Make Your Children Millionaires!

Is this the powerful secret that will motivate your learners to write?

In the schools I visit, primary and secondary, I regularly meet teachers who have set their learners a task along the lines of…

Write your own version of this story.

Educators in UK primary settings using Talk for Writing may recognise this as the ‘Innovation Stage’: your learners take a tale they’ve read or heard, make a small adaptation, then write that down.

It makes sense as a task. Your learners have a scaffold, one they may even have enjoyed. They don’t really need to do much. It’s like painting by numbers, but switching the paints to colours of your choice. The perfect blend of creativity and guided form. Right?

So why do many educators find their learners struggling with such a task?

I’ve a couple of theories. First, there’s no motivation. There’s already a version of the story out there, and it was good enough to entertain them and/or their peers. Why reinvent the wheel?

Second… in every other context, we tend to discourage plagiarism – so when their teacher tells them to actively plagiarise, a part of them should be forgiven for wondering if it’s a trick! Even if they don’t know how to express that feeling, it could still be inhibiting them.

Do either/both these theories sound true to you? Fortunately, no matter the reason, I’ve found a solution I can share with you here…

But first, please know that you’re not alone. Talk for Writing is enormously popular in the UK, probably the most common writing scheme I come across in my visits to primary schools, but pretty much every educator using it says the same: Phase 1, ‘Imitation’, is brilliant for encouraging engagement from learners as they copy repeated phrases linked with actions, understanding Story Maps, etc – but ‘Innovation’ still seems too great a leap.

In fact, when I wrote the EU’s guidance on storytelling in the classroom, I was able to reference reports in the National Strategies Archive from teachers noting that the two final TfW phases (of the three…) were “the least easy to implement”. I’d found these online – but the Archive has since disappeared…

As a writer myself, though, I love challenges like this. Here’s the opening to a story I wrote for English Hub’s educator handbook, All the Better to Read You With – see if you can work out what it was based on…

A fox took a stroll in a wood one day
When a tiger leapt out in the fox’s way.
“My favourite food!” the tiger said,
And bared all the teeth in its stripey head.

Remind you of anything? What if we swap the fox for a mouse, and the tiger for a large brown-haired creature with two curved horns, bright orange eyes, and a slimy black tongue…?

It won’t surprise me if you didn’t need my prompt. Julia Donaldson’s The Gruffalo has sold over 13 million copies, regularly tops ‘Reader’s Favourite’ lists, and was recently found to be the most common first book for children in a UK survey.

But here’s a question for you: Which came first? My story or Julia’s?

Julia’s rhyme came first. I deliberately wrote my version to match her metre and rhyme scheme. But the story is far, far older.

And in fact, Julia knew this. She’s very honest about it. Read her interview in The Guardian from 2020, and you’ll see her mention the Chinese folk tale of the fox and the tiger that she used for inspiration.

Julia’s a dab hand at innovating. Her very first picture book, A Squash and a Squeeze, was based on a Yiddish tale. But she’s not the only one. Mention We’re Going on a Bear Hunt to any teacher or parent today, and they’ll likely tell you that’s a Michael Rosen story – even though the book’s illustrator Helen Oxenbury admits to painting cover art for the folk singer who taught the ballad to Michael after bringing it from US to the UK.

Julia Donaldson. Michael Rosen. Millionaires that your learners are likely to recognise. And how did they make their fame and fortune?

By doing the exact same Innovation exercise you’re asking your learners to do!

The excitement this knowledge sparks among primary learners can be replicated just as easily with older learners. Twilight? That’s just Juliet meeting a vampiric Romeo. The Hunger Games? Those ‘tributes’ would’ve been in the Minotaur’s labyrinth in Ancient Greece. The Girl of Ink and Stars? She could be following in the footsteps of Mulan.

So the next time you invite your learners to adapt an existing story, let them know you’re asking them to do something that could literally – and literarily – make them rich and famous. $;-)

If you try this with your learners, please let me know how they get on!

And if you’d like to read the entirety of my Gruffalo adaptation, along with eight other stories, associated lesson plans, and guidance on reading like a storyteller, ask your local bookshop for a copy of All the Better to Read You With by Chip Colquhoun and Rebekah Owen, with a cover by Winnie the Witch’s Korky Paul!