Friday, June 14, 2013

Talking, Drawing, Writing: Chapter 1-Storytelling


Jennifer from Teaching With Grace has put together a fabulous summer book study. The book is Talking, Drawing, Writing:  Lessons for Our Youngest Writers. The book is written by Martha Horn and Mary Ellen Giacobbe. I am so excited to participate in this book study. I love finding new teacher resource books that can excite and encourage teachers. The introduction alone was so inspiring. Since I’m moving to kindergarten next year, I was so excited to participate in this book study that can help me identify the best practices to use to teach young students how to write. I’m a little late joining the linky party because of our family trip to Disney World, but I’m so excited to participate.

The chapter highlighted two great questions for thought. (page 23)
·      What experiences are we providing in the classroom that could spark topics for writing?
·      How do we design our yearly curriculum so that children are exploring and discovering and playing and engaging with each other?

After reading this chapter, I know that I want storytelling to be a big part of my kindergarten classroom. The author set the chapter with several examples of teachers encouraging the students to tell stories about their own experiences. The teachers in the examples continued to question to students to give more information about their story. This questioning naturally leads to students being more detailed in their stories, which will later lead to more detailed written stories. 

Being able to tell a story is the foundation for students being successful writers. As a teacher, I need to develop a classroom that provides students with authentic learning experiences that will spark student creativity and storytelling ideas. Not all students come to us with the same background. The activities that we provide our students will help give all students stories to tell.

How do you provide authentic learning experiences for your students in the classroom that will provide storytelling opportunities?  

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