National Storytelling Week KS3/ S1-S3 Resources

‘Soundtrack your story’: a storytelling project with Jeffrey Boakye

Supported by Amazon, we have created a fun, interactive storytelling project for National Storytelling Week with author and broadcaster Jeffrey Boakye, for pupils aged 11 to 14 (S1-S3). Based on the theme ‘Soundtrack your story’, the project is designed to inspire a love of story creation through music and rhythm.

The week began with a free, live storytelling workshop with Jeffrey on 4 February 2026, now available as a recording to watch on-demand.

The workshop will be an exciting springboard for a menu of classroom activities providing inspiration for pupils’ stories.

Watch the recording below:

Key Stage 3 (S1-S3) classroom resources

Our National Storytelling Week teacher resource pack for Key Stage 3 provides a flexible menu of activities to support your students to write, building on Jeffrey's workshop.

Please download the KS3/S1 to S3 resources at the bottom of the page.

Writing competition

Teachers can submit their students writing to our National Storytelling Week writing competition throughout February. Winners will be notified in May.

Prizes

• Winning pupils will be published in a National Storytelling Week anthology. They will receive a printed copy of the anthology as well as a copy for their school.
• These pupils and their schools will also be in with the chance of winning book bundles.
• Submit your students’ work, please read the guidelines and follow the link to Submittable.

Guidelines

• Submissions will be open until 27 February.
• Submissions can be a maximum of 500 words. The submissions can be in any format eg. lyrics, fictional stories, non-fiction writing, personal narratives.
• We will not judge submissions on spelling or grammar mistakes, but the writing should be coherent and clear.
• Please upload your submissions as a Word document. Please name the document the initials of the pupil. Eg. Submission1_JD
• Please ensure no pupil names are on or inside the document, just their initials. We cannot accept any submissions including names.
• There is no cap on the number of submissions per class or school. However, please note that you will need to upload a separate submission per pupil. We only accept one entry per pupil.
• Please only submit writing created by KS3/S1-S3 pupils.

Please remember that we are a small team processing a large volume of submissions. We appreciate your patience.

Submittable

• You will need to create an account with your email address and name. You will need to verify your account.

If you have any questions about National Storytelling Week 2026, please email Young Writers: young.writers@literacytrust.org.uk