Monthly Archives: September 2009

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Looking for a fun way to foster public speaking skills in your upper elementary school students? Try introducing a storytelling project!

How it works:

• Set aside about a week for this project.
• After listening to you model a retelling of a popular story using expression and simple props, the students each pick a different favorite children’s story or fairy tale. (For a great list of download-able fairy tales, check out this site).
• As a class, brainstorm the elements of good storytelling (eye contact with audience, props, hand motions, expressive voice, etc.)
• Students begin learning their own story by memory, first by rewriting the story onto paper and then by making note cards about the story’s main ideas.
• Students gather simple props and practice telling their story to a partner, using this evaluative form (click here to download) to provide constructive feedback to each other.
• Then, have your students tell their story to the whole class.
• On the final day of the project, have your students perform their stories either for an audience of parents or for a class of younger children. First-graders LOVE to be the audience for this project!
• Use this rubric (click here to download) to evaluate students.

Students love getting to work with their favorite childhood stories, and storytelling puts a fun spin on traditional public speaking/oral reading assignments. The key is to model it first, discuss elements of effective storytelling, and provide plenty of opportunities to practice before the final performance day.

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Graphic organizers allow students to display and organize their thinking concretely–whether they’re reading a novel or their history book. This three-part series will share a new (downloadable!) graphic organizer with each post.

In the two previous posts, we met The Stick Man and the handy dandy Story Map. This article is about a great tool called the “Comic Book” Story Sequencer.

This tool allows students to summarize and visually depict main ideas of a text or historical event. And, with children, there’s a lot of power in a name. By calling it a “Comic Book” sequencer, students automatically think it’s a blast! They don’t even realize that they’re sequencing, determining main ideas, synthesizing, using writing skills and visualizing.

How it works:

Each box on the chart represents a different main event. Students draw a picture summarizing the main idea of the chapter (or historical event or science concept). And in the rectangle at the bottom, students write a sentence summarizing the main idea.

For younger grades, this can be very simple: A simple drawing of the characters with a simple sentence describing the drawing.

For older grades, this exercise can involve more detail and synthesis: The drawings can be very detailed, and their summary sentences may need to include more than one main idea to encompass the important events.

When to use it:

• As a study guide before a history test, to sequence major events.
• As an organizational tool before writing essays (a different point or paragraph can be organized in each box).
• As an assessment tool to see how well students understand the main ideas of each chapter in a novel study. The pictures also show you what a student is visualizing as they read. Additional sheets can be added for additional chapters.
• At the beginning of the year: Have students make a comic strip about themselves, using major events from their own lives!

How to use it:

• Download the graphic organizer here. Once students get used to using the organizer, they can draw their own versions on paper.
• Model how to complete the diagram thoughtfully. Complete the first one together as a class, so students can see that you want thoughtful responses and detailed visualizations.
• If students need more practice with the diagram, have them complete one on themselves, next.
• Then, have students complete the diagram independently on whatever book or concept you’re studying.
• Colored, detailed sequencers make great classroom displays for open house, too!

To download the story sequencer, click here.

Coming next on A Learning Experience: Fun poetry ideas!

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Okay, so the school year is underway. Yay! But let me guess…are you already out of funds for classroom supplies? If so, we have the perfect classroom stimulus package.

Just send us a brief (less than 500 words) article, essay, journal entry (whatever you want to call it) that shares classroom tips, lesson plan/project ideas, or poignant or funny classroom stories. If your entry is selected for publication (which it most likely will be), you get instant cash for your class: a $35 School Box gift card to be spent either at one of their stores or–if you’re one of the poor souls who doesn’t live near a School Box store–in the School Box catalog, which we will mail to you with your gift card (we’ll even cover the postage for your items).

So, e-mail your ideas to us, so we can send you a little something-something to support you in your teaching endeavors!