The PLACES Academy

Using Storytelling in the Classroom

Here you will find eight stories created especially to create learning and engagement around the UN sustainable development goals (SDGs) and the European Union as an active player to create a sustainable development. The stories are suitable for working with various aspects of UN’s global goals no. 3, 4 and 10 with a particular focus on well-being, cooperation and inclusion. Some of the stories also touch upon issues related to other SDGs or the collaboration between countries in the EU. Each story has been tagged with some of the topics that we think the story invites to talk about. These tags are only for you as a teacher to get a quick overview and an idea of how to use the stories in your teaching. Revealing them to pupils in advance is often fatal, so we do not recommend that you do that. It can have a negative influence on both their spontaneous listening and experience with the story, as well astheir motivation and success in including their own experiences and in using playful activities to arrive at the perceptions each story is a possible entry point to. In the classroom – or elsewhere – you can use the stories in many different ways. For instance:
Watch one or more of the recorded stories together.
You can watch the stories yourself and tell them to your pupils in your own way. For instance, make them longer or shorter, or modify details so they fit your specific students and school.
One or more of the pupils can watch one of the stories and tell it to the rest of the class.

Different age groups and different endings​

The stories are designed for different age groups and the videos are available in two versions; with and without endings. This makes it possible to work with the stories in many different ways, beyond the methods suggested on the activity cards. For instance:
You can watch the story without ending together and then go into groups to imagine the endings.
Elder pupils can watch the stories for the younger age group and tell them to the younger ones.
Elder pupils can modify them to better suit an audience of their own age.

The Playful activity cards that fit particularly well with certain stories are mentioned next to the individual stories. Most of the activity cards can be used with most of the stories. You can find the Playful Learning material here.

Enjoy!

age group 11-14
age group 11-14
age group 11-14
age group 11-14