Rules of Storytelling
photo credit: World Bank Photo Collection via photopin cc
I recently saw this article on Boing Boing that shares a tweet from Emma Coates, Pixar’s Story Artist, in which she relates the 22 Rules of Storytelling. I am regularly trying to encourage my students to do #12: ”Discount the 1st thing that comes to mind. And the 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th – get the obvious out of the way. Surprise yourself.” That rule could apply to many enterprises, not just storytelling. Perhaps if my students see that it is advice from the studio that produced Up, they will find it more trustworthy!
One of my favorite bloggers, Sonya Terborg, also posted about this list. The following day, she produced her own, modified, version, called “16 Rules for Sharing Your Story”. She made an excellent graphic to accompany it. You can download the PDF here. I think it would be an excellent poster to put in your classroom, or to print for students to use as a binder or notebook cover.
Storybird (Reblog)
For the summer, I have decided to use my Tuesday and Thursday posts to reblog some of my favorite posts that some of my readers may have missed the first time around:
As a teacher, do you ever have a moment when no one needs your help, and you are standing in the middle of your classroom wondering what you should be doing? In my twenty years of teaching, I think that’s happened twice: when I was student teaching and had no idea what I was supposed to be doing anyway, and today. I showed my students Storybird, which allows you to choose sets of art to illustrate a story that you write. I meant for it to be a station on some computers in my classroom, but the students who started at that station didn’t want to leave. So, I started pulling out laptops until everyone was working on their own stories. For over an hour, there was silence in my room, and every child was engaged in creating his or her own story. We had been studying Figurative Language, and the assignment was to create a story with a winter theme that used at least 4 different types of figurative language.
After lunch, I thought the students might be weary of sitting in front of computer screens. I began saying, “Okay, you have a choice. You can either continue working on your Storybirds or – ” I didn’t even get to finish. They unanimously agreed that they wanted to continue.
Storybird is free. Register as a teacher, and you can add a class of students easily. The students do not need e-mail addresses to register or log in. You can view their work at any time, and they can also view the work of other students in the class by clicking on a tab at the top. They can comment, as can the teacher. It’s online, and easy to share, so they can show friends and family. The teacher can post specific assignments or the students can just create. Collaboration on stories is possible, and reading the stories of others is inspiring. The art work is charming and lovely.
Here is a sample from one of my 4th graders: (I apologize if some of the words are cut off – WordPress does not “play well” with embed codes!)
PicLits
PicLits is a website that basically offers a catalogue of pictures for which you can make captions. The captions can be created from a word bank underneath that changes based on the selected picture, and variations of the chosen words are offered (such as plurals). This is one of those sites where the user can differentiate for him or her self. Single words can be selected for beginning English speakers – or entire sentences and paragraphs can be added. Some users offer famous quotations for the pictures, while other users lend a sense of humor to the image with a quip, as you can see below. There are links to several blog sites that give recommendations for using PicLits in the classroom. As always, though, it is important for the teacher to preview images before recommending the site to your students.
Grace is Overrated Journal Pages
The 49 journal pages on “Grace is Overrated” are inspiring and thought-provoking. They include quotations, fill-in-the-blanks, and questions that are great for self-examination. The layout of each of Christie Zimmer’s pages is fun and attractive as well. Some of them are more suited for adults, but I have used several with my students. The kids enjoy voicing their feelings on such a variety of topics and discussing the quotations!
Summer Superheroes
Summer Superheroes is a “Parent & After School Resource” on ReadWriteThink. It offers an interesting twist to the concept of creating your own superhero by challenging the author to invent a superhero whose powers are somehow dependent on the warmest season of the year. The detailed instructions for motivating the child and for helping him or her to develop the story include interactive resources on the ReadWriteThink site. This would be a fun idea to share with parents, or to use in the last month of school – when everyone’s mind is on summer anyway!
Scribble Press
Scribble Press is a free app for the iPad that allows the user to create ebooks. There are over 50 story templates (If I Were a Superhero, for example), or you can create your own. Illustrating the stories is easy and fun with the use of markers, stamps, and stickers. Once a book is created, it can be sent to your iBookshelf, and read by any iPad user. It can also be shared in other ways by publishing them to a public gallery (optional) or even ordering a printed copy of the book. Scribble Press is extremely “kid-friendly”, and a wonderful way to spark the imagination of even the most reluctant writers!
