The PLACES Project

Enhancing linguistic and creative skills through storytelling

Themes and Learning Objectives

  • Practice active listening
  • Play the role of a character
  • express their opinion and emotions as well as those of the characters in the story
  • work on creativity
Ecole fondamentale Champagnat

Location: Florenville, Belgium

Pupils involved: 21 pupils

Age Group: 7 years old

Class: 2nd Primary School

Implementation Procedures

The teacher chose this version of the story because they had the book in the school library and the children would have the opportunity to get back to it afterwards if they wished to. Moreover, in this version the characters are animals, this suits the age of the children well.
Materials and tools used

The book Une soupe au caillou by Anaïs Vaugelade, ed. Ecole des Loisirs, a modern version of Stonesoup.

The pupils were put in a special mood, by creating a ‘storytelling’ atmosphere before telling the story. They sat on cushions in a circle, there was silence. While telling the story the teacher stopped at different moments to have the pupils anticipate, making hypotheses.
After the storytelling, they discussed together the moral of the story and the characters’ intentions.
Then, they created portraits of the different characters in the story using vegetables (in the same way as the 16th century painter Arcimboldo did).
Finally, they imagined a new variant of the story, a new recipe, and could illustrate it, if they wished to.
The teacher suggested more ideas for the future
  • Making soup together, everyone contributing, sharing the soup
  • Working on the calendar of fruit and vegetables, and where they are produced (here or far away)
  • Using a transparent silhouette for the person coming into the village
  • Telling the story more than once with different intentions and tasks for the pupils
  • Interviewing a character from the story
  • Acting out the story
  • Using different clues to make hypotheses at the very beginning: in groups they predict the content of the story, they start from
    • the title, some sentences, some words, an object, a character, some sounds

Sharing Outcomes and Experiences

This activity of anticipation fits in well with the curriculum for French (language objectives), making hypotheses.

The pupils could use their creativity to represent the characters of the story and learned about a well-known painter from the 16th century, Arcimboldo. This fits with the curriculum for art.

Although the teacher was used to reading stories to his pupils, it was the first time he told one. He noticed that the pupils were even more attentive, and he wants to do both from now on, both ways having their advantages.
The activities help the students understand the story and the characters in a better way, contributing to literacy and critical thinking skills.