This term, the Year 1s at St Peters Campus have been exploring stories as a way to help us understand our world and express ourselves through the transdisciplinary theme of ‘How We Express Ourselves’. As a provocation, each child received a blank photo album just before the end of Term 2 to fill with pictures from the holidays. These pictures became the inspiration for children to share their stories with the class as well as in their writing.
Since then, it’s all been about stories:
- discovering the different ways people tell stories
- messages or lessons in stories
- how to make and share our stories
- how to bring stories to life.
The children attended an interactive concert held by the Adelaide Symphony Orchestra called ‘In This Place’ which used music, oral storytelling and animation to bring the story to life. Tying in perfectly with Book Week, the children immersed themselves in storytelling and story making. We explored Bible stories, picture books, novels, felt boards, puppets, role play, music making, small world play, stop motion videos, narration, bookmaking and many other tools and techniques to tell stories. We even had author Deborah Abela visit us and tell us about how she writes and publishes her picture books. This really opened the children’s eyes to how stories are created and books are made.
Using all these experiences, the children are now in the process of making their own stories and bringing them to life in their own unique ways. There are a wide range of topics and the children’s creativity and ingenuity has really shone through in this unit of inquiry!
Marion Nam
Year 1 Teacher
