Till Rolls

I don't know what it is about rolls of paper that make them exciting to write or draw on, but every time I've used them, the children respond enthusiastically. Till rolls are cheap to buy, or you could roll up any paper for the purpose. Often rolls of backing paper get damaged in schools, so you could use them up this way, and I've also used wallpaper borders and the backs of old wallpaper rolls for the same purpose.

Today we each started a story with the same opening line, then, every few minutes, passed the story on to a new writer, asking the recipient to unroll the paper by only a few centimetres to peep at what's gone before. That way you end up with a disjointed but satisfyingly whacky complete story at the end of the session.

But there are lots of ways you could use a long strip of paper: unroll a long strip across the floor, then take a well-known story and have children work on a different sections at once; or see who can write the longest (tallest) tale. Or give two children the 'middle' event of a story and have them write the beginning and the ending simultaneously. There are lots of possibilities.