school visits 2021

Email us at [email protected] or call on 01865 790050.

school visits 2021

With an emphasis on oral storytelling, our sessions are designed to help your students develop spoken language, engage in collaborative, social play and discover our shared oral and literary cultural heritage.

Curriculum links include:• Literacy• PSHE• Local history• Global diversityAt a time when stories are more important than ever, we’ve refreshed our sessions in line with the philosophy of Barry Carpenter’s Recovery Curriculum.

“Each teacher said how engaged their children were with your storytelling – some were hanging off your every word. Your use of props inspired some children to incorporate them into their stories. There was great discussion around the characters and what they might be up to. We were so appreciative that we couldn’t find anything to improve on!”

Teacher, Zoom storytelling session, March 2021

All bookings during the coronavirus pandemic are fully refundable so do get in touch as soon as possible to arrange your school trip and secure your session.

We offer a range of tailored sessions from Nursery to Year 13, covering each Key Stage

EYFS/YEAR 1: STORY PLAY

Students enter our Small Worlds gallery for stories on our big bed. They create their own mini story landscapes and imagine the episodes that could unfold within their enchanting new world.

Outcome: speaking and listening presentationLength of session: 2 hoursSession times: 10:00 – 12:00 or 12:30-14:30Cost: £175+VAT per class of up to 35 students

A story session held in The Story Museum’s Small Worlds gallery.

City of Stories film experience


YEARS 1-13: GALLERIES VISIT AND STORY SESSION

A Galleries Visit and Story Session can be combined with a City Story Walk (see below) to explore how Oxford city has inspired classic children’s books.

Length of session: 2 hoursSession times: 10:00 – 12:00 or 12:30-14:30Cost: £175+VAT per class of up to 35 students

A visit to The Story Museum Galleries combined with the Story Session of your choice in the Magic Common Room.

YEARS 1-3: STORY PORRIDGEStudents will join in with participatory retellings of traditional folk and fairy tales, and learn to retell the story in groups. They will use the classic device of the Rule of 3 to create their own story.

Outcome: speaking and listening presentation

Students are introduced to oral stories that star the classic character of the Trickster, such as Anansi the Spider and Reynard the Fox, before creating and retelling their own versions.

Outcome: speaking and listening presentation, written draft if requested

Students look at the concept of powerful objects within stories from Thor’s hammer to Arthur’s sword in the stone. They then work in groups to concoct their own story about an object with a mysterious power.


Students explore portals used in classic stories featured in the Enchanted Library, from the Rabbit Hole down into Wonderland to the Wardrobe through to Narnia. Students then create their own magical portal between two worlds, using a wealth of materials to stimulate the beginning of an enchanting story, including the beautiful mini worlds hidden in the mysterious cabinets in the Magic Common Room.


YEARS 1-3: STORY TRICKSTERS

YEARS 2-4: STORY POWER

YEARS 2-7: STORY PORTALS

Students listen and join in with traditional oral stories from around the world and then create their own version using the key elements of story - character, setting, theme and plot structure.


YEARS 4-8: YOUNG STORYTELLERS

A revitalising approach to your own class set text.Students will explore The Story Museum’s curation process and design an immersive narrative environment based on close reading and analysis. Past bespoke sessions have included C. S. Lewis’ The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, Betsy Byars’ The Midnight Fox, Michelle Magorian’s Goodnight Mr Tom, Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World, and Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales.

Outcome: speaking and listening presentation; illustrated and annotated design using quotations

YEARS 5-13: MUSEUM MAKER


YEAR 2 UPWARDS: CITY STORY WALK

Our Learning Team will lead your group to iconic sites around the city of Oxford from some of fiction’s greatest moments. Select your chosen story below.

Length of session: 2 hoursSession times: 10:00 – 12:00 or 12:30-14:30Cost: £175+VAT per class of up to 35 students

Take a story-themed walk through Oxford to see the places in the city that inspired its most famous fantasy writers.

YEAR 2 UPWARDS: ALICE STORY WALK Come on a walk through the story of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. We’ll begin at The Story Museum, then walk along to Christ Church Meadow, the location of many sites that inspired Lewis Carroll. As your Story Guide retells the story, we’ll have a Caucus Race, a Caterpillar Contest, a game of ‘Red Queen Says’, and fun with songs, riddles and charades along the way.

Come on a walk through the story of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe with our Story Leader. We’ll begin at The Story Museum, and walk towards the grounds of Oxford Castle, ‘the perfect setting for a retelling of the dramatic events at the White Witch’s Palace.

