Here’s the guidance and resource materials for teachers, librarians, parents and others who work with children for Episode Six of The Story Thief Challenges.

Story Re-cap questions for children:

1. How does their dad try to answer the phone?
2. Why is their dad becoming like a child?
3. How have the Story Thief challenges changed Liam and Aoife’s relationship?
4. Why do they have to do three more story challenges?
5. What do you think their mother will do?

Writing advice Re-cap questions:

1. What is a fantasical setting?
2. What is the simple question you must ask when inventing a fantastical setting?
3. What was the single image that inspired Pádraig Kenny to write Tin?
4. Why is it important to know the rules for your fantastical setting?
5. What kind of research can help you in creating your setting?

Story Challenge:

P.S. I have a Story Challenge for you.

First I want you to pick a place. It could be a real place on earth or in our universe or it could entirely invented by you.

Secondly I want to you to come up with your ‘What if?’ question about that place. Make it as magical and crazy a question as you like, really turn everything upside done.

Now start asking your what if question and follow the answers and the new questions that emerge until you’ve created your created your fantastical setting complete with its own rules. 

Finish by writing out a few paragraphs that describe the setting for a story that you’ve created. Maybe do a drawing too. 

How to do this challenge?

Hopefully this one is completely self-explanatory. It’s all about getting kids to ask lots of questions and discover their world and its rules (and probably the story) in the process.

Here’s some alternative ways to do it with groups:

• It could be done as a group activity instead of individually. For example, you could announce the location (eg: Paris) and the ‘What if?’ question to the group (eg: What if the Eiffel tower was a flying robot?). Have them all call out their answers and with your guidance develop the setting together.
• Another option is to write out individual ‘What if?’ questions onto little sheets of paper. (For example, ‘What if your parents were vampires?’, ‘What if goldfish could talk?’, ‘What if the moon was actually made of cheese?’) Now distribute them at random to the kids and get them to answer the questions and develop their story settings.
• Whatever you’re having yourself 🙂

Once the challenge is completed?

As ever we’d love to see what the kids came up with and show it to all our readers on the kids’ work pages.  Please get in touch on our contact page!