Telling stories

Also called Recounting, Narrative on a device, Personal narrative, News

Recounting the day on a device: who, what, where and then what. The hardest thing to do with a board and the one that makes a person a person to everyone else.

What it is

Telling a story means saying what happened: "I went swimming with Nan and I fell in and it was funny". It is the most demanding thing a board can be used for, because it needs people, places, verbs, time words and comments, in order, to a listener who was not there and cannot guess.

It is also the thing that turns a device from a tool for getting needs met into a way of having a life other people know about. "What did you do today?" is the question every family asks and every school sends home, and a person who cannot answer it is a stranger in their own house.

Who it can help

Anyone who can combine a few words and has something to tell. Small children telling their news, teenagers with a grievance, adults coming back from day services, older people remembering. It matters for people who move between settings (home, school, respite, hospital) where nobody at one end knows what happened at the other; see handover between carers.

It is slow, and it will not be fluent for a long time. A story on a board is often three words and a photo. That is a story, and the listener's job is to receive it as one.

How it works

Stories are built from the same vocabulary as everything else, ordered by time words: "today", "then", "after", "finished". The listener supplies the connective tissue and checks: "you went swimming, then what?". A photo from the day does more than a hundred cards, and a device that can show a photo beside the words is a storytelling machine.

Remnant books help: a ticket, a wrapper, a leaf from the walk, stuck in a book the person carries, so that the story has a prop. On a paper or symbol board, a story page (who, what, where, when, and a feeling) gives a fixed order to walk through.

The Talk board is a general vocabulary rather than a diary, so the story is built from its sets: a person from the people set, a place, an action, a feeling, spoken as one sentence. A written note or a photo on the same phone carries the rest.

Getting started

This week, ask "what happened?" at the end of the day with the board in front of you, and build the answer together: press "swimming" for them if you know, then wait for the feeling. Send a photo and three words home from school, and ask home to send three words back.

Make a story page: who, what, where, feeling. Walk through it at bedtime about your own day first.

Keep a remnant book. It costs nothing and it gives the person something to show a listener who does not know how to ask.

Where to get help

Speech and Language UK on narrative skills in children. Communication Matters for AAC. A speech and language therapist can build story frames for the person's stage. For personal narrative in dementia, the Alzheimer's Society covers life story work.