Story Starters Teaching Resources
Explore story starters for kids created by teachers for teachers like you to encourage creative writing in the primary classroom.
This collection of narrative prompts has been designed by the Teach Starter teacher team to help you help your students as they perfect their narrative story writing skills. Aligned with the Australian literacy curriculum, the collection is packed with options for starting sentences and stories, as well as writing stimulus sheets you can use to encourage young writers to unleash their creativity!
Is this your first year teaching writing lessons? Or maybe you're just looking for some fresh ideas to incorporate story starters into your lesson plans? Read on for a primer from our teacher team!
What Are Story Starters?
The name may say it all — or maybe not! A story starter is a sentence or a short phrase that's created to spark the imaginations of your students and help them kick off a story.
These short bits of text provide students with an example of how to begin their story. They stimulate students' imaginations and help beat back writer's block!
They also go by a number of other names, including:
- Narrative starters
- Narrative prompts
- Story prompts
- Story openers
Is a Story Starter the Same as a Writing Prompt?
Story starters can be considered writing prompts. After all, these phrases or sentences work to prompt a student to continue the narrative.
But not every writing prompt is a story starter! A writing prompt provides our students with ideas that they can use to begin writing, but the words of the prompt do not have to appear within the actual text of the story.
A good story starter, on the other hand, will actually function as the first few words or sentences of a story.
What Makes a Good Story Starter?
When our teaching team sits down to craft a good story starter to add to our collection — and for you to add to your lesson plans — we have a few criteria in mind.
- The story starter should hint at the theme of the story.
- The story opener should not provide students with too much information — the goal is to leave it to students to craft major story details using their own imaginations!
- The story starter should hook the reader by revealing an intriguing element of the story.
Some of the elements we like to include in our story starters include:
- Questions
- An introduction to a particular character or characters
- Descriptions of the setting
- Dialogue
- Action
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Gingerbread Man Disguise Project
Design a Gingerbread Man disguise to save Gingie from getting eaten by Santa with a printable Gingerbread Man Disguise project.
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Melted Snowman Craft Activity
Have some winter crafting fun with our Melted Snowman Craft template and writing activity.
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Narrative Sentence Starter Worksheets
Use our printable narrative writing prompt worksheets to boost your students' imaginative writing skills.
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Roll an Adventure Story - Storytelling Dice Game
Roll and write an adventure story during Book Week using our Roll An Adventure Storytelling Game.
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Write a Short Story – The Tale of Transformation
Get your students analysing and writing a story with a lesson with this engaging and fully scaffolded writing project booklet.
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Daily Writing Prompts Calendars - Upper Primary
Inspire your students and encourage them to write regularly with a set of printable Daily Writing Prompts in calendar format.
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Narrative Writing Visual Prompts Presentation
A 19 slide teaching presentation containing visual narrative writing prompts.
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Narrative Writing Lesson - Story Leads to Hook Readers
Hook readers with this narrative writing lesson that introduces your students to eleven story lead strategies.
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5 Narrative Writing Stimulus Sheets
Writing stimulus sheets with a narrative focus.
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Write a Short Story – The Quest
Get your students analysing and writing a quest story with this engaging and fully scaffolded writing project booklet.
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Write a Short Story – Adventure in Space
Get your students analysing and writing adventure in space stories with this engaging and fully scaffolded writing project booklet.
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Write a Short Story – Overcoming Obstacles
Get your students analysing and writing overcoming obstacles short stories with this engaging and fully scaffolded writing project booklet.
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Genre of the Month - Writing Prompt Grids (Upper)
Introduce your students to a variety of writing genres with our printable genre-specific writing prompt grids.
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Adventure Story Starter Task Cards
Print and use these Adventure Story Starter Task Cards to inspire adventurous narrative writings during Book Week.
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Inspiring Story Starters Task Cards
Get your students writing inspiring stories with this set of story starter task cards.
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Topic Sentence Starter Examples Slideshow
Spark creativity with this topic sentence starter examples slideshow that provides your students with writing prompts across three writing genres.
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Storytelling Cubes
Roll our Storytelling Cubes to generate fun narrative writing prompts to use in your classroom.
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Narrative Paragraph Topic Sentences – Digital Template
Discover narrative paragraph topic ideas designed to inspire creativity and help students confidently write engaging narrative paragraphs.
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Narrative Prompts Posters
A set of 20 posters to display as narrative story prompts for students.
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Sentence Strip Activity Cards - Simple Sentence Starters
Encourage conversation and writing with our Printable Sentence Starter Prompts for Early Years.
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Adventure Storytelling Cubes & Writing Templates
Use our Adventure Storytelling Dice templates to create an engaging Book Week Writing Activity.
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Story Ideas – Character, Setting, and Complication Cards
Help your students choose a topic to write about with this set of 36 character, setting and compilation task cards.
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Roll to Create a Silly Book Title – Differentiated Writing Activity
Print a differentiated literacy activity using dice and a chart to create a silly book title and storybook.
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Seven Sensational Story Starters PowerPoint
Inspire creative and catching narrative story starters with this story starters set of teaching slides.
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Gold Miners' Bulletin Project
A creative writing newspaper project in which students design and write the front page of an imagined newspaper from the Australian Gold Rush era.
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Narrative Writing Poster
A poster to encourage your students to think about narrative writing.
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Magical Story Starters Task Cards
Get your students writing magical stories with this set of story starter task cards.
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Goldilocks and The Three Bears - Finish the Story Writing Prompt
Finish the Goldilocks and the Three Bears story in your own words.
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My Monster Story Template
Use this simple story template to get your students writing simple narratives based on a sequence of events.
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Alphabet Characters Story Generator Cards
A set of cards using alphabet-related image prompts for writing.
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Adorable Animal Finger Puppets Template
Download a set of 12 animal finger puppets to use when teaching poetry, creating narratives and more.
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'If I Were a Bowerbird...' Writing Stimulus
Get students thinking and writing about what they would collect, or what they would do if they were a bowerbird.