ALA Murder Group, Museum Day, Nov. 3, 2004

Today we continued the Storytelling cycle by having the students talk a little to their classmates about the previous activity of filming and writing a story. We then engaged the students in a an activity where they told a story to each other. In a variation of the old EGG TIMER game, the students were given a place (the museum), character names (Julie and Ryan), and a situation or crisis (a kidnapping), and they were instructed to begin telling a story from those guidelines. ( a practice run was done first, and too many options for them to use were given - they guidelines were then whittled down to what is written above.) For the trial run, each student was given thirty seconds to tell part of the story, making it up as they went along. After the thirty seconds, the next person in the circle was to continue the story. The larger exercise went to two minutes instead of thirty seconds. As the story was told, the students were also filmed telling the story. After the exercise was completed, evaluation questions were asked such as:
What do you remember about the story?
Can you describe the characters at all?
How about the guidelines - did the story stick to them?
The students began to talk about how there were too many PLOT points that came out and it was hard to follow. They also mentioned that details about the characters were left out and the settings were confusing. (They mentioned that the story told would be very hard to film.) A handout was given that explained to them the elements of a good story that they were already talking about - Theme, setting, Story Structure and Point of View, Characters, Plot, and Style and Tone. The work for the next week is for the students to view the film of their work and critique it - the story as a whole, and their 2 minute contribution - on the basis of the six elements given above from a questionnaire based on the descriptions.
Jonathon