From the Narnia lamppost and Alice’s gate to a beautiful garden with no key, to Lyra’s room leading to the spires and rooftops of Oxford...the Wonder Walk route features stunning locations including the Radcliffe Camera and Christ Church, with a few dragons along the way! Choose three authors from C S Lewis (the Narnia series), J R R Tolkien (The Hobbit), Lewis Carroll (Alice’s Adventure’s in Wonderland), Katherine Rundell (Rooftoppers) and Philip Pullman (Northern Lights trilogy). During the walk your students will learn key facts about the writers’ lives and how simply observing the world can lead to ideas for classic fiction. Your students will also play the stories through a variety of multi-sensory games and storytelling.

YEARS 2-4: NARNIA STORY WALK

YEARS 2-13: WONDER WALK

YEAR 3 UPWARDS: CITY STORY WALK and CITY OF STORIES FILM EXPERIENCE

Book a City Story Walk and then board our Story Craft for a 30-minute film, flying through a thousand years of story history - the perfect way to provide context for the Wonder Walk.

Length of session: 2.5 hoursSession times: 10:00 – 12:30 or 12:00-14:30Cost: £195+VAT per class of up to 35 students

This offer is ideal for studying local history and getting ideas for writing. Note the film experi-ence is recommended for age 7+.


YEAR 2 UPWARDS: DAY OF DELIGHT

Select your story session and chosen city story walk and enjoy an extended visit to The Story Museum.

Length of session: 4 hours (including 30 minute lunch break)Session times: 10:00 – 14:00Cost: £275+VAT per class of up to 35 students

Includes a Gallery Visit, Story Session, and City Story Walk.

YEAR 3 UPWARDS: DAY OF EXTRAORDINARY DELIGHT

Select your story session and chosen city story walk and spend the whole day at The Story Museum.

Length of session: 5 hours (including 30 minute lunch break)Session times: 10:00 – 15:00Cost: £295+VAT per class of up to 35 students

Includes a Gallery Visit, Story Session, City Story Walk AND City of Stories film experience. Whew!

FOCUS ON YEAR 7: WRITE AT THE STORY MUSEUM

In September 2020 No More Marking’s extensive online study found that Year 7 students are, on average, 22 months behind expectations for writing. With this in mind, we have created a set of new sessions expressly for this year group.

The Story Museum’s evocative settings provide the perfect space to give your students’ writing experience a lift. Guided by our Learning Team, made up of experienced primary and secondary teachers, your students will explore the Museum’s story-based environments with a view to inspiring new pieces of writing with a focus on vocabulary and metaphor.

In our Magic Common Room, they will explore the ways in which our immersive exhibitions, such the Narnia space, were created and analyse a section of a pre-1914 text or a piece of contemporary fiction to interpret and write a design brief for a new space in the Museum.

Half Day: includes an hour exploring the Galleries and a one-hour poetry writing sessionFull Day: includes an hour exploring the Gal-leries and three hours on an extended, collabo-rative writing activity based on the creation of the GalleriesFull Week Residency: students will read and respond to a whole book in a week.

Sessions are available immediately and throughout the summer holidays. For detailed information and how to book, please email us at [email protected]

Book a half day, a full day or a week’s residency:


BOOK NOW FOR THE BOOK OF HOPESSeptember 2021 to December 2021

For a limited time only, we are offering sessions responding to our temporary exhibition, based on The Book of Hopes edited by Katherine Rundell (2020), created to offer hope and comfort during lockdown.

The students will explore the exhibition, including the Axel-Schleffer-inspired Hope Tree full of parrots, the Liz Pichon ‘doodle-shed’ and the David Almond star-lit dreamtime space. The students will then have a workshop based on selected stories from the book.

Sessions are based on the philosophy of Barry Carpenter’s Recovery Curriculum, enabling students to develop PSHE skills to explore and discover hope and resilience in challenging times.

Take part in games and group performances based on stories from The Book of Hopes, including ‘The Song of Gladness’ by Michael Morpurgo and ‘Hope Hunter’ by Joseph Coelho. They will then design their own Hope Hunter.

KEY STAGE 1: HOPE HUNTERS WORKSHOP

Students will meet hopeful and hopeless characters through participative storytelling activities from The Book of Hopes, including the palm-sweaty Hal from ‘Sunflower’ by Geraldine McCaughrean and an Evil Supergenius from the ‘Hope Machine’ by Sam Copeland. Students will then create their own character, exploring the themes of hope, self-esteem and resilience.

KEY STAGE 2: HOPE HUNTERS WORKSHOP © Axel Sheffler 2020

school visits 2021

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