Artifact for today is the use of Primary Resources in your writing and storytelling. As you can tell from some of my other posts, photographs speak volumes when it comes to telling a story. Letters and diaries lead us personally into stories from times past. With access to digital resources, we have rich databases to research from. Dig in!

The Dust Bowl Era has always perked my interest, probably because my grandparents lived through these hard times and shared so many stories with me. I teach a workshop entitled "A Picture is Worth a Thousand Words" and concentrate on photographs from that time period (from the Library of Congress archives). I share the photograph above and ask my participants to jot down any factual observations they can make. No inferencing is allowed at this time. I guide them into deeper observations through questions about their observations. Finally, I allow inferences to be made which allows emotions into the picture. What happens often is my participants don't always see the baby Florence Thompson (Migrant Mother) is holding in her lap. The observations, guiding questions always leads into more questions, awwww's, and "where can I find out more?"

National Archives
Library of Congress
Digital Vaultshttp://www.digitalvaults.org
Making Sense of Documents - this includes historical songs
Authentic History Center - great place to locate pictures, documents, videos, audio productionsStories from the Smithsonian Institute
The Portal to Texas History - I have to put this resource in since I'm a Texan. I'm sure if you do a google search for your city, state, country, you'll be able to find fantastic sites.
Lone Star History Links
Historical Photographs and Documents from the Smithsonian
Dust Bowl Photographs
Dust Bowl Audio Files, Maps, Photographs- Listening to families tell about their hardships is amazing and insightful!

O is for OBJECTS you speak of in your writing and tell in your storytelling . Description is EVERYTHING! Readers and listeners alike must be able to see your characters and what they are up to. Utilizing the five senses to describe objects in your story is imperative. 

Blogging A - Z Challenge has allowed me to not only share several of the activities I participate in with my storytelling students and writing students but also to learn so much myself. This post is near and dear to me because I worked with my 4th grade class for about six weeks to accomplish a STORYTELLING Museum for the entire school to visit. We had a blast and the students enjoyed telling their stories based on the artifact they chose.

I had gathered several art pictures from our art curriculum for the students to choose from. Many of the pictures chosen were Norman Rockwell paintings which suited my students to a tee. I told a baseball story based on one of Norman Rockwell paintings as a model of what I wanted my students to accomplish at the end of our museum collection development.  The students worked in groups of two or three and some even went it alone and did a fantastic job. It was February and our writing abilities had grown by leaps and bounds by this time so the writing process was intact.  The kids worked in their groups developing their own tales based on the picture itself. I asked the kids not to read the artist notes on the back of the posters mainly because I wanted their ideas to be fresh and their own. The main idea was to make ANY connections to the art itself. Above are some prints from Metropolitan Museum of Art and some wonderful websites/blogs dedicated to Norman Rockwell are below.

Norman Rockwell Websites/blogs: Share his pictures on a large screen or the students could use iPads/computers showing the painting as they tell their connecting stories:

1. Petapixal Norman Rockwell

2. Word Press - Norman Rockwell

The Metropolitan Museum of Art offers pictures online to use for educational purposes for free. I chose a few that I hope to use with my storytellers real soon. If you can't find any pictures from printed art calendars or schools, these museum paintings and artifacts from museums are perfect!

I loved this activity. To conclude, I've included other museums that provide public domain or fair use images for educational purposes.  Linking from LibGuide: University of Dayton

Today's artifact is a bit of a stretch but I got the "E" in Epitaphs on tombstones. I know that epitaphs alone aren't artifacts but walking around older cemeteries and reading the epitaphs on the tombstones date back to the 1600's is pretty interesting. There's a life's story in just a few words - pretty impressive. Hmmm, I'm wondering what mine would say? Summing up one's life in a few sentences takes some practice. Wouldn't it be cool to either begin or end a story with our character's epitaph. I'm not sure if I've ever heard anyone tell a story beginning or ending with a summary of a person's life. I think this would be effective if my students were to  storytell an event in a historical character's life, like Daniel Boone, Davy Crockett, Marie Curie, or Helen Keller and personalize it with an epitaph in poetry form depicting the character traits of that person.

