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Workshops

Gail Herman singing Full Day, Half Day, or Mini WORKSHOPS:  Teachers and/or Students

Writing with Hearing Between the Lines (Energizing  the Voice and Augmenting the Meaning with Musical Sound Effects & Folk Percussion Instruments)

Poetry through Sound and Movement (2nd through 7th grades)

Creative Storytelling, Movement, and Mime:
Making Learning Kinesthetic and Creative

I am one of the contributing authors to three books for using story arts in the classroom, including The Storytelling Classroom,  Spinning Tales-Weaving Hope, and Active Learning.  I will introduce participants to strategies for making the curriculum creative and kinesthetic. Many primary, elementary and middle school students need opportunities to move. Stories, mime, and movement provide bright children with creative, kinesthetic challenges, while offering all children mnemonics for concepts to be researched and/or learned. For example, standards include learning and using parts of speech and grammar, or perhaps researching interests students have about one-celled organisms, rocks, penguins, geographic forms, and elements of art and architecture. All have narrative and kinesthetic aspects. After demonstrations, participants will learn strategies to use with students for creative work using story structures, mime, characters, hand puppets, and story slotting for writing, social studies, science and math.

The underpinning of narrative is movement: movement of emotions, images, and plot. Some exploration activities participants will learn include the Adverb Game, Opposite Character Machine, the Sound Screen, the Rondo Form, Pictures in Four Parts and Be the Thing.

Participants will have the opportunity to be actively involved in moving, creating sound effects with world percussion instruments, creating and narrating, and examining resources for movement, mime, and storytelling. Movement, mime, folktales, tall tales, and family stories make the curriculum creative and kinesthetic.