Once upon a time, in a school not so far from here, there was a class called Autahi who loved stories. Each time the children gathered together for a chat, or rest, or a snack, they always asked to be read a story. And when the story ended, they would call out, "Another story, please!" Many of the children also liked to find story books to enjoy during choosing time, or made up stories when they played with their friends.
Truly, Autahi was a room full of stories. Luckily, the teachers in Autahi loved stories as much as the children. So, they agreed that Autahi should begin a quest to explore some of the many ways that stories can be told, through drawing, writing, speaking, drama, film-making, puppetry ... so many wonderful possibilities.
And so began the tale of Autahi's latest Inquiry ...
Yes, our Inquiry in Autahi is about ways to tell stories. At Worser Bay School, we use an Inquiry cycle to help us to map our inquiry learning. It looks like this:
We are just at the very beginning of this cycle. In fact, we're almost in a pre-inquiry stage, where we're fuelling up our inquiry by reading and exploring lots of different fairytale stories. These are stories that most of us already know well, but can be told in many different ways. We are experiencing some of these different retellings, thinking about the characters, making art, building and making, and doing some of our own writing, too. This week, we have begun exploring Jack and the Beanstalk. Here we are, building a beanstalk for Jack (and we'll be planting some beans this week, too).
From these early experiences, we will begin to consider what questions we have about how these stories can be told. We will find some new ways to tell these stories ourselves and - really important - share them other people.
Keep an eye on the Blog and Seesaw as we move through our Inquiry process and share our learning and stories with you. And do ask your child to tell you the stories they are learning at school.
