On Monday April 13 '09, a second workshop for educators was held at the Mariposa Museum in Peterborough, NH. The first in the series was held on March 9th.
Teachers and librarians in the CONVAL School District were invited to participate in the workshops, which introduced kamishibai as a storytelling art and explored ways of helping students create their own kamishibai.
The Mariposa Musuem has a storytelling theater and a number of kamishibai as part of their collection. The kamishibai are used to further the Mariposa's mission of providing a community gathering place for all ages to celebrate international folk art.
Teachers had the opportunity to veiw kamishibai made by Dianne's students over the past six years. The kamishibai were made by children from kindergarten to the fourth grade.
On the right, a teacher explores how a kamishibai theater works.
Educators at the workshop had many wonderful questions about how to integrate the story telling and the story making into their curriculum.
Dianne shared with workshop participants the variety of steps she uses to teach students to make their own kamishibai, from the initial gathering of story ideas to the finishing touch of the three places the kamishibai title and author/artist name needs to appear.
She described how using storyboards allows students to move back and forth between pictures and words as they create their kamishibai. Also, because kamishibai is a performance art, she touched on the importance of providing students time to learn how to perform their finished kamishibai for a live audience.
To the right, Jeannie Connolly, the Arts Enrichment Coordinator for the CONVAL School District, performs a kamishibai recently created by a first grade class at the Hancock Elementary School in Hancock, NH. Kamishibai created at Hancock Elementary will be performed at the 16th Annual "Children in the Arts Festival", in Peterborough on Saturday May 16, '09. See www.childrenandthearts.org for more details.
Workshop feedback from one teacher: "I love the idea of incorporating art, storytelling, mapping and literacy elements to help teach writing skills."
And from another teacher: "Keep spreading the Kamishibai Way!"
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