WORKSHOP DAY 1 WITH THE STORYTELLER
Year 5, Grays Farm School, Bromley meet The Storyteller
TEXT-TILES/INSPIRATION AFRICA
Day 1, Spring Term, 1999
WORKSHOP DAY 1 WITH THE STORYTELLER
Year 5, Grays Farm School, Bromley meet The Storyteller
After break we looked at the Text-Tiles Website, we saw some flags with a dragon with loads of heads, a bird with two heads, some crabs and some monkeys...'look before you leap'.
"This morning we heard stories from the storyteller ...
... we acted out a story about a lemon, a hat, some weeds, some shakers and some fish that spoke. We screamed when they spoke!
 | After this we made up some stories and we had to speak what came through our heads. |  |
In the hall we spoke through our heads and acted out what went through our heads, then we had to act out the animals to different sounds. Then we got into groups of 4 and 5 and created our own group monster. We had to make a sound to go with it and we had to make a movement.
Some of us made different shapes and noises... swirling, giggling squeaking 'sort of like dancing really' ..and we had loads of fun!"
In the afternoon we got down to the serious business of writing our stories. In our groups we began by drawing a picture of the monster we had made up in the hall before lunch. We were given 4 minutes to complete our drawing, then we had to give it a name. We then had brainstorms where we had to shout out words that we thought described Africa, we made a list... these words were for us to use in our stories.
Next we had to write our story, Xanthe talked about stories and how we set scenes and make adventures happen. So we started by each making up a character and giving it a name, next we had to put our characters in a scene... each group had to try and agree without arguing too much. The characters had to come across a problem and then sort it out. Each story had our monster in it too. We only had about 20 minutes to write the first version of the story. Then we had to read them out in class and people listened and clapped.
At the end of the day Tony did a screen print of a monkey using two colour prints. It was brilliant. Now we knew how our books were going to be made. On to the SCREEN PRINTING WORKSHOPS (Days 2 and 3).