Walking the story

This is a teacher-led activity that gets students through a story from any one of the world’s religions without them having to learn complex parts, read materials straight from ancient languages, or ‘read around the room’. It is important for them to maintain respect for the heritage of the story whilst at the same time having a lot of fun in RE.

The steps to walking a story are:

• Choose the passage which most suits your learning intentions for the lesson.
• Find an appropriate space for this activity – use the resources that come to hand, like furniture and pictures.
• Select, on the basis of likely engagement and participation, those students who will work with you to get the story told.
• Distribute parts to those who will enjoy interacting with you. Ensure that you include all students at some time.
• Cast yourself as the narrator and then tell the story.
• Bring in students as you need to, feeding them lines.
• Encourage the rest of the students to take on participatory roles, eg if walking the story of the calming of the storm (Mark 4), get some ‘actors’ into the shape of a boat, have some students as disciples in the boat rowing, some making the sound of the wind at the appropriate moment, some being the thunder, and so on.

At the end of this activity, encourage the students to record what they have seen and done. It is a great and quick way to fix a story in the students’ minds.