Dr. Susie Nyman from the Sixth Form College in Farnborough has developed a fun and interactive method using random sweets to help students enhance their storytelling and writing skills. As the Curriculum Manager for Health and Social Care with 24 years of teaching experience, Dr. Nyman’s approach makes learning more engaging and memorable. Below is a transcript of Dr. Nyman’s explanation.
Dr. Susie Nyman from the Sixth Form College in Farnborough serves as the Curriculum Manager for Health and Social Care. With 24 years of teaching experience at the Sixth Form College, she shared an innovative teaching method:
“The random sweets are brilliant for primary children or any students, to be honest. You can take the sweets out and make a story, incorporating the five senses. So you’re given a sweet, and then you might start the story, adding in what it felt like—touch, taste, smell. This helps students to write stories more effectively, especially when you add in connective words, because that helps them link their ideas together.
The idea of using random sweets originated when I was talking to my son many years ago. He was asked to write an essay, and we discussed it. He used to like me telling him stories about random things every night, so we would get random sweets, pull them out, and I’d create a story with him using these sweets.
Here you could use these connectives in class with the children to create stories. Using the random sweets, I’m going to now create a story.
Using the first connective: One cold afternoon, we went up to London and visited Big Ben. It was about lunchtime. So after that, we went to the pub and had a drink of beer because we’ve got a barrel of beer there. Once we’ve been to the pub, we then decided immediately that we heard a game of rugby was on in Twickenham. So we jumped on the train and went to Twickenham to see the rugby. And then, whilst we were at the rugby, we had an ice cream, and finally, we went home on the coach.”
