Storytelling Reflection (Blog #4 Storytelling with Props)

Storytelling Reflection - It’s Fall Y’all 


In planning for my storytelling experience, I decided to select a story with a seasonal tie-in.  The Legend of Spookley the Square Pumpkin written by Joe Troiano and illustrated by Susan Banta is well received by children. The easy rhyming pattern and colorful illustrations contribute to its enjoyability as a read-aloud. In our course readings, the addition of poems and fingerplays to enhance the storytelling experience has been mentioned several times and so I decided to start the session with a short poem that I remembered from my days teaching preschool, a version of Five Little Pumpkins.  


 My daughter helped me create an interactive prop with rotating pumpkins sitting on a fence made out of craft sticks. We planned jack o’lantern type expressions for the backside of the pumpkins that would be revealed as the pumpkins were turned one by one and reflect the tone of the pumpkins in the poem. 

I practiced reading the poem and the picturebook several times working on my inflection and pacing. After setting up the camera, I realized that I would need to move the prop in order to show the picture book while I was reading.  I decided that I would pause the video, reset the camera and edit the two sections into one video clip. In my opinion, this is one of my favorite videos that I’ve made so far.  




This Week's Stories:

Bodie, I. (1994). Ghost tales for retelling. Sandlapper Publishing Co, Inc.

Schwartz, A. (2017). Scary stories to tell in the dark. Harper Collins. 

Schwartz, A. (2017). In a dark, dark room and other scary stories. Harper Collins. 

Image credits: All images are the creation of the blog author with the exception of book covers which were sourced via Amazon.com
















Comments

  1. Cassandra WoodallOctober 24, 2021 at 7:40 PM

    Such a fun story you picked and the prop was so cute! Great idea to cut the videos together.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Storytellers All Around (Blog Post #3 Reading Reflection)

Image
Photo Description: Starting with the photo in the top left, 5th graders are participating in an Ellis Island role-playing experience in Social Studies. In the top right photo, students are practicing a reader’s theatre script. In the photo below, a first-grader reads aloud during snack time to her classmates. The photo in the bottom right is of Kindergarten storytime with hybrid class sizes and social distancing. And finally, the photo in the bottom left is of a Google meet with a mystery guest reader on St. Patrick’s Day. (photo credit: J. Walter, 2021) Storytellers All Around      While reading Chapter 10 in Greene and Del Negro, I couldn’t help but daydream about how storytelling could be a larger part of the curriculum in the school where I work. As an arts magnet school, we already have the fine arts focus including drama, dance, music, and visual arts,  However, none of the pictures featured above are part of those programs. These photos are documentation of ...
Read more

Once Upon A Time (Post #1 - Reading Reflection)

Image
  "We tell stories to make sense of our world."                                  E.  Greene & J. M. Del Negro (2010) A Brief History of Storytelling In order to trace the beginnings of storytelling, one would need to travel farther back in time than the familiar opening line of well-known fairy tales. One would even need to look past the first recorded instances of storytelling that date between 2,000 and 1300 BCE (Greene & Del Negro, 2010). According to E. Greene and J. Del Negro in Storytelling: Art and Technique , one would need to listen to the oral chants of early man as they recount experiences of everyday life (2010).  From that point forward the art of storytelling has a varied, yet persistent presence in man's life.   Greense and Del Negro (2010) also illustrate how the role of storytelling has evolved through the centuries. In ancient times and throug...
Read more

Storytelling Reflection (Post #5 - Interactive Storytelling)

Image
There Was An Enthusiastic Audience... Calandro, L. (2017). There was an old lady who swallowed a bat! Cartwheel Books.      The inspiration for my final storytelling selection came about by discussing this course with a coworker as we monitored student dismissal at school. She invited me to read a story with one of the kindergarten groups she sees on a daily basis as part of the RTI program. The teacher had already read There Was an Old Lady Who Swallowed Some Leaves with her students during the previous week and suggested that I consider reading a different version of the story with them - emphasizing a connection to the previous story, predictable story patterns, and rhyme scheme. After acquiring the book, There Was an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Bat; I planned the storytelling lesson. I practiced reading the story several times before meeting with the students. Although nothing about reading the story by myself could prepare me for the energy and enthusiasm that the stu...
Read more