when things don't go as you expect...

Here's the blank piece of paper that I had planned to fill with the summary of yesterday's curriculum story, "Mischief Comes to Alpha-Beta" (an Enki Education 1st Grade Language Arts story). I was excited about this -- for the first time doing a written summary of a story with the boys, rather than just a verbal recall. I had it well-planned: I was going to restate their summary in a more concise form, then model writing it down. It was going to be great!


It didn't happen. Not only did I not get to the writing part, I didn't even get to the making-the-summary-more-concise part. When I started to lead the kids in their story recall, they both just looked blankly at me. J scratched his head and said "You know, I really didn't understand that story. It was really confusing. And long. And, well, kind of crazy." I turned to Zoo Boy and he just shrugged at me, a half-smile on his face to say "me, too".

Obviously I had no choice but to bag my plans for the day. So instead of writing and drawing, I retold the story to them. Only this time, I made a few props. Just some simple drawings of some of the key characters met during the story. And a very basic town map, showing simple block houses and the letter characters residing inside. We borrowed some of our wax buddies from our 4-processes block to play a couple of roles. And the fingers on my right hand served as the four main characters.


As I re-read the story, I simply laid out the pictures I drew on top of the town map as they occurred in the story.


It was an enormous hit.


As soon as I finished, J asked "Can we play with this stuff?"


Absolutely, I told him, and I left them to it.


At one point I stuck my head back in the room to find J re-telling the story to himself, using the drawings in the way I had. Later, Zoo Boy ran through the house with a couple of the drawings, using them like dolls in some complicated make-believe story.


I'm guessing I'll find them a bit more connected to the story tomorrow morning. THEN I can go ahead and do the other stuff I've had planned for story work this week.