after,’ or ‘the evildoers were thrown into a well and never heard of again,’ or perhaps ‘and he picked up his weapon and went on his way.’ There are many options but you can only arrive at one ending!

Sharing the rough draft

My time at the tutoring program was fun. Students created stories that had magical changing forests, armies of devils, and sleeping beauties. They were very creative and ready to share. I look forward to being able to come and partner with this program in the future!

Working hard on stories