Class Discussion Data #1: Where do all of your good story ideas come from?

Today in our morning sharing circle, I asked my class, "Where do all of your good story ideas come from?"

For the past two days, my students have been working in partnerships, writing the middle of the stories they began a few weeks ago when we launched our Story Play writing. After writing story beginnings using who, where and when details, the children have, most recently, planned with their partners what will happen next in the middle of their stories, with a focus on describing a problem and including dialogue between the characters.

They have worked collaboratively on drawings and dictated their narratives to a teacher. They are looking forward to acting out their still-in-process stories and revising as needed so the stories make sense.

Throughout the Story Play process, I have been curious about how my students come up with the imaginative and detailed stories that seem to come so naturally to them. Are they influenced by books they have read, stories they have heard, television shows, video games and movies? Are they influenced by hearing stories told by their classmates? Do they hold these stories inside and bring them out at story-telling times or are they stuck in the immediacy of the present, creating their stories from ideas they have just heard from others or ideas their partners have just shared with them?

This morning when I posed the question to them directly, I expected that most of these five- and six-year-olds would not be able to think so meta-cognitively about their story-telling process. Nevertheless, I was interested in what they would say, and which children would be able to reflect at this higher level on the process of story creation.

As expected, there were several responses about the stories themselves:

"My story is about a crocodile is in a puddle and the princess is in the water." (Adrian)
"The fireman took the princess to a boat." (Ravin)
"The mouse, he was in trouble because he couldn't find the other mouse... because he was in Antarctica," (Madeline)

Other children made reference to the Story Play tools we have been using, anchor charts and the stories themselves, the beginnings of which are posted on the wall:

"I make some problems, and then I make another problem, and then I make it fixed. [I get the idea for the problem] by what the beginning was about. It gives a hint what should come next." (Ben)

"I looked on the wall [pointing to the beginning of her story hanging up]." (Josslyn)

"My idea was... you know, it's hard. You just have to think really hard to know how to do my ideas. Just think of something really good to solve the problem. And think of a problem and... it's all done! Just think super duper hard." (Arden)

A few children shared comments about thinking about their own lives:

"I think about stuff that's' true and about that's not true." (Yair)
"I got it from my lost tooth." (Forrest)
"I am really good at thinking of stories because I have a big brother and also, my daddy grew up on a kibbutz and he always has funny stories." (Ariana)

Click here for a video clip of the class discussion:

The children's comments suggest that some of them are drawing content from their own lives and experiences while others are finding the anchor charts and mini-lessons useful in helping with the process as they develop their stories. This may be true for these particular students and perhaps for others as well, though I wonder if Ariana and Forrest, for example, were thinking about their life experiences as a source of ideas for Writer's Workshop stories, rather than Story Plays.

In addition to the direct responses from this discussion, I am drawing some different conclusions about where I think their stories come from simply by looking at the dictation of the stories themselves and from the video data I have collected of their planning and drawing process. A few stories show that children are getting ideas from their own interests (Arden and Yair's story about space) or from materials in the classroom (Romel asked to bring the princess finger puppet to his table to draw).

Overwhelmingly, however, it seems that the children's ideas are coming directly from their peers, sometimes from hearing their classmates' stories read aloud, which happens in the mini-lessons right before they draw and write, and sometimes from the collaboration between partners as they plan, draw and talk together. For example, the day after we acted out Ravin and Avani's story about the princess on the mountain who got stuck in a hurricane and a fire, three other groups decided to write stories with princesses as protagonists.

In the class set of stories, castles abound (the setting of 4 out of 10 stories) and rocket ships, hurricanes, tornadoes, mountains and oceans appear in multiple stories. Princesses, knights and sharks are recurrent characters (appearing in 7 of 10 stories!), often cropping up in one story after the children hear about or act out similar characters in someone else's story.

Story Plays: October/November 2012 (Analysis of story elements in dictated stories for 10 partnerships)

Partners	Characters	Setting	Problem	Dialogue	Solution	Ending
Avani & Ravin	Princess, husband, wife, fire fighters	Mountain, hurricane, fire, falling candy and medicine	Hurricane and fire	“Help me, help me!” “Oh my darling!”
Arden & Yair	Arden, Yair, Program Director Judith	Space, rocket ship, planets, sun, moon	Getting too close to the sun, tornado	“Oh no! We’re going towards the sun!” “We’re going really close to the sun! Turn us around.”
Ariana & Sierra	Butterfly, cat, dog, baby, mom royal family (2 princes, 3 princesses),	Mountain, tornado	Mom couldn’t take care of the baby, tornado
Madeline & Samara	Wind-up mouse, regular/real mouse, snake	Birthday party box	Regular mouse in a box, cant find wind-up mouse; snake sends mouse to get a pebble, turns wind-up mouse to regular mouse	“Who are you?” “Oh, should I get you something? Like a little lunch?” “The snake did it! He turned me into a regular mouse!”
Josslyn & Anieli	Princess, sharks, birds	Beach, bathroom	Princess falling and sharks eating her	“Let’s eat her, I’m gonna eat you up from my very yummy tummy.” “I’m very full from eating all those princesses!”
Partners	Characters	Setting	Problem	Dialogue	Solution	Ending
Destiny & Azucena	Queen, princess, boy	Sun, rainbows, castle	Princess is too young to be queen	“The princess is too young to be queen.” “Where are we going? " “You will go by yourself.” “We will need to go fast.”  “Look at this beautiful house.”
Eden & Ben	King, queen, ninja, knights, princess	Castle, drawbridge	Ninjas and knights fighting, princess falls in water	“Help!” “Help! Save my princess!”
Forrest & Arden	Ben, Brody, knights	Castle, rocket ship	Trying to sneak past the knights, rocket ship almost explodes	“Shh” “Get ‘em”
Romel & Sean	Princess, king, shark	Castle	Princess caught in water and shark going to eat her	“He’s coming!”
Emiko & Brody	Alligators, fairy, monster	Apple tree	Fairy picking apples, alligator eats monster	“Why is the fairy picking all my apples?”

This morning's discussion was fascinating for many reasons, particularly in showing how the children are able to think about their story writing process. And looking at my dictation and video data has given me some clearer ideas about where I think the stories are actually coming from.

So where do all of their good story ideas come from?

The leading influence, thus far, seems to be the ideas they are hearing from their classmates. I am eager to understand this in a deeper way as I delve into the details of how my focal students collaborate in planning and developing their stories.