While presiding over the trial scene in Alice in Wonderland, the King of Hearts gives a witness valuable advice on telling a story: “Begin at the beginning,” the King said gravely, “and go on till you come to the end: then stop.” It is good advice too for teachers tackling the classroom learning strategy known internationally as Scottish Storyline. But there is a little more to be said on the subject.

“The beginning is vital,” explains Carol Omand, headteacher at Aberfoyle Primary school, Stirling, and a leading Storyline practitioner. “It has to be dramatic and memorable to enthuse the children.

“When we studied ancient Egypt, the staff laid the classroom out one lunchtime by putting the tables together with sand on top, hiding boxes with trinkets inside and scrolls with hieroglyphics on them. We dimmed the lights and covered the front door.

“When the kids came back they were enthralled. They crept into the classroom and sat down quietly with Egyptian music playing in the background.”

On being told they were now archaeologists, the children took brushes and gently swept the sand away to uncover the boxes and hieroglyphics. Some of them knew what the symbols were but not what they meant. To others they were magic messages they wanted to learn more about.

“So that led them in and set them off on their different routes of discovery.”

As important as the beginning is the ending. Here the aim is to help the children move on, leave a world of the imagination in which they have been immersed and divest themselves of the colourful characters they have become.

“There has to be an ending, because the children live the story and enjoy it so much that it’s hard for them to move on. The ending has to be carefully thought out, but it can alter as the topic progresses. It should be fun and enjoyable, so it might be a banquet, a garden party, a visit.”

Having considered the beginning and end of a Storyline, it only remains for the teacher to think about the middle, which can be spontaneous. The essence of Storyline is that it harnesses spontaneity to a carefully planned structure aimed at achieving educational aims chosen in advance.

This is the creative tension at the heart of the method. It is also perhaps the nub of the difference between the child-centred Storyline approach and a conventional classroom project.

“The teacher has the story but does not know the detail of the content,” explained a speaker at the recent International Storyline Conference in Denmark. “The teacher has planned for almost every activity,” said another, “but the students feel they have ownership of the story.”

Feelings of ownership are much in evidence among Mrs Omand’s P3-P4 pupils as they talk with enthusiasm about “our village”, a topic they explored with the help of two trainee teachers on placement from Frederiksberg College of Education in Copenhagen.

“We talked first about what buildings were in the village,” says Mrs Omand. “Then we went on a walk with a question sheet to find things we might have forgotten.

“We got a letter from the council saying there were four empty spaces in Aberfoyle. We talked about what we’d like to have in the village that wasn’t there. We thought of so many things that we couldn’t put them all up.”

The pupils in one group suggested a vet’s surgery, a snake shop and a swimming pool. Their story of what happened next illustrates how educational goals - in this case learning the skills of teamwork, decision-making and compromise - can be achieved within a planned structure that still lets pupils take the project in directions of their own choosing.

“I came up with a swimming pool,” says one girl. “But I thought it would be silly to try to put everything in one building, so I voted for the vet’s. And that’s what we built, with a snake shop inside it for snakes that weren’t wanted any more or had problems.”

“The teacher has to be prepared to take risks,” says Mrs Omand, “and let the children make their own decisions, while being ready to draw them back if necessary.

“Each Storyline is threaded with key questions that lead the children on to the next bit of exploration or the next key skill you want them to learn - all of which are derived from the 5-14 curriculum guidelines.”

Storyline was originally conceived as a means of pulling together disparate subjects - history, geography, science - within integrated areas of the curriculum, such as environmental studies or expressive arts. However, it can be used just as effectively for language and number work, says Mrs Omand.

“All the teachers at Aberfoyle now use Storyline. It’s not an easy option and you probably wouldn’t choose to do it every term, but it does have a magical effect.

“To other teachers interested in Storyline I’d say learn about the background: why you use it, where its power comes from, how the key questions are like chapters in a story. Try to work with someone experienced in its use if you can. And start by using an existing framework. That will allow you to adapt ideas that are known to work, while developing your own ideas and gaining the confidence to write your own Storyline.”

THREADS OF LEARNING

Storyline is an approach to curriculum integration devised at Strathclyde University and now practised in more than 20 countries, including the United States, Hong Kong, Thailand, Germany, Greece, the Netherlands and the Scandinavian countries. It is particularly popular in Denmark, which hosted the first international Storyline conference in November 2000.

The method, known internationally as Scottish Storyline, starts from the learner’s existing knowledge. The teacher devises a set of key questions that prompt the learner to construct his own model of what is being studied before testing this against evidence. The questions are structured in a sequence the learner and teacher work on together to tell a story and create a setting - a sort of visual text - which is more meaningful and motivating to learning than a textbook.

Children watch the story unfold as their ideas appear in visual form around the classroom. The level of involvement encourages them to take responsibility for their own learning. The process is stimulating, memorable and fun.

Courses in Storyline are offered by Strathclyde and Edinburgh Universities. Carol Omand, headteacher at Aberfoyle Primary school (tel 01877 382278), would be happy to talk to teachers about the method.

For more information, websites www.storyline-scotland.freeserve.co.uk and www.storyline.org feature papers written by practitioners, information on events and links to schools and colleges around the world where Storyline is practised.