Donaldson_Christine_Storytelling_Experience

 

Donaldson_Christine_StorytellingExperience

This is my experience with reading The Haunted Lake to 4th and 5th Grader

Reflection on the experience of telling the story of The Haunted Lake. 

Storytelling during October is so much fun. There are so many fall and Halloween books that students just love. Knowing how much students love these books, I wanted to choose a scary book that was also more appropriate for older students. I have focused much of the storytelling experiences on younger grades or audiences. For this experience, I wanted to find something that my older students would enjoy.  

To choose a story, I first sat and looked through my public library online catalog, setting search parameters for juvenile and scary as the genre. I gathered a list of possibilities then traveled to my local library. At the library, I spent time gathering the books from my list and then additional time just browsing the shelves for any additional titles that seemed promising. While looking through titles, there seemed to be a large number for younger elementary students and books for older students were chapter books. The Haunted Lake seemed to fit in the middle and at first read was very promising.  

In preparation for reading to my students, I read the story multiple times both silently and aloud. I also practiced holding the book to both my left and right. The text on the page was greater than many books and I wanted to be sure that I was familiar with the text yet able to give students amble time to view the illustrations. The illustrations are great, and I wanted my students to have the time to take in the illustrations and maybe also think about what they may have visualized differently. I will also look on You Tube for other recordings of stories to see how others read a story. The only recording that I found of this book was a video of PJ Lynch reading a few excerpts to promote his book as it was nominated for the KPMG Children’s Book Award Ireland. It was also very neat to watch him draw ghosts that were part of the story. While I cannot recreate an Irish accent, he does a really great job with the pace and tempo that keeps sets a very spooky mood. During this time, I was also thinking about pauses needed to emphasize aspects of the story to set a suspenseful or scary mood. Listening to the author reading a few pages helped to solidify my own thoughts on how to read the book.    

The next step was to read it to my students. I read this to four different classes and all of them enjoyed it. Many lists that I looked over suggested that The Creepy Carrots books as must reads and they are very popular and creepy, but I wanted a story that was something that could have happened. At the end, we would talk about if the story could be true. This book fits very well as there is a town in South Carolina that was flooded to build a reservoir and I was able to bring this fact to our discussions about the story and how it may have come to be told. We talked about how there were lakes in our own state that began as towns such as Lake Murray, Lake Hartwell, and Lake Marion. We had some very good discussions about how ghost stories get started. 

It does not surprise me, but the storytelling is easier than the technology. I did not have a You Tube channel prior to this class, and I was unaware of the 15-minute video length limit. On Sunday, I was looking through the videos and seeing that no one had viewed my video. Looking at my You Tube channel revealed that my video failed to finish loading due to video length and the verification of my account. After verification, I was able to complete the loading and my video was posted. Yeah! I also live in an area with poor Wi-Fi capabilities, and I must upload video at my school or wait hours for the process to finish. To correct my error, I had to upload it while we were all at church and that took over an hour with an empty house.  

 

Reflection the experience of the story The Little Old Lady Who was Not Afraid of Anything. 

         This story is very much a younger grade story. I revisited this story after about 10 years away. I had forgotten how enjoyable the story is to read and how much the students enjoy listening and participating. I reviewed the story many times before reading it with my students. What was most noticeable about revisiting the story is how much my experiences have changed how I performed the book with my students. Previously it was only read with students acting out the clomp, wiggle, shake, clap, nod, and boo but there is so much more that the students can do. After about the 7th and 8th reading, I had the students standing and walking with the little old lady. We clomped, clapped and wiggled to the end of the book and the experience was more. By the end, students could tell the story back to me as the book was very repetitive. This was the most enjoyable experience, and I will continue to repeat this year after year.  

The biggest takeaway I have from these experiences is repetition. Every time you read the story; it becomes smoother. Every time you read it; you find minor things that improve the experience. Every time you read, you become more comfortable with any future stories you read. I have a high school clinical student who wants to teach, and he had never read to children before. He chooses a book each week and then reads it the following week to a class of kindergarten students. Watching his journey from awkwardly reading in an almost monotone voice to seeing him read with voices and asking students questions after the story has really reinforced the importance of storytellers and the process it involves. I recommend a storytelling class for all educators.  

 

This week I am reading the following non-fiction stories. 

Volcanoes by Gail Gibbons 

Pluto! Not a Planet? Not a Problem! by Stacy McAnulty 

Who am I? An Animal Guessing Game by Steve Jenkins and Robin Page 

A Dinosaur Named Ruth: How Ruth Mason discovered fossils in her own backyard. 

The Stuff of Stars by Marion Dane Bauer 

The Amazing Life Cycle of Plants by Kay Barnham