Once Upon a Time in West PM: Exploring Stories and Storytelling

 

For as long as the human species has been able to communicate, stories have served as a means for expression, interpretation and record-keeping. The urge to create, share and understand narratives has been wired into us through the evolution of the brain, which employs the cause-and-effect processes that also drive stories. And storytelling is not only the activity of children: As adults, we devise stories, both long and short, throughout most of our waking moments, often without even realizing it. These adult stories might be internal conversations, interactions with loved ones or coworkers or the mental recounting of a significant event from the last day or the last decade.

 

This thirst for narrative begins at a very early age and was especially evident to the West PM teachers as the autumn quarter in 2017 commenced. In all corners of the classroom, stories naturally unfolded: A teacher transcribed a child’s words for her story at the language table. In the area of the play yard known as the Back 40, a group of children verbally narrated the action surrounding the solar system exploration of a team of astronauts. Another group of children assigned roles and relationships for a family-run sand area bakery shop. On the patio, a hollow-block building served as the home for a group of police dogs bringing a saga to life. In each of these dramatic play settings, children take turns offering ideas and assuming leadership roles in the play, using this dynamic mix of creative brainstorming, layered story building and revolving perspectives to build their communal narratives.

 

As often happens in our classroom, the teachers followed the story-related interests of the children into what is known as a project. A project is a hands-on, integrated classroom unit of study that often arises from the pursuits and foci of the children. Through cross-disciplinary collaboration between children and teachers on the curricular focal point, both individual and collective meaning can be uncovered and shared.

 

Perhaps one of the most potent homes for our new project was the language table. The language table is usually home to books and stories of all sorts. Adult-authored fiction and nonfiction is read to the children, often by a teacher but sometimes by a visiting parent or even a child or sibling who has begun to read. A child might pick up a “book” (copy paper that has been folded and stapled to create the pages of a book, complete with a construction paper cover) and begin to create the illustrations before asking a teacher to write accompanying text. In fact, some children are also interested in writing their own stories, piecing together text through the process known as inventive spelling: For example, “love” might be spelled as “luv” as children sound out words. The timeless and powerful tradition of oral storytelling is also alive and well at the language table, as eager children verbally share their experiences, hopes and dreams.

 

Stories and storytelling permeated every corner of our classroom. The teachers noticed recurring themes, such as the group of police dogs, and new stories arising spontaneously. During winter quarter, a group of children created a narrative involving a cheetah family. In their story, the cheetahs lived on the small outdoor stage, the grass was water, the bridge became the family’s boat, and a hill turned into an active volcano, an important element to their narrative. As the relationships and context were being built, a child offered that the volcano “doesn’t shoot out like this [hands low to the ground]. It erupts this high [hands high over her head],” while another mentioned that the water near the volcano is “really hot. But the cheetahs like it.” On the small stage, several children used the blocks to construct their home and were soon joined by two others. One cheetah told another, “I’m your sister, remember?” The other took in this information, then replied, “Remember, I’m your brother.” As the game unfolded, the cheetah family established that they lived in Africa (the small stage) but worked in Australia (the sand area house at the other end of the yard). As part of the game, the cheetahs had to cross the ocean and climb over the volcano to reach Australia.

 

At snack time, the children enjoyed sharing personal narratives about their lives but also welcomed the opportunity to create a group story. Known in our classroom as a round robin story, this creative process is a basic yet effective version of oral storytelling. Round robin stories are pretty straightforward: One child at the snack table offers an idea to start the story. The story then moves around the table, with each subsequent child building upon the story with her own idea. This is an enjoyable and highly creative process that can work in almost any setting with a group of willing children (or adults).

 

Here is a round robin story from a West PM snack table. The storytellers were Claire, Henio, Henry R., Jack, Katherine L. and Ainsley:

 

 

Story time, which ends our afternoons, was also a daily opportunity for exploration of stories and storytelling. Over the course of one week the story time teacher reads the same picture book each day, to provide children the chance to create ownership of and investment in each specific book. In our quest to explore all varieties of storytelling, teacher Maryam presented the award-winning wordless picture book The Lion and the Mouse—a retelling of the Aesop fable by artist Jerry Pinkney—which inspired the children to add their own narration:

 

 

The picture books we read during story time each week are thoughtfully chosen, based on criteria such as repetition, theme, rhyme, plot and characters. Many of our story time books lend themselves to what we call a story play. A story play is essentially a dramatization of a picture book. In our class, story plays often take place on our patio during the post-snack music time. For example, in late October, teacher Vanessa read The Leopard’s Drum, written and illustrated by Jessica Souhami. On the patio the following week, Vanessa facilitated a story play during music time. To prepare for the story play during the afternoon, children honed their fine motor skills by collaboratively creating props and costumes using paper, colored pencils, tape, scissors and staplers.

 

At music time, The Leopard’s Drum story play began. With focus and conviction, the children adopted the roles of the characters in the story. Some children knew the story so well they were able to recite their character’s dialogue word for word! As a result of the story play process, children bravely shared their creativity with each other, while also developing their self-regulation skills as they waited patiently for their turns. When the story time picture book lends itself to dramatic reinterpretation, the teachers are excited to facilitate music time story plays that foster teamwork, resourcefulness and competence.

 

In early April, the storytelling project was deepened by a visit from an author. Stephanie Lucianovic, mother of West PM student Arthur, is an author who has a picture book scheduled for publication in 2020. She asked the children, “Where do ideas for stories come from?” Stephanie explained how many of her picture book ideas emanate from her daily life. Hello Star, the working title of the above-mentioned manuscript, came from Stephanie’s 5-year-old son (and West PM alumnus) Henry, who said to his mother as an astronomy-loving 3-year-old, “Did you know that stars die? Isn’t that sad?” Stephanie also shared with the children the relationship between a picture book’s author and illustrator, and introduced words and concepts such as author, illustrator, editor and manuscript.

 

Our classroom project about stories has created an open-ended narrative into which the children have eagerly inscribed their cognitive, social, emotional, physical and lingual capacities. While their chronicles will continue well beyond their time with us, the West PM teachers were fortunate to be able to craft a space for ideas, dreams and adventures. We look forward to enjoying future installments from the lives of these young storytellers.