Workshops For Elementary Students

Classroom Workshops:
These offer an opportunity for 100% student participation in a workshop designed to extend either specific classroom or general educational objectives. They also provide an opportunity for teachers and administrators to observe teaching techniques.

Possible topics for K-2 students include, but are not limited to:

Building Blocks:
This workshop reinforces basic skills necessary for story listening and story making. Students will engage in full motor exercises that help them become better observers, partners, and listeners. 

The Magic Beans: Creating an original movement tale for the entire classroom
This workshop:
-Reinforces pre-concrete operational learning skills such as recall, sequencing, and grouping -Offers a motor based learning experience -Works on developing expressive vocabulary -Reinforces cooperation

Story Theater: Acting Out the Tale
Students will create original dialogue and movement as they come to explore and express a given tale. This workshop: -Helps to teach the culture that a story emerged out of -Reinforces the social weave of the classroom, teaching cooperation and team work in the service of a larger work -Allows children to discover their particular theatrical strengths -Reinforces pre-concrete operational learning skills such as recall and sequencing

Possible topics for third through fifth graders:

Learning the Tale:
Prior to telling a story one must hear, imagine, and retell it in many ways before it becomes uniquely theirs. Students will learn and practice this process.

Acting It Out:
Creating a play from folklore draws young people into the process of character development. It also promotes cooperation, reinforces sequencing and recall and empowers students by having them generate their own dialogue. This project culminates with a play that can be performed for other members of the school community.

I’m the Teller:
Student will choose, develop, and tell stories. They will learn telling techniques and practice them on tales to be shared with a larger audience.

One Generation To The Next:
Students will interview a family member and create an original tale from this work. This project not only teaches story making and telling skills but reinforces family cohesion.

Great Ideas: 
Students will experience a series of creative story making exercises and ultimately shape original tales. This process teaches students how to access and shape their imaginations.

The Character’s the Thing
Student’s writing is often flat because they don’t understand that unique plots evolve out a characters’ personality, motive, and idiosyncrasies. During this workshop students will explore how a character is developed, defined, and drives plot.

Judith Teaches Two Classes Annually:

Making Stories From Your Life, the first weekend in February:

Telling Stories to Children, the last week in June:

http://www.tellingstoriestochildren.com

Come and See a Performance