What Makes a Good Story?

“One sees clearly only with the heart. Anything essential is invisible to the eyes.” – The Little Prince

This month, the kindergarten students are beginning to develop, write and design their own classroom play. In preparation for this project, we noted that the kindergarten has been thinking deeply about what makes a story "good." It was easier to determine what we did not like about some stories- the story was not too interesting, there were not a lot of describing words, or "the story was all over the place." When asked why some stories were "good," the reply was often "because I like it!" Wanting to move this thought into a critical thinking process, we have begun to examine several favorite stories to see why they appeal to us and what makes us want more of a good thing!

As the children have perused classroom books, visited the library, and shared books from home during classroom book sharing, questions have arose: 

Why do you like it?

Why did you pick that?

Why did that character do that?
How did they fix it?
What is going to happen next?
Can we read it again?

Through our investigation of "good" stories, our kindergarten class has learned some new vocabulary as well as determined the components that create a good story in a visual web:

• A story should have a beginning, a middle and an end
• It should be interesting and sometimes have a surprise
• A story has a problem and often a lesson
• A story has characters and a setting 
• The characters will grow and/or change during the story
• If it is a "good" story, you will often want to read or hear it more than one time
• If a story is "good," our class often likes to "act" it out
• A "good" story can also be a "heart" story 

 The beauty of an emergent curriculum is that the ideas from the children truly lead the study. Since our few days back from break, it is obvious that the classroom and school-wide talks about "inner light" and the theme of the winter program has taken a hold of the hearts and souls of our children for they have begun to call our favorite collection of "good" stories, "inner light" stories, "bucket-filling stories," and "heart" stories! The framework for our play has begun to take shape in the midst of these very important discussions about "good" stories. The students have clearly indicated they want to look at the nature of "good" stories as we continue our quest to write a "good" play! If you or any of your family members would like to share one of your favorite "heart" stories with the class, please let us know. We would love to expand our awareness of other "heart" stories!

Please note that we will perform our kindergarten-written "heart" story on Friday, January 29th at our 8:30 am Lower School assembly in the Muller Auditorium.