It feels fitting to start a blog about stories by mentioning a book: “Why Don’t Students Like School?” by Daniel Willingham. In it, Willingham describes the human mind as being “exquisitely tuned to understand and remember stories”. That idea has shaped my curriculum work in three different ways: revisiting stories over time, using stories to teach concepts and vocabulary, and telling our local story.
This is underpinned by deliberate curriculum sequencing, so stories are not isolated moments but part of a coherent journey where knowledge, concepts and disciplinary thinking accumulate over time.
1. Revisit stories over time to build knowledge
From four-year-olds upwards, our curriculum is packed with stories. This is particularly noticeable from our curriculum for four-year-olds to that for up to nine- year-olds. We often begin by teaching the narrative of a story, asking questions about meaning and linking it to children’s own experiences. For example, we might tell the Christmas story and connect it to familiar ideas such as receiving gifts or being excited about the arrival of a baby.
Through the curriculum for 5–11-year-olds, we start attaching concepts to that story, such as incarnation or the idea of Jesus as saviour. For 11–14-year-olds, in a unit on the Abrahamic faiths, students might explore Islamic versions of Jesus’ birth or look at stories from non-canonical gospels that appear to have been familiar in the early Islamic world. For 14–16-year-olds, they encounter a womanist reading of the story alongside different Christian celebrations. By the time students reach 16-18, they examine how Matthew and Luke construct theological portraits of Jesus.
Each time, students return to the same core narrative, but with deeper concepts, richer context, and increasingly sophisticated disciplinary tools. If a student stays with us to A Level, they will have returned to this story many times. It never becomes dull, because they encounter it through different worldviews and disciplinary lenses. Crucially, revisiting familiar narratives frees cognitive space. Students are not learning a new plot or cast of characters, so they can do more challenging thinking with the material.
2. Use stories to teach concepts and vocabulary
Once I accepted that the brain privileges stories, I began creating narratives to introduce key thinkers and ideas.
We tell the story of Heraclitus, famously melancholy, who feels he cannot truly know anything because everything is in constant flux. Later we meet Aristotle, endlessly curious about the changing world, even falling out with his teacher, Plato.
Students’ favourite story is often Thomas Aquinas. They love hearing about a young boy not cut out to be a crusading knight, instead destined for life in the Church. He shocks everyone by choosing the “wrong” religious order, is kidnapped by his brothers, and yet all he wants to do is read his Bible. When he later discovers Aristotle’s works, he realises he can study both scripture and the natural world.
These individual stories become part of a much bigger narrative we tell to our 5-7 year olds onwards: the story of empiricism and later natural theology.
3.Tell your local story to build identity and belonging
I moved to Norfolk in 2020 and still have the zeal of a convert. Norwich claims to be the City of Stories, and I quickly realised that as a Trust Lead I wanted our RE curriculum to tell those stories too.
Our developing curriculum includes figures such as Julian of Norwich, Edith Cavell, Sophia Duleep Singh, Abdalqadir as-Sufi and Thomas Paine. We also tell the story of Norfolk’s rebellious nature: a county where Norwich once claimed a church for every week of the year. When you visit Norwich today, you are still struck by the sheer number of church buildings, yet census data now places us alongside Brighton with one of the highest percentages of “nones”. We deliberately explore this tension through social science and worldview lenses, helping students think about continuity, change and what belief looks like in lived local contexts.
One of my hopes for a national curriculum is that it includes a local unit, and that SACREs are supported to help schools identify their own stories, alongside CPD to help teachers weave them thoughtfully into curriculum design. Because every place has a story. The question is whether we choose to tell it.
I hope this inspires you to look back at your own curriculum and reflect on how you use stories: the stories students revisit over time, the stories that help them grasp big ideas and vocabulary, and the local stories that shape their sense of place and identity.
About
Nikki has been teaching RE for almost 20 years, she is currently the head of PRE at Lytchett Minster School in Dorset where she has worked for 12 years. In September she is starting a new role as the Subject Specialist for RE with Inspiration Trust. She tweets as RE with Mrs McGee @RE_McGee and her blog can be found at https://rewithmrsmcgee.wordpress.com/ The Lytchett PRE twitter account can be found at @LMS_PRE The Lytchett YouTube channel is called Lytchett PRE.