Interactive Storytelling Glove

I love storytelling!  This storytelling glove is a great way for students to have prompts when presenting their stories.  It also offers a great visual for the audience.
Choosing the Story:
Some students retold classics like the Three Little Pigs. Some students added unique endings to classics. Other students created completely original stories with creative characters.

Here are the materials:

-child's glove

-Velcro strips cut into pieces to fit on glove fingertips

-paper characters/pictures from the story 

(some clip art, some original artwork, stickers on card stock also work)

Construction:

• First, each student told a peer or teacher their story.
• Next, they drew pictures of the story line in a a graphic organizer.  
• Then each person chose, cut and decorated paper clip art characters for their retelling of the story. 
• I laminated the clip art characters or put them on card stock for durability. 
• Then the students attached the Velcro to the back of each clip art and glove fingertips.  

The best part was the presentation of the stories! 

Through out the verbal storytelling, the students introduced the characters by attaching a clip art image to one of the fingertips.  Sometimes the characters on different fingertips were made to talk with each other.  As characters left the scene, the students removed that clip art from their finger tips.

This activity enabled student independence and creativity. Each child's story was expressed through art, voice, and body.  Most of the students retold their stories repeatedly at home, to family and with other students.

Real Life Writing-Yum!

I love to do interactive writing that has a real life purpose.  This engages students as well as creates motivation and meaning for the writing.

Here is a great activity for expository writing using recipes!

We did a shared writing activity as we made peanut butter and jam sandwiches.

                                Each step was told verbally first.
                                We followed the verbal step physically.
                                We wrote a sentence describing the step we took.

The concrete sandwich making created an accessible reference point or reminder when writing.  We worked on sounding out words as we wrote.  We also looked for word clues to spell new words.  For example- peanut was referenced on the peanut butter jar.  These clues created independence when writing.  She even thought of a 'hint' for making her sandwich.  Recipes also require or introduce sequencing of events.

Good recipes to write include: familiar foods, short processes, child-appropriate accessible ingredients

exs. sandwiches

ants on a log

pizza

tostadas

salad

nachos