Our Alisa has already created a storybook collection in September with her 3rd and 4th graders. She sent me the collection which I share below.
I feel that it is important to share here because we now have a great example of what many of us will be aiming to produce in the spring during project time [described in ANATTY].
What you will notice in Alisa’s description is that she encourages all sorts of spin offs – not just the story – from the “base” one word image. Alisa explains:
“Y’all know I teach 1st-4th grade Spanish. The 3rd & 4th graders started the school year begging to create a new One Word Image. So in mid-September I already had 6 images – 3 sections of each grade. Each of those classes lovingly developed fabulous stories about their image. We wrote them up, attached them to the images, posted them all, and did a gallery walk [ANATTY] after I did an initial oral overview of each plot.
“Then each group wanted to dramatize the story. With their “help,” I converted the narrative to Readers’ Theater [ANATS, ANATTY]. We acted out each story – with several different casts – so each story was filmed 2-3 times [Video Retell – ANATS]. I kept riding the wave. The classes begged to see each others’ videos. Then they begged to re-enact each others’ stories.
“Here we are 5 weeks later and we’re finally going to take a break from the OWIs because next week is the lead up to Halloween and I promised we’d do Halloweeny stuff. Meantime, the 2nd graders saw all the images hanging on the walls of the Spanish room, and they wanted in on the action. So those 2 group just finished creating their OWI stories, too.
“Now I have 8 total. One is a giant orange Halloween donut with black sprinkles and vampire teeth named “Dunkin’”; and his frenemy, a slice of pizza with worms and dirt on it named “Wormsy.” In the end of that one, Dunkin’ is a poor sport and when Wormsy beats him at soccer, he drinks up all of Wormsy’s tomato sauce with a straw and then eats him with his vampire teeth!
“Yes, I get paid to do this.”
I commented on what Alisa wrote:
…the 2nd graders saw all the images hanging on the walls of the Spanish room, and they wanted in on the action….
My comment:
“This is the way it’s supposed to work. Why promote your program when the kids can do it for you? Even though I’ve been doing OWIs since 2005, I didn’t introduce the galleries until 2016 in India and I immediately noticed then that I didn’t have to worry about building up interest in my program anymore – it happened naturally precisely because of the galleries and the natural competitive nature of kids to be the best artist. In New Delhi kids from other classes would even want to skip other classes to join the classes of their friends to get in on the fun.”
Alisa continues:
“Before we turned it into a Readers’ Theatre, we also did a 6-panel storyboard. We came up with the summary statements together; then I wrote in the captions and they copied from under the doc camera; then they illustrated the panels; then we viewed all the papers.
“And some classes also did a Listen & Draw on dry erase boards. I have a video of a guy drawing a similar image – say a piece of sushi with cutie eyes (artforkidshub.com) – and I kinda Movie Talk it – but then the kids add the particular OWI attributes – an angry hairy unibrow, a looooong beard, etc. and everyone shares the image they drew by raising their board. Some are so attached to the character that they beg to draw on paper in color – we haven’t done this yet this round – and some surprise me with artwork they did at home!
“BTW – with any whole class kid artwork that becomes of it – have them write a favorite part of the story below (copy from the storyboard captions) and make a bulletin board in the hallway – maybe even post the BIG ORIGINAL OWI, and a brief layman’s explanation of the “project.” This has the potential to gain lots of evaluator points; gets the word out to parents and community about the fun and real language in your classroom, and injects much needed levity into the schoolhouse!”
[Me again: Do not worry if it sounds like it’s too busy. That’s what we want: all sorts of possibilities. There is no one right way to do this work. Alisa has been at this stuff for many years, as have many of us on the PLC.]
Here are links to (only the first pages of each of) the kids’ stories, just to give the idea:
