Story Mountains

Introduce using a story mountain as a method to structure planning a piece of writing with a well known story. By using a well known story that children are familiar with, they will be able to relate to the plan and identify the different elements needed within a story. Then children can use the story mountain structure to plan their own stories. Other planning structures and ideas are plot lines (time line of events), comic strip to show progression of a story and character development activities such as mind maps and drama tasks to build and develop a character for a story.

Example story mountain - Little Red Riding Hood

Introduction: She is going to visit grandma, packing basket of goodies, entering the woods

Build up: meets wolf in the woods, she insists she should stay on the path but wolf wants her to take a shortcut with him

Problem: wolf gets to grandma's house first and eats her, dresses up in her clothes, LRRH arrives and asks questions wolf who then tries to eat her too

Resolution: Woodcutter saves LRRH and kills wolf by splitting his belly open to rescue grandma too

Ending: LRRH and grandma are safe and happy

Key Questions to ask or setting the story: who/what/where/when/why?