Powerful Storytelling

Bridgette Towle and Angela Heape, authors of the book Cup (which is part of the Reimagining Our Work [ROW] collection), describe what they learned about the power of storytelling as they worked with a group of children deeply engaged in a long-term project. The powerful stories in the ROW collection, all closely related to Ann Pelo and Margie Carter’s new book, From Teaching to Thinking, each describe specific work with children to illustrate what it looks like to “move beyond the joyless land of prescribed curricula…to the green-growing terrain of lively curiosity,” as Pelo and Carter write.

In Cup Towle and Heape marvel at remarkable discoveries by children and adults alike as the result of a long-term project where the entire class explored a simple material – plastic cups. Here’s one discovery:

“Encounters between children, cups, and lights opened a portal to fantastical worlds generating stories of adventure and mystery. Storytelling sparked new connections and relationships between ideas, theories, things, people and places – real and imagined! The children’s narratives showed us how powerful materials and objects are as activators of expressive storytelling and metaphoric thinking: both important components of literacy learning. Alert to the richness unfolding before us, we listened and scribed the children’s stories, and in doing so, showed them how much we believe in their capabilities as creative thinkers and storytellers.”

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