Thanks for Teaching Us
Thanks for Teaching Us is a site that allows students to publicly thank their teachers. With Random Acts of Kindness Week just around the corner (Feb. 13-19), this might be a great activity to offer your students. Talk about the qualities they have liked in past teachers. Ask them to choose a teacher and to write a letter of gratitude. If they have permission to have their work and first name on the internet, allow them to type their thanks on this site. Once it is posted, the letter can be e-mailed to the teacher. Searches can be done on the site, as well, for teachers and schools that have already received thanks.
My Favorite Online Writing Tools
Many schools are out for the next two weeks, which gives teachers the opportunity to catch up on their personal lives. Sometimes, though, teachers like to use this time for planning. As the number of subscribers to this blog climbs, I am aware that many of you may not have had time to read all of the posts, or might have missed some of the earlier suggestions. So, I thought this might be a good time of year to summarize and emphasize some of the most valuable resources I have reviewed so far. Today, I would like to offer my Favorite Online Writing Tools:
#3 – Writing Prompts – Luke Neff provides this site with wonderful writing prompts usually accompanied by thought-provoking graphics.
#2 – Read Write Think - The student interactives alone on this site make it well worth a visit. But it is also rich with lesson planning ideas and other resources for teachers and parents. It’s one of the many sites tied to Thinkfinity, which I featured as one of my favorite teaching tools.
#1 – Storybird – I cannot say enough good things about this site, which allows students to create stories from sets of illustrations provided on the site. Students can comment on each other’s work, parents can view the stories online or even purchase published products of their children’s masterpieces. I have had several students who thoroughly dislike writing suddenly plunge themselves into weaving tales on Storybird. One of them even wrote a thank you note to me for introducing him to the site. This is, by far, one of my favorite discoveries this year.
If you are interested in reading my original posts on each of these resources, please click on the following: Writing Prompts, Read Write Think (part of my post on Thinkfinity), and Storybird.
Storybird
As a teacher, do you ever have a moment when no one needs your help, and you are standing in the middle of your classroom wondering what you should be doing? In my twenty years of teaching, I think that’s happened twice: when I was student teaching and had no idea what I was supposed to be doing anyway, and today. I showed my students Storybird, which allows you to choose sets of art to illustrate a story that you write. I meant for it to be a station on some computers in my classroom, but the students who started at that station didn’t want to leave. So, I started pulling out laptops until everyone was working on their own stories. For over an hour, there was silence in my room, and every child was engaged in creating his or her own story. We had been studying Figurative Language, and the assignment was to create a story with a winter theme that used at least 4 different types of figurative language.
After lunch, I thought the students might be weary of sitting in front of computer screens. I began saying, “Okay, you have a choice. You can either continue working on your Storybirds or – ” I didn’t even get to finish. They unanimously agreed that they wanted to continue.
Storybird is free. Register as a teacher, and you can add a class of students easily. The students do not need e-mail addresses to register or log in. You can view their work at any time, and they can also view the work of other students in the class by clicking on a tab at the top. They can comment, as can the teacher. It’s online, and easy to share, so they can show friends and family. The teacher can post specific assignments or the students can just create. Collaboration on stories is possible, and reading the stories of others is inspiring. The art work is charming and lovely.
Here is a sample from one of my 4th graders: (I apologize if some of the words are cut off – WordPress does not “play well” with embed codes!)
Six-Word Memoirs
A couple of years ago, a fellow Gifted and Talented teacher, Michelle A., introduced me to these brief biographies by showing me the book Not Quite What I Was Planning. I was immediately intrigued, and went out to buy my own copy. There is something deeply moving about the power of six words to tell an entire life story, and I looked for ways to incorporate it into my classroom. Apparently, Michelle and I weren’t the only ones who saw the potential of this writing technique. It has taken classrooms by storm. On this site, a teacher explains how she used the idea with her second graders, and gives instructions for the classroom activities. (Be sure to click on “Expand to Read More”.) And at Smith Mag, there are lots of examples and ideas – even 6-word questions. And Daniel Pink has a variation on this idea, as well, with “What’s Your Sentence?”. I would not recommend that you set younger students loose on any of these resources, as there are some mature topics discussed, but you can gather plenty of appropriate ideas to jumpstart their creativity.
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