This is a topic very close to my heart (Jules). Drama and talk is essential in order to prepare for great writing.

When I trained as a teacher, I don’t think we had much specific creative writing training. There wasn’t time – the PGCE course had to rattle through so much in that year. For years, I tried my best to help children to write well but I’m not sure that I really succeeded!

Storytelling Schools (based on the work of Pie Corbett) was the method that really made a difference to my teaching. This method teaches a story to the child, then they play with that story (and the vocab) in a low stakes way and then the process of teaching how to write the story begins.

In the Storytelling Schools’ method, we call the ‘playing with the story’ part – deepening. We get deep into the story so we know how the characters would speak, where the story is, how each character feels in each part of the story and why the problem matters so much.

And this is where drama is so useful. Using drama, we can deepen the story – we can live the story so that the children can feel how each character feels, speak in role as the character, or describe how it all looks in the eyes of someone in the story. If you break a story down into manageable chunks, and you focus on each chunk at a time and consider the events, the emotions and the dialogue then the children are prepped and ready to write. 

Those oral drama games that we played to deepen the storytelling were a game changer for me.

I have a few basic techniques that I use all the time:

• Tell me more
• Phone home
• Role play (where the kids literally role play the piece of the story they are about to write)
• Conscience alley

And of course I use others. (There are loads to choose from on the Let’s Do Drama website.)

So, for example, in the course of writing a portal story with the children I might so the following short drama activities with the children before writing each chunk of the story:

1. Role play the scene at home before finding the portal. Focus on actions and dialogue that can be used in the first paragraph to give clues about the characters strengths and fears.
2. Build the set of the place where the portal is.
3. Draw the portal.
4. Mime and describe going through the portal.
5. Phone Home describing the new land they have found themselves in.

Everytime we deepen the oral storytelling through drama, we gain more ideas, zoom in on more details and collect more vocabulary that can really bring writing to life. It is an essential part of the writing process. I couldn’t teach writing without it.

I suspect the new primary curriculum will also reflect the value of drama in the writing process. I look forward to seeing if I’m right!