Stories and Storytelling have always been a part of my life. My grandparents, father, and uncle all delighted in telling stories and many of my childhood memories involve listening to family stories. I guess it is not surprising that stories have become integral to my classroom but getting here was a multi-year process.

When I first started teaching kindergarten in 2003 the children wrote/drew every day for 20 minutes in little books. I sometimes prompted them but usually left them free to choose their own topics. In 2006/2007 Dr. Emily Skinner volunteered during writing time and introduced me to the Writing Workshop approach developed at Teachers College. This provided me with some structure for writing time and has been a resource for ideas when I needed to help a child move forward.

In the fall of 2007 I participated with Dr. Mary Blake in some research looking at the connection between storytelling and story writing competency. As a part of the research I had to tell personal stories to my students at the beginning of journal writing once a week.  The children were encouraged to respond to these stories by sharing their own stories orally and in writing.

The following semester I introduced “writing workshop” with a focus on storytelling. During writing workshop I did not provide any prompts.  I encouraged children to write about events from their real lives (which I often modeled by telling personal stories).  It became clear to me that the children objected to being restricted to what adults considered real.  The children wanted to tell stories that were influenced by popular culture when I restricting story choices I was cutting some children out of the “story club.”  Since then I have intentionally allowed children to write fiction, non-fiction, or autobiographically; recognizing that they would have different levels of comfort with the scripts inherent in these different story forms.

As writing workshop has developed over the years I have created a fairly consistent script for starting it at the beginning of the year:

1. Allow for independent writing (30-minute block of time)
2. Share a story with very simple drawings and send the children off to write.
3. “Did you know I have a cat? His name is Mowgli and he is a scaredy cat. One day a man named Sam came to my house to fix my bathroom. Mowgli hid under my bed. Sam plugged in a very loud machine. Mowgli ran outside so fast I could barely see him. I thought he was lost. I looked under the house and in the bushes and under the car. I called, “Mowgli, Mowgli.” But no Mowgli. My cat…was lost.”
4. Show them that there are many different ways to write.

Students love sharing their stories with their teachers and especially with each other.  Feel free to ask your child to share what they wrote at any time.  We look forward to watching their stories grow and find ways to capture and share their voice with others!

-Mary J. White, Master Teacher Butterfly Classroom (4/5 year olds)