Narrative App – (Black Sheep Press Narrative App)

This app mirrors the development of narrative skills in children – from raising their awareness of the individual components of a simple story to retelling and generating their own endings to stories. It is a versatile resource which can be used alongside other narrative interventions in the classroom.

The app contains 26 games which introduce narrative concepts and provide multiple practice opportunities:

The app contains

An explanation of narrative – A video narrated by Bec Shanks explaining to children that stories are made up of lots of different bits … ‘Who’, ‘Where’, ‘When’, ‘What Happened’ and ‘The End’

An introduction to narrative – three games introducing the colours and icons used in the narrative approach.

Individual sections 3 to 8 contain a total of 23 games
‘Who’ – (4 Games) From simple picture matching to helping Freddy the Magician with his tricks by answering all the ‘who’ questions.
‘Where’ – (4 Games) From simple picture matching to flying a rocket to the moon by answering all of the ‘where’ questions
‘When’ – (4 Games) From matching a ‘when’ picture to deciding when Jack might ride his bike – in the morning, afternoon, at lunchtime or in the evening.
‘Consolidation’ A game to consolidate the concepts of ‘who’ ‘where’ and ‘when’
‘What happened’– (4 Games) From making silly sentences to deciding what might happen if you saw a lion in the school field.
‘The End‘ – (2 Games) begins with selecting the ending to a story the child likes best to generate and record their own ending.

This app has been trialled with children ages 4 – 7 by clinicians, teachers, and parents, producing extremely positive feedback from all groups. 100% of participants were either very likely or extremely likely to use the app and 77% of participants said that the children they were working with learnt a lot or a great deal from using the app.

Please don’t take our word for it, hear what some users say…
‘When he went back to class, despite playing several activities it was the app activity that the child immediately told the teacher about ‘Guess what, we played a game about telling stories… it was about a clown who went to space and saw a pig in pants!’ The child was very animated and looked forward very much to using it again. It was the first thing he asked for in his following session. Another child did not want to return to class as he was enjoying activities so much.’ (Clinician)

‘My daughter 7yrs loved all the ‘what happened’ and ‘the end’ sections where you got to explore the full story. She enjoyed recording her sections of the story too. My son who is 4 really enjoyed the spinner games, pop bubbles, matching sections of the stories etc. Overall the pace of the app and the illustrations and commentary were good. Some educational apps can be a bit fast-paced and feel a bit stimulating but this felt great and the kids were engaged and calm while interacting.’ (Parent)

Easy to navigate, colourful, clear instructions, narrative components are well organised, fun, effective and enjoyable games, really useful to have all resources/components and activities in one place. (Teacher)

‘Their favourite things were the monster who you had to feed the story elements. The animation and sound effects were great. They loved the silly stories and enjoyed switching all the sections and hearing the story play back to them. They also loved Pop the Bubbles and the magician. It was great to have a voice-over for all the instructions so my son (4) could play all the games and do all the activities without having to be able to read’ (Parent)

‘The app is easy to use, accessible for children to use, brightly presented with lovely colours and pictures so that it appeals to children. It is easy to navigate, the voices are pitched at an appropriate level for children and nice to listen to. If the child doesn’t give the correct answer they don’t get a cross or a ‘wrong’ noise. Games can be played for a few minutes as a stand-alone activity or you could work through them in order.’ (Teacher)

Age: 4-7+ years (Appropriateness for older children will depend on the learning and language profile of the child)

About the authors
Bec Shanks is a Senior Specialist Speech and Language Therapist with more than 25 years of experience. Bec is the author of the best-selling Speaking and Listening through Narrative. Bec is passionate about how services can work better together to support neurodiverse children and young people with language and communication needs, in education.

For further resources by Bec see our narrative resources. The Speaking and Listening through Narrative program, based on the work of Bec Shanks’, facilitates the development of children’s narrative skills through structured sessions focused on different story components. Results from using the resource showed improved formal language scores and enhanced classroom functioning, as observed in a successful pilot study and its subsequent implementation in schools.

Catherine is a speech and language therapy assistant with over 20 years of experience. She delivers speech and language therapy to primary-aged children in group and 1-1 settings. Catherine regularly delivers Narrative Therapy to children and provides training to school staff and parents on how to use narrative therapy both in the classroom and in a home setting.

Bec Shanks introduces the Black Sheep Press Narrative App