K2: Storytelling

Students in K2 level (5-6 years old) fall into the Mythic, Literal stage of development, according to James Fowler. At this stage the child is likely to embrace story as the major way of giving unity and value to experience. The strength in this stage seem to be the rise of narrative and the emergence of story, drama and myth as ways of finding and giving meaning to experience. Tap into the kids' emergent story-telling skills by encouraging them to come up with their own story and design a book. This would help them move towards the stage of expressing a full thought and sentence.

 

The elements of a Story

As an introduction, watch a short video

 

Discuss: who are the main characters of the story? What is the problem? What is the solution?

 

Encourage inquiry into the transformation every character of a story goes through; analogous to the transformation of the caterpillar

 

Next class activity, watch part of a video and discuss what the problem is and how they would solve it creatively

 

Picture exploration activity

 

Show a picture and asked the students to imagine what happened. What is the evidence that led them into thinking that way.

 

Personal Project:

Week 1: Make a list of the characters who will be in your book and draw the cover of your book
Week 2: Give a simple title to your story that describes the issue faced by the main character
(accompanying exercises: show pictures and have students come up with a title to the images)
Week 3: Make a list of the things that will happen to them; the problem that they are facing (page 2 of the book)
Week 4: Come up with a solution to the problem; what s/he does to solve the problem (draw the solution scene)

 

 Reflection:

 

What works?
Students seem very intrigued and fully immersed into their individual project. Students demonstrate high sense of attachment to what they do as a consequence of their efforts.

What does not work?

Strength of students: students slowly start building confidence in speaking freely

Weakness of students: Students are unable to fully develop and express their thoughts in English. They communicate through short, many times disconnected, sentences.

What is needed?
To work more on their imaginative thinking; to move towards a stage where more details are used (such as further developing the characteristics of their main character)

 

 Inspiration and professional development: