Family Event: It All Began With a Squiggle...Creative Storytelling for Young Learners

A free virtual class for children ages 4-7 offered through Outschool. Space is limited and registration is required. For the children of eligible UMass Grad Employees and Postdocs.

Class Description:

Storytelling is a beautiful bridge between your imagination and experiences to written stories.

During this class, we will use a small squiggle to inspire early learners to use their amazing story telling skills to develop a story based on their drawings. This class is all about planning and telling stories. If learners feel inspired to write down or record themselves telling the story after class with an adult, that would be a fun extension. In class, our focus will be on planning and telling our stories together.

During this interactive class, we will spend the first part of class looking at a squiggle and developing a story all together. I will draw  for the whole group for this part of class and we will all work together to plan and tell a story based on our group drawing. This modeling and whole group planning/telling of a story will serve as a jumping point for learners to begin telling their own stories.

After we have created our group story, learners will begin creating their own stories based on a brand new squiggle picture. It is okay if learners use our first story as inspiration for their own story or if their story is full of all of their own unique ideas. As we know, stories can keep growing and growing so during class learners will be encouraged to share their stories "so far" but will also be encouraged to keep working on their stories after class as well. Depending on each learner, some children may have stories to tell that they feel are complete by the end of class and others may have a great start on their stories and plans to keep forming the story after class.

All learners are invited to upload themselves telling their stories into the classroom after class. With the help of adults in their homes, they could also records themselves telling their stories to share with friends and family! Storytelling can be a great confidence boost for timid writers as they begin to really see themselves as someone who has stories to tell and the skillset to do so.

Story telling is a great skill for pre-writers, early writers, and even for more advanced writers as a way to work on planning and story development without the pressure of thinking about spelling, punctuation...I am looking forward to telling and listening to amazing stories  in class together soon!