From My Pen to Your Ear
June 12, 2008
St. Clair Co. ROE Writers’ Workshop
Marilyn Kinsella at www.marilynkinsella.org
Part One-- Folktales: The Basis for Success
Goal: Tell a folktale. Why -- they form the basis for successful storytelling and writing.
See: Illinois Learning Standards
Lecture:
1. What is storytelling
2. Types of stories: Personal Experience, Historical/family history, Original/Literary, Folk
3. Why tell folktales
| Writing - strengthens ability to understand basic story structures; opportunity to retell within a given structure; provides a base for creative fracturing; can be written to tell or to perform as a play or reader’s theatre |
| Good for teachers to introduce science, geography, social studies; nice additions to multi-cultural days; promotes character building; easy to learn; promotes discussion on choices made by characters; meets many educational standards, appeals to different learning styles. |
4. What are folktales – small lecture on types of folktales – Morality tales (trickster, animal, and pourquoi), legends, tall tales, urban legends, fairy tales, fables, philosophical/wisdom (religious, Sufi, etc) See my paper HERE
5. Finding Folktales – 398.2 collections and picture books; on-line sites, storytelling festivals
Tell a simple folktale
As a group identify:
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what are the bare bones? Character, Setting, Problem |
| what are the interesting details, not necessarily crucial to the story's Big 3 (C, S, P) |
| what are the 'other' Big 3 -- Beginning, Middle, End |
| what did you observe in the telling that brought the telling of the story to life? voice, dialogue, facial expression, simple gestures ) |
How to learn stories using several different learning style techniques: (differentiation)
| Retelling orally (audio-learner) |
| Outline (writing) |
| Story map (visual learner) |
| Story scenes (visual learner) |
| Story walking (kinetic – muscle memory) |
| Creative dramatics (group learning) |
Activity: Retelling a Folktale to Make it Your
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· Hand out simple folktales and have the participants bring it down to its bare bones. |
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· In groups or as individuals, pick one of the above to work on the story |
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· Making the story your own – visualization, senses, details, dialog, participation |
Class Ideas: Writing exercises using the folktale:
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Do a visualization with the folktale. Tell or read a folktale. Afterwards, have the students close their eyes and walk them through the story - looking at the details. Have them pick out something significant from the story - a thing, a person, a location, etc. Write that word on a piece of paper and circle it. Now, free think words associated with that word and write them around the main word. Circle them and attach to the main word with a line. Now, free think words from those words and write them around those words circling them and attaching them. Keep doing this until ideas no longer flow. Now look at all the words on the outer edges. Do you see a pattern. This could possibly be your version of the story. Try writing the folktale |
| Have them work in groups to bring it down to bare bones (or give them the bones) and then flesh it back up. |
| Make it into a fractured tale, a radio interview, or readers’ theatre (see example HERE) |
| Put the students into groups. Each group will rewrite a folktale using one of the following to the extreme: imagery, metaphor, actions words, clichés, idioms |
| Write a letter from one character to another |
| Choose a character to be from the story and write the story in first person as a diary entry. |
| Write the story as a news reporter may write it - remember to use "who, what, when, where, why and how" in your report. Write a clever news headline. |
| Write your own Tall Tale. Here is an idea from Storyteller, Tom McCabe - Telling Tall Tales |
| The How and Whys of Writing a Pourquoi Story. |
LUNCH
Part Two: Everybody Has a Story to Tell
Tell a Personal Experience Story and its development process
Activity:
List of story prompts on large paper (ex. At the top of the page “I remember…”
· When I got this scar
· When I had my driver’s test
· A special Christmas/winter holiday morning
· The scariest moment of my life
Do a visualization with the group. Have them identify a significant person, place or thing. Take it and "web it." Take the object in the visualization and write it in the middle of a piece of paper. Draw a circle around it. Free think any words or phrases that come to mind around the word. Circle those words and draw a line connecting the words to the main word.. Now, think of words or phrases off those words and circle them and attach them back to those words. Keep doing this until ideas seem to stop. Now, look around the edges of the web. See, if you can see a pattern developing. Oftentimes, this will help bring your story from an anecdote to a full-fledged story.
In 3-minute segments have the teachers tell the story (or about the story) to a partner. Then, partner tells. After the next direction, change partners and tell it again, but make changes. Each idea below needs to be explained, discussion, and then told (3 minutes each) in pairs:
1. Tell the story – in the sequence it happened
2. Use a different plot: Tell it from someplace towards the end or from some detail in the story
3. Visualize – ask questions to elicit more details…who, what, where, when, etc
4. Senses – go through the story using the five senses
(Theatre Game – Write “Goldilocks and the 3 Bears” on the paper. Give each person a card with a sense written on it – sight, smell, sound, taste, feel. Ask for words that could be in the story related to the given card)
5. Physicalize the story: Walk through the story and play with gesture and movement.
6. Tone – What do you want the audience to feel as they listen to this story. Add words to stimulate this.
Group activity: As a group, discuss the types of tones and words that elicit that tone. Tone can also be "felt" by storyteller's movements.
(Theatre Game – Write a sentence such as “My, my, don’t we look pretty today.” Say it in different tones – sassy, complimentary, ugly, uncaring, etc - add gestures)
7. Use different point of views:
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· Tell it in first person – “I” (this is probably how the person tells it already) |
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· Tell it from another person’s point of view |
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· Tell it in second person – “you” |
8. Who is the focus on in the story? Change the focus
9. Add Character Voices and Conversation
(Theatre Game – Write a sentence such as “Where do you think you are going” and have participants say it as different characters – Mother, Father, Principal, fellow student, etc)
Time to write out story they now can tell
Have participants tell their stories or, if need be, about the story or read it.