Story Cubes

Rory’s Story Cubes (available here) are a versatile Literacy and story-telling tool for teachers and children to use in their classrooms. There are nine dice, with a total of 54 images. By rolling the dice, a different set of images is produced, which can be used as the starting point for a story or for other Literacy work. Here are some ideas for how they might be used:

• Work as a class and ask someone to roll the dice. Show the set of 9 pictures (under a visualiser if available) and ask a child to begin a story using one of the pictures as their starting point. Then, ask a new child to continue the story by including another of the pictures. Repeat until all nine pictures have been mentioned in the story.
• Work in small groups and have ‘storytelling’ sessions where the group works together to tell a story which involves all nine of the pictures.
• Let the children work in pairs. One child rolls the dice and tells a story using the cubes. The other child has to listen and remember the story, then retell it to others in the class.
• Begin a session with a storytelling activity based on a roll of the cubes. After, ask the children if they can write the same story down… can they remember what happened?
• Roll the dice and share the nine pictures with the class. Ask all of the children to tell / write a story which includes all of the images. Share the stories at the end of the session and compare them… how were they similar / different?
• Roll two or three of the cubes and ask children to think of a super sentence which involves the pictures shown.
• Give the children a grid with nine boxes on it. Ask the children to roll a set of dice and put one in each box on the grid. They should then tell / write a story which includes the images in the order shown on their grid.
• Roll one of the dice and identify the picture (e.g. plane). Then:
  • Ask the children for words to describe the plane.
  • Think of ways (mnemonics) to help them remember how to spell ‘plane’.
  • Share words that mean the same (synonyms) as plane.
  • Think of words which rhyme with plane.
• Give the children some cube nets and ask them to make their own paper sets of story cubes. Which images would help to make an interesting / exciting story?