A fun writing activity would be to write poetry epitaphs for historical people studied in history and science. The students could work in groups, research the historical figure, agree on this person's character traits and create an epitaph - funny or serious.

I've included some fun websites that give us insight into funny epitaphs and further writing activities:
How to Write a Funny Epitaph
Grave Humor
Famous Epitaphs

You know a great book when you read one. I'll mention three fantastic books that have engaged 2nd graders on up to adults to write creatively, share their stories with each other, and then perform their polished tales to eager listeners. Please reply with other titles that you would like to add to this growing list.

These three books act as mentor texts to engage students in reading, writing their own versions, and then performing these tales through the craft of storytelling. Each book contains a variety of stories to connect with everyone. My students have had more fun working together and honing their ELA skills while celebrating their products through storytelling! I've included a few examples of "tall tales"  my 4th grade students created from David Wisniewski's The Secret Knowledge of Grown-Ups.

According to the Merriam-Webster Dictionary, artifact is defined as
1. a simple object (such as a tool or weapon) that was made by people in the past
2. something created by humans usually for a practical purpose; especially :  an object remaining from a particular period 


Anchor is today's artifact. Let's do a quick write (take no more than 3 minutes to jot down anything that comes to mind when you invision either the word or picture of "anchor."  Share your thoughts with someone close to you. My ideas are typed below. I tend to move right into metaphorical but students will probably begin with the actual physical structure of what an anchor is. See what you come up with.

1. My family anchor's me daily. They are only a phone call away.
2.  Anchors Aweigh - Navy
3.  Story: It takes more than a 20 lb. anchor to keep your bay boat from drifting in the waters while fishing. The winds seemed to dismantle the definition of "an anchor" that day. We're definitely amateurs when it comes to fishing in the Gulf of Mexico--almost ran ourselves up against the jetties while fishing.
4. Hope is an anchor for the soul
5. heavy, iron, chains, sink, unmovable
6. heave-ho - pirates

Find quotes from the internet, poems, books, songs, etc. about anchors

Quotes:
1. "Life's roughest storms prove the strength of our anchors."
2. "It is a far, far better thing to have a firm anchor in nonsense than to put out on the troubled seas of thought." - John Kenneth Galbraith
3. My beliefs will run through everything I do. My beliefs,my values are my anchor and when people try to drag me, as I know they will, it is to that sense of right and wrong, that sense of who I am and what I believe, to which I will always hold."- Ed Miliband

Activities to try out with your students or peers:

1. Truisms help shape stories that you write or that have already been written. What truisms can you think of when it comes to the artifact: anchor? Some examples I've found are:
a. We all need an anchor in our life to guide us.
b. Before an anchor can ever be raised, it must be let go
c.  An anchor can drag you down

Using your truism about an anchor (physical or metaphorical), write a story around it. This truism will help you bring in emotion and a deeper sense of what you really want your listener or reader to understand.

2. Sharing connections made with others always generates stories lost and now found - jars your memory. Write down all that you remember and begin to build your story. Share your anecdotes with us on this blog.
I would love to hear from you!

3. Metaphor: Make one of your characters in your tale the anchor and explain why. For example: I am that heavy anchor you heave over the bow

I can't think of a better way to link with others with similar interests around the world than through blogging so I signed up to participate in the Blogging from A to Z challenge beginning in April. I'll have 26 days (not including Sundays) to blog using a theme that I'm  revealing today as so many others are.  Each day's subject will focus on the next letter of the alphabet (A - day 1, B- day 2, and so on).

My Theme for the month of April is ARTIFACTS!
My "Power of Story Blog" fits perfectly in my theme as I will be sharing stories, activities, writing, reading, and research ideas that can be utilized in the classroom, in the library, in a storytelling club setting, or simply, as a spring board for what you want to accomplish with an idea I've presented.


Can't Wait!