Twillman Elementary kindergarten students turned into little red hens, lazy mice and other animals under the direction of storyteller Sherry Norfolk.
She visited every kindergarten class, working with students on the “Hear It! Learn It! Tell It!” program. Students heard stories, told stories, acted them out and wrote new ones. They learned about characters and setting, problems and solutions and story beginnings, middles and ends.
In Cherronda Williams’ room, Norfolk and the students created two stories. Norfolk told the students the newly created stories, using different voices for each character and a variety of sound effects for certain actions. Then, she let the students take turns performing the story for their classmates until everyone performed and watched it.
Set at a house in the country, the story featured a little red hen who found a seed. She asked for help from her friends - a lazy dog, a lazy cat and a lazy mouse. She wanted help planting the seed but all three animals refused. This became a pattern – before each new action, the hen asked every other character to help and they always refused.
The hen planted the seed, watched it grow into a stalk of wheat, cut the stalk, ground it into grain, stirred it with water and other ingredients to make bread, baked it and ate it. When it came time to eat the bread, the pattern changed and all of the other animals volunteered to help. At first, the hen refused to share but her friends’ sad expressions convinced her otherwise.
According to her website, www.sherrynorfolk.com, storytelling is important because, “Teaching through story means that students will be able to remember what is taught, access that information and apply it more readily. Story aids memory because it puts information into a meaningful context to which other information can be ‘attached.’ Storytelling lays down the narrative or contextual track where knowledge can reside. It is storytelling that creates and maintains connections between isolated pieces of information.”
Activities such as this one link to a HSD Value – “We will monitor academic progress in a timely manner and provide differentiated support for each student to reach maximum growth.”
For the second story, she asked the students what kinds of animals can be found on farms. Norfolk changed the setting and characters but the patterns remained – Norfolk told the story to the students, who then performed it for classmates until all of them took a turn.
In the story, a cow on a farm found an apple tree and she decided to make applesauce flavored with cinnamon. She walked into the barn and asked for help from her friends, a lazy pig, two lazy horses and a lazy sheep. They all declined. The cow picked the apples, peeled and chopped them, cooked them in water, added some cinnamon, stirred and mashed the apples and then ate the applesauce. As in the first story, at each new task, the cow asked her friends to assist her but they all preferred to doze until it was time to eat the applesauce, when they eagerly volunteered.
“They were really excited,” said Williams about her students’ reaction to Norfolk’s stories. “I liked how Norfolk got everybody involved so that everyone would get a turn. I was impressed at how much of the stories the students could retell and that they used some of the same hand movements she used.”
Williams said Norfolk’s visit left such an impression that students have asked her if they can turn books they are reading in class such as, “The Moles and the Baby Bird,” into mini-plays, too.