National Storytelling Week - KS2

National Storytelling Week is a week where we celebrate the power of telling stories.

In 2025, National Storytelling Week runs from the Saturday the 1st to Sunday the 9th of February.

It is celebrated every year in schools, book clubs and museums and is a chance to make and share stories. Stories can be found all around us in picture books, plays, TV shows, films and video games.

In this article you will learn about:

• Different types of stories
• How to tell stories
• Storytelling through history
• Stories from around the world
• Moral and religious stories

Talking about stories helps us understand them better.

When we discuss a story, we can discover why characters do what they do and how it makes us feel.
Talking helps us spot things we might have missed and think about the big ideas, like friendship or courage.
It also lets us hear other people’s thoughts, which can help us see the story in a new way.

All stories have characters and a plot but there are lots of different types or genres of story, from fairy stories and myths to science fiction and adventure stories. Take a closer look at some of these different types of stories.

Here are some storytelling tips to help you write your own stories.

Write your own short story in 500 words or less.

Will you write a fantastic fairytale, an amazing adventure, or a strange science-fiction story?

If you are not sure where to start, use the story starters as inspiration.

Many stories have been passed down through time over thousands of years. They were told out loud by a storyteller before we had books to document them. Ancient Greek myths are an example of these.

Stories from the past teach us about how people lived and what they believed and can pass on lessons, beliefs and traditions.

They are not always fictional. They can also be factual and record the true stories of real people's lives.

For example, people record their daily life in diaries and these can be useful for historians to understand how people lived and to learn about special historical events. There are famous diaries such as the Diary of Samuel Pepys and the Diary of Anne Frank.

There are also biographies, which tell the story of a person's life. If the person writes it themselves, it's called an autobiography. If someone else writes it, it's called a biography.

Storytelling from around the world

Stories have been told around the world for thousands of years. We can learn about different cultures and also learn how to speak other languages by reading or listening to stories from different countries and cultures.

Many religions also use storytelling to explain important religious events. The stories often have a moral lesson for people to learn such as the importance of being kind, as in the Sikh story of Guru Nanak and the Boulder.

A story which has a moral lesson is also called a parable, for example the parable of the Good Samaritan, which teaches the importance of empathy and kindness.

Aesop was a slave and storyteller who lived in Ancient Greece. He is famous for writing Aesop's Fables, stories which are still told today. Fables are stories that feature animals and teach a moral lesson.

In the fable, The Boy Who Cried Wolf, the story shows that if you lie too many times, people might not believe you when you're telling the truth.