This week we read the story 'Help! We Need a Title!' by Herve Tullet...but not the whole thing. If you've ever read the book, you know that it's about a few characters who are trying to organize themselves to tell a story, so we thought we'd help them out! We stopped reading at the part where they called for an author and made ourselves the authors!
First we worked in groups of 3 to make story plans using a big piece of paper and pencils:
Then it was time to animate and record our stories! We used the iPad app 'Puppet Pals' to tell our stories with the five main characters from the book.
When we shared our stories, we noticed that they were all very different, even though they had the same characters! This gave us a chance to think about PERSPECTIVE - one of our key concepts for this unit.
The idea of thinking about the same thing in different ways is new to us, so we will continue to explore this concept as we continue our unit of inquiry.
This morning during our free play we discovered felt materials to retell the story The Three Billy Goats Gruff which we read yesterday. At first it was just Lea and Violett working to retell the story, but soon there were more and more friends interested! Here we are working together and negotiating how to retell the story:
Here is some work that we did with Ms. Stacey in music class today connected to our current unit of inquiry about stories:
We created sound effects and contributed ideas to the continuation of a story using household objects. We explored facial expressions for characterisation, vocalisation, improvisation on instruments and movement.
Yesterday the Grade 9 guitar band visited us from the high school. They played two Disney songs: 'Under the Sea' and 'The Bare Necessities'. Not only did we love listening to the beautiful guitar music and thinking about some of our favourite movies, the visit also gave us a chance to make connections to our current unit of inquiry (CI: People share stories in many ways).
Before the performance started, Ms. Alison asked a question: Do you think music tells a story? There was a mix of opinions. After we returned from the performance, she asked the same question again:
Music sounds like a story. The music is connected to the movie and the book. (Lea)
That was like music and a story mixed together. (Wilma)
The story is like a movie. (Denzil)
We then watched video clips of the songs from the movies. We were listening to the same songs, but this time there were words, characters and animations. This time, more people thought a story was being told:
This one has pictures and singing so it's a story. (Daniel)
Not just pictures, but also people singing it. (Denzil)
When we listened back to an AudioBoo recording of the Grade 9's performance, less of us thought a story was being told:
No one is doing actions or anything so it's not a story. (Johnny)
It doesn't have pictures. (Daniel)
Or people singing. (Denzil)
It's still a story! (Wilma, Lucy, Lea)
This Friday we will be attend the Rapunzel stage musical which will give us another opportunity to think about if and how music tells stories.
For the last few weeks we've been exploring a new central idea:
People share stories in many ways.
We started off by collecting our ideas about what a story is. As we shared our thinking, it became clear that we made strong connections between stories and books, often understanding them as the same thing. Ms. Alison also noticed that we didn't seem to conceptualize stories as something that we ourselves could create or tell.
So Ms. Alison thought about a time she always sees us telling stories...during our play! We were storytellers, we just didn't realize it yet!
We looked at some photos and videos of our play and thought about whether our play was telling a story or if it at least gave us an idea for a story. At first we weren't quite sure. Some of us thought there were stories there and some of us said, "No way!" So we read a couple of books about children who told beautiful stories through their play:
When we viewed our photos and videos again, we thought a little bit differently. This time we used some more imagination, like Max in Where the Wild Things Are. We chose a few favourite photos a started to think up stories, which we documented as story timelines:
We were so excited by creating all these wonderful ideas that we decided it was time to try our own. Using our own writing, drawings, and the iPad app 'Draw and Tell', we created more stories about our play. Here are a couple of examples:
Lea's story about a little girl making and selling fruit smoothies.
We are a group of Kindergarten 1 students at an international school in Singapore. Our teacher is Ms. Alison. Follow us on our blog and Twitter to see how much we're learning and growing!