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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Adapt a Short Story – Change the Narrative Setting
Explore the role the narrative setting plays within a story with this engaging and fully scaffolded writing project booklet for primary students.
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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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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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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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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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Magical Story Starters Task Cards
Get your students writing magical stories with this set of story starter task cards.
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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.
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Grandparents' Day Writing Prompt - The Very Best Day
Surprise Grandma and Grandpa with a special story telling about the Best Day Ever with a Grandparents’ Day writing prompt.
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Halloween Words - Vocabulary and Writing Centre
Stretch your students’ vocabulary and writing skills with a devilishly-delightful Halloween Vocabulary and Writing Centre.
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The Relief Teacher Monster - Halloween Craft and Write
This Halloween, inspire your struggling writers to write toe-curling tales of a day spent with a Relief Teacher Monster!
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Objects in the Sky – Writing Prompts
Describe objects in the sky, such as the clouds, moon and sun, with this set of 8 space science writing prompts.
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Easter Writing Prompts - Differentiated Worksheets
Inspire your early year students to get writing with these easy to use Easter writing prompts.
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Easter Writing Prompts for Narrative Writing
Inspire creativity and build writing stamina with these engaging Easter-themed Writing Prompts for Narrative Writing.
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Easter Diary Writing Activity
A cute diary entry writing activity.
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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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Spring Writing Prompts
Celebrate Spring with Spring writing worksheets for the early years.
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Halloween Writing Prompts - Bats
Differentiated writing activity using bats as a writing prompt.
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Insect-Themed Flashcards and Writing Prompts
Inspire young entomologists to read and write about insects with minibeast writing prompts and word wall cards.
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Farm-Themed Flashcards and Writing Prompts
Build vocabulary and writing skills with this ocean-themed writing activity.
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Valentine's Day Vocabulary Cards and Writing Center
Build a Valentine’s Day writing station with a printable word wall and writing prompt worksheets.
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Grandparents Day Writing Prompts
Combine your writing lessons and Grandparents Day with this set of writing prompt worksheets.
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Imaginative Writing Topics for Easter
Inspire creativity with these 3 imaginative writing topics—fun Easter story prompts your students will love.
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Write a Short Story – The Discovery or Invention
Get your students analysing and writing an invention story with this engaging and fully scaffolded writing project booklet.
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What Happened Next? Alice in Wonderland Writing Template
Finish the Alice in Wonderland story in your own words.
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Fairy Tale Setting and Book Characters Classroom Display
Teach fairy tales and narrative structure with a printable fairy tale setting poster and book characters for a classroom display.
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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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Curious Creatures Character Spinner
A curious creature character spinner to use during imaginative writing.
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'Pick Three' Writing Inspiration Worksheet
A worksheet to use when students need writing inspiration for a narrative piece.
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Create and Write – Art Template
A template designed for students to display their writing and illustrations.
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Imagine This! Silly Story Template
A template to use as a fun writing activity.
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Story Building Dice Activity
A set of 3 dice to use when to generating ideas for creative writing.