Story walks are go, go ,go!

Next week is the launch of the Storywalks authored by Norton St Philips school between Bath and Frome. It has been an amazing collaboration with Claire Vowell who applied to the Shine Trust for the initial grant. The specific task was to see if geo-locating text would lift literacy and learning with their pupils. With only a single term to field test and gather the data the initial results have been very positive.

The project was primarily focused towards boys reading, by empowering them with the skills to geolocate their own words in locations outside the classroom. A term on and we reviewed this question again, asking in plain English has it helped the fidgety boys read and write more? The answer is simply yes.

On the first day just after the first storywalk.

But what about the girls, have they been left behind, has the gap closed between those of a similar age, or have they engaged in exactly the same way? Have they been swept along with the joy of reading and writing, hiding and seeking just like their male peers. Well again the answer is yes, they have all lifted their abilities and key literacy skills across the board.

Towards the end of last term Mrs Vowell said to me 'I've just had one boy ask if he can use the other side of the paper he was writing on!' Why of course, she replied, a little dumbstruck as normally a single sentence was all this pupil would deliver and now he wanted to write more, and this is just one example of many.

The Sun Dial, a point of reference in the Church yard at Norton St Philip.
Note - we walked passed it again and again, seeing, but not really seeing it,
then one of the pupils pointed it out and suggested this is where this chapter should be located. 

So what has given these pupils their reading wings, surely its not all down to geolocating words?

No I don't think the storywalks concept is the single magic bullet, its integration into current good teaching practice is essential and in the simplest terms perhaps all storywalks have done is assimilated a literacy activity into a more physical context. The same core literacy work is still being completed with a heap of other ones too, mapping, uploading images, taking photographs, filing, sequencing, etc. The skills required for the pupils to achieve this does take some time, but the strength of the system is simplicity, and if 6 year olds can master it then that's testament to its ease of use.

Inputting the story to the Storywalk engine

Having extra help in the classroom and balancing the teacher pupil ratio will undoubtedly help, but one key to this in my opinion is the physical, the raising of the heart beat and throwing off the twitches during learning. At one point we were revealing the pupils own stories on the Mead, (Norton St Philips village green and cricket square,) and I was delighted to see the pupils running with their tablets, eager to reveal their own stories and text.

To the next chapter!

Last term in my mind was just the beginning, I have learnt so much riding shot gun with Mrs Vowell and her team, but there is so much more that can be done. How do we improve what we have created, what worked, what faltered, what are the short cuts and where can we go from here. 

Holly the Hare, part of a storywalk written by the pupils.

Some of these you can plan, others need further flying time, for example on my last day we tested their 'epic trail' (their words) 'The Weaver of Norton'. Towards the end I witnessed pupils acting their story as it was read out loud, and we had been walking for a good hour and a half by this point so I expected the final chapters to be more of a dash to completion, but if anything they were getting more involved and taking longer.

Dragon Head Stone - the Dinosaur story, part of
The Weaver of Norton trail

In short I am incredibly proud of the achievements made by the pupils and staff at Norton St Philips school, next week on Tuesday 14th we will have 'The launch event', press at 11.00 and schools at 1.30. I've ironed the bunting and pressed my shirt, I've rehearsed a few words to say but stage two is now in our sight. We need other schools to see what we are doing and also want a piece of this, to bring me and Claire in to fire up literacy in their schools, to invest in tech which can reveal their pupils words. (Not just 3G iPad mini's, the Nexus 7 by google is brilliant at this too and half the price!)

I am sure phase two will set some new challenges, new locations and new opportunities, but in the mean time, see you on Tuesday.

Get in touch with me at http://storywalks.info