Friday, August 16, 2013

Storytelling and Critical Reading in Content Areas

[Day 5 Notes from Kathleen Tolan's Session]

Agenda:
Centers
Storytelling
Critical Reading


Summarizing:
You write the same amount of words about a small summary as you do about a summary of the whole book.
Summary: Just focus on boxes


Valley Forge a safe headquarters
     high ground
     easy to defend
     woods to build huts for shelter

Storytelling: 
Take the box and bullets and create a little story/vignette around the box and bullets.
Tell the story of "Daniel" who lives in Valley Forge. Kids LOVE this!

Events make for the best storytelling.
  • Take major events, and have kids get into storytelling circles to tell the events.
  • At first, you want to start with just bare-bones of a story for the kids. (You don't want to intimidate kids about storytelling)
  • Don't storytell only once! Retell over and over.
In storytelling, what would you want kids to hit, in a barebones-skeletal way, during storytelling.
It has to sound like story, not a summary!

Create a picture storyboard


As kids get to know the story better, they cut the pictures out, add other pictures/sketches.
Don't let is sound expository. It needs to sound like story.

Read another source to give a different perspective.

Now update the storyboard. Do you need to add anything?

Why is Sybil left out?
...and now we've lead kids into critical reading!

Who is left out? Why is that?

Critical Questions to Teach Children:
  • Who created this image?
  • Analyze the different  perspectives one can take from viewing this image?
  • What perspective does this text offer on an issue or experience?
  • Who was the image created for and how does it affect the viewer?
  • What did the image creator want people to believe?
  • Might the image have been exaggerated? If so, how? And why?
  • Whose voice is heard?
  • Whose voice is missing?
  • Whose story is it? Who benefits from it being told this way?
  • Who has power in the text? Why does he/she have it?
  • What social norms do we see in the text?
  • What values are upheld in this text?
  • What values are challenged in this text?
  • What experience does this text describe which we may be unfamiliar with?

Image created by Paul Revere to show people. He had an agenda with the creation of this image. This image outraged the people.

An image that shows a different perspective of the same event. (Probably more accurate)

...and now we've considered perspective and point of view!

Critical reading is easier to teach in history than in fiction.

[Center Activities]

Share out:
Share an occasion where a study carries information from one center to another.
Push your kids: What can you bring to your center that you can share with the other people at your center?

Assessment:
Little projects where kids create posters or projects
Museum: What big things have we learned during this unit?
Act out something they learned/storytell
Sign up for different ways kids want to show their learning
Collect and evaluate notebooks
Create a writing project (informational book)
Make a PowerPoint about a subtopic (i.e. Colonial Clothing)

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