Visit 1: Story Time

Fifth graders are some of the most interesting people on the planet. It's true. The examples in Miss Pettibone's class are no exception to this rule.

Before I dive right into what the great stories were that we created together, I want to take a minute to high light how impressive this class was to me. First, there was little to no hesitation that I saw from the students in our activities. That's huge. It shows an eagerness to learn and a willingness to jump right in. In life, in theater and in school we learn most often by doing and seeing if things worked out the way we hoped they would. This class of students wasn't afraid of anything. Secondly, they were exceptionally respectful and responsive to their teacher. She didn't have to be overbearing, or angry, and they worked hard through the end of class, stayed on task, worked kindly, and were overall very responsive. Good parents + Good teachers = Great kids, and that's just what I saw. It was excellent.


Ok! So, I walked in and gathered the students in a circle after introducing myself. I drew the image on the left hereon the white board and asked if they could fill it out. They did a great job identifying rising and falling action, the climax, the introduction and the end. I introduced the idea of an "inciting incident" which helps the story begin. Ask your student to explain more about  this. They're bright kids.

I had the students give me two adjectives and two nouns to fill in a mad lib of "The (adj) (noun) and it's trouble with a/the/an (adj) (noun)." One of our stories was "The Smiley Slug and it's trouble with the Disturbing Car."  I gave an opening sentence and the students were to follow with a sentence of their own starting with either "fortunately" or "unfortunately". The story started with, "One day, the smiley slug woke up and wanted breakfast." Next to me, a student said, "Unfortunately, the slug got eaten by a tiger!" Through a series of incidents the slug was taken from the jaws of death, literally sometimes, and then found itself in more trouble. By the end, it did get breakfast, but then it died. We did this activity once more to help the students really connect with the ideas of plot structure and Miss Pettibone did an excellent job side coaching to help students stay on course and find solutions to problems with the stories. Then the groups broke out and made their own stories which they performed for the class. These included "The Hoppy Turtle and it's trouble with the Silent Killers," "The Fluffy Dog and it's trouble with a ferocious donkey," "The three interesting brothers and their trouble with a troublesome sister," "The two dogs and their trouble with other magical creatures" and one more that is slipping my mind at the moment.

Finally, when the beautiful performances were completed, we took time to discuss if this kind of thing happened in real life, or if it was only in stories. We came to the conclusion that some details only happen in stories like witches turning dogs into hot dogs, or Captain America fighting with dinosaurs. However, a time line of events often looks much like a plot line of a story. We talked about how in World War II, Hitler rose to power and decided he wanted to take over the world (Intro) and started with the invasion of Poland in September of 1939 (Inciting Incident). Then many battles took place, countries were conquered and big events like Pearl Harbor changed the whole climate of the war until the climax of Hilter Surrendering and Japan Surrendering after bombs were dropped. The falling action was the results of the events of the war, and what has happened since become both their own "stories" and resolutions to that story.

Next time, we are planning to introduce the students to the major players or characters who are participating the colonization of America. That may end up taking two visits, but we'll see how it goes.

Until Next Time!