What do you get when you mix Storysack© resources with First Steps™ storytelling approaches? A little bit of magic! Just over a year ago, Neil Griffiths and I hit upon the idea of combining these well known resources as a way of helping children become more confident storytellers. Neil was keen to show how storysacks could be used across the curriculum with all age groups; I was looking for a fabulous resource to illustrate First Steps storytelling approaches. Each was originally created in response to teachers' needs for practical classroom support; both are based on the belief that children are natural problem-solvers who want to make sense of their world. So, the alliance was a natural one.

We know that it really helps children's reading and writing development if they have a ready store of stories in their heads - from being told stories, from hearing them read, from watching them on the TV, from the stories of their own lives. What is focused on less - though it is equally as important - is helping children to develop their skills as storytellers. Our new approaches highlight a step-by-step process for building up children's awareness of the important ingredients of story and a range of techniques to build known and unknown stories.

These approaches are:

• modelled stories where the adult models storybook language and story conventions
• character interviews where children develop questioning skills to see the relationship between characters, motives and actions
• character role plays where children investigate the crucial elements of setting, character, events and resolutions
• story reconstruction, an oral version of written story sequencing with a range of scaffolding to support children's confidence and progress
• circle stories where children tell stories collaboratively with a focus on developing their critical listening and thinking skills.

The approaches in themselves are, individually, familiar activities to many teachers. Put together in a coherent and planned way with the use of a storysack that the children love, they lift the storytelling experience and build in step-by-step support.

Using storysacks with familiar stories, children can use the map and props to support their retelling of the story as a pair or as a small group. This is a real confidence-builder for children and it helps them to get to grips with storytelling techniques such as using key words to help remember the sequence of events, dramatic openings and use of repetition.

The children can create a story in draft form by identifying key moments and dividing up the telling around the group. In a re-draft, the parts of the story can be re-allocated around the group or evaluated using a reflective activity where each person identifies something they liked, or suggests something that could have been done differently. With each practice of the story the children build in additional detail, dramatic pauses and greater awareness of their audience.

With unfamiliar stories, there is great scope for children to use the props and map to create their own story and then compare theirs with the original. Giving children a number of textless pictures from the story and asking them to discuss their preferred sequence gives a great insight into the children's understanding of narrative structure; it is also a way of supporting the children as they create their own narrative pathway collaboratively.

By making stories central to children's experiences in school we can help them to make sense of their world and explore events beyond their experience. If we focus on the telling of stories, we are laying the foundations for children to articulate their own experiences and building skills they can draw on in their written stories.

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