beginnerswork

The first set of story cards is drawn with a black washable marker on 5x7 blank index cards backed with magnet tape. Don't to help them draw, this will be their base line. AND NO WORDS at this point.

Children are very good at remembering the meaning of these simple drawings and using them to tell stories. They can create  and tell stories for days with these minimal images so you may have to provoke a conflict...so that you can get to the important experience.

The idea is that the images should be bit unclear which will hopefully cause some confusion. When conflict arises for example:the story tellers call the cat drawing a caterpillar... it is a perfect and pivotal teachable opportunity!

You say, "Well, it does look a bit like a caterpillar...How can we remember that this is a CAT?" Some bright little bulb will say... "We can write cat on the picture, we can use a word." This will be truly eureka moment for everyone and a perfect demonstration of one reason for written language. It was always the highlight of my years as a teacher because now that understood that written language has innate power and is extremely useful, we could move on. Of course, shortly after this moment everyone else will want their card labeled...one concept one word.

For the cards at the right there was only one I didn't remember was the "trip to space" I only guessed at the title. And yes, it was his first drawing for the Story Board he came in to my class reading and writing lowercase and reading cursive... and yet... well that's a blog post...



FIRST CARDS