I am interrogating the role of anecdotes in the classroom at the minute – I guess this is my little teaching preoccupation – and this book has a great scope for it. I chose to go without glasses, but because I couldn’t see properly, I tried to take the wrong kids onto the slide, which was among the most excruciatingly awkward moments of my life. Often, the fact that some children are willing to share does prompt other children to be a bit more confident to reflect and share. I have used it before with two classes, and I have been using as part of my mentoring with some of the Year 6 children.

Philosophy for children this certainly is: I lost count of how many times it opens up space for reflection and discussion.

I could have shared the weird feeling it gives me when I wear gloves for too long, which makes me feel like I am being suffocated.

What is shared may or may to be quite personal, but crucially, that decision is made by the children.After we have shared ideas as a class – I don’t force any individual kid to share unless they are wiling to at this point – we can then get onto producing our own page.

follows a child’s hilarious, wildly inventive train of thought following the death of his grandfather and the discovery of his journal, in which his grandfather had jotted his thoughts about life after death and the ideal heaven. A vital closing part to this session should be the opportunity for children to share their work with each other in the class, perhaps randomising it in some way so that they are not necessarily just sharing with their best friends. I cannot remember exactly who first mentioned this book on Twitter a few years ago, but to whoever it was, I am eternally grateful. Storytelling can go beyond narrating the written word, and I think there is merit in pupils ability to speak narratively about their own experiences. The book invites readers on a whimsical journey that follows a young boy’s desire to create a robot clone of himself.

Some kids might point out birthmarks or scars, some of them might talk about trapping their fingers, or about a special piece of jewellery they are wearing, or why they are wearing mehndi at the moment. He realizes the diversity of the feelings he has, the intensity of the dreams he grows, the joy of interacting with different people and the secrecy of some of his most intimate thoughts. Distrusting the apple’s convincing appearance, the child’s imagination spirals upwards and outwards into a madcap fantasy world – maybe it’s a star from outer space with tiny aliens on board? To get what I mean, think about one of your classes: you will have a couple of children in there who can capture the attention of everyone in their class when they are telling even a quite objectively boring and uneventful anecdote, and you will have some children who, even if something truly remarkable has happened to them, haven’t got the capacity to tell it well.

I shared how I have always bitten my nails, and my Dad really hates it (always has) and he threatened to put English Mustard on my fingernails if I didn’t stop. It Might Be An Apple – The story follows a child’s hilarious, wildly inventive train of thought through all the things an apple might be if it is not, in fact, an apple.In telling these stories, what you are needing to do yourself, and what you are encouraging in the kids, is the ability to spin a good yarn – to speak humorously or with pathos, to be able to pre-empt the reactions it might get and to withhold certain information until the very end, to be able to identify the key parts of the ‘plot’ and to tell it appropriately. follows a child’s hilarious, wildly inventive train of thought as he decides to make a clone of himself – and starts to ponder what makes him HIM.