As part of the Storias project, the Apprimeurs ran a workshop on 25 January for a class of CM1 – CM2 pupils at Pierre et Marie Curie school in Saint-Nazaire. This workshop is part of the testing of one of the stories written by the Grimm Sisters, the Italian partners in the Storias project, featuring national historical figures.

The aim of the 26 pupils was to reconstruct the biography of a mystery historical figure (in this case, Olympe de Gouges) and to produce a collective accordion book.

Creativity for learning

After a presentation of the book chain and an explanation of the “railway” (the “flat” chronological sequence of the final book), the class was divided into six groups.

Each group was given an envelope containing biographical, geographical and historical information, as well as questions, definitions to find, riddles, stickers, a title and so on.

First of all, without knowing which historical figure their collective book was going to be about, the groups were given the task of putting together a double-page spread using the elements available to them. We encouraged their creativity by decorating their double-page spreads.

Then, each group presented its double page spread to the class. As they went along, the children were able to reconstruct the chronology of the biography and reveal the name of the historical figure: Olympe de Gouges.

Finally, the class bound the pages and made the accordion book, creating the cover and imagining the title.

Enthusiasm and teamwork to unveil the story

This was the first version of the workshop, which involved the children’s creativity, group work, understanding a corpus and solving riddles.

The pupils were excited by the idea of guessing who was the historical figure to be discovered.

The enigmatic elements (text hidden in a coded grid or in a calligram, arrow-word grid, etc.) and the creative freedom on the double-page spread were generally very popular.

All by themselves, the students looked up definitions in the dictionaries available in the classroom.

Communication and reflection, in groups and then with the whole class, enabled them to put together coherent double-page spreads, answer the questions and riddles and situate themselves chronologically in the life of the character to produce the final book.

As a bonus, the French Revolution was on the CM2 curriculum, so the pupils had a good base of historical knowledge to situate Olympe de Gouges in her time and to be comfortable with the context.

Towards optimising the workshop…

  • The level and desire to read of the CM1 – CM2 pupils was not always what was expected: the biographical information in the envelopes was sometimes difficult to understand, as were some of the questions and riddles. The group dynamic helped with individual difficulties, but the content would have to be readapted to ensure that everyone felt at ease;
  • At the start of the workshop, understanding the objective and discovering the elements in the envelopes took longer than expected: the children needed clearer instructions to get started and not be overwhelmed by the corpus, the mysterious identity of the character and the objective of composing the double page.

To find out more about the European project Storias, click here