Merrybelle’s Storybook Project: Part 3
(中文在英文后面)
Merrybelle Guo, a student at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, received a grant to travel to China and create storybooks with students and teachers at RCEF’s Guan Ai Elementary School. This is the third in a series of posts about her experience. Previous posts can be found through the following links: part 1, part 2.
So, as had been planned the previous day, I met Xie laoshi at 7 am in the school library. I was pumped for day 1 with the 4th graders, then Xie laoshi hit me with a big one: we were going to not only start the books, but finish them today, too! We settled on setting aside five classes for the storybook class, however, it ended up spilling into seven.
There were definite similarities in the 4th grade run through and the 3rd grade version of the storybook project, but there were also distinct differences. Most of these differences were attributed to the different class personalities and atmospheres bred by the two different teachers. Whereas the 3rd graders had had experience working in groups and presenting their ideas (some were even quite ham-ish about performing), the 4th graders were much more shy about voicing, let alone performing their creativity to the class. We had to quickly switch from the lesson plan group created and performed stories to a new tactic.
This tactic ended up being drawing a pair of eyes, a nose, ears, etc.. I asked the class to help me draw a face. What did a face necessarily comprise of? Eyes, lips, nose, ears etc as had previously been mentioned. Then, I asked them to help me come alternative substitutes to the traditionally accepted facial features. Our face ended up having flowers for eyes, a triangle nose, a moon mouth, stars for ears, and locks of vines. Since the kids were having a really hard time coming up with creative stories, this was an exercise in using the imagination and viewing our world in an alternative perspective. It also ended up serving as an analogy to the storybooks. In order to tell a story, one must have all the necessary ingredients to weave a tale of intrigue, excitement or of fun! So then we had all the kids draw their own faces with their own facial form replacements. This expectedly produced a lot of funny looking faces!
This time around, when we got around to making the actual books, instructions were much more explicit. Each page had to have a single, complete thought. Each page had to progress the story. We wanted the stories to be simple, which would make them more readable. It would also help them work on the basic, but essential, story telling components. Since our instructions were much more clear, and also much more strict, the students had a tougher approval process than the 3rd graders. At first, I was afraid the strict criteria would stifle creativity but it seemed pretty necessary and it also seemed to work out “better” than the first storybook project attempt.
Despite a slight malfunction with the hole puncher and one and a half books to go, I think the 4th graders did a fantastic job, and so did Xie laoshi. Round 2: done!
Merrybelle的故事书课程：第三篇
Merrybelle Guo来自北卡罗来纳大学教堂山分校，她获得资助来到中国，和RCEF关爱小学的师生一起完成一项特别的教学——故事书课程。本文是她一系列经历中的第三篇，前两篇文章参见下列链接：第一篇，第二篇。
按照前一天的计划，早上7点钟我在学校图书馆里和谢老师碰头。对于即将和四年级孩子们度过的第一天，我充满了期待，而谢老师给了我一个巨大的挑战：要在一天之内完成故事书教学！我们商量后决定为故事书课程安排5节课时，然而，最终我们用了7节。
四年级的教学情形同三年级有许多相似之处，不过区别也同样显著。这些区别主要源于两位不同的教师所培养出的不同班级性格和课堂氛围。三年级学生们曾经有过分组活动和表达思想的经验（有一些学生甚至有着超乎寻常的表现欲），而四年级学生在表达意见时则显得害羞拘谨，更不必说在全班面前表演了。我们只好把分组创作表演故事的计划暂时放下，转而采取一种新的教学方式。
这个新方式就是画画。我要求同学们画一张脸，脸的构成元素是什么呢？眼睛，嘴唇，鼻子，耳朵……然后，我请他们用一些替代物取代这些通常的面部特征。最终我们画出的脸有着鲜花的眼睛，三角形的鼻子，月牙的嘴巴，星星耳朵，和葡萄藤头发。由于孩子们在创作故事方面遇到了困难，这样的绘画可以帮助他们练习想象力，用新的视角观察世界，起到同故事书创作类似的效果。随后，正如讲故事需要将阴谋，刺激，幽默等等元素编织在一起，我又让同学们发挥想象，用替代物画出自己的脸。毫不意外地，许许多多滑稽可笑的面孔问世了！
在此之后，真正的故事书创作开始了。我们给孩子们提出了更加明确的要求，每一页必须有一个独立完整的想法，并且能够推进故事的情节。内容要简洁，既便于阅读，又能帮助孩子们体会故事创作中最基本同时也最重要的构成元素。由于要求清晰且严格，同三年级相比，故事通过审核的难度增加了。起初我曾担心这种严格会压抑孩子们的创造性，但结果证明还是很必要的，效果比第一次的故事书尝试要好。
除了打孔机有一点小故障,以及还差一本半的故事书没有完成，我认为四年级学生们的表现非常好，谢老师的工作也非常出色。故事书教学第二轮：完成！
（翻译 ：王晓峰）
Modified
Wei Ji Ma (blog author) says:
Added on July 2nd, 2008 at 6:01 amVery interesting. In Theater class i have also noticed that sometimes creativity needs to be structured. Too much flexibility in the task may leave the students clueless. I am glad the storybooks are successful and that you are learning a lot in the process yourself. Did you tell Diedie Weng about your experiences? She was the first RCEF volunteer who did a storybook project (Dongbaoquan, VP2006) and would probably be very interested in hearing about your experiences.
Diedie says:
Added on July 2nd, 2008 at 8:09 pmNamaste,Merrybelle! Hello from India.
I am terribly sorry I have not replied your email earlier about your lesson plan. The past month has been crazy.
Anyways, I am glad that your storybook project with the kids is going so well. I love your ideas about the scavenger hunt and drawing faces. Last month I have just finished a project with a painter and a group of refugee children using painting and video to talk about “what is home.” I want to share this process with you. Hope it is helpful. We didn’t really request the kids to be creative but tried to provide them a way to find themsevles. Being able to explore one’s visiion usually will lead to unique stories. The children has been given three colors to do abstract paintings to express what they see—like “imagine you are standing in front of the window of your house, what do you see…” “Imagine you are flying in the sky, walking in a forest, you are finding a place to land.” We also took kids to parks to look at trees, film trees, and paint trees in day time and night time. I was amazed by the colors and expression the children developed in their paintings over the past month, despite the fact that they were having a hard time to stay focus during activity. In the final part of the project, the children were asked to put together the paintings based on their visual connections and write a story. The story came out amazing original.
SOrry i have to go in ten minutes. Here is a short brain storming piece for my new video based on the children story. The writing is quite messy but can tell you a bit about the process and the stories:
Intro:
In this documentary, I will use mainly the paintings and stories created by three girls(two refugee and one buffalo girl) to tell an emotional and artistic search for self, friendship and home through a journey of watercolors with an refugee artist who grew up in buffalo and shared somewhat similar childhood experiences.
Brainstorming about structure:
OK, this is just my imaginary structure. I have not “examined” the footage carefully yet. But in my head, the footage plays together like this. It may not make sense. Just a rough idea.:)
1. Opening: Ajak’s story: “Once upon a time, I went through this time portal…I found an heart-shaped land, I saw lots trees surrounding a house in the middle…..I never leave there ever again” (A scene of Ajak telling her story with her hand moving from painting to painting)
2. Girls sit in a circle using a camera to interview each other about each other, where they are from, what they want.
3. Pragna: “Close your eyes, imagine you stand in front of a window…Kids’s discussion on their paintings that reflect what they see from a heart-shaped window.” Children doing painting, showing the images they film from their home windows inside or outside. (Perhaps I should add a short of girls holding the camera and stand in front of a window. Ajak said she can’t film at home because her mother doesn’t like. I will go with her to find a window that she likes outside and film from there.) Then, Elizabeth talks about her image—”I saw the sun through a rain drop looking out from my window” more girls talk about their images…
4. Girls started using brush to explore colors and went on a visual journey—Elizabeth tells her story: once upon a time, I went on a journey, I saw purple, green….changed into organze….I met a friend called…
5. Pragna’s interview with Elizabeth. Elizabeth said she felt the trees in her present world is brown, because she is surrounded by all brown people…Ajak said the trees in her hometown are red, and then now are black…they explained why…
6. Pragna: “Imagine you are walking through forest, flying in the sky, you are looking for a place to land…”
7. Pragna’s conversation with the girls on her purpose on this painting project, and the girls’ find out more about Pragna and her experiences…
8. Children’s discussion on the colors of their trees in the painting, in the past and the present. Girls asked Latrisha: where are you from? Latrisha: Buffalo. Girls to Latrisha: You never moved? Latrisha:”Never.” The girls were surprised then they listen to Latrisha’s stories about her moving from different houses…Latrisha is one of the girls who are not refugee in the program. (Interview Ajak why she doesn’t want to draw roots for her tree?)
9. Latrisha’s story about her growing a garden that keeps dying, and she finally gives up.
10. I originally want to end at Latrisha’s sad story but I want to give a more critical note. So I may try to interview Latrisha why she wants to leave a sad ending for her story, since children’s stories usually have a good ending. We will see what she would say. The end.
Kathy Hoekenga says:
Added on July 9th, 2008 at 5:39 amHi Merrybelle,
Hello from Trinity School in California! I am the 5th grade teacher and was one of the fortunate members of my school to visit Guan Ai in March- what an incredible experience! We all wished we could have stayed longer and spent more time with the teachers and children as you are doing. Our 4th and 5th graders were penpals with the Guan Ai 5th graders this past year and we hope to continue with more correspondence this next year- hopefully between more of the classes and between some of the teachers.
I love all of the creative work you have done with the Guan Ai students! We are planning to discuss ideas for collaborative lessons that could be done between our schools or done at both schools and then shared. If it is possible for you to share a few of the students’ stories it would be fantastic- that way we could share them with our teachers and students and it would be a jumping off point . Perhaps we could have penpals at different grades share their books with each other! Another idea from what you have done would be for the penpals to make individualized nametags for each other based on what they have learned from letters. If possible, please let me know what you think of these ideas! Many thanks!!