Abstract:

The Story WorkshopR method, originated by John Schultz, works from grad school to grade school, from American affluent to poverty areas, from the South Side of Chicago to Fudan/Shanghai, engaging the participation and advancement of skills for the many voices and cultural and linguistic origins, as well as encouraging people to use their different ways of apprehending things—face to face, face to self, face to group, face to teacher, face to computer screen. It enhances problem solving abilities at the computer and online. Grade school assessment scores for students in Story Workshop classes, meeting for 2 hours once a week, rise significantly. This includes math and science where reading comprehension and narrative/visualized problem solving can be crucial. It can be adapted easily into primary and secondary curricula and into daily and weekly scheduling. It fulfills broad language arts syllabi. In the Story Workshop Practice Teaching program in the Fiction Writing Department, we work with 400-500 grade school children each year. The presentation includes DVD showing of actual classes. See below.

The Story Workshop method, its activities and formats used by teachers with reasonable training, integrates reading, writing, speaking, listening, thinking and incorporates the three major ways of learning in every phase—the visual, the auditory, and the kinesthetic.* These “ways of learning” are not so distinct, but interpenetrate in all of the Story Workshop activities. The methodology is designed to be flexible, enabling the teacher to engage the diversity